Writing the History of the Emotions

Reviews two books: "The Vehement Passions" by Michael Fisher and "From Passions to Emotions: the Creation of a Secular Psychological Category" by Thomas Dixon. The framing of these two books could not be more dissimilar. Dixon's is a history of affects and appetites, passions and feelings, from the Ancients to the Moderns. Fisher, on the other hand, frames passions and emotions through literary forms. He has a different agenda: to reduce feelings to their barest possible essences, the better to see the country of passions before him, especially its ethical hinterlands.