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Saving the ϕαινόμενα: a note on Aristotle's definition of anger

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

W. V. Harris
W. V. Harris
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

In his Rhetoric Aristotle gives six definitions of emotions in approximately the following form, with the word (Rhetoric ii.2.137830–1). Does he mean ‘Let anger be a reaching-out, accompanied by pain, for conspicuous revenge for some conspicuous slight to oneself or one's own, the slight not having been deserved’, or should ϕαινομένηςίην be taken to mean ‘manifest, plain’, or (a third possibility) should it be translated ‘perceived, apparent’? Since this is his fullest definition of anger, the question deserves discussion, even though a number of scholars, including such an expert on Aristotle's philosophy of the emotions as W. W. Fortenbaugh, have previously answered the question in what I think is the right way.

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 1997, pp. 452 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

1 The other five emotions are vengefulness, envy, jealousy, pity, and shame. Three of the definitions begin with , the other three with . In ii.2.1378a30–l Spengel and Ross bracketed , for no strong reason. Kassel (1976) read, instead of , the words , but this difference does not affect the present argument.

2 Fortenbaugh, ‘Aristotle's Rhetoric on Emotions’,Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 52 (1970),55Google Scholar repr. inBarnes J., Schofield, M., Sorabji, R.,Articles on Aristotle 4(London, 1979),142Google Scholar.Having written this note, I was pleased to find that J. M. Cooper also strongly supports the same view, ‘An Aristotelian Theory of the Emotions’, in A. O. Rorty (ed.),Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric (Berkeley, etc., 1996), p. 255 n. 23.Google Scholar

3 Aristotle, On Rhetoric. A Theory of Civic Discourse (New York, 1991).Google Scholar So also Gill, C., Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy(Oxford,1996).198n. 78;Google ScholarVlastos, G., Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher(Ithaca,1991),190 n. 38. This has passed into many non-classicists' accounts of Aristotelian anger,CrossRefGoogle Scholar e.g.Solomon, R. C.,‘The Philosophy of Emotions’,Google Scholar inLewis, M., J. M. Haviland,Handbook of Emotions(New York London, 1993),4.Google Scholar

4 So tooG. Courtois, ‘Le sens et la valeur de la vengeance chez Aristote et Seneque’Google Scholar, in Courtois, G., La vengeance Etudes d'ethnologie, d'histoire et de philosophie 4(Paris, 1984), 92.Google Scholar

5 ‘Sur la définition aristotélicienne de la colere’, Revue philosophique de France et de l'étranger 147 (1956), 305. Cf. J. Fillion-Lahille, ‘La colére chez Aristote’, REA 72 (1970), 51.Google Scholar

6 Griechische, Denker(revised edn, Berlin Leipzig,1931),3.368.Google Scholar

7 Add also M. H. Worner, ‘“Pathos” als Ūberzeugungsmittel in der Rhetorik des Aristoteles’, in Craemer-Ruegenber I.,Pathos, Affekt, Gefuhl(Freiburg in Breisgau Munich, 1981), 69–70.Google Scholar

8 Wartelle, A.,Lexique de la ‘Rhétorique’ d'aristote(Paris,1981).Google Scholar

9 i.7.31, 8.6,9.32, ii.10.1,11.1, iii.2.9.

10 See the papers by Aubenque and Fortenbaugh cited above. Postscript: I notice now thatW. M. A. Grimaldi (1988) translates the key word in this text by ‘manifest’, like Tovar.Google Scholar