Thumos: desire and emotion on Aristotle's thought

• Grant number: 22/09819-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2023
• End date: March 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antônio de Ávila Zingano
• Grantee: João Gabriel Borges Ribeiro
• Supervisor: Cristina Viano
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Centre Léon Robin, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 20/05994-8 - Prolegomena to sentimental education: À¬¸¿Â, DÁµ¾¹Â and the constitution of non-rational motivation on the philosophy of Aristotle, BP.DR

Abstract

My aim in this research is to establish the conceptual boundaries between the notions of desire and emotion in Aristotle's works. This requires scrupulous research on the comments and analyses the Stagirite links with these concepts in his corpus, as a manner of establishing which elements converge on both definitions. In order to do that, a first step is to understand how those concepts are framed inside the architecture of the Aristotelian soul. As a second step, it will be necessary to investigate how the philosopher conceives and employs the term thymos in his work. There are three main competitors for being its reference: a dispositional trait of character, a capacity (for emotions?), and anger. That discussion is important because for some scholars, like Garver (1994) and Koziak (2000), thymos plays an important role bridging the concept of emotion and desire in Aristotle's thought. If their claim seems to be too strong, at least it shows a light in the real fact that thymos is used by Aristotle in a close connection with the emotion of anger and maybe even with other emotions too. How to account for that? Is this just a question of a flexible usage of language or it has other implications for the comprehension of his moral psychology? Those are the main questions that have to be answered. (AU)