Wonder

A Grammar

Sophia Vasalou

• Editorial: SUNY Press
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438455549
• Categoría: Filosofía
• Categoría: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Wonder has been celebrated as the quintessential passion of childhood. From the earliest stages of our intellectual history, it has been acclaimed as the driving force of inquiry and the prime passion of thought. Yet for an emotion acknowledged so widely for the multiple roles it plays in our lives, wonder has led a singularly shadowy existence in recent reflections. Philosophers have largely passed it over in silence; emotion theorists have shunned it as a case that sits awkwardly within their analytical frameworks. So what is wonder, and why does it matter? In this book, Sophia Vasalou sketches a "grammar" of wonder that pursues the complexities of wonder as an emotional experience that has carved colorful tracks through our language and our intellectual history, not only in philosophy and science but also in art and religious experience. A richer grammar of wonder and broader window into its past can give us the tools we need for thinking more insightfully about wonder, and for reflecting on the place it should occupy within our emotional lives.

Index

Abrams, Meyer H., 82, 113, 114

Addison, Joseph, 79

admiration, 13, 19, 43, 46, 53, 54, 65, 80, 189, 212, 221n2, 227n46, 238n81, 242n25, 253n3

aesthetic experience, 141–42

wonder as an, 60, 64, 65, 82, 89–91, 112–114, 140–54, 196

see also sublime; art

aesthetics of the infinite, 80, 155

Age of the Marvelous, 34, 35, 241n5

Albert the Great, 52, 62, 237n73

amazement, 14, 27, 28, 30, 73, 75–76

American Transcendentalists, 82, 114

anger, 44, 232n42

Annas, Julia, 233n57

anxiety, 44, 47, 50, 56, 59, 68–69, 177, 180–81, 183, 186, 187, 188

Aquinas, Thomas, 62, 75–76, 102, 162, 172, 186, 187, 260n70

connection of wonder to pleasure and fear, 52–53, 71–74

aporia, 56, 63, 116

appreciation, 111, 201

Aristotle, 6, 19, 36, 39, 43, 53, 62, 73, 74, 86–87, 172, 190–91, 236n68, 260n70

on greatness of soul, 159–61

on the usual versus the unusual as a source of pleasure, 67

on wonder as a source of pleasure, 33–34, 52

on wonder as a response to the familiar versus the unexplained or unfamiliar, 37, 56–57, 62

Platonic versus Aristotelian wonder, 55–59, 62–65, 67, 68

art,

literary or narrative, 34, 52, 53–54, 57, 96, 104, 105, 155, ...