Passion of Wonder

Passion of Wonder

Introduction

People have different characteristics and different emotions that vary according to the situation. They may be happy in good times and get upset when they face problematic situations, they might also get worried and tensed in difficult times. People may lose their temper and get angry when situation gets out of their control and they fear something from happening that is against their will and the way they want situations to be. Many philosophers have worked in the field to identify these emotions and how they reflect human behavior (Jones, 2009). Wonder is an emotion that can be compared to surprise, human wonder or get surprised when something unusual happens to them. When a person experiences a situation where something happens that he has not expected or that was unlikely to occur it makes him wonder what happened that resulted in occurrence of the situation. Descartes has been a great philosopher who has worked tremendously on identifying different emotions of humans and how it has affected human behavior and how it varies according to changing situations (Marshall, 1998).

Style of Writing

I have modeled my writing style after Descartes. The emotion selected for this paper is wonder. In “Descartes and Modern Theories of Emotion” Descartes has identified numerous passions and emotions, including wonder, that are a part of human life. Of the six passions that have been highlighted by Descartes, wonder has been placed at first by the philosopher. The other passions that have been identified by him include: love and hatred, desire, and joy and sadness. He has then defined each of them individually to determine the impact of these on human life and their emotions. He highlighted all of these passions have a built-in direction of motion excluding the passion of wonder, these directions can either be aversive or appetitive. Descartes states that an individual should place love prior to hatred and joy to sadness (Rubenstein, 2009). The writing style used in this paper for analysis is the mixture of Descartes' analytic style and plato's dialectical style of debate.

Discussion

Wonder can be considered as one of the most distinct passions of a human. When an individual encounters something that is formerly unknown to him this in result influences the person to wonder about the factors that lead to the situation. If someone experiences a situation that is distinctive from what it is ought, it makes the person wonder and be surprised. Wonders is considered to be the most distinct passion as it does not have any opposites and does not have any objects defined to the passion (Fisher, 1999). Wonder is considered to be the passion that motivates individuals to be mobile and move from one state to another, it influences the person to look for the hidden reality. Wonder can be defined as an action that is both active and consequently passive. Wonder is explained as a sudden surprise for soul, which occurs as a result of occurrence of objects that seem to be rare ...