ABSTRACT
The history of emotions implies history of subjectivity. Emotions are subject to the person, the person is subject to emotions. The history of emotions relies heavily upon theological/philosophical accounts of the emotions as a means of constructing norms for a given period. Aquinas and Descartes both register the necessity, if analysing emotions, of rendering them as objects, of placing them at an intellectual distance from the selves that house them. Unlike Aquinas, Descartes understood the passiones physiologically, as functioning in a mechanized body. Scholastic theology seems particularly emotion-less. Aquinas’s explanation as to the nature of a passion is highly argued in meticulous terms. Scholastic theology is famous for splicing the created world into categories upon category, usually with attendant neologisms. The messiness of emotions are transformed by scholars like Aquinas into a stratified structure whose workings can be discerned and understood.
