Looking for Spinoza
Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A famed neuroscientist explores the emotions that make life worth living in "clear, accessible, and at times eloquent prose" (San Francisco Chronicle).
In the seventeenth century, the philosopher Spinoza examined the role emotion played in human survival and culture. Yet, the neurobiological roots of joy and sorrow remained a mystery. Today, we spend countless resources doctoring our feelings with alcohol, prescription drugs, health clubs, therapy, vacation retreats, and other sorts of consumption; yet the inner workings of our minds—what feelings are, how they work, and what they mean—are still largely an unexplored frontier.
Here, bestselling author and distinguished scientist Antonio Demasio concludes the groundbreaking trilogy he began with Descartes' Error by drawing on his innovative research and experience with neurological patients to examine the cerebral processes of human emotion. With scientific expertise and "a flair for writing," he navigates the neurology of feelings (The New York Review of Books).
"Damasio has the rare talent of rendering science intelligible while also being gifted in philosophy, literature and wit." —Margaret Jacob, Los Angeles Times
"Exceptionally engaging and profoundly gratifying . . . Achieves a unique combination of scientific exposition, historical discovery and deep personal statement regarding the human condition." —Nature
"Damasio . . . succeeds in making the latest brain research accessible to the general reader, while his passionate Spinozist reflections make that data relevant to everyday life." —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The third in a series that began with Descartes' Error, this book deftly combines recent advances in neuroscience with charged meditations on foundational 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and the result is Damasio's fullest report so far on the nature of feelings. A Salk Institute professor and head of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa Medical Center, Damasio makes a useful distinction between emotions, which are publicly observable body states, and feelings, which are mental events observable only to the person having them. Based on neuroscience research he and others have done, Damasio argues that an episode of emoting begins with an emotionally "competent" stimulus (such as an attractive person or a scary house) that the organism automatically appraises as conducive to survival or well-being (a good thing) or not conducive (bad). This appraisal takes the form of a complex array of physiological reactions (e.g., quickening heartbeat, tensing facial muscles), which is mapped in the brain. From that map, a feeling arises as "an idea of the body when it is perturbed by the emoting process." Because they "bear witness to the state of life deep within," feelings are a vital guide to decision-making. Damasio goes on to connect his own views to Spinoza's and sympathize with that thinker's "secular religiosity," which identified God with nature. He ends by discussing spiritual feelings, which he relates to "the sense that the organism is functioning with the greatest possible perfection." Given his professional background, it is not surprising that Damasio is more persuasive when talking neuroscience than philosophy. But overall, he succeeds in making the latest brain research accessible to the general reader, while his passionate Spinozist reflections make that data relevant to everyday life.
Customer Reviews
Too detailed and too general at the same time
A major part of the first half of this book focuses on details of neurology, particularly the brain. Understandable, the author being a neurologist and all, but not presented in a way that is accessible to this reader. The rest of the book is more generalized, but does not delve in to the links between the neurology in the first half and the feeling states described in the second. Not a great read, despite promising much.