Before Plato

• Heraclitus (500 BC)

The emotional state is characterized by a mixture of body parameters such as temperature (hot/cold) and sweat amount (wet/dry). A normal state (non emotional?) would be dry and cold.

• Anaxagoras (500 BC)

Plants as well as animals experience pleasure. All sensations (sensory perception) are accompanied by (unconscious) pain. Pain is felt (become conscious) only when it is intense enough, or in excess.

• Empodocles (490 BC)

Men think and feel with their body (blood around the heart region).

• Diogenes of Apollonia (460 BC)

Pleasure and Pain result from blood aeration, mediated by the toungue.

• Democritus (460 BC)

Happiness (positive emotion) is characterized by a state of mental and physical equilibrium. Thoughts (cognitions) are the result of a distributed interaction of some localized corporeal components.
For Example:

• Rationality: in the chest
• Control of behavior: in the head
• Resentment: in the heart
• Appetite: in the Liver
• Hippocrates (460 BC)

- The brain is at least partly responsible for conscious life (emotions included). The emotional states are characterized by brain temperature, moisture and aridity.

• Fear arises from brain overheating. Ex flushed face, red eyes. It is due to the flow of bile. Melancholy is a state of persistent fear, i.e continuous flow of bile.
• Grief and anxiety arise from brain cooling. It is due to the flow of phlegm.
In normal states, corporeal elements are mixed in a balanced manner. Pain results if one or several elements are disfunctional. This is considered as the first biological theory of pain.
- The ease of circulation, and amount of pneuma (air, within the body) is besides the brain, a second source of emotional control, through its influence on blood supply, and intimate relation with blood itself. Emotional expressions (symptoms) are mediated by organs such as;
• Diaphragm: active in unexpected joy or grief.
• Heart: contracts in surprise and strong passions, dilates in good humor.
• Lungs: in outbursts of anger.
• Socrates (470 BC)

Adds moral life (higher cognitive/divine functions) to physical and medical characterization of emotion. Happiness is made of pleasure, utility and good. His disciples formally associated pleasure with good, and pain with evil. They introduced the concept of ideal pleasures (pleasure in a prospering buisiness).

For More Information

• Hippocrates:

- The Regimen on line: a theory of 'temperaments'.(M.I.T.)
- The Sacred Disease on line: pain. (M.I.T).

Editor: Jean-Marc Fellous

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