Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

I have talked about sentiments and emotions as though they were things that we simply experience, by analogy (I suppose) with the other senses. This article remonds me that I need to be broader in my thinking - just as vision or taste is a complex interplay between what I emperiencing and what I have previously experienced, so are sentiments and emotions. "In Chinese philosophy... emotions are not fully explained by inner subjective feelings or inexplicable passions. Rather, they are understood as interactive, responsive, and holistic affectivity that plays broad psychological, cognitive, and moral roles in one's understanding of the world (its objective reality, nature of things, and their situations and circumstances) and one's dispositions and reactions to external stimulation." That's the starting point for this article, which is focused throughout on the  notion of qing (情), which Bongrae Seok  writes is commonly understood, in modern Chinese, as affective states of the mind. Image: Wikipedia.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Apr 24, 2024 8:46 p.m.

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