Description
Book SynopsisBreaking off the ordinary flow of experience, the passions create a state of exception. Intense states have come to be seen as symptoms of pathology. From Aristotle to Hume to contemporary biology, this work finds evidence that the passions have defined a core of human nature no less important than reason or desire.
Trade Review"I revelled in the new book by the brilliant American critic Philip Fisher, The Vehement Passions, which is about nothing less than what the title promises: thoroughness, rashness, fear, anger, grief, and more."--Susan Sontag, Times Literary Supplement "With this persuasive and elegant essay on the paradigmatic human passions of fear, anger, grief, and wonder, Harvard University English professor Fisher joins a growing group of scholars bent on emotional rehabilitation: restoring to respectability the emotions so distrusted by Enlightenment rationalism and the forms of Stoicism that pre-date it... It's also ... delightful. Fisher ingeniously mixes discussion of Achilles, Oedipus, Othello, Lear, and Ahab with careful critical assessments of Kantian ethics, rational choice theory, and the philosophical underpinnings of the legal system."--Mark Kingwell, Wilson Quarterly "A consistently engaging book... [It] manages to present a wealth of information in an admirably clear and accessible format... People outside of universities curious about how the emotions regularly manage to dominate our thinking and planning will enjoy this overview of a fascinating field."--Virginia Quarterly Review "A stimulating and provocative book, whose strength lies precisely in the compact selectivity with which it argues its case for the vehement passions."--John Higgins, The Times Higher Education Supplement "Philip Fisher's new book ... makes a daring case for the continued relevance of pre-Christian ideas about the passions. His argument is that we underestimate the positive potential of the 'vehement passions' long understood only as forces that must be suppressed or redirected if we are to develop healthy minds in a benevolent world."--David Simpson, London Review of Books "The Vehement Passions by Philip Fisher is one of those rare books that carries the unmistakable whiff of real originality ... one filled with striking insights, wide learning, unexpected correlations and connections that illuminate much in life and literature that we may have only half noticed... Page after page offers broad yet precise and often startling generalizations of the sort that made me first pause, then nod in assent."--Jeff Gundy, Georgia Review
Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 ONE: Passions,Strong Emotions, Vehement Occasions 12 TWO: Paths among the Passions 28 THREE: Thoroughness 40 FOUR: Privacy,Radical Singularity 53 FIVE: Time 71 SIX: Rashness 93 SEVEN: Mutual Fear 109 EIGHT: The Aesthetics of Fear 132 NINE: The Radius of the Will 157 TEN: Anger and Diminution 171 ELEVEN: Grief 199 TWELVE: Spiritedness 227 CONCLUSION 246 NOTES 253 AUTHOR INDEX 263 INDEX OF TERMS 266
