{"id":2503,"date":"2020-02-03T14:02:47","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T14:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/?page_id=2503"},"modified":"2020-02-03T14:02:48","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T14:02:48","slug":"notes-on-aristotle","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/courses\/rhe-330e-pathos\/pathos-resources\/notes-on-aristotle\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Aristotle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>According to Aristotle, people don\u2019t enter the state of mind called \u201canger\u201d without a reason, and they become angry <em>at<\/em> <em>someone<\/em>, even if they\u2019re not sure who that person is. (Maybe you get out to your car and see that <em>someone<\/em> has put a dent in the door.) To experience anger, he says, you have to believe that someone has intentionally done something to you or a friend (not just \u201cman\u201d in general) that wasn\u2019t justified\u2014and, he says, it has to be accompanied by \u201ca certain pleasure\u201d which arises from \u201cthe expectation of revenge.\u201d (As in: \u201cI\u2019ll get you, my pretty.\u201d) The belief that you\u2019ll be able to get someone back is a pleasant one, says Aristotle.<\/p>\n<p>Note that he doesn\u2019t consider what might make a slave or a woman angry. Nor does he contemplate the character of young or old <em>women<\/em>, or <em>women<\/em> in their prime. Etc. \u00a0He\u2019s concerned only with male citizens. We\u2019ll want to keep that in mind.<\/p>\n<p>Note also Aristotle\u2019s distinction between <strong>anger<\/strong> and <strong>hatred<\/strong>: anger is always directed at an individual, whereas hatred might also be directed at whole classes of people\u2014liars, tattle tales, thieves, as he says, but also, as we see so often today, against certain ethnicities or races or sexual orientations, etc. According to him:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Anger can be cured by time, but hatred can\u2019t (9).<\/li>\n<li>Anger is accompanied by pain, but hatred isn\u2019t.<\/li>\n<li>The angry one wants the offender to pay, which means the offender is worthy of one\u2019s anger<strong>.<\/strong> An angry man wants the offender to feel what he has felt. So at some level, the angry man believes the offender is redeemable. The hater, on the other hand, wants the offender to \u201ccease to exist.\u201d A hater won\u2019t be satisfied by seeing the offender pay or suffer but wants this offender gone. Extinguished.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For each emotion, Aristotle indicates what one must <em>believe<\/em> to feel it. To feel fear, for example, you\u2019ve got to believe<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>that the object of your fear is an evil that you can\u2019t prevent<\/li>\n<li>that is on its way <em>right now<\/em> (it\u2019s not far off)<\/li>\n<li>and that is capable of causing you <em>great pain and destruction<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>These beliefs are the necessary conditions for fear, he says. And the fear is increased if you believe the damage will be irreparable and that no help is on the way. Your fear will dissolve if you believe you\u2019ve already suffered all you can suffer and there is nothing left to lose<em>.<\/em> In every case, according to Aristotle, a belief is involved: someone\u2019s sudden appearance may startle you, but it doesn\u2019t escalate to <em>fear<\/em> unless you believe this person will hurt you. It doesn\u2019t matter if your belief is wrong; it only matters that you do indeed believe it. Change the belief or judgement about the situation, and you\u2019ll change the level of the distress.<\/p>\n<p>He defines pity as pain at an evil suffered by one who doesn\u2019t deserve it, someone much like oneself or a loved one. Three conditions for pity:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pitier must believe the suffering person is undeserving (they can\u2019t have asked for it)<\/li>\n<li>Pitier must believe the suffering person is vulnerable to this evil, too (coulda been <em>me<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>Pitier must believe the suffering is significant and not trivial (can\u2019t be about a broken finger nail)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If you believe you are invulnerable to this sort of suffering involved, Aristotle says you won\u2019t feel pity. And if you\u2019re panicked or scared to death, you also won\u2019t feel pity\u2014no time for that.<\/p>\n<p>Aristotle\u2019s list of significant impediments that might be pitiable include: death, bodily assault, old age, illness, lack of food, friendlessness, separation from friends, deformity (also translated as \u201cugliness,\u201d which impedes friendship \ud83d\ude42 ), weakness, having a disability, being disappointed, \u2026etc.<\/p>\n<p>So Aristotle discerns between different emotions by reference to their characteristic <em>beliefs<\/em>. There\u2019d be no way to describe the difference between fear, pity, or grief without noting that it is pain at the thought of certain future events believed to be impending: \u201csomeone\u2019s going to hurt <em>me<\/em>\u201d (fear); \u201c<em>you<\/em> will suffer b\/c someone hurt <em>you<\/em>\u201d (pity); and \u201c<em>I\u2019ll<\/em> have to go on without you\u201d (grief). There is pain in each of these situations, but what differentiates them is the belief about the location of the pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Aristotle, people don\u2019t enter the state of mind called \u201canger\u201d without a reason, and they become angry at someone, even if they\u2019re not sure who that person is. (Maybe you get out to your car and see that someone has put a dent in the door.) To experience anger, he says, you have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":202,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2503","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2503\/revisions\/2504"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}