more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Plato put high on his agenda a project which did not figure in Socrates' programme at all: the hygienic conditioning of the passions. This cannot be an intellectual process, as argument cannot touch them.
Clarification
'Hygienic' here means 'for the sake of good health'
Gist of Idea
Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions
Source
comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.88
Book Ref
Vlastos,Gregory: 'Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher' [CUP 1992], p.88
A Reaction
This is the standard traditional view of any thinker who exaggerates the importance and potential of reason in our lives.
| 23997 | Plato saw emotions and appetites as wild horses, in need of taming [Plato, by Goldie] |
| 1651 | Plato wanted to somehow control and purify the passions [Vlastos on Plato] |
| 5160 | There is a mean of feelings, as in our responses to the good or bad fortune of others [Aristotle] |
| 23913 | Nearly all the good and bad states of character are concerned with feelings [Aristotle] |
| 7832 | Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| 4863 | An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza] |
| 24009 | Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B] |
| 4909 | The only way we can control our emotions is by manipulating the outside world that influences them [Carter,R] |
| 23975 | Learning an evaluative property like 'dangerous' is also learning an emotion [Goldie] |
| 23983 | We call emotions 'passions' because they are not as controlled as we would like [Goldie] |
| 23999 | Emotional control is hard, but we are responsible for our emotions over long time periods [Goldie] |
| 23994 | Emotions are not easily changed, as new knowledge makes little difference, and akrasia is possible [Goldie] |
| 23998 | Emotional control is less concerned with emotional incidents, and more with emotional tendencies [Goldie] |