Landscape, Climate and Feeling

Abstract

The history of emotions implies history of subjectivity. Emotions are subject to the person, the person is subject to emotions. The history of emotions relies heavily upon theological/philosophical accounts of the emotions as a means of constructing norms for a given period. Aquinas and Descartes both register the necessity, if analysing emotions, of rendering them as objects, of placing them at an intellectual distance from the selves that house them. Unlike Aquinas, Descartes understood the passiones physiologically, as functioning in a mechanized body. Scholastic theology seems particularly emotion-less. Aquinas’s explanation as to the nature of a passion is highly argued in meticulous te..