Thomas Dixon

From Passions to Emotions (eBook, PDF)

The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Today there is a thriving 'emotions industry' to which philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists are contributing. Yet until two centuries ago 'the emotions' did not exist. In this path-breaking study Thomas Dixon shows how, during the nineteenth century, the emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category, replacing existing categories such as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections. By examining medieval and eighteenth-century theological psychologies and placing Charles Darwin and William James within a broader and more complex nineteenth-century setting, Thomas Dixon argues that this domination by one single descriptive category is not healthy. Overinclusivity of 'the emotions' hampers attempts to argue with any subtlety about the enormous range of mental states and stances of which humans are capable. This book is an important contribution to the debate about emotion and rationality which has preoccupied western thinkers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has implications for contemporary debates.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Juni 2003
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780511056376
• Artikelnr.: 38191529

Autorenporträt

Thomas Frederick Dixon Jr. was an American Baptist clergyman, politician, lawyer, lecturer, author, and filmmaker. Dixon, known as a "professional racist," wrote two best-selling novels, The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden-1865-1900 (1902) and The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905), which romanticized Southern white supremacy, supported the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, opposed equal rights for black people, and glorified the Ku Klux Klan as heroic vigilantes. D. W. Griffith adapted The Clansman for the big screen in his film The Birth of a Nation (1915). The film served as inspiration for the Klan's revival in the twentieth century. His elder brother, preacher Amzi Clarence Dixon, contributed to the editing of The Fundamentals, a series of articles (and later volumes) that were significant in fundamentalist Christianity. "He won international acclaim as one of the greatest ministers of his day." His younger brother, Frank Dixon, was also a preacher and lecturer. His sister, Elizabeth Delia Dixon-Carroll, was a pioneer woman physician in North Carolina, serving as the doctor at Meredith College in Raleigh for many years. Dixon's father, Thomas J. F. Dixon Sr., was a well-known Baptist minister, landowner, and slave-owner.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: from passions and affections to emotions
2. Passions and affections in Augustine and Aquinas
3. From movements to mechanisms: passions, sentiments and affections in the Age of Reason
4. The Scottish creation of 'the emotions': David Hume, Thomas Brown, Thomas Chalmers
5. The physicalist appropriation of Brownian emotions: Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin
6. Christian and theistic responses to the physicalist emotions paradigm
7. What was an emotion in 1884? William James and his critics
8. Conclusions: how history can help us think about 'the emotions'
Bibliography
Index.