Abstract

Drawing on a rich digitalized corpus of early modern texts, Hans-Juergen Diller argues that the concepts expressed by the English words ›passion‹ and ›emotion‹are different in that the former in contrast to the latter has moral connotations: ›emotion‹ stands for an a-moral category. Focusing on the example of Descartes,I take issue with Diller’s method. Diller claims that his distinction applies to Descartes’ use of the French equivalents to ›passion‹ and ›emotion‹. But there aretwo concepts of a concept. According to the fi rst, the meaning of a word expressing a concept is not sharply distinguished from the complete discourse in whichit figures. According to the second, meaning is more narrow. For instance, it is restricted to the explicit defi nition an author provides. I show that Descartes provides an explicit defi nition of passion and emotion in purely physical, a-moral terms. So Diller’s method is not apt to trace concepts in the second, more restricted sense which Descartes himself has in mind.