The first part of the book covers the theories of the emotions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism (Ch. 1) and their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and Origen to Gregory of Nyssa, Cassian and Augustine (Ch. 2). The basic ancient alternatives were the compositional theories of Plato and Aristotle and their followers and the Stoic judgement theory. These were associated with different conceptions of philosophical therapy. Ancient theories were employed in early Christian discussions of sin, Christian love, mystical union, and other forms of spiritual experience. The most influential theological themes were the monastic idea of supernaturally caused feelings and Augustine's analysis of the relations between the emotions and the will. The first part of Ch. 3 deals with the twelfth‐century reception of ancient themes through monastic, theological, medical, and philosophical literature. The subject of the second part is the theory of emotions in Avicenna's faculty psychology, which, to a great extent, dominated the philosophical discussion of emotions in early thirteenth century. This approach was combined with Aristotelian ideas in later thirteenth century, particularly in Thomas Aquinas’ extensive taxonomical theory. The increasing interest in psychological voluntarism led many Franciscan authors to abandon the traditional view that emotions belong only to the lower psychosomatic level. John Duns Scotus, William Ockham and their followers argued that there are also emotions of the will. Chapter 4 is about these new issues introduced in early fourteenth‐century discussions, with some remarks on their influence on early modern thought.

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The philosophical analysis of emotion was introduced by Plato and developed further by Aristotle. Plato's various ideas pertaining to feeling and emotion are dealt with in Sect. 1–3 and Aristotle's compositional theory of emotion (evaluative thought, feeling, behavioural suggestion, bodily change) in Sect, 4. The Stoic theory of emotions as judgements is discussed in Sect. 5, and the Stoic therapy aiming at freedom from the emotions (apatheia) in Sect. 6. In other later schools, the aim of the therapy was the control and moderation of emotions rather than their extirpation. Section 7 deals with the Epicurean therapy and Sect. 8 with the theories and therapeutic views of the Middle Platonists, Galen and Plotinus. The subject of the last section is the combination of ancient philosophical theories in Nemesius of Emesa's influential work On Human Nature.

The aim of this paper is to delineate the emergence of the philosophical analysis of emotions in Plato and Aristotle. Our main thesis is that certain philosophical questions pertaining to what might be called occurrent emotions were first formulated in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and that the same questions to a large extent shaped Hellenistic and later ancient discussions. The Hellenistic theories provided material for early medieval thought concerning the emotions. Of special importance was the Stoic doctrine of spontaneous first movements as modified by Augustine. The general background of early medieval discussion was, however, Platonic psychology. Aristotle's theory came into the scope of interest in the thirteenth century. Even though some new systematic ideas were developed in later medieval thought, it seems that ancient theories and classifications dominated the Western discussion of the emotions until the seventeenth century. (See Knuuttila forthcoming.) We use the term "emotion" as a translation for a certain type of pathos. (For discussions of some questions pertaining to this term

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