Les Passions de l'âme
Les Passions de l'âme (German: The Passions of the Soul ) is an essay by René Descartes from 1649.
Descartes would like to analyze human passions and explain them scientifically. In the first part Descartes describes the body and its function in detail. Then he explains the concept of the soul and how it works. In the second part, Descartes is devoted to emotions. He examines them carefully and goes into detail about their function, their symptoms and their individual properties.
First part
First of all, it is made clear that in order to be able to deal adequately with this topic, one must understand body and soul as two separate and independently functioning things. This is only possible if one ascribes the purely physical processes to this and allows the remaining processes to be imparted to the soul (Part I, Articles 2-3). In article 4 he attributes all thoughts of the soul and all kinds of warmth and movement to the body. Descartes compares the functioning of the body to a machine. He does not die from the disappearance of the soul, but from the failure of important organs. The soul escapes from the body as a result of its death, not the other way around (Part I, Articles 5-6).
How the body works
Descartes first considers the structure and function of the body (Part I, Articles 7–16). He goes into detail about the course of the veins and the blood flowing in them. Their description, like the description of the heart and the muscle movements, is basically medically correct (Part I, Articles 7; 9; 11), but the most important point is the description of the brain and the nerve tracts associated with it. Because the muscle movements and the sensory impressions depend on the nerves "which all come from the brain like fine threads or tubes" and connect it to the body (Part I, Article 7; 12). Something special is happening here: Descartes describes a type of gas that, like "very fine air or ether" (Part I, Article 7), can move very quickly and flow into the brain in large quantities through the nerves or veins (Part I, Articles 7-10). He calls this gas “spirits of life”. Because of their delicate nature, however, they soon emerge “through the pores of the brain substance, from there into the nerves and muscles and thus set the body in motion in all possible ways” (Part I, Article 10). In Article 11, Descartes describes exactly how the spirits of life that flow from the brain through the nerves stimulate the spirits of life in the muscle, thereby causing muscle contractions and controlling what causes the movements. Furthermore, our sensory impressions can also control the course of the spirits and make the body react reflexively to, for example, visual impressions.
Descartes counts reflex movements as those that we are like animals, such as eating, breathing, walking, and so on. These movements are not controlled by our will, but result from the opening and closing of certain pores and the release of the spirits into the nerves and veins, triggered by certain sensory impressions (Part I, Article 11).
How the soul works
All effects that cannot be ascribed to the body therefore belong to the soul. This has two states: the active states and the suffering states. First of all, to the first states, to which “willing” belongs, which presupposes knowledge (Part I, Article 19), and of which there are two types. This includes thoughts that do not show themselves externally, such as purposeful thinking about a certain object. The second type of wanting ends in targeted movements of the body, for example moving the legs if you want to go for a walk.
So the soul can interact with the body. For this it is necessary to note that the soul, although Descartes' dualism is independent, is inseparable from the whole body. The place where it can especially interact with the body is in the brain. Descartes speaks of a small "acorn" that is located in the middle of the brain and where the spirits are particularly active (Part I, Article 30f). Descartes ascribes such a special role to this glans because it has no counterpart in the brain. This makes it the perfect gathering point for all sensory impressions that the body receives, and can use the spirits to evoke reactions or pass them on to the soul. The soul has its main seat in the glans and "[...] radiates to the whole body by means of the spirits, the nerves and even the blood [...]." (Part I, Article 34). Descartes uses an example to show how the sensory impressions set the spirits of life in the glans in motion and how the soul can interact with the body through them:
“For example, if we see an animal approaching us, the reflected light from its body paints two pictures of it, one in each of our eyes, and these pictures produce two others with the aid of the optic nerve in the inner surface of the brain [...]; from there these images shine through the mediation of the [...] spirits in the manner of the little acorn, which is surrounded by these spirits [...]. So both images in the brain form only one on the glans, which has a direct effect on the soul and allows it to see the shape of the animal ”(1, 35).
The soul recognizes the animal and can classify it as dangerous based on memories. This information is then taken up again by the spirits of life that flow back into the glans. The body can then react with an escape or defense mechanism by the spirits of life narrowing or expanding certain pores of the heart and thus controlling the pulse and setting the muscles of the legs in motion through the nerves (Part I, Article 35f). By stimulating the glans, the soul can move the body according to its "will". Likewise, by specifically pushing the spirits of life in the glans, it can evoke memories in the brain that it wants to remember (Part I, Article 42).
Memories also play a role in another sense. Descartes explains in a later chapter: “There is such a connection between the soul and the body that once a physical act has been connected with a thought, then one of the two also later evokes the other. [But] the same actions are not always associated with the same thoughts. ”With this he explains why people react differently to the same stimuli. As an example, he gives that a cat, although a popular pet, may be reluctant to use in some people. This is because as a child you may have had a bad experience with a cat, and although you no longer remember yourself, the brain associated the image of the cat with a negative feeling. And so the soul feels the reluctance again and again when the memory of cats is awakened in the brain (Part II, Article 136).
About the passions
The suffering states of the soul are the passions. Although they can be awakened by sensory impressions and the course of the spirits of life (Part I, Article 27), their effect seems to be only in the soul. Through the passions, the close connection between body and soul becomes evident, as these are brought about, entertained and strengthened by the movement of the spirits. Descartes defines the passions of the soul in article 28 as follows:
“They can also be called sensations, because the soul receives them just like the objects of the external senses and is only thus able to get to know them; but even better they are called excitements, since this name can not only be assigned to all changes in the soul, that is, to all ascending thoughts, but mainly because none of their thoughts move and shake them as strongly as these passions. "(Part I. , Article 28)
Passions include all sensations or emotions such as joy, anger and the like. It is important for Descartes to realize that real passions cannot be faked. Objects or situations can indeed be vividly recalled and clearly recognized in dreams, "[...] but even the sleeper cannot feel sad or otherwise moved in dreams if his soul does not really have this passion." (Part I. , Article 25f)
How unmistakable the passions are can also be seen in their persistent intensity. The fact is that no passion can be aroused by us through our will alone. This is because it is awakened and sustained by the spirits that are connected to the senses. But if we wanted to surrender to an emotion through sheer will and without external influence or to awaken ourselves in certain situations, we would have to focus entirely on a memory, which stimulates the spirits in the brain to go to the places where the memory lies then interact with the soul and awaken passions. But the fact that only the spirits and not our will is responsible for the awakening of the passions also means, conversely, that these cannot be controlled by the will either. So the passions remain acute as long as we are exposed to the stimulus that has activated the spirits: "All that the will is able to do during this excitement is not to agree to its effects and to hold back the movement of the body [...]." (Part I, Article 46)
In this way one can try to escape the stimulus or at least control one's reaction. For example, an angry man can stop the fist raised to strike, or the frightened person can prevent the legs from escaping (Part I, Article 45f).
Descartes goes into a seemingly widespread error that passion arises in the heart (and not in the brain). This misconception can be explained by the course of the nerves: The change in the emotional situation due to the movement of the spirits is automatically passed on there by means of a small nerve that reaches from the brain into the heart. Therefore, many emotions are felt in the heart, although they do not arise there (Part I, Article 33).
Second part
In the second section of the “Passions of the Soul” Descartes devotes himself to the passions in detail and looks in particular at the six original passions and their uses: The ultimate causes of the passions in the soul are the spirits of life, but in order to obtain a precise understanding of the passions you have to watch them more closely. Because even if most passions are awakened by the senses, there are other triggers. This includes the activities of the soul, the state of the body or random impressions in the brain. However, there are fewer passions than external impressions and we do not react to every impression with a passion in every situation, this only happens if it is important to us (Part II, Article 51f).
The most important passions will now be named and their meaning, their “symptoms” and physical causes as well as their effects on the body will be examined.
The six original passions
The six original passions include: wonder, love, hate, sadness, joy, and desire.
The amazement
Two qualities make amazement a special passion; firstly, it is probably the first, because when we encounter an object for the first time and its existence may surprise us, we are amazed before any other passionate judgment. Second, there is no passion that opposes astonishment. Something that doesn't surprise us doesn't move us in the opposite direction. The subcategories of amazement include respect and contempt, which arise when we wonder about the size or smallness of the object.
Definition and cause: “The astonishment is a sudden surprise of the soul [and] thus arises first from the impression in the brain, which the object presents as rare and therefore worth careful consideration; then through the movement of the spirits of life [...]. "(Part II, Article 70)
In contrast to the other passions, amazement does not reveal any change in the blood. This is because it is not judgmental and is purely intellectually engaged in a new object, which only takes place in the brain and not in the heart or blood.
The benefits of amazement: Depending on how new an object is to us and how strong our amazement is at first, this passion can be very useful to us. It is particularly suitable to arouse curiosity in people. This then drives us to want to understand the new and encourages learning. It is important, however, to develop a healthy level of amazement. Those who are seldom or not at all surprised will also have few ambitions to learn something new. On the other hand, someone who wonders about every little thing will find it difficult to focus his mind on the important things and dwell on insignificant things (Part II, Articles 72-78).
Love
After we have “got to know” an object and decide that it is good for us, we take loved ones with it (Part II, Article 56). As soon as we love an object, the spirits of life are stimulated to direct their will towards the beloved objects. A distinction must be made between two types of love: benevolent love, which strives for the good of the beloved object, and covetous love, which makes one strive for the beloved object. But that does not differentiate the essence of love, because if you love, regardless of whether it is benevolent or desiring, you have the same accommodation for the object. And so you ask for it, or try to be as close as possible to the object. This, according to Descartes, is the most common effect of love (Part II, Article 81). The subcategories of love are affection, friendship, and devotion. Depending on whether you respect a person or an object more or less than yourself, you feel devotion or affection. If you respect the person equally, you feel friendship. The physical symptoms include a steady, but incomparably stronger and more violent pulse, which is accompanied by a pleasant feeling of warmth in the chest. Overall, love is beneficial to health through its effects on the body (Part II, Article 97).
The benefits of love: Since the pursuit of a good is always accompanied by hope and joy (Part II, Article 87), love has two uses: on the one hand, it allows us to recognize and strive for good things, and on the other hand, its side effects create a good one Feeling in the body and promote the health of the body.
The hate
Hate is the opposite of love. But it doesn't have as many sub-categories as love, because the evils themselves are not very differentiated either. The main focus then is to part with the evils. After we have assessed a new object and do not love it, but rather it shows itself to us as bad and harmful, we feel hatred towards it. A weak but rapid pulse occurs as a physical symptom. In the chest area, the feelings of cold and heat alternate. The leakage of bad vapors can also be part of it (Part II, Article 98).
The benefits of hatred: If an object triggers the feeling of hatred in us, we are driven by the course of the spirits to avoid it. This is how we stay away from an evil and part with harmful things (Part II, Article 79).
Sadness
Sadness arises when the soul experiences a want or its evil happens.
Definition and cause: The sadness arises from the fact that the soul receives the sensual impression transmitted by the life spirits that an evil is happening to it. As with seemingly unfounded joy, there is seemingly unfounded sadness. This is triggered by purely physical impressions that arise in the brain and to which the soul has no relation. Especially when the body is sick and one is not aware of it, the feeling of sadness arises (Part II, Article 93f). Physical symptoms of sadness are a weak and slow pulse; A feeling of constriction is felt in the chest area (Part II, Article 100).
The joy
In joy the soul receives a positive emotion. This can also be triggered by good weather or when you feel very relaxed after a good sleep.
Definition and cause: The cause of joy is very simple. If the soul believes it has a good, it feels joy. This is triggered by the fact that the brain presents a good as its own. Through the sensual impression that the body receives from the property, the spirits of life are activated, which awaken joy in the soul (Part II, Article 91).
But sometimes you can't spot a sensual source of joy. In that case it can be assumed that the brain, i.e. the body, gives the impression of a good without the soul having anything to do with it. True to the motto “A healthy mind lives in a healthy body”, the spirits of life are stimulated by the good physical condition to generate a joyful feeling (Part II, Article 93f). Physical symptoms of joy are a steady but slightly faster beating pulse and a pleasant warmth in the chest caused by the rapidly circulating blood (Part II, Article 99).
The desire
Now it is so that through the above passions a positive or negative attitude towards an object or a person develops. Looking to the future, this is automatically followed by desire. This includes, on the one hand, wishing for something good that will come soon and avoiding something bad that will come soon. On the other hand, one can also wish that something good remains or hopefully comes soon, or that something bad will soon pass or hopefully never occur (Part II, Article 57). The desire for something good is not always equally strong. So you can only want to enjoy some things for a short time, but you want others more and you want to experience or own them completely:
“So the beauty of a flower is only tempting to look at it, but that of the fruit makes you want to eat it. The most important desire, however, is that which arises from the perfection that is assumed in a person who is believed to be our second self. "
(Part II, Article 90)
This of course means what is popularly called love. This type of love must not be confused with the passion of the same name.
The particular benefit of passions
But why do we have these passions and what use do they have for humans? Let it now be the case that the passions "[...] are all set up only for the body, and they have meaning for the soul only through their connection with the body" (Part II, Article 137). Its purpose is to induce or support the soul to such acts "[...] which serve to maintain or perfect the body." (Part II, Article 137). Because as already mentioned, the soul feels joy or sadness about new objects, which can then turn into love or hate. This then creates the need to hold or avoid the object. However, according to Descartes, grief and hatred are more important than joy and love. This is so because the former keep us away from evil, while the latter only help us to increase perfection, which is beautiful but not absolutely necessary (Part II, Article 137). When it comes to wanting or avoiding things, one should not only rely on feelings, because some things can seem good at first, although they are (in the long term) harmful (e.g. drugs); while others seem bad even though they are good for us (in the long term) (e.g. bitter medicine). Therefore, the use of the mind is essential if one does not know instinctively whether one can rely on one's feeling (Part II, Article 138).
The special benefit of love and hate
But if it is the case that one has assessed things correctly and that the supposedly good is really a good, then love can also arise directly from the knowledge of this fact, and one does not need to feel joy first. According to Descartes, this love cannot be great enough, since it leads us to true goods and perfection: “[Love] cannot become too great; because even the most extreme measure allows us to unite so intimately with the good that even then love for ourselves no longer distinguishes between the two, and this can never be wrong. ”(Part II, Article 139) In contrast, the hatred itself is small Degrees harmful. Even if it is necessary to move away from evil, it would be better to let yourself be carried away by love for the opposite good. Besides, there is no evil that does not have a good in it. Then, as the evil is removed, the good part is also removed, which is why sadness always goes with hatred. Hence, hatred is always harmful and should be avoided; even more so if it is based on a false assumption. With love and joy you can't see it so strictly. Because even if they are based on a false assumption, they are still beneficial to the body. And since false joy is worth more than justified sadness, if one has a choice in an ambiguous situation, one should turn to joy. It is different with love and hate, because real hate always removes us from evil. Hence it is preferable to false love, which might only bind us to evil (Part II, Article 144).
The special properties of desire
So it has been shown that love and hate give rise to the desire to attain that and to avoid it. And this is necessary for the body and cannot be bad if the desire comes from true knowledge. Nevertheless, there are two things to watch out for: Any kind of excess should be avoided, whether in love, hate or desire (Part II, Article 141). Furthermore, care should be taken not to covet anything that is misconceived, as the subsequent actions can be harmful (Part II, Article 143). Yet this mistake is often made: "The most common mistake that is made in this is that the things that depend on us are not sufficiently separated from those when they do not." (Part II, Article 144) This means the things that depend on our free will. This includes, for example, acquiring knowledge, learning a skill or exercising in order to stay healthy. Since the desire for these things originates in knowing that things are good for us, we cannot be mistaken in judging them. Furthermore, we can always achieve our goal, since it depends only on us, and thus often achieve satisfaction. Descartes counts it among the virtues when one does the self-dependent good (Part II, Article 144). Things, the fulfillment of which do not depend on us, should, in spite of all temptation, not be desired. They just spring from an error of our mind and occupy our thoughts to divert our striving for the important things. To desire something that does not depend on us means to rely on happiness. But in reality the hope of a stroke of luck arises from uncertainty. What we call happiness does not exist like this, because events always occur when the necessary causes are given. If a cause is missing and you don't get what you want, you think you haven't been lucky. In reality, however, the effect could never have occurred due to the inadequate causes, and it is clearly shown that in this case one has wasted one's energy on coveting something that was impossible to get from the outset (Part II, Article 145).
But just as Descartes speaks out against (hoping for) happiness, he represents trust in Divine Providence. So everything is necessary and predetermined. One should accept this and turn one's desire away from the things that do not proceed from us. This could be practiced by distinguishing between chance and predestination. So it can happen that one follows one's intellect with one thing and still suffers damage (e.g. one is robbed on a safe path, but spared on the insecure path). However, we could not have foreseen the evil we experienced because we acted to the best of our knowledge. So it can only have been predestination that brought us to the evil, and so we cannot complain. Accepting this predestination even in the event of a bad outcome helps us to no longer want to control what is independent of us and to concentrate on the wishes, the fulfillment of which depends only on us (Part II, Article 146).
The inner excitement of the soul
Descartes contrasts the passions with another excitement, which he calls the "inner excitement of the soul". As the name suggests, this comes from within and is not dependent on the course of the spirits. This inner excitement is so strong that it can be felt despite intense and negative passions (Part II, Article 148). The stronger this inner joy is, the less negative passions can affect us. On the contrary, it is so perfect that it cannot be hurt. This makes the joy that you can feel anyway through the inner excitement even stronger. To follow the virtues, that is, to have always acted according to the best of conscience, makes the inner joy so strong that "even the strongest outbursts of passions can never disturb the calm of his soul." (Part II, Article 148)
expenditure
- Les passions de l'âme - The passions of the soul , 1868. ISBN 3-7873-0544-0
- Les passions de l'âme. Ed. U. completely new translation by Christian Wohlers. Stuttgart: Meiner 214. (Philosophical Library. 663.) ISBN 978-3-7873-2685-3 .
literature
- Wilhelm half barrel: Les passions de l'âme. Kindler's Literature Lexicon. Vol. 4. 3., completely revised. Stuttgart: Metzler 2009. pp. 527-428.
- G. Belgioioso, V. Carraud: Les Passions de l'âme et leur réception philosophique . Turnhout: Brepols 2020. ISBN 978-2-503-58452-2