ABSTRACT
Aristotle’s ethics and political theory are constructed round a closely knit family of psychological concepts: those of happiness, virtue, practical wisdom, action, state or habit, desire, pleasure and pain. Aristotle distinguishes and devotes at least some direct attention to the defining characteristics of fifteen emotions. Aristotle recognizes that the feelings of disgrace and eagerness to match others’ accomplishments both involve a distressed state of mind, but neither aims at causing distress in another; nor, it seems, does either of these feelings derive in any way from imagining distress as felt by another person. Aristotle limits himself to just fifteen states of mind, ones selected so as to cover the range of emotions that the orator needs to know about in order to compose his public addresses with full effectiveness – whether by representing himself as motivated by them, or by finding means to arouse them in his audience and direct them suitably for the purposes of his discourse.
