What are feelings? How do they come about? And how do they determine our behaviour? Dominik Perler takes the route of the history of philosophy to answer these controversial questions. He discusses the theories of Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Montaigne, Descartes and Spinoza, showing a large variety of explanation models. In his extremely clear and well-written book, he traces how strongly the theoretical framework for explaining feelings has changed. At the same time, he shows that along with each framework, the answer to the question of how to control one’s emotions has also altered drastically.
