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I have now given several positive arguments which, cumulatively, make a case for the claim that, according to Aristotle, the cognitive component of ethical virtue is the cognition of value where value can be understood as ‘enriching relatedness’ and shows up in analogous but unexpectedly different ways in different situations. What about the cognitive component of emotion for Aristotle? Is it cognition of value as well? It would be helpful to an interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical theory if it were, since it would go some distance in explaining what it means to say that emotions are shaped or developed, according to Aristotle, rather than simply suppressed or channeled. Emotions would be shaped, on this account, when our perception of the value of particulars changes. When our perception of value becomes richer our emotions become richer; when our perception of value changes, our emotions change. Could this be Aristotle’s view? 1 In “Changing Aristotle’s Mind,” Martha Nussbaum and Hilary Putnam argue that, according to Aristotle, emotions are species of perception. The argument is a textual one. When Aristotle uses phrases of the form “X, Y, Z, and in general (holo\s) A,” what he means is that A is a genus of which X, Y, and Z are species. In De Anima, Aristotle says, “getting angry, being confident, desiring appetitively, in general perceiving” (De An. 1.1 403a5ff.). Hence, emotions are forms of perception (1992, 44).1 159 CHAPTER SIX Emotions as Perceptions of Value The argument is persuasive, but puzzling. If emotions are species of perception, why doesn’t Aristotle say so in his definitions of emotion? Instead, he defines emotions as states (of the soul) accompanied by pleasure and pain. For example, in the Eudemian Ethics he says, “By emotions I mean such [states of soul] as spirit, fear, shame, desire, in general those [states] that are in themselves usually accompanied by perceptual pleasure and pain” (EE 2.2 1220b12–14). Similarly, in the Rhetoric he says, “Emotions are [states of soul] due to changes in which our decisions come to differ and which are accompanied by pleasure and pain, for example, anger, pity, fear, and all other such [states] and their opposites ” (Rhet. 2.1 1378a19–22). In the Nicomachean Ethics he says, “By emotions I mean desire, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, in general the [states of soul] that are accompanied by pleasure and pain” (NE 2.5 1105b21–23). A page later in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle goes even further and indicates that it is not simply that emotions are accompanied by pleasure and pain but that pleasure and pain are the genus of which emotions are the species: “For example, both fear and confidence and desire and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain can be felt too much or too little and in either case not well” (NE 2.6 1106b18–21). A number of Aristotle’s definitions of specific emotions in the Rhetoric conform to this third understanding of emotion, namely, that specific emotions are types of pleasure or pain. Pity, for example, is defined not as a state accompanied by a type of pain, but simply as a type of pain. Pity is “a certain pain at an apparent destructive or painful evil happening to someone who does not deserve it and which one might expect oneself or one of one’s own to suffer . . .” (Rhet. 2.8 1385b13–14). Fear, too, is a type of pain. Fear is “a certain pain or disturbance [resulting ] from the appearance of a future destructive or painful evil” (Rhet. 2.5 1382a21–22). Four other emotions are defined as types of pain: shame is a certain pain and disturbance regarding the type of evils that appear to bring one into disrepute (Rhet. 2.6 1383b12–14); indignation is pain at undeserved good fortune (Rhet. 2.9 1386b8–11); envy and emulation are a certain pain and disturbance at the success of one’s peers, the former at the fact of the other’s success, the latter at the fact that one does not share that success) (Rhet. 2.9 1386b18–20, 2.10 1387b22–25, 2.11 1388a32–35). A fifth comes close to being defined as a type of pleasure : a friend shares pleasure in good things and pain in painful things due to the friend (Rhet. 2.4 1381a3–5). Only one emotion, anger, is said to be accompanied by pleasure or pain...

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