A racionalidade das emoções em Aristóteles

Abstract

The thesis will deal with the possibility to educate the emotions because the rationality presented in its nature and in the morally educated emotions. The study will be based on the proposals of Nicomachean Ethics, using, when necessary, the De anima, the Rhetoric and the Poetics, texts that have given special attention to the subject. To defend these proposals, the research seeks to understand what Aristotle understands by emotion, starting from Book I of NE, which will indicate the possibility of the desiderative capacity to hear reason. Because of this, we realize that Aristotle does not intend to exclude the non-rational elements of the moral life, being more concerned to find ways that reconcile the psychic capacities and to feel emotions with the right things, in the convenient moments, towards what and to whom it is appropriate. This interpretation is possible because the philosopher understands the soul as something composed of connected capacities, putting the emotions, which are from the domain of the desiderative, from its beginning, in contact with the rational capacity of the soul. This last ability indicates the reasons for the corret emotion, but also proposes to the man morally educated a moderate form of emotion that will allow him to lead anapproprieted life. Such a life, identified with eupraxía, is only achieved with the support of the virtues. Therefore, it is necessary to understand what Aristotle proposes as virtue and why it relates it to emotion from Book II of NE. This study allows us to continue the investigation of the human soul capacities suggested by ENI 13, a text that presents the division of the virtues, according to the soul's capacities, into moral and intellectual virtues. The virtues are the best possible state for each capacity of the soul, being essential subject to the proposed research. At the end of the NE exposition, the alternative of interpreting eudaimōnía as a life totally dedicated to theoretical contemplation seems to beadequate to the proposals of our study. Nevertheless, Book X itself contains arguments that allow us to keep understanding the best way of life possible for man, that is, his own function, as a life in the pólis, which combines the good exercise of all his capacities. Interpretation viable by the presentation of rational chained faculties that can touch the emotion, from its awakening to when they are moderated with the aid of practical reason. Contact that will be facilitated by the instruments that the citizens can use to guarantee the chance of feel appropriatly, in order to be virtuous and happy, living in community.