Aquinas on the Emotions: a Religious-Ethical Inquiry
Diana Fritz Cates
Georgetown University Press, 2009-12-15 - 288 pages
All
of us want to be happy and live well. Sometimes intense emotions affect
our happiness -- and, in turn, our moral lives. Our emotions can have a
significant impact on our perceptions of reality, the choices we make,
and the ways in which we interact with others. Can we, as moral agents,
have an effect on our emotions? Do we have any choice when it comes to
our emotions? In Aquinas on the Emotions, Diana Fritz Cates shows how
emotions are composed as embodied mental states. She identifies various
factors, including religious beliefs, intuitions, images, and questions
that can affect the formation and the course of a person's emotions. She
attends to the appetitive as well as the cognitive dimension of
emotion, both of which Aquinas interprets with flexibility. The result
is a powerful study of Aquinas that is also a resource for readers who
want to understand and cultivate the emotional dimension of their lives.
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