Abstract

In hisRhetoricAristotle gives six definitions of emotions in approximately the following form, with the word(Rhetoric ii.2.137830–1). Does he mean ‘Let anger be a reaching-out, accompanied by pain, forconspicuousrevenge for someconspicuousslight to oneself or one's own, the slight not having been deserved’, or should ϕαινομένηςίην be taken to mean ‘manifest, plain’, or (a third possibility) should it be translated ‘perceived, apparent’? Since this is his fullest definition of anger, the question deserves discussion, even though a number of scholars, including such an expert on Aristotle's philosophy of the emotions as W. W. Fortenbaugh, have previously answered the question in what I think is the right way.