One of the things that you tried
to do and successfully achieved
was to resurrect
the stoic theory,
that there is a
definite-- that there
isn't a division between
thought and feeling.
And that seems what you've built
on is the importance of emotion
in not just the personal
sphere, but more importantly,
in the public and
the political sphere.
Just reflect, if you would,
a little bit on that for us.
Well, it was something
that was easy to come up
with if you studied the history
of philosophy, which I think
everyone should
do a lot more than
happens sometimes today, because
it wasn't just the stoics.
But really, everyone in the
ancient Greek and Roman world
understood that emotions
involve intelligent appraisals
of what's good and bad
for your well-being.
So fear involves the thought
that something powerful and bad
is out there.
And you're not fully
empowered to ward it off.
Disgust-- well, they didn't
talk about disgust so much.
But I'll talk about anger.
Anger involves the thought
that something wrong
has been done to someone or
something that you care about,
and that it would be a good
thing for the wrongdoer
to be punished somehow.
So they all involve
these thoughts that
pertain to our own well-being.
I think even most animals
have such thoughts.
They're not
necessarily verbalized.
But most psychologists
who work on animals now do
think, of course,
they have fear.
And of course, they have
many other emotions.
So I just wanted to take the
bare bones of the view that
survived from the ancient
Greek and Roman thinkers
and then turn it into a more
workable contemporary theory.
And to do that, I
had to do things
that they didn't
think of doing, like
studying cultural
differences in emotion.
But also, particularly
important to me,
studying childhood
development, studying
how infants are born with
inchoate emotions of fear
and a sense of helplessness.
And of course, in my new
book The Monarchy of Fear,
I use a lot of
that in explaining
how we get into some of
the political difficulties
that we're in right now.
