Abstract

Various passages of the "Huainanzi" (ca. 139 B.C.) that bear upon the topic of emotions are brought together and the connections among these are demonstrated. There is a special focus on anger and desire. Emotions are analyzed as motions of qi that arise almost inevitably from a person's interactions with his environment. The "Huainanzi" adopts two models to describe the sagely way of dealing with these "motions": an active model in which the heart is seen as the faculty in control, and a passive model in which the heart is described as a mirror