In this extensive and dense monograph, K. offers a systematical reconstruction of Aristotle's theory of emotions. This is the abbreviated (!) version of his 2009 dissertation written under the supervision of the philologist Arbogast Schmitt in Marburg. The topic is well situated in the contemporary academic landscape, strewn as it is with an ever-increasing interest in emotions in general as well as in Aristotle's psychology in particular. New research on this topic is undoubtedly welcome, especially because since Fortenbaugh's classical brochure (Aristotle on Emotion [1975]), more than thirty years of development in philosophy and classical studies have considerably changed our concepts and the loci of emphasis in our engagement with the emotions, so that an examination of Aristotle's view in the new intellectual context is now urgent, not least in order to integrate the research of these last few decades and bring it up to date. Anyone, however, who expects this bulky volume to fulfil this desideratum will be disappointed. Not only does K. have no intention of presenting Aristotle's thought in contemporary philosophical fashion, he also puts forward the ambitious claim that we must re-write his whole psychology, emotions of course included, because his legacy was entirely undervalued and misunderstood by modern Aristotle scholars due to their unreflective application of modern categories to Aristotle's thought.
The nine uneven chapters are not an easy read because of the baroque style and numerous digressions. After 76 pages of introduction, K. begins with a remark on methodology in Chapter 2, which is supposed to be integrated in the introduction. Chapters 3–6 are the central part of the book, the subjects of which are ‘Aristotle's determination of emotions’, ‘pleasure and displeasure’, ‘mixed feeling’ and ‘striving, will and action’ respectively. The last three chapters serve as the conclusion, in which K. summarises his results, marking his position off from those of others, which he characterises as ‘un-Aristotelian assumptions’. It is surprising, however, that K. sets out to distinguish between Aristotle's different uses of the term pathos in Chapter 8, a task which would seem to be better located in his account of Aristotle's determination of the emotions in Chapter 3. More seriously, the fragmented, twisted and repetitive structure of the central chapters (4–6) indicates a lack of controlling materials.
The bold thesis of the volume is that there is a unified theory of emotions in Aristotle, which can and should be reconstructed from Aristotle's own epistemology and psychology, following the method for defining a geometrical figure in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics (p. 88). According to his reconstruction, emotion is defined as a perceptible qualitative alternation of a cognitive activity (Erkenntnistätigkeit) of the soul, namely a discrimination (krisis) essentially accompanied by pleasure or displeasure (pp. 594–7). K. argues that many scholars fail to appreciate this unity not only because they have been misled by the developmental hypothesis of Aristotle, but also due to the modern bias that emotions cannot constitute a natural kind. To capture the ‘genuine’ Aristotle, methodologically, he claims, we must prefer evidence from the ‘ancients’ to that from the ‘moderns’.
K.'s extraordinary approach and findings are understandable only against the background of the research of his supervisor Schmitt and his circle. The fundamental idea shared by this group is that Plato and Aristotle, who they take to be the most representative of the ‘Ancient world view’, have been misinterpreted by an un-Aristotelian modern theoretical framework, rooted in the Stoic and medieval representational model of mind (Vorstellung). According to this story, the crucial contrast between the Ancients and the Moderns is that the former see rationality as a kind of discrimination, whereas the latter unify mental activity under the tag of representation or consciousness (Bewusstsein). Although this is not the place to address this grand narrative critically, it is nevertheless certain that K.'s aim is to substantiate Schmitt's speculation of the querelle des Anciens et des Modernes through a case study. This motivation, in part, explains why this volume is isolated from the mainstream debate.
Symptomatic is how K. portrays the state of research. He complains that almost all scholars misidentify emotion in Aristotle as some kind of representation, no matter whether they regard doxa or phantasia as its necessary constituent. This diagnosis, however, seems to derive from the presupposed schema of Schmitt rather than from a sympathetic reading of the literature. In fact, the recent debate between doxa- and phantasia-views of emotion presupposes a distinction between phantasia and other kinds of cognition. Proponents of the doxa-view (e.g. Fortenbaugh, Dow) argue that the phantasia-words in Aristotle's Rhetoric should be broadly, not technically, understood (i.e. it appears/seems to me that …), so that the emergence of those words in the account of emotion does not violate their doxa-based interpretation. This strategy does not necessarily commit them to hold, as K. reads into their position, that all mental actions or emotions are phantasiai. It is, however, by means of this forced attribution that K. paints the mainstream debate – about whether and to what extent emotions are cognitive – as irrelevant, taking pains to address the allegedly modern categorical mistake, a straw man invented by himself.
Paradoxically, K.'s ‘new’ finding – though not well articulated – appears very close to the modern cognitive interpretation of Aristotle. Remarkably, he argues that merely based on phantasia, we cannot realise any emotion (p. 561). He goes as far as to claim that emotion requires a rational action (Denkakt p. 551), or a synthesis of actions of knowledge (Erkenntnisakte). Moreover, he dismisses the embodied side of emotion, declaring that physiological change is only a result of cognition or its subsidiary component (pp. 543–58). Since he also admits that the physiological change, caused by the activity of the soul, in turn, exerts a certain influence on the soul, his ‘new’ interpretation then falls into some kind of interactionism, which is not only philosophically unpromising but also in tension with Aristotle's hylomorphism of the soul.
In fact, to achieve his argumentative goals, K. is obliged to address the representationalism of mind espoused by Tye and Dretske; to take part in the wider scholarly debate between broader (e.g. Caston) and narrower (e.g. Lorenz) uses of phantasia in Aristotle; to review the discussion of the concept of krinein in Aristotle by Ebert, de Haas and many others; and to struggle with, rather than superficially quote, van der Eijk who, in opposition, argues for the significance of the body for Aristotle's cognition and emotion. Unfortunately, K. is silent on all these issues. Instead, he seems to find it more congenial to remain in the context demarcated by Schmitt, predominantly quoting research by his teachers and friends, in order to support, or to gain support from, their ‘insights’. Besides the findings from Marburg, K. is also accustomed to having recourse to long passages from Ancient commentaries (e.g. a paragraph in pp. 455–8) as authoritative interpretations of Aristotle which, in the main, are often no less difficult to understand than the text at issue. Leaving aside the methodological worry about this hermeneutic, it is puzzling that in contrast to the extensive (if not excessive) citations from commentaries on Aristotle's theoretical philosophy from Alexander, Philoponus and Simplicius, K. entirely overlooks Aspasius’ commentary on Nicomachean Ethics and Alexander's Ethical Problems, in which emotions, pleasure and pain are handled in a more substantial way. Even Plato is quoted only once (p. 94), which undermines K.'s claim that the definition of pleasure in the Rhetoric is Aristotelian rather than Platonic (Chapter 4).
Formally considered, this volume is well-produced, with a bibliography, a useful general index and an index locorum. There are a few errors in typography, footnotes, translations and cross-references. For example: ‘Ursachensachenlehre’ for ‘Ursachenlehre’ (p. 544); footnote 56 is printed in duplicate; the translation of MA 701b19 – ‘das vernünftige Denken sind dem Vermögen nach die Gegenstände’ (ἡ νόησις τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων ἔχουσι δύναμιν) – is false; EN 119b6–7, 119b8 should be 1119b6–8 (p. 492); cross-references to n. 1082 on p. 504 and p. 505 are misleading. The reader would be not lost in the labyrinth of materials if unnecessary quotations were reduced both in footnotes (e.g. nn. 307, 351 and 358) and in the main text (e.g. pp. 478–9; 485–7), and if K. was more concerned with clarity, precision and conceptual rigour.
K.'s work embodies an idiosyncratic way of approaching Aristotle, which deviates from, and might be provocative for, mainstream scholarship. In general, his unitarian reading of Aristotle is feasible, yet his concrete arguments are not convincing. The reader should maintain critical distance from this work.
