A History of Psychology by Brett George Sydney

Author:Brett, George Sydney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-85177-6
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

§4 . The two factors, mind and body, have now been treated as distinct. It remains to see what Descartes said about the organism as a living unity of opposites. This part of his teaching is comprised under the term Passions of the Soul; it is the psycho-physical part of the whole system.

The term passion denotes a change or affection in a thing which does not arise from the thing itself. In the case of the soul it will include all the phases of conscious life which are dependent on the action of agencies external to the soul. Thus the sensations are passions; the lower form of memory, the mere retentiveness, is a passion; Descartes goes so far as to say that all forms of knowledge are passions. By thus including under the “passions” perceptions, feelings, emotions, and the processes of induction and reasoning, Descartes shows that he intends really to oppose the will to the intellect. The soul is active only in volition, which includes attention, recollection, and phantasia (cp. p. 205); in cognition it is passive. Descartes retains the belief that truth belongs to those ideas that correctly represent their sources, the objects. If the will intrudes, it can only assent to the necessary connexion of ideas; otherwise it perverts the truth into error.

The doctrine of the passions depends upon the idea of spirits. All passions originate in the sensations. When Descartes defines the term further he distinguishes the emotions from sensations and from volitions. Sensations are passions which we refer to external objects, e.g. smells, sounds, colours. Volitions are emotions which arise from and are caused by the soul itself. So Descartes finally means by passions those inner states which are states of consciousness, but at the same time have their real cause in the agitation of the spirits. They are both inner states, with no external counterpart, and intermediate states, neither wholly physical nor wholly psychic. They are determined from without and from within. The exciting cause, e.g. of hate, moves the animal spirits, but the nature of the individual’s character modifies the nature of the passion through the brain. The brain being the chief seat of the soul, the two activities meet at that point. In this way the will or activity of the soul has the power of modifying the passions and changing their psychic values. Every passion has an inner and an outer phase. The natural disposition is the inner phase; the object which stimulates to action in accordance with this disposition is the other phase. Education produces character or fixed dispositions, so that the doctrine of the passions leads into the doctrine of conduct or ethics. The training of the will and the control of the passions thus form the psychological part of Descartes’ ethical reflections.

To complete the psycho-physical part of the doctrine it is necessary to note that Descartes makes the brain the seat of the passions. This is directly opposed to the view that they should be localized in the heart.

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