Abstract
New awareness of the cognitive role of emotions leads to new discussions in the fields of law and politics. In these new discussions Aristotle is often pointed out as a forerunner because of his theory about emotions in Rhetoric.
Aristotle discerns two moralities, in which the cognitive role of emotions has a different meaning: a civic morality of judicial procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics and a contemplative morality of theoretical study in Politics. In the civic morality attendance for the cognitive role of emotions means acknowledging that excellence in judges and other decision-makers is based on self-education through self-reflection. In the contemplative morality of the Politics the study is focused on the possibility to educate the emotions of citizens in general through laws. Rhetoric is about the persuasion of decision-makers in Law Courts and in the Assembly. As far as it is concerned with emotions, it is more about influencing than about educating.
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Notes
- 1.
These sentences are borrowed from the very useful comments of one of Springer’s reviewers on an earlier version of this chapter.
- 2.
Solum (2013), p. 2/3.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 8/9.
- 6.
Aristotle’s view is certainly also rejected by Scholastic Realism, and this realism has played an important role in the way, for example, Peirce has salvaged the Medieaval view on language for current times. See Oleksy (2015).
- 7.
“That a deduction is made from accepted opinions—as opposed to deductions from first and true sentences or principles—is the defining feature of dialectical argumentation in the Aristotelian sense.” in Rapp (n.d.). In this volume authors mostly speak of common place(s) instead of commonplace(s) to clarify that topos does not refer to generally existing common opinions, but to an opinion which is thought to be accepted by the parties in an actual debate.
- 8.
See for example Solum (2013), p. 27.
References
Oleksy, Mateusz W. 2015. Realism and Individualism: Charles S. Peirce and the Threat of Modern Nominalism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Rapp, Christof. n.d. Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/.
Solum, Lawrence. 2013. Virtue Jurisprudence: Towards an Aretaic Theory of Law. In Aristotle and the Philosophy of Law Theory, Practice and Justice, ed. Liesbeth Huppes-Cluysenaer and Nuno M.M.S. Coelho, 1–32. Dordrecht and New York: Springer. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=1083709.
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Huppes-Cluysenaer, L. (2018). The Debate About Emotion in Law and Politics. In: Huppes-Cluysenaer, L., Coelho, N. (eds) Aristotle on Emotions in Law and Politics. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66703-4_1
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