The word emotion has its roots in the Latin emovēre, composed of e – (out) and movēre (to move): that which moves us outward, that stirs us, that breaks an inner equilibrium to propel us into action. For the Greeks it was pathos: passion, suffering, an intensification of feeling. This is also why Plato, in The Republic, through the metaphor of the charioteer, urges us to let reason prevail in guiding the forces of the soul. Emotions, then, have never been conceived as abstract events: they are movements, living forces that pass through the body.
And it is precisely in the body that emotions act first. The heart that speeds up, the breath that grows labored, a knot in the stomach or the shiver of goosebumps. Even before words arrive, the body “knows.” Emotions alter posture, facial expression, internal chemistry. They are not an addition to rationality, but its foundation—its biological and experiential support.
Juvenal had grasped this well with the expression mens sana in corpore sano. Not a separation, but a unity: mind and body as inseparable aspects of the human being. Thinking well, living well, deciding well require a body that is listened to and in balance. Emotions, in this view, are not enemies of reason but—if recognized, listened to, and tempered—become extraordinary traveling companions with whom to coexist.
Western philosophy, however, has often followed a different path. Descartes profoundly shaped our way of thinking by separating res cogitans (the mind) from res extensa (the body). A division that led to emotions being seen as disturbing elements, to be controlled or censored. It is precisely this fracture that Antonio Damasio challenges in his book Descartes’ Error. Through neurological studies and clinical cases, Damasio shows that emotions play a decisive role in decision-making processes: without them, even the most logical mind remains paralyzed. Emotions help us decide; they orient us in our deepest choices. Ignoring them means repressing them and, very likely, taking unhappy paths.
Emotions orient us. Robert Plutchik attempted to map this complex universe by identifying eight basic emotions: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, and anticipation. From these, like primary colors, infinite emotional shades arise: pride, outrage, optimism, pessimism, love.
And yet emotions do not allow themselves to be easily confined. In many languages around the world there are words that describe specific, subtle, and profound emotional states, such as wabi-sabi—the bittersweet serenity of decay—or ubuntu, the joy that arises from the common good. And there are other emotions, which each of us feels in a unique and unrepeatable way, that still have no name. Perhaps this is precisely their beauty: learning to feel without the need to classify everything. Remaining in listening, allowing experience to be lived before being defined. Without a name. Knowing how to linger, with respect, among the nameless.