Preface and Acknowledgments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
In this book I return to some of the themes I discussed in Sour Grapes (1983). An equivalent of sour grapes is “sweet lemons,” the transmutation of bitterness into sweetness, analogous to that of base metals into gold. The mental alchemies that I discussed in that earlier book, notably in the title chapter, had a limited range. In particular, they did not have any place for the emotions as fuel, raw material, and final product of these processes. The purpose of the present book is to say something about the role of the emotions in mental life and in the generation of behavior.
In Chapter I I propose an account of explanation in the social sciences that, although less ambitious than nomological explanation, goes beyond mere narrative or description, however “thick.” The central idea is that of a mechanism, a recurring and intelligible causal pattern. The emotional reactions, mental alchemies, and other forms of psychic causality that I discuss elsewhere in the book are instances of mechanisms in this sense.
In Chapter II I discuss some prescientific or, better, extrascientific sources for the study of the emotions. I first consider Aristotle, whose account of emotions in the Rhetoric remains utterly fresh and insightful. Next, I consider the treatment of emotions by the French moralists, from Montaigne to La Bruyère. Finally, I discuss what we can learn about the emotions from a handful of novelists and playwrights: Shakespeare, Racine, Mme de Lafayette, Jane Austen, Stendhal, and George Eliot.
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- Alchemies of the MindRationality and the Emotions, pp. ix - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998