Reconstructing Rome: Vespasian in the Capitolium | The Peripatetic View of the Passions | Blood, Guts, and Laughter: Dark Humour in Statius' Thebaid V | Lucretius and the Conquest of Emotion | Transforming Relationships through Emotional Expression in Sophocles' Electra | Brutalized Bodies and Broken Categories in Catullus 8 and 40

The Peripatetic View of the Passions

    Where did the Peripatetic doctrine of the moderation of the passions come from? In Richard Sorabji's book Emotions and Peace of Mind (2000), he makes the claim that Aristotle is the founder of the doctrine of metriopatheia, although this word occurs nowhere in Aristotle, or even in fragments of the early Peripatetic school collected by Wehrli. The fact that Sorabji can make this claim without providing evidence for it reflects a general scholarly acceptance that this view goes back in some form to Aristotle. However, with the exception of the Magna Moralia, almost certainly a post-Aristotelian work, no surviving Peripatetic text presents the doctrine of the moderation of the passions as we find it in later Roman accounts. Cicero and Seneca both attribute this view to the Peripatetics, however both do so in a polemic against them. The term metriopatheia itself occurs nowhere in reference to the Peripatetics earlier than Diogenes Laertius, who attributes it to Aristotle himself.
    In this paper I will begin with Aristotle's account of the passions, which he discusses in the context of the moral virtues rather than as a separate topic in ethics. I will also touch on his treatment of the passions in the Rhetoric, where they are presented not as a moral issue, but are discussed for their importance in rhetorical persuasion. Next I will compare the view of the passions in the Magna Moralia, which differs markedly from the view found in Aristotle's two main ethical works, the Nicomachean and the Eudemian Ethics. After this I will review the evidence from Wehrli's collection of Peripatetic fragments, focusing in particular on the views of Hieronymus of Rhodes. Finally I will look specifically at the earliest occurrences of the term metriopatheia in an attempt to answer my original question and discover why and by whom the view later became so strongly identified with the Peripatetics.