Le rationalisme français et la théorie des émotions

Abstract

A philosophic and comparative reportabout the problem concerning the reason/emotion in the field of psychology andneurology throughout Modern Times. Thebirth of philosophy and modern sciences inthe XVII century never veiled the enormouscontradictions that characterize the rationalistthesis. But during the XVIII centurythanks to, mainly, Rousseau, these positionswould be amended and a proposal of anideal balance between reason and emotionwould be offered then on the basis of thecurrent neurobiology. This study includes acritical analysis about the most importanttheories (Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Darwin,Ellis, LeDoux, Damasio, Goleman)and their contrastive analysis obtained byusing other approaches (Locke, Voltaire, LaMettrie, Foucault, Marías, Habermas, Zubiri,Iglesias). The aim of this report is tooffer a complete, ordered and systematicreview of the theory of the emotions, focusedmostly on the French field of theXVII and XVIII centuries, as well as on thecurrent development of the neurobiologicalscience.

Keywords

• French Enlightenment
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• René Descartes
• Theory of the Emotions
• Neurobiology