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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:02.079)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary. And I'm here today with Dr. Barbara Rosenwein, the Professor Emerita at Loyola University Chicago and Affiliated Research Scholar at the Center for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University in London. And we're here today to talk about her book, Generations of Feeling, A History of Emotions, 600 to 1700. Dr. Rosenwein, wonderful to have you on today.
Barbara Rosenwein (00:03.694)
Thank you.
Barbara Rosenwein (00:28.6)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
PJ Wehry (00:31.615)
So just that initial question I ask every guest, Dr. Rosenwein, why this book?
Barbara Rosenwein (00:38.88)
well, the reasons are complex. The whole field of history of emotions was fairly new at that time. would say while I was writing it, it was published in 2016, but I really started it 10 years before that. It was a very lengthy process.
PJ Wehry (00:50.207)
Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (01:07.118)
The history of emotions as a field was only 10, 15 years old. And I was part of that, but I started my life as a medieval historian. And so I did my first work on medieval emotions and early medieval emotions, because again, that was my specialty.
PJ Wehry (01:25.558)
. Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (01:36.046)
I noticed as the field of the history of emotions evolved that people were talking about the emotions in their own fields, but their own fields were walled off from one another. They were in your perfect terminology silos.
in which people felt comfortable, but they weren't talking about an arc of history as though the history of emotions was early modern or medieval or ancient or even smaller slices of time within that. I thought the history of emotions, given that emotions were a common human
PJ Wehry (02:20.935)
Hmm
Barbara Rosenwein (02:32.28)
potential, even though they weren't the same exactly at all times, had the possibility of bridging these many silos, these many specialties, these many, and showing that there was a way in which you weren't talking about
entirely different worlds, but that there was continuity as well as change. In addition to that, because of my own methodology, which was not to talk about the emotions of a particular period, but to choose certain important groups within the period.
PJ Wehry (03:03.851)
Hmm. you
Barbara Rosenwein (03:30.696)
and show that they might express similar emotions or rather different emotions, or they would put emphasis on particular emotions but not on others. My technique was to talk about what I called emotional communities and the way to think about emotional communities.
PJ Wehry (03:54.259)
. you
Barbara Rosenwein (04:01.236)
because it works across all periods of time is just think about our own era and think for yourself about which groups of people you share emotional comfort in. For example, I find that I laugh the same things.
PJ Wehry (04:21.247)
Hmm. Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (04:28.27)
other academics laugh at and dislike the emotions shown by groups that sort of my fellow travelers in my emotional community do not share. When I can point out an easy example,
PJ Wehry (04:50.551)
and
PJ Wehry (04:56.735)
Sorry, go ahead. It's a very stark example.
Barbara Rosenwein (04:57.39)
with the latest American campaign for president where the Democrats... It was a very stark example. The Democrats presented themselves as a party of joy. don't know if you recall.
The joy was the big word that they used. And they, of course, made that their silo. And the other Republicans were the party of not joy, of depression, of unhappiness, of fear, of loathing, and so on. So,
PJ Wehry (05:28.063)
.
Barbara Rosenwein (05:53.71)
You can see this very, very easily within our own society. Now, I have not done a scholarly discussion of the emotions of the Democrats versus those of the Republicans, but somebody could do it. But that gives you an idea of what I mean by an emotional community. And what I wanted to show is that
In all periods of time, there are groups that differ in their emotional norms and values. It's not just the Republicans and the Democrats in our own time. This has been true throughout history. What's different nowadays is the hardening of the boundaries.
PJ Wehry (06:39.977)
and .
Barbara Rosenwein (06:51.318)
refusal to really listen one side or another. And of course, we are confronting very serious problems that no other era has confronted, such as climate change, the ascendance of AI, which may take away
most of our jobs and so on. So we're living in a very new kind of situation. But across history, there have always been different groups with different takes, attitudes, but also emotions about what was going on, about one another, about what emotions were important.
PJ Wehry (07:34.463)
. you
Barbara Rosenwein (07:47.406)
I were not. What I wanted to show was both continuity and change over a great period of time, 600 to 1700, was the way in which I tried to bridge the medieval early modern divide, which was difficult for me because I had started out as a specialist in
early medieval, the early medieval world, I sort of, my specialty sort of went up to the 12th century. And then beyond that, I could teach, but I wasn't a specialist in those fields. And I had to re-
PJ Wehry (08:24.667)
.
PJ Wehry (08:39.071)
Hmm. Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (08:46.002)
train myself to write this book to make the transition from early medievalist to a motion historian, covering a longer period of time. But I thought it was important to do because you know, if you are just
PJ Wehry (09:11.091)
.
Barbara Rosenwein (09:13.55)
a specialist in your own little field, you can't convince the general public. And I did want to speak to a general public, although this book is quite specialized in terms of it's gotten lots of footnotes. But I did want to speak at least to the general historical public that the history of emotions doesn't belong to one field.
within history. And I also wanted to show that the history of emotions had the possibility of changing our notion of periodization. We have a notion periodization that dates from the Renaissance when Vasari, for example, saw
the Renaissance or renaissance as the rebirth, that's what the word means, of the classical world. So then he put in the middle between his time and the earlier period, this mid period, which he discarded and
overlooked as he bridged, it was like an ocean, and he built his bridge over to antiquity. We still have that. So there's ancient, there's medieval, and then there's, well, now history departments have agreed that going from the Renaissance to
PJ Wehry (10:58.623)
.
You You
Barbara Rosenwein (11:10.114)
The modern world is a big, big tongue and most people can't become specialists in that. So now it's divided into early modern and modern. And now there are little bitty separations, but we're still attached to that model. And I want to break that historical model. I thought,
PJ Wehry (11:22.711)
. .
Barbara Rosenwein (11:37.1)
history of emotions would be one way to do it. I haven't seen any practical results of my attempt. History departments still are locked into those categories. But note that many people get their history only from an introductory class.
PJ Wehry (11:51.071)
.
Barbara Rosenwein (12:06.642)
which will often be the history of Western civilization or world history that tries to go from a very early period until a very late period. So I wanted to be able to speak to that general audience. This book was my breakthrough book to begin to do that.
After this book, I published three books that are called trade books that are for a general audience. Although I must say that Amazon reviews all say, well, this would be a nice book for someone who really was a specialist in history. And I don't mean those books to be that for that. But anyway.
PJ Wehry (12:44.207)
Mm-hmm.
it Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (13:05.534)
I wrote a book on the history of anger, a book on the history of love, and most recently on the history of the feelings of old age, both the feelings of the old person about being old and about younger people, about the elderly. So you can see the whole arc of my career here.
PJ Wehry (13:33.562)
Yes, and if I can very sincerely say this, it makes so much sense that it took you 10 years to write this book. I was astonished at the depth of research. Can I just tell you that this represents an enormous amount of work? I am not used to reading this depth of research.
Barbara Rosenwein (13:35.394)
Thank you.
Barbara Rosenwein (13:52.27)
Thank you.
PJ Wehry (13:57.727)
outside of specialized monographs, for it to be across this kind of vast... I was astonished reading it. I think it's a gem. think it's important. And it's really... Your 10 years you put in, and I will say, you're not seeing any practical effects of this in history departments. I think that's because most people aren't willing to put in the work.
Barbara Rosenwein (14:02.222)
Yeah.
Thank you.
PJ Wehry (14:26.665)
to cross the divides because it is an enormous amount of work. But that's clearly reflected in what you have done. So thank you first and foremost.
Barbara Rosenwein (14:32.664)
Thank you.
did feel as I began each chapter that it was like starting a new PhD dissertation.
PJ Wehry (14:40.959)
Yes, it kind of like that. I'm not going to lie. I'm like, this is just a whole new field every time. if I can just speak a little bit here, it makes so much sense. And I can see why it was so important to you because it is like, who can imagine talking about medieval emotions without talking about Augustine? And who can imagine talking about Augustine?
Barbara Rosenwein (14:53.806)
Thank you.
PJ Wehry (15:09.213)
I mean, this just becomes, it's so evident in your book and it's just something that's missed. If you don't take this long view, how can you talk about the emotions of Augustine or, excuse me, Augustine's emotional psychology? That's a different thing. Without talking about the Stoics and Cicero. And you laid that out so clearly and that's, and that's obviously just an enormous amount of work. So one, thank you. And it's also just necessary. It's a necessary in the history of emotions, but it's also history.
needs the specialized stuff, and it needs these kind of broader arcs. And I think you did a great job of that. When you talk in, just to go back a little bit, when you when you first started talking, the history of emotions being a relatively young field, why do we need the history of emotions? What is the you you talk a lot about the common misconceptions and
Barbara Rosenwein (15:46.766)
Thanks.
PJ Wehry (16:07.871)
the need for different methodologies. And I found that discussion fascinating because, and I think most people just in their own emotional communities, and even as you talk about the separation in our current society with different emotional communities, that different emotional communities require, have different language and that...
we assume that our way of looking at emotions is a universal thing and it's not. Can you talk a little bit to that and talk about that? I think your technical term for it, and maybe I'm mixing a little bit here, is genome mosaicism? Again, fun thing, but please.
Barbara Rosenwein (16:52.942)
Yeah, well that is a sort of biological analogy to the idea of emotional communities. And by bringing that up, I really wasn't exactly explaining why history of emotions is important, but rather trying to give an analogy to a modern reader to
PJ Wehry (17:01.151)
It's.
Barbara Rosenwein (17:22.798)
who might say, well, we know what emotions are. There are lots of books, especially ones by neuroscientists, that are telling us about particular emotions and where they can be located in the brain and
that there are six or seven basic emotions and we all have them and we all have them in the same place in the brain. There are neuroscientists who disagree with that and they're very important for my work, but they are not as recognized as the nor popularized. This is easy to.
think of the brain as having little packets within which here's anger and here's rationality and down here is, well, anyway, I'm making fun of it. And I don't mean to make fun of it because it isn't bad research, it's just incomplete research. So what I want to say is that
PJ Wehry (18:31.31)
Yeah. Mm.
Barbara Rosenwein (18:47.118)
Emotions have the reason why we need a history of emotions is because we already, even before there was such a thing, made assumptions about emotional development in which the assumption was that our modern world has developed
emotions that most fully our sensibilities are the most sensitive. We know about compassion, we know about empathy, and that the past did not.
PJ Wehry (19:37.135)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (19:46.434)
the the the there were pioneers in elaborating this trajectory of emotional development, such as how hoisinga, although he was Dutch and so is Jose, but anyway, Johan hoisinga.
And then Norbert Elias later during the Second World War. These are people who elaborated that periodization. Now, who cares? It doesn't matter, right? So they think we have reached the pinnacle of emotional development and they've been denied and passed didn't have it the right emotions or any emotions.
PJ Wehry (20:24.465)
Okay. Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (20:48.338)
If you read the materials of the past, if you look at the art of the past, if you think about human beings and their loves and hates and revenge in the past, you cannot help but find emotions.
but they have been read out of the materials. And that's the interesting thing. Almost, I don't know if you remember that before the 1960s, you're probably too young, the historical profession hardly noted women. They just weren't there in histories.
PJ Wehry (21:21.947)
.
PJ Wehry (21:42.495)
Hmm. you
Barbara Rosenwein (21:45.306)
even the great historian Mark Block who wrote Feudal Society, the most fantastic book on the Middle Ages, hardly a woman. It was all medieval man. And by that, women meant men.
in the 1960s and 70s, women historians began to see that, wait a minute, there were, you know, 50 % more people and they had lives and so on. They were read out, they were simply silenced. So too with emotions. Let me give you an example. When I started out,
PJ Wehry (22:33.391)
Hmm. Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (22:40.814)
I was a historian of the monastery of Cluny. Now, the monastery of Cluny was the most prestigious monastery in all of the 11th century. And it built the largest church consecrated in 1095 that was the largest church in all of Christendom until
St. Peter's, but that was built much later during the Renaissance. the Monastery of Cluny was an important topic. What did I discover in reading the materials? The Monastery of Cluny? Even its driest materials, like its legal documents.
PJ Wehry (23:39.078)
Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (23:39.862)
documents that handed land over to the monastery in return for the salvation of my soul, prayers of the monks, because I am pious. But you see the words for love of God, love of the abbot, you see words of friendship.
PJ Wehry (23:54.827)
You
PJ Wehry (24:05.215)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (24:09.014)
Nobody talked about that. were, you know, these were legal documents. So take out the words, they're little words. Words of emotion are so oddly little for such a major thing. Think about love, right? It's L-O-V-E, amor, A-M-O-R.
PJ Wehry (24:37.983)
And to you.
Barbara Rosenwein (24:38.368)
four letters, you can avoid it entirely. However, when I say to someone, I love you, it matters to that person, And so, yeah, and to me, right? Exactly. Of course, I could be lying in which case.
PJ Wehry (25:02.271)
Because you want to. I think you mentioned that a little bit with the like the bribing aspect and stuff. It's not quite flattering.
Barbara Rosenwein (25:05.638)
We just want to hear it.
That's right. That's right. it still has emotional impact. That's why I use it, because it can manipulate people. So anyway, all I discovered was we're reading out these words. We've got to read them back in.
PJ Wehry (25:18.035)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (25:34.687)
Yes, if you don't mind my saying so, I've had Dr. Joel Harrington on to talk about the Faithful Executioner. And one of the main, the main purpose of his book was to humanize the past. And that's a little bit, I think, if I'm not mistaken, what I'm hearing from you, and I think there, I think, and this is a little more contentious, there's an ethical reason to do that. But more important, like, I think what's not really contestable is there's a formational
effect of humanizing the past, of recognizing the difference and the similarities between you and these past people. Instead of being, you know, like you said, the benighted past and just like writing them off like, we're at the pinnacle now. And then recognizing our own faults by addressing, by acknowledging those strengths of the past. And I think that's a little bit of what, if I, I want to make sure I'm on the same track with you. I think that's a little bit what you're talking about here.
Barbara Rosenwein (26:30.442)
Yes, it is. But I'm interested in the fact that you've gone to the vocabulary of vice and virtue, know, strengths and weaknesses, which is sort of our way of talking about virtues and vices. And I think we need to watch that because
PJ Wehry (26:42.171)
hahahaha
PJ Wehry (26:51.263)
you
PJ Wehry (26:55.199)
Yeah. Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (26:58.77)
If we're looking at vices and virtues like that, then we're going to start judging past emotional communities on the basis of our own value judgments. And I would like to hold off on that. I don't mean we can never do that. We can, we must. I cannot.
look at the emotional community of the Gestapo and say, well, it had great strengths, but let's first look at it carefully and see what made it tick. Where did it get its values, its norms? How did those
PJ Wehry (27:37.256)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Barbara Rosenwein (27:58.094)
induce its actions. These are the more important historical questions as far as our moral evaluations. Those are important. Of course, those are important. But first, let's understand what we're talking about.
PJ Wehry (28:23.794)
Yes, yes, careful, that, which is reflected in your depth of study, right? First, that we are carefully examined on their own terms before we just snap, yes, absolutely.
Barbara Rosenwein (28:33.454)
Yeah, exactly. I really wanted to understand these people on their own terms. Yeah, it's not easy. takes a lot.
PJ Wehry (28:47.487)
Yeah. No. Oh, can we? I I got to the chapter on and I'm gonna probably gonna say his name wrong about Gerson and you're like, well, he described emotions in this beautiful way according to the music theory of the time. Now, in order to understand this, you also have to understand the music theory of the time, which is different. I was like.
It makes sense. makes sense. Like if you describe things in the scales we have today, a lot of people would be able to use it. But the fact that the musical scale is different, you're like, that's a lot of work.
Barbara Rosenwein (29:15.534)
you
Barbara Rosenwein (29:26.476)
Now, I mean, it was, it was, well, it was a lot of work, but luckily there is a terrific addition of his writings on the music of the heart, the silent music. And so it's a...
PJ Wehry (29:37.535)
Hmm. .
Barbara Rosenwein (29:54.506)
Let me say this. I said it was like starting a PhD thesis on a gestion, but it was, but PhD thesis rests on decades and centuries of research by others. I mean, I cannot, I really, for that chapter in particular, I
PJ Wehry (30:11.338)
Yes. Yes.
Barbara Rosenwein (30:24.014)
I know my modern scales, but I really did have to rely on what other people were telling me about the modal system and so on.
PJ Wehry (30:36.671)
That makes total sense. I mean, you're a historian of emotions is very, to go this distance, you had to follow one subject. I don't think anyone expected you to do the same for the history of music as well. and I've really appreciated this discussion of the kind of historiography.
Barbara Rosenwein (30:45.74)
here.
Barbara Rosenwein (30:53.088)
Right. Good.
Barbara Rosenwein (31:01.934)
for
PJ Wehry (31:06.011)
If you don't mind, would like to ask one thing I found really interesting within the themes you're drawing out in the book. Of course, I think most people would say friendship is involved with emotion, emotion is involved with friendship. There seems to be something special in the way that Cicero and Augustine and Alquin, that is like one of those continuous threads you draw out. Can you talk a little bit about the special role that friendship played in emotion?
Barbara Rosenwein (31:35.082)
Yes, it was really Aristotle who, sorry, but yeah, who,
PJ Wehry (31:45.137)
No, you're right. You're right.
Barbara Rosenwein (31:52.718)
for whom friendships were very important for obvious reasons. In the palace, you have really an elite emotional community that is pretty divided, you might say.
PJ Wehry (32:11.427)
and
Barbara Rosenwein (32:22.87)
because of the Peloponnesian War. Prior to that, it had not been. So war really tore this society apart. And Aristotle is coming in at the frayed ends of that terrible rupture. And he sees two kinds of
PJ Wehry (32:26.263)
Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (32:52.426)
friendship. One friendship is based on love and it asks nothing of anyone else. So that I'm your friend and I will not need from you anything but that together we pursue the important goals of life.
PJ Wehry (33:16.095)
you you
Barbara Rosenwein (33:21.676)
And for Aristotle, that was virtue. But other kinds of friendship are, there's a word, but now I can't remember it. I'm not good at words anymore, but it's manipulative. It wants something. It is, I'll do this for you.
PJ Wehry (33:45.887)
Transactional.
Barbara Rosenwein (33:49.482)
if you do that for me. Exactly. And thank you. I'm going to rely on you for all my missing vocabulary from now on. Before this show, PJ supplied a word to me that I couldn't capture in my mind. And he kindly mentioned it.
PJ Wehry (34:07.167)
Yeah
Barbara Rosenwein (34:19.194)
And yes, thank you. Anyway, that idea, transactional versus pure, you said that there was a continuity with Cicero? of course. Yes, he didn't read Aristotle himself, but he knew
PJ Wehry (34:22.175)
and and
Barbara Rosenwein (34:49.254)
the ideas already through translations from the Greek. Oh, wait a minute, Sissamo did read Greek. Sorry, sorry, sorry, he did. It's later on when you get to Augustine, who didn't read Greek, but he adopts that same dichotomy. Alquin also.
PJ Wehry (35:03.967)
Yes. Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (35:17.834)
adopts it, it works well in a world where you have multiple interests, people with many different goals, and you have to figure out whether their goals are congruent with your own or whether...
PJ Wehry (35:32.959)
and
Barbara Rosenwein (35:43.628)
They're marginal to your own, in which case they may be useful to you, but they are not going to be soulmates of yours. And we really have this idea still today in attenuated form, I think. it isn't very foreign to us even today, but...
PJ Wehry (36:05.563)
.
Barbara Rosenwein (36:12.846)
today, much more involved with romantic relations. And it was definitely not connected with romantic relations in the same way in the Greek world. They could have sexual relations with each other, but that had nothing to do with our notions of romance.
PJ Wehry (36:32.241)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (36:42.67)
I think I'm getting off track here. okay. Okay. I think, I mean, when you read now about my soul mate, it's generally not about friends. Although the idea of besties is, you know, my best friend is...
PJ Wehry (36:46.794)
No, I'm tracking. This makes sense to me. So yeah.
PJ Wehry (37:03.783)
Yes. That makes perfect sense, but I was not expecting you to say besties. Sorry, that really threw me. Yeah, but that would be, that's besties. Soulmate has become particularly romantic. And of course, I'm assuming that's part of what you were writing about in your book on love.
Barbara Rosenwein (37:32.344)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly. So, has a little bit given way in our own society, but I think it's still very important. It's just been subsumed by other words and by the notion of romance, which really
PJ Wehry (37:50.327)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (38:01.739)
is pretty modern.
I mean, the idea of love isn't modern. The idea of love is, I mean, it's already being theorized by Aristotle and Plato, that it comes into the Christian tradition, and it is problematized by Christian theologians, there's various kinds of love, and so on. And it is.
to some extent at that point separated from friendship. Not in the 12th century, but in later periods. Think about Luther, for example. The topic of friendship is less important in Luther than it is in...
PJ Wehry (38:53.803)
and and
Barbara Rosenwein (39:02.414)
Augustine, even though Augustine was a primary source for ministers conversion.
PJ Wehry (39:13.116)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely there's a lot of threads that you can pull from Augustine that Luther did not pull on. He pulled on some very specific threads for his own work.
Barbara Rosenwein (39:28.674)
Yes, he did. Yes, he did. And that's right. That's the way history works, that people in different environments pull different threads. And I was trying to make that analogy with the human genome, where different, different genomes existing in the same body can
PJ Wehry (39:31.245)
PJ Wehry (39:43.645)
Yes. Yes. yeah, and I did, I found that, I found that helpful, as, you're kind of going through and there's, there's both, there's two stories. There's how it shows up.
Barbara Rosenwein (39:53.775)
show themselves in different times because of different environmental factors.
PJ Wehry (40:13.149)
And then there is the continual change, very slow change, of the genetics underneath themselves. If I understood your analogy correct.
Barbara Rosenwein (40:19.758)
That's right. Because when cells divide, they don't necessarily replicate perfectly. why clones are really... A clone will never be the same as the original.
PJ Wehry (40:41.519)
Yes. Which is a really, and I love that application to emotions because it's, I think we do think of emotions sometimes at a very superficial level. We think of them as like cloned or just repeated generation after generation. If I could say, I love the title that you have this is history idea, but also this
Barbara Rosenwein (40:58.158)
Thanks
PJ Wehry (41:03.113)
this generation of feeling. I appreciated the pun. I did want to make sure to say that.
Barbara Rosenwein (41:08.27)
Great, great, thank you.
PJ Wehry (41:10.271)
Along with friendship, one of the threads that you trace, this is more about difference. Friendship seems to be kind of a continuous thing, but the one that's more is how different, one of the big choices that emotional theorists would make is how they viewed emotions in relation to the soul and or the body. How does that show up? What are some...
good examples, you'd like to use specific characters, people. They're not like fiction characters, but specific people and the way they approach that.
Barbara Rosenwein (41:49.582)
I am not sure that I agree with your question because I think that almost every theorist connected and still connects the emotions to the body.
PJ Wehry (42:00.883)
then please, give me a better one.
PJ Wehry (42:19.487)
Mm-hmm. .
Barbara Rosenwein (42:20.536)
Whether the heart or today we connected with the brain.
with the soul in the sense of the...
not necessarily in the Christian sense, but just in the sense of that which makes us human. More generally, the spirit, whether that spirit is immortal or it is very mortal and dies with the
PJ Wehry (42:49.567)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (43:14.318)
And with the mind, both with the reasonable part of the mind, but also the sensate part of the mind, the part of the mind that touches, smells, and is set alight by these things. These things are
seen as emotional. They can even be cold emotions, such as when I get the feeling of hunger. Hunger is a bodily sensation. It comes from stomach acids or whatever it comes from. And then the external food makes that
PJ Wehry (43:52.223)
Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (44:13.806)
feel satisfied. it's a kind of desire, hunger, it's a kind of desire. It's very close to what most theorists call, in fact, some theorists put hunger in with the emotions. They also put lusts in with the emotions, arrows in with the emotions. These are flexible.
PJ Wehry (44:17.055)
Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (44:42.978)
categories. And that's why I kind of disagree with your question, because I think that every theorist has taken these things into consideration. But as with so many other philosophical systems, you might say, they emphasize
PJ Wehry (44:45.887)
Hmm. Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (45:11.464)
certain things over others. Nowadays, we hardly see anybody talking about the importance of the heart in relation to emotions, although we're coming up to Valentine's Day, and everybody is going to be sending out a Valentine or two, and they will, you know, be thinking of their heart, my heart feels so in
PJ Wehry (45:14.847)
and Ha ha ha ha ha ha
Barbara Rosenwein (45:40.558)
Lay theory, the heart still is the seat of the emotion of love. so the theorists may not take that into consideration in their theories, but I'll bet that even the most hardened neuroscientist
is going to buy a Valentine's Day gift for his wife or her husband or companion or whatever. I do think that we live in an uncertain world where these ideas still come up, they still play a role.
PJ Wehry (46:18.367)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (46:36.63)
and that we see them with different emphases in the past than today, with different meanings. I doubt that you would actually say my heart is the seat of my love, but
Throughout most of the Western tradition that had been the very, very important theory also of medical people like Galen. And as for the soul, you know that the life
or difficult point is that the word for soul is not all that different from the word for mind in Latin. And so you've got anima, animosa, and I think that made it easier for medieval theorists to just be vague about
PJ Wehry (47:44.259)
Right.
PJ Wehry (48:02.843)
Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (48:04.204)
had the connection between the emotions and the soul. But for someone like Thomas Aquinas, of course, the emotions are part of the human soul. Because in the end, the human being is going to pass away. And the fountain for all emotions for Thomas Aquinas
is love, and love is either going to be present and inspire the heavenly, the heavenly fate, or that love is going to be turned in the wrong way, and it is going to inspire hate, and then you'll be in hell. And that's really, you know, love.
PJ Wehry (48:56.983)
Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (49:03.918)
is heaven and hate is hell.
PJ Wehry (49:06.495)
And if you don't mind, again, I'm speaking from ignorance, so feel free to correct me. There's also, you've talked about a little bit the story of the heart to the brain. There's also, there was a time, or maybe it was an adjacent emotional community, where the gut, the bowels were considered the seed of the emotion. And what I find fascinating as you're talking about this is some of the newer research that's becoming popular.
are people talking about emotions that are now, it feels like we're, am I right in tracing that?
Barbara Rosenwein (49:42.83)
Yes, you are. You are absolutely right. Certain kinds of emotions for Galen, for example, are part of the liver. Other kinds of emotions belong in the heart, generate in the heart. Already the Greeks had a notion that the
PJ Wehry (50:08.219)
Hmm. Okay.
Barbara Rosenwein (50:12.75)
erasable emotions like fumo came from the stomach or the area here, whereas the desire emotions are up here. But it's all because they're not really looking at nerve endings. They're not doing the kind of
PJ Wehry (50:38.547)
All right.
Barbara Rosenwein (50:42.38)
brain work, body work that is being done today. But I'm very glad, I was very glad to read about some of the new work that's being done on the emotions, because I think the whole body is of course involved in emotions. What about shivering from fear or getting the, getting little
PJ Wehry (51:01.343)
Hmm.
Barbara Rosenwein (51:12.174)
Goosebumps. There you go. Thank you. Goosebumps. think we're, yes, of course there is now a revival, but it's different, of course, because we now know about nerve endings, so we now know about connections and how that works, chemical connections.
PJ Wehry (51:14.825)
Goose. Goosebumps? Yes.
PJ Wehry (51:28.543)
Yes. Thank
Barbara Rosenwein (51:42.292)
electrical connections. So it will be fascinating to see what more happens, especially with more precise instruments and also the openness of his scientists to do theories to not being wetted.
to one idea because I think emotions are extremely complicated. We are not going to find an E equals MC squared formula for emotions. They're simply going to be more complicated. And as we know, even E equals MC squared has to be.
PJ Wehry (52:17.955)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (52:26.047)
Yes. One of the things that you mentioned there, and I think this speaks to the complexity you're talking about is
Barbara Rosenwein (52:41.096)
problematized nowadays.
PJ Wehry (52:53.419)
When the emotions are first being theorized, there's not always, but sometimes it was, and even today, people talk about it as a one-way street from the mind to the body. And what you're talking about is a feedback loop, right? It can be an external or internal thing that makes you shiver, but once you shiver, that also reinforces or creates new emotions. And so, the way that we name emotions is part of that feedback loop.
Barbara Rosenwein (53:07.415)
Exit.
PJ Wehry (53:21.149)
And so the culture around it is going to make a difference. Am I right in tracking that?
Barbara Rosenwein (53:21.678)
Yeah, you are absolutely right. And I would like to bring up the name of Lisa Feldman Barrett as a neuropsychologist who talks about the importance of adding to our vocabularies precisely because we live in, our brain is situated, she's a neuro.
psychologist, so she puts everything in the brain. But our brain is situated in the body, but as the interface to the external world. And the environment of the body and the environment of the external world will offer different things to different people depending on who their parents are, how they're nurtured, what the climate is like.
PJ Wehry (53:54.399)
Yes.
Barbara Rosenwein (54:18.606)
And that's going to affect the internal environment. It's going to be also the external environment. And if we're wedded to a few simple emotion terms like anger, we are not going to see the enormous complexity of what these inputs and outputs.
PJ Wehry (54:46.939)
Yeah.
Barbara Rosenwein (54:47.886)
Because what our mother says to us or our caretaker, father says to us when we're little babies is going to matter for our understanding of our own feelings. If we only have a couple of words to describe them, we are going to be less human.
PJ Wehry (54:53.023)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (55:00.639)
I
Barbara Rosenwein (55:17.102)
I hate to say that. We're going to have lost a lot of sensibilities that we could have and that would make our lives richer.
PJ Wehry (55:23.967)
Yes, yes, not less human in terms of value or dignity, but less human in terms of our potential.
Barbara Rosenwein (55:41.336)
That's right. Thank you very much.
PJ Wehry (55:44.381)
Yes. I want to make sure that I'm being respectful of your time, but let me just say it has been an absolute joy having you on. And so just as a final question, besides buying and reading your excellent book, right? I always end with that. But besides buying and reading your excellent book, for someone who has listened for the last hour, what would you recommend that they think about or do over the next week in response?
Barbara Rosenwein (56:17.624)
Think about your own values and goals and how those might be opened up by listening to the values and goals of those you would not ordinarily listen to, whether from other cultures or from the historical past.
PJ Wehry (56:41.435)
Hmm.
Phenomenal answer. Dr. Rosenwein, absolute joy having you on today. Thank you.
Barbara Rosenwein (56:45.726)
or even in your own environment.
Barbara Rosenwein (56:55.96)
Thank you very much. It was a joy being here. Thank you.