Publish at December 06 2023 Updated December 06 2023
We have a very special relationship with our emotions. On the one hand, we are often embarrassed to be emotional in public; we feel obliged to be rational in a world of performance. On the other hand, many of us share our emotions in an almost narcissistic way on our social networks. Our relationship with this very human part of ourselves is not new.
For a long time, emotions were called passions because they were perceived as something passive passing through the individual. It took the philosopher Spinoza, among others, to challenge this view, seeing emotions instead as motors leading to action, whether for good or ill.
In 2022, the intellectual Ilaria Gaspari published her "Petit manuel philosophique à l'intention des grands émotifs" (Little philosophical handbook for the emotionally inclined), an almost abecedarian approach to the various human affects and what they mean. First, she differentiates between emotion and sentiment. The latter is the act of reliving an emotion, of reflecting on it.
So, from happiness to anger, everything can be explained as a part of us that expresses itself. Jealousy, for example, is the realization that we are replaceable both professionally and personally. By deciphering our emotions, we'll be able to live with them better, and let ourselves be hurt less by certain situations.
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