Anger S. Braund, G. Most (eds.): Ancient Anger. Perspectives from Homer to Galen . (Yale Classical Studies 32.) Pp. x + 325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Cased, £45, US$65. ISBN: 0-521-82625-X
Anger S. Braund, G. Most (eds.): Ancient Anger. Perspectives from Homer to Galen . (Yale Classical Studies 32.) Pp. x + 325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Cased, £45, US$65. ISBN: 0-521-82625-X
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DOI：
10.1093/clrevj/bni099
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发表时间：
2005-03
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Goldhill
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文献类型：
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作者：
S. Goldhill
“这些天，人们的情绪变得火热了”，这本有趣而及时的书的编辑们这样写道。当然，他们的意思并不是说我们已经进入了西方充满激情互动的新时代，更不是说他们的声明是个人的忏悔（我想）。更确切地说，这是一种认识，即本书所针对的专业古典主义者，已经对古代世界强烈情感的表达产生了极大的兴趣。威廉·哈里斯的《抑制愤怒》（剑桥，马萨诸塞州，2002）最近对古典文化中的愤怒管理进行了长期研究，这本书显然是本卷的起点。但在哲学中，特别是亚里士多德伦理学中复杂的rôle情感，以及希腊化思想中激情的地位，已经成为特别富有成果的辩论领域。尽管《埃涅伊德》中关于愤怒的争论没有减弱的迹象，但对“怜悯”、“竞争情绪”和“爱”的新看法在古典雅典的文化史上一直很突出。情绪似乎风靡一时。这种“追求激情的时尚”很容易发现，但很难诊断。在某种程度上，这似乎是对温克尔曼长期以来对古典音乐的看法所依据的“冷静”和“有序”的另一种反应。就像多德对待非理性一样，我们也需要给纯洁的希腊白人带去一些肮脏的干扰。在某种程度上，更有意义的是，后福柯时代对“自我塑造”和“自我关怀”的持续关注，使得情感和控制之间的动态关系成为古典主题形成的核心：塞内加的《德拉》或亚里士多德对复仇欲望的讨论，现在似乎触及了古代知识分子如何反思他们的内心生活和探索他们的社会行为的核心。但也许最重要的是，情感是文化相似性和差异问题变得最紧迫的领域。现代西方既将其最宝贵的价值观和制度的起源追溯到希腊和罗马，同时又在古代发现了一种陌生而奇怪的异类，这已经成为一种司空见惯的现象。民主的诞生（等等）受到庆祝，但奴隶制、剥夺妇女的公民权和使用抽签被视为不可接受的政治生活形式而遭到拒绝。这种跨越时间鸿沟的行为是经典的创始姿态。希腊人和罗马人在哪些方面与我们相似？19世纪的理想主义常常用一个愿望来回答这个问题：要是我们能（更）像希腊人和罗马人就好了！二十世纪的人类学研究倾向于赋予距离特权：过去男人和女人的假设和态度是多么不同啊！没有什么比情感问题更生动、更持久的了。希腊人和罗马人像我们一样感受爱吗？还是古代世界不同的制度和社会期望意味着人类有不同的内在生活？是不是所有的人都会经历“愤怒”？或者“愤怒”只是“愤怒”和“愤怒”的现代版本？修昔底德可能把“人性”作为一个历史常数提上日程，但这种说法难道不是一种特定文化的建构吗？
‘These days, the emotions are hot stu¶’, begin the editors of this interesting and timely volume. They do not mean, of course, that we have entered a new era of passionate interaction in the West, and still less is their statement a personal confession (I assume). Rather it is a recognition that professional classicists, to whom this book is addressed, have become extremely interested in the expression of powerful feelings in the ancient world. William Harris’s Restraining Rage (Cambridge, MA, 2002) has recently taken a long look at anger management in classical culture, and that book is an obvious starting point for this volume. But in philosophy in particular the complex rôle of the emotions in Aristotle’s ethics, and the place of the passions in Hellenistic thinking, have become particularly fruitful areas of debate. While the arguments about furor in the Aeneid show no sign of abating, new approaches to ‘pity’,‘rivalrous emotions’, and ‘love’have been prominent in the cultural history of classical Athens. Emotions are, it seems, all the rage. This ‘fashion for passion’is easy to spot, but harder to diagnose. In part, it seems yet another reaction to the ‘calm’and ‘orderliness’ that ground Winckelmann’s long-lasting view of the classical. As Dodds did with the irrational, we too need to put some dirty disturbance back into the pure, white Greeks. In part, and more pointedly, the continuing post-Foucauldian interest in ‘self-fashioning’and ‘the care of the self’makes the dynamic between emotion and control central to the formation of the classical subject: Seneca’s De ira or Aristotle’s discussion of the desire for revenge now seem to go to the heart of how ancient intellectuals re· ected on their inner lives and explored their social behaviour. But perhaps most importantly the emotions are an area where the question of cultural similarity and di¶ erence becomes most pressing. It has become a commonplace that the modern West both traces the origin of its most prized values and institutions back to Greece and Rome, and at the same time µnds in antiquity an alien and strange otherness. The birth of democracy (etc.) is celebrated, but slavery, the disenfranchisement of women, and the use of lot are rejected as unacceptable forms of political life. This act of reaching across the divide of time is the founding gesture of Classics. In what ways are the Greeks and Romans like us? Nineteenth-century idealism often answered that question with a wish: if only we could be (more) like the Greeks and Romans! Twentieth-century anthropological study has tended to privilege the distance: how di¶ erent the assumptions and attitudes of men and women of the past are! Nowhere is the issue more vivid and insistent than with the emotions. Did the Greeks and Romans feel love (etc.) like us? Or do the di¶ erent institutions and social expectations of the ancient world mean that humans had a di¶ erent internal life? Do all humans always experience ‘anger’? Or is ‘anger’only a poor modern version of the speciµcity of ‘ira’and ‘furor’? Thucydides may place ‘human nature’on the agenda as a historical constant, but is that claim not a culturally speciµc construct?