Aristotle's Rhetoric Analysis

While Aristotle’s work is centuries old, it is a testament to him as a philosopher that his work is still read, discussed, and debated to this day. In the field of philosophy of emotion, his work, called Aristotelian analyses, forms part of the fundamental foundation on which the field is built. Aristotle defines and gives several examples of this analysis of emotions in the second book of his work Rhetoric; however, he does not cover every emotion in those examples. After explaining what constitutes the definition of an emotion in Aristotle’s theory this paper will apply the theory to two emotions that Aristotle did not cover in his original work. To conclude my description of Aristotle’s Analyses theory I will share my opinion of the theory
These parts are the called the emotion’s state of mind, target, and grounds. The state of mind can be defined more directly as the definition of the emotion. In the example of fear, Aristotle defines fear as “…pain or disturbance due to a mental picture of some destructive or painful evil in the future” (Roberts, 74). The second part of the definition is the emotion’s target. The target is who or what the emotion is directed at. For example, a person could have a fear of heights, love their spouse, or regret something they said while drunk. These are emotions with very clear targets, but it should be noted that the target of an emotion need not be the cause of the emotion. The third and final component of an emotion’s definition in the Aristotelian theory is the aforementioned cause or to use Aristotle’s own words, the grounds on which an emotion is
My opinion of Aristotle’s work: Aristotle created a straightforward method to define emotions, but flaws in the system have been revealed as an increasing number of philosophers have scrutinized his work. The theory does not work well when applied to emotions such as surprise. As surprise lacks a clear pleasure or pain feeling that Aristotle claims accompany all emotions, and the target of surprise is hard to clearly identify. Additionally, Aristotle’s theory makes no mention of the requirement that a person must have a personal investment in something to feel emotions where it is the