Full Idea
The Stoics named four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear
Gist of Idea
There are four basic emotions: pleasure or delight, distress, appetite, and fear
Source
report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations iv.13-15
Book Reference
Goldie,Peter: 'The Emotions' [OUP 2002], p.87
A Reaction
'Distress' sounds too vague to do the job of explaining anything. Getting them down to four suggests an extreme desire to simplify such things.