Eight Basic Emotions: A Thumological Perspective

In my thumological theory of emotions, there are eight basic emotions of our spirit. I pair them as follows:

Anger and guilt

Sadness and gladness

Disgust and desire

Disappointment and gratitude

I paired the emotions because I saw the pairs as essentially related. For example:

Anger is our spirit's response to being wronged and guilt is its response to doing wrong.

Sadness is our spirit's response to loss and gladness is its response to gain.

Disgust is our spirit's response to what repels it and desire is its response to what attracts it.

Disappointment is our spirit's response to desire denied and gratitude is its response to desire relieved.

In my view, our emotions, at their best, are our spirit's life-affirming responses to our in-the-world interactions. They show us what harms and helps our spirit and life. They protect and promote our own spirit and life.

Now that I have articulated a basic theory of emotions from a thumological perspective there are several interesting questions to explore:

Does the basic theory I've articulated survive scrutiny or does it need to be revised? My hunch is that it will need to be revised as we live with it, test it, and learn more.

What do we do, if anything, with our emotions? 

Are our emotions problems that we need to solve as some seem to believe?

Are our emotions ways of knowing that we do well to attend to as others seem to believe?

Are they just facts of life with which we live?

Do we simply watch them come and go as some say we should?

What about disordered emotions, those which deny life with little or no gain? What more can we learn about them? What do we need to do about them to minimize their harm?

Of most interest to me is the question, if emotions are of our spirit, which I believe they are, and we do well to care for our spirit, since it is that which makes us alive, then how do we best care for our own emotions and the emotions of others?

I'll explore some of these questions in future posts.