| The academic study of the relationship of emotion and reason had begun when the human nature had been studying philosophically. Generally, the relationship belonging in the primary mental productions-myth, religion and natural philosophy-showed the tendency of transition from emotion to reason. The myth was characterized as the emphasis upon the ardour, the religion reflected the conflict between the inner passion and the external standard, and the philosophy transformed the expression of the origin of the world and human that the myth and the religion had done by means of images into abstract exploration. The Greek philosophers correlated understandings of the relationship of emotion and reason with their knowledge about the nature of reason. Their diverse views of the relationship of emotion-reason and the evolution actually had reflected the different understandings of nature of reason and the evolution.The philosophers of ancient Greece- Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoicism-initiated the primary viewpoints. The evolution of the view of the relationship of emotion-reason started from the ancient Greece, and went through the Medieval Age, the modern philosophy into the fields of contemporary philosophy and psychology.In terms of the emphasis on emotion or reason, the view of the relationship of emotion-reason can be classified into three categories: the category of the focus on the emotion, the category of the focus on the reason and the category of the focus on the emotion and the reason. The relationship can be classified into two categories with respect to the cognitive content in the emotion. In my opinion, emotion and cognition are separate and independent systems. A rational behavior needs their conjunct effects. |
