Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of FeelingStanley, Hiram Miner
Philosophy
Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling
Stanley, Hiram Miner
Emotions
A marked and constant element in anger is hostility. This is the
aggressive fighting attitude of will which is exercised toward and
against the perceived pain-giving object. Anger can never subsist
without this volition element, and it always appears as direct simple
reaction to anger-provoking object. Anger always exhibits itself as
hostility, openly and freely in lower life, and in higher life, which is
often disingenuous, the hostility as real psychic act remains, though
somewhat concealed in physical manifestation as long as angry mood
exists. The will tendency is always toward the violent removing and
destroying of the offending object. However, naïve primitive anger does
not include in its hostility giving pain for pain received, making the
object suffer in turn, which is, indeed, far removed from the capacity
of primitive mind to conceive. Anger in its earliest form does, of
course, inflict pain where its object is pain-susceptible; but this, it
may confidently be said, cannot lie in the intent of the pain-inflicter.
The simple original ebullitions of anger do not include intent in any
form. Volition is powerfully and directly incited by the emotion without
the intervention of any idea. The only representation in the simplest
anger is the representation of pain experience impending which occasions
the excitement, which then directly and violently starts will-activity;
but the representations of destructiveness and pain-infliction as ends
become guiding ideas only in the slow evolution of anger toward more
intelligent forms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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