In such sense, “the utility of all the passions consists alone in their fortifying and perpetuating in the soul thoughts which it is good it should preserve, and which without that might easily be effaced from it. To explain, Descartes affirms that “in order to excite courage to oneself and remove fear, it is not sufficient to have the will to do so, but we must also apply ourselves to consider the reasons, the objects or examples which persuade us that the peril is not great that there is always more security in defence than flight that we could expect nothing but regret and shame for having fled, and so on.” (Descartes, The Passions of Souls, 1649, p.
Because of their origins in the soul, emotions are not only controlled by thinking, they are also shaped by thoughts, especially those which are believed true. Descartes affirms that emotions originate in our soul, or the thinking of ourselves, and there are only six - wonder, desire, joy, love, hatred, and sadness. James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890, p. According to William James, “bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact… and feeling of the same changes as they occur, is the emotion” (W. To discuss the role of emotion in the organisational environment, we first need to understand what an emotion is, and how it can shape our behaviour in managing employees.įor Aristotle, emotions are the product of different judgements, a concept later represented by Shakespeare in Hamlet, who affirms “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking make it so” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, 2, 1, pp.
Emotions are the most important bond or glue that links us together.”, says John Elster (1999). Creatures without emotion would have no reason for living nor, for that matter, for committing suicide… Emotions are the stuff of life. “Most simply, emotions matter because if we did not have them nothing else would matter.