Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Though "humors," "passions," and "sentiments" have been around since antiquity, "emotions" are a relatively modern concept, writes researcher Firth-Godbehere in this accessible survey. Emotions are "the way we use the sum of our experiences to understand how we feel in particular circumstances," Firth-Godbehere writes, and looks at the roles different emotions have played globally. He examines the witch crazes in Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries (which, he argues, happened because of Europeans' specific understanding of fear and abomination), the role of shame in 19th-century Japan during Yoshida Shō in's time, and the Chinese Communist Party's use of "emotion-raising" techniques in the 1940s, including short plays "designed to provoke a thirst for revenge against the nations humiliating China." In considering whether emotions are innate or culturally constructed, Firth-Godbehere concludes that they are often both: many emotions, such as disgust, are universal but are expressed within certain cultural parameters. While his survey leaves open the question of how the way humans understand and express emotions "built the world we know," it's nonetheless a well-written, fact-filled global tour. Readers interested in a history of emotional responses will find this a good place to start. (Nov.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An educative foray into a "growing discipline…that tries to understand how people understood their feelings in the past." How mankind has dealt with emotion might seem an abstruse academic problem, but this is an insightful and mostly accessible history that should intrigue diligent readers. Firth-Godbehere, research fellow for the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University, hits the ground running by pointing out that emotions are a concept "that English-speaking Westerners put in a box two hundred years ago….The notion that feelings are something that happen in the brain was invented in the early nineteenth century." Earlier thinkers spoke of temperaments, passions or sentiments--archaic terms now replaced with a single catchall term. The author casts his net widely, beginning with the ancient Greeks, who had no shortage of opinions on our inner lives. Later Christian theologians, led by St. Augustine, concluded that feelings are not good or bad in themselves; their value is determined based on how they are used in the service of God. Any emotion could be sinful if used for personal gain. In the modern age, we have largely discarded the almost universal idea that controlling one's feelings is the mark of a civilized person. Showing emotions is acceptable, and even material desires (i.e. "covetousness") are OK if one shows "good taste." Firth-Godbehere notes that all these concepts are Western, and he goes on to introduce different approaches to emotions in Japan, Africa, and China. Although described as a history, this book delves deeply into philosophy, the theologies of the major religions (rife with commonalities), science, the arts, and social movements from humanism to communism. Plenty of scholars seem to have read everything on their chosen subjects, but it's rare to find one who can convert this massive database into lucid, captivating prose. Paul Johnson and Yuval Noah Harari do it; Firth-Godbehere is another. Occasionally heavy reading that is well worth the effort. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.