'Aristotle and the Cognitive Component of Emotions'

This chapter provides arguments regarding Aristotle’s insights into the cognitive component of emotions. More specifically, it argues that Aristotle believed that a variety of psychological states can grasp the cognitive content involved in emotions. In order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this view, the chapter presents a debate concerning whether Aristotle advocates a phantasia-based account of emotions, according to which emotions are some kind of perceptual construal or imagining, or whether he is instead best thought of as holding some kind of belief-based view. In fact, the chapter contends that both interpretations are in the wrong. Hence, the chapter advances its own view by first providing a sketch of some of the key points in the debate before reconsidering Aristotle’s view.