Don't fight when your body's blood and hormones are fluctuating. Gently look away and don't lose your 'wonder' about the world.
Five complete deep essays
Descartes, famous for the proposition ‘I think, therefore I exist’ (Cogito, ergo sum), is remembered as a philosopher who devoted his life to cold mathematics, science, and metaphysics. However, the last book he worked hard to complete before he passed away was 『Passions of the Soul (1649)』, which unexpectedly dealt with emotions.
Behind this book was a deeply intellectual exchange of letters with the intellectual Queen Christina of Sweden and Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. The princess asked Descartes a sharp question. 'Why do even the most rational people lose peace of mind when they are physically sick and depressed? 'How on earth are the body and mind connected?'
To answer this question, Descartes combined anatomy, physiology, neurology, and philosophy to create humanity's first 'modern mind-body interaction theory of emotions.'
Descartes split humans in two. The immaterial soul (Res Cogitans), which thinks and feels, and the material body (Res Extensa), which occupies space and moves like a machine. So how do the soul, which cannot be touched, and the body, which is a lump of meat, communicate?
The place Descartes pointed out was the ‘Pineal Gland’, a small organ located in the center of the brain.
According to Descartes' 17th-century physiology, when external danger is detected by the sense organs, 'Esprits animaux', a very fine substance believed to be produced in the blood, moves along the nerves and affects the pineal gland. The soul then experiences a subjective passion called ‘fear’. Although this explanation differs from modern neuroscience, it has historical significance in that it attempts to explain changes in the body and experiences of the mind as a continuous process.
Descartes selected the six basic human passions (wonder, love, hate, desire, joy, and sadness), and among them, he placed 'Wonder/Admiration' in the first place.
Wonder has a unique characteristic that makes it crucially different from all other emotions. Love or hate involves a calculation of likes and dislikes, such as 'Is this beneficial or harmful to me?', but wonder is a state in which the brain stops being purely overwhelmed by the 'new and unfamiliar object itself.'
� When you encounter a strange flower or a wondrous aurora that you have never seen before while walking down the street, your heart beats as usual, but the animal spirit of your brain is concentrated in the pineal gland, imprinting the object deeply in your mind. Descartes praised ‘wonder as the noblest gift of God that initiates knowledge, science, and all philosophical inquiry.’ A soul that has lost its sense of wonder is an old soul.
When my heart is pounding and my body is covered in cold sweat before the presentation, I think to myself, ‘Calm down! You may have heard the command ‘Don’t shiver!’ What were the results? In fact, I would have been more nervous and sweat would have poured down like rain.
Descartes points out that this is a disaster caused by physiological ignorance. Will is a power of the soul, but heartbeat and vasoconstriction are mechanical movements of the body by which the animal spirit rushes the blood. The will of the soul has no power to command the heart directly to ‘Stop!’
What does Descartes suggest? He describes indirect control: directing attention toward another thought or object instead of simply commanding a passion to stop. A reader today might explore this question by noticing a view outside or recalling one key sentence of a prepared presentation. His account of the pineal gland and animal spirits belongs to seventeenth-century physiology; it does not establish that these actions necessarily calm emotion through a particular bodily mechanism.
The greatest virtue presented by Descartes is ‘generosity (Générosité).’ Generosity is the noble attitude of someone who knows two things.
First, I realize that the only thing that is truly and entirely mine in my life is 'the decision to use my free will correctly.' Second, I acknowledge that all other people in the world are also dignified beings with the same free will as me.
Generous people do not dwell on minor insults or emotional wounds to fuel their desire for revenge. Because I know that the rudeness of others is nothing more than physical immaturity caused by their animal spirit running wild, and cannot damage the freedom of my soul. Taking warm care of my body, maintaining a wonderful curiosity about the world, and being generous to others—that is the great wisdom that Descartes left us.