John Cooper is an expert in ancient Greek philosophy who authored a book on ancient moral psychology and ethical theory titled "Reason and Emotion." The book provides a systematic account of important issues and texts in moral psychology from Socrates through Epicurus and the Stoics. For the ancients, morality centered around developing good character through virtues like judgment, sensitivity and a secure sense of self. Moral psychology studied the psychological conditions needed for good character, like certain desires, attitudes, and states of mind. The philosophers acted rationally to instantiate the good, while non-rational desires were not based in reason but could still be influenced by a broader, reasoned perspective.

1. Reason and Emotion
by John M. Cooper
Discussants
Romielyn B. Gomez
Sunshine Dream S. Legario
Professor
Dr. Jonathan Leal

2. If you have an important
decision to make in yourlife, do
you follow your emotion or your
reason?

3. John Cooper
• He is the Emeritus Henry Putnam University Professor of
Philosophy at Princeton University and an expert on
ancient philosophy.
• He was the author of Reason and Human Good in
Aristotle, which was awarded the American Philosophical
Association's Franklin Matchette Prize.
• His work in ancient Greek philosophy spans the areas of
metaphysics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind,
ethics, and political theory.

4. John Cooper
• He was President of the American Philosophical
Association, Eastern Division (1999-2000), and was Vice-
Chair of the association's national Board of Officers (2001-
02).
• He received his A.B. degree magna cum laude from
Harvard College, his B. Phil. from Oxford University,
Corpus Christi College, where he was a Marshall Scholar,
and his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

5. REASON AND EMOTION: ESSAYS ON
ANCIENT MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
It gives a systematic account of many of the most
important issues and texts in ancient moral psychology
and ethical theory, providing a unified and
illuminating way of reflecting on the fields as they
developed from Socrates and Plato through Aristotle to
Epicurus and the Stoic philosophers Chrysippus and
Posidonius, and beyond.

6. The morality was "good character" and what that
entailed: good judgment, sensitivity, openness,
reflectiveness, and a secure and correct sense of who
one was and how one stood in relation to others and
the surrounding world.

7. Ethical theory was about the best way
to be rather than any principles for
what to do in particular circumstances
or in relation to recurrent temptations.

8. Moral psychology was the study of the
psychological conditions required for good
character - the sorts of desires, the attitudes
to self and others, the states of mind and
feeling, the kinds of knowledge and insight.

9. The philosophers act rationally because
they choose to act so as to instantiate
the good in the world as a whole to the
greatest degree possible, thereby
achieving their ultimate goal.

10. "the philosophical study of the best way to
be studied the specific capacities and
powers, the different interests and desires
that human beings by nature develop or
are born with, and how one ought to limit,
arrange, and organize those for the best"

11. "in ways that are completely independent
of the use of their rational capacities ...
that is, independently of any rational, i.e.
reasoned thoughts they may have about
what to do, about what is to be done"

12. A rational desire is the "practical expression of a course
of thought about what is good for oneself, that is aimed
at working out the truth about what is in fact good"
(242).
Non-rational desires, on the other hand, are "desires
whose causal history never includes any process (self-
conscious or not) of investigation into the truth about
what is good for oneself" (242).

13. Such persuasion is possible only because the
non-rational desires employ "the very same
terms" in which reason thinks about the
proposed action and such persuasion works by
getting the non-rational desires to respond to "a
wider and more comprehensive view" of the
proposed action

14. Having a character at all, and a fortiori having
a good character consists in settled, trained
disposition of a person’s capacity and tendency
to experience some range of nonrational
desires, or other nonrational feelings, and
partly in consequence of those desires or
feelings, to act in certain characteristics ways.

15. People’s judgement of things and persons are
altered by their emotional states, stands his
very impressive account in Ethics of the
nonrational types of desire, which lie at the
root of emotions, and their effects on people’s
reasoned views and reasoned attitude to do
things.

17. References
https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/reason-and-emotion-in-
the-moral-life/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2005/2005.07.38/
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/64/