1 Pleasure and Pain

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1.1 Emotions in dramas

I felt pity for Tsuneko; for the first time in my life I was conscious of a positive (if feeble) movement of love in my geart. I vomited. I passed out. (No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. p.85)

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1.2 In comedy there is pain and pleasure

Even at a comedy the soul experiences a mixed feeling of pain and pleasure. (Plato Philebus p. 128)

Tragedy and comedy, not only on the stage, but on the greater stage of human life. (Plato Philebus p. 132)

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1.3 Control pleasure control pain

That day a man triumphs over pleasure, he will triumph also over pain. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.89)

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1.4 Pleasure controls the mind

Pleasure is the mean, the measure , and the suitable and the like of the mind. (Plato Philebus p/ 155)

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2 Love

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2.1 Love seen in dramas

When I hold her breasts they’ll  nestle against my palms with a marvelous, sweaty heaviness. I feel responsible for all this woman’s flesh because it teases me softly like other things that are mine. I’m trembling with the sweetness of her being here, and when she feels me tremble she’ll tilt up like a leaf in a wind-tossed tree and show the white backs of those eyes of hers. (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima p. 31)

Ryuji was ready to die happily that very moment. Only when the cool tips of their noses brushed did he realize with a chuckle that they were two firm, separate bodies. (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima p. 32)

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2.2 What love is

She has shown Socrates the way out of black and white, Socrates asked: how can love not be beautiful and ugly? Diotima “Love falls between wise and ignorant, beautiful and ignorant, and that Love is one of them. Wisdom is one of the most beautiful things, and love is love of beauty. So love must necessarily be a lover of wisdom; and as a lover of wisdom he falls between wisdom and ignorance. (Love ‘intermediate’ state and one type of search to satisfy a need, namely the search for wisdom, or something you don’t have. The result of this intermediate “happiness”. (Plato Symposium p. 37)

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2.3 Love is a waste of time

Love, he said, is the occupation of the unoccupied. (Diogenes - Oxford p. 40)

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2.4 Pleasure without love 

When someone spoke badly of Lais to him, saying that she did not love him, he replied that he did not suppose that wine or fish loved him either, but he happily took his pleasure in both of them. (Diogenes - Oxford p. 134)

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2.5 Fear and love 

Fear is a consequence of error, so never fear courage in the attempt to win love. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Os Irmao Karamazov (Editora 34)

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2.6 Types of Love

Active Love (It needs self control and work) and Contemplative Love (You are on a stage) (Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Os Irmao Karamazov (Editora 34)

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3 Anger

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3.1 What is Anger?

What is anger? bioling of blood or desire for retaliation? Analogy: What in a house protect it from a storm? the bricks or the form of it for the sake of it? (Aristotle On the soul Oxford p.3)

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3.2 How to control Anger?

Anger will abate and become more controlled when it knows it must come before a judge each day. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.47)

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3.3 How to stop Anger?

Let us take it that becoming gentle is a settling and quicting of anger. That anger dies down in the face of humility is shown also by the fact that dogs do not bite people who are sitting downl. Those who are serious when he is serious, because this gives him the impression that he being treated seriously and not despired. Those who have done more good than bad. Mercy, Make a man gentle by considering the condition that makes him angry. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.64)

Hence Philocrates did well once the people of Athens were angry with him and someone said” “ why aren’t you defending yourself?” “When I see someone else receiving a dressing-down. The point is that people become gentle once they have exhausted their argument on someone else. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.66)

We do not stay angry with a man after his death, seeing that there is nothing left for him to suffer. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.66)

 Time heals anger but not hostility. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.70)

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3.4 How to trigger Anger?

We should try to see a) in what condition people get angry: b) with whom they get angry: and c) what kinds of things provoke them to anger. (...) arouse anger in someone else, some goes for the othe emotions . (...) anger, then, to be the impulse, accompanied by pain. (...) anger, then, to be accompanied by a certain felling of pleasure based on the expectation of achieving retaliation. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.61)
Gets angry with: mock, physically harm, those who are rude, fail to return favours, his friends if they fail to speak well of him or do him good, and especially if they do the opposite, his friends also if they are insensitive to his needs, forgetfulness. (...) use what he says incline his audience to anger. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.63)

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3.5 The origin of Anger?

Anger is the result of weakness. It cannot exist without our assent to an impulsive impression, and is a misguided expression of reason (so animal) cannot experience it). (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p. xxi)

For the nearer a man comes in his mind to impassibility, the nearer he comes to strength, and as grief is a mark of weakness, so is anger too, for those who yield to either have been wounded and have surrendered to the enemy. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation p.110)

The precondition for anger is pain, because anyone in pain desires something. (Aristotles The art of Rhetoric Oxford p. 63)

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3.6 The effects of Anger?

Anger has brought grief to a father, divorce to a husband, hatred to a magistrate, defeat to a candidate. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p. 22)

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3.7 Action with pain

Everyone who acts in anger acts with pain, while the man who commits outrage acts with pleasure. (Aristotles The Nicomachean Ethics p.128)

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4 Fear

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4.1 What is Fear?

Let us take fear to be a feeling of pain and disturbance accompanying a mental image of imminent evil of life threatening or painful kind. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.71)

There isn’t any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it. And society is basically meaningless, a Roman mixed bath. And school is just society in miniature: that’s why we’re always being ordered around. A bunch of blind men tell us what to do, tear our unlimited ability to shreds. (The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima p. ?)

Fear is a consequence of error, so never fear courage in the attempt to win love. (Fyodor Dostoevsky - Os Irmao Karamazov (Editora 34)

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4.2 How is fear created?

Who would willingly speak of such matters if, every time we mentioned sadness of fear, we were compelled to experience grief or terror? Yet we would not speak about them at all unless in our memory we could find not only the sounds of the names attaching to the images imprinted by the physical senses, but also the notions  of the things themselves. These notions we do not receive through the experience of entrance. The mind itself perceives them through the experience of its passions and entrusts them to memory; or the memory itself retains them without any conscious act of commitment. (Saint Augustine - Confessions (Oxford) p.1192)

There is no pain in stone, but in fear of stone there is pain. (Fyodor Dostoevsky - Memorias de um subsolo (Editora 34) p.120)

Let us take fear to be a feeling of pain and disturbance accompanying a mental image of imminent evil of life threatening or painful kind. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.71)

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4.3 The effects of Fear?

However, fear brings some quickly back to their senses, while others it drives more violently astray and turns them into madmen. This is why during wartime people wander about with their minds distracted, and never will you find more examples of prophesying than when fear compounded with religious feeling strikes the mind. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.244)

No one who lives in fear, then, or distress or agitation, can be free, but anyone who is released from fear, distress, and agitation is released by the very same course from slavery too. (Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook Oxford p.72)

It was extremely difficult for me to explain to Shigeko how much I feared them all, and how I was cursed by the unhappy peculiarity that the more I feared people the more I was liked, and the more I was liked the more I feared them-a process which eventually compelled me to run away from everybody. (No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. p.117)

Man fears death because he loves life, and so nature ordered. Mistake! Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. The man will still arrive for whom it is indifferent to live or not, that same will be god. (Fyodor Dostoevsky - Memorias de um subsolo (Editora 34) p.120)

For fear in moderation controls men’s passion, but fear that is persistent and intense and causes desperation makes men without spirit bold, and prompts them to try anything. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.201)

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4.4 The bodily effects of fear

Shame should not be described as a virtue; for it is more like a passion than a state of character, It is defined, at any rate, as a kind of fear of dishonour, and produces an effect similar to that produced by fear of danger; for people who feel disgraced blush, and those who fear death turn pale. Both, therefore, seam to be a sense bodily conditions, which is thought to be a characteristic of passion rather than of a state of character. (Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics p.79)

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4.5 Fear of death

Accordingly, Lucilius, as far as you can, muster your courage against the fear of death: it is this fear that makes us abject; this is what disturbs and destroys the very life it spares. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.247)

Forget all else, Lucillius, and concentrate your thoughts on this one thing: not to fear the name of death. Through long reflection make death one of your close acquaintances, so that, if the situation arises, you are able even to go out and meet it. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.248)

Why don’t you reflect, then, that for a man the source of all evils, and of his meanness of spirit and cowardice, is not death itself, but rather the fear of death? It is to confront this that you must train yourself, and it is towards that end that end that all your reasoning, all your studies, and all your readings should be directed, and then you’ll recognize that it is in this way alone that human beings can attain freedom. (Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook Oxford p.216)

One who is afraid of death fears either and absence of consciousness or its alteration. But if consciousness is no longer present, you will no longer be conscious of any evil; and if you come to have a somewhat altered consciousness, you will merely be a living creature of another kind, and you will not have ceased to live. (Marcus Aurelius - Meditation p.81)

For often fear of dying is what causes a man to die. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.130)

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4.6 Fear of supersticion 

A man who was highly superstitious once remarked to Diogenes, “ I could break your head in with a single blow”, to which he replied, “And I for my part could make you tremble with fear simply by sneezing from the left (suddenly)”. (Diogenes - Oxford p. 47)

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4.7 How to dominate fear?

For what tyrant, or what thief, or what law-courts, can still inspire fear in those who no longer attach any importance to the body and its possessions? So wait, and don’t make your departure without proper reason. (Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook Oxford p.24)

But if, one fine day, you secure freedom from fear and distress (...) don’t boast about it, but demonstrate it through your actions; and even if no one notices, be content that you yourself are of sound mind and are living a happy life. (Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook Oxford p.210)

For the whole point of this virtues is that they reject fear, rise above all the hazards of this life, and regard nothing that can happen to a human being as unendurable. (Cicero - Selected Works - Penguin - p.199)

Two types of evil - The fear of expected evil and the fear of an evil reputation. To make anyone fearless, we and the law bring him face to face with many fears. (Plato Laws 114)

If you wish to fear nothing, consider that all things are to be feared. Observe how we are crushed by trivial reasons. Without a certain proportion neither food, or drink, or wakefulness, or sleep is a benefit to our health. You will soon understand that we are trifling, weak little bodies, lacking stability and liable to be destroyed by no great effort. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.222)

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4.8 The object of fear

Object fear: Those who know what a man has done. Those who are able to do a man wrong when he is vulnerable, because human beings usually do wrong if they have the ability to do so. Those who are objects of fear to people stranger than ourselves. Those who attack people weaker than us, because they are not already objects of fear, they will be when they have grown strong. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.71)

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5 Envy 

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5.1 What is Envy?

Envy, and what conditions, if we define envy as a kind of pain aroused, in respect of one’s peers. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.84)

No one who looks at another man’s possessions takes pleasure in his own: for this reason we grow angry even with the gods, because someone is in front of us, forgetting how many men are behind us and what a massive load of envy follows at the back of those who envy a few. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.44)

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5.2 What makes people envy?

The kinds of good things that are matters of luck are those which arouse envy. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.21)

Envy: Those who are near us in time, place, age, and reputation. Hence the line “Kingship too knows how to envy”. If we have spent a lot on something, we envy those who have spent little. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.85)

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6 Piety

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6.1 What is piety?

Piety: What we fear for ourselves we piety in others. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p. 81)

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6.2 Piety in Dramas

Pity and fear are the emotions to be taken into account when evaluating the role of tragedy. (Aristotle Poetics Oxford p.xxvii)

One of those sentiments, namely pity, has to do with undeserved misfortune, and the other, namely fear, has to do with someone who is like ourselves. (Aristotle Poetics Oxford p32)

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7 Grief

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7.1 Grief in Dramas

The news of my father’s death eviscerated me. He was dead, that familiar, frightening presence who had never left my heart for a split second. I felt as though the vessels of my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer. (No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. p.168)

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7.2 Grief with friends

Best friend died. - ‘Grief darkened my heart’. Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My home town became a torture to me; my father’s house a strange world of unhappiness; all that I had shred with him was without him transformed into cruel torment. My eyes looked for him everywhere, and he was not there. (Saint Augustine - Confessions (Oxford) p.57)

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8 Shame

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8.1 What is shame?

Shame should not be described as a virtue; for it is more like a passion than a state of character, It is defined, at any rate, as a kind of fear of dishonour, and produces an effect similar to that produced by fear of danger; for people who feel disgraced blush, and those who fear death turn pale. Both, therefore, seam to be a sense bodily conditions, which is thought to be a characteristic of passion rather than of a state of character. (Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics p.79)

Shame is in the eyes. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.76)

Shame, the Dionysios (poet) before the execution: noticed that those who were going to be excited with him were covering their heads as they passed through the city gates, he said ‘Why are you covering up?’ ‘You don’t think any of them will be seeing you tomorrow, do you?” (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.78)

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8.2 What sparks shame

What arouses shame in us are the kinds of bad actions that seem to bring disgrace on either us or those we care about, and for actions to have this quality must be due to vice. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.74) 

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8.3 The shamless

Diogenes would eat such food as he could gain out in the streets, and the story even went that he would masturbate in public (for what easier way could there be to satisfy his sexual desire). The Cynic life was thus of necessity a shameful one, and far from playing that down, Diogenes deliberately behaved in a shocking manner to show his contempt for conventional social attitudes. (Diogenes - Oxford p.viii)

When someone expressed a wish to study philosophy with him, Diogenes gave him a fish to carry and told him to follow in his footsteps; the man threw it away out of shame “our friendship was brought to an end by a fish”. (Diogenes - Oxford p. 17)

Hence Sappho’s response to Alcaeus ‘ I have something to say, but shame restrains me’: she replied. ‘But if you yearned for things that were good or fine, If your tongue were not conceiting some evil utterance, shame would not shroud your eyes, And justice would inform your words. (Aristotle The art of Rhetoric Oxford p.34)

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8.4 Shame after anger

If the sufferer becomes more violent, it will stamp on him a feeling of shame of fear that he cannot resist; it he grows calmer, it will introduce conversation that is either welcome or novel, and will distract him encouraging a thirst for knowledge. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.49)

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8.5 Those who should be ashamed

But in the forefront I count also those men who find time only for wine and lust; for none are more shamefully engrossed. The others, even if they are imprisoned by the vain dream of glory, nonetheless err in a manner not unbecoming. (Seneca - Dialogues and Essays Oxford p.145)

A modest character is preserved likewise by modest action, while shameless actions will destroy it; and a faithful character is preserved by acts of fidelity, while acts of a contrary nature will destroy it. (Epictetus - Discourses, Fragments, Handbook Oxford p.88)

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8.6 Shame in friendships

Friendship can be a dangerous enemy, a seduction of the mind lying beyond the reach of investigation. Out of a game and a jest came an avid desire to do injury and an appetite to inflict loss on someone else without any motive on my part of personal gain, and no pleasure in settling a score. As soon as the words are spoken ‘Let us go and do it’, one is ashamed not to be shameless. (Saint Augustine - Confessions (Oxford) p.34)

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8.7 Shame in Fame

‘Fame, in fact, is a shameful thing, and so often deceptive. Euripides was right to make Andromache cry out: O Fame, o fame! - Many a man ere this Of no account hast thou set up on high. (Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin) p.58) 

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8.8 Shame in Love

Strepan sometimes sent revealing letters to Vorvara, and then was terribly ashamed, Vorvara kept them with affection and care, (Fyodor Dostoevsky - Memorias de um subsolo (Editora 34) p.23)

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9 When there are no emotions

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9.1 Unbalance

When a man is empty he desires to be full, and has pleasure in hope and pain in vacuity. (Plato Philebus p. 127)

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9.2 No feelings

I would mumble that I was hungry, and stuff a dozen jelly beans in my mouth, but what they meant by feeling hungery completely escaped me. (No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. p.23)

Am I waht they call an egoistic? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit? (No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai. p.158)

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