The Secret History of Emotion

Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah Fielding, and Judith Butler, among others, Daniel Gross' "The Secret History of Emotion" reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. The Roman Stoics, for instance, offer insight into the reasons why political passions are distributed to some people but not to others. Contemporary theorists such as Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. "The Secret History of Emotion" offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today.