Wonder: A GrammarSynthesizes the most important recent work on wonder and brings a number of disciplines into conversation. Wonder has been celebrated as the quintessential passion of childhood. From the earliest stages of our intellectual history, it has been acclaimed as the driving force of inquiry and the prime passion of thought. Yet for an emotion acknowledged so widely for the multiple roles it plays in our lives, wonder has led a singularly shadowy existence in recent reflections. Philosophers have largely passed it over in silence; emotion theorists have shunned it as a case that sits awkwardly within their analytical frameworks. So what is wonder, and why does it matter? In this book, Sophia Vasalou sketches a grammar of wonder that pursues the complexities of wonder as an emotional experience that has carved colorful tracks through our language and our intellectual history, not only in philosophy and science but also in art and religious experience. A richer grammar of wonder and broader window into its past can give us the tools we need for thinking more insightfully about wonder, and for reflecting on the place it should occupy within our emotional lives. Vasalou s book is an important and exciting contribution to the literature. It is not a narrow academic inquiry on an obscure topic, but a sweeping exploration of an emotion that was once recognized as among the most important. Vasalou makes a powerful case for wonder and her book will spark great interest. Jesse Prinz, author of Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind This is a powerful study of wonder, whose major strengths include its engagement of overlooked primary sources (in particular, Adam Smith and Zorba the Greek), its exhaustive treatment of the secondary literature, and its careful attunement to historical complexities. Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
An Emotion Unlike Others? | 11 |
Histories of Wonder between the Rainbow and the Harpies | 33 |
On Seeing the Extraordinary or On the Different Ways of Being Struck | 86 |
Practices of Wonder | 121 |
Why Wonder? | 168 |
Notes | 221 |
| 263 | |
| 273 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith aesthetic already appear Aquinas’s Aristotle Aristotle’s articulated Cambridge claim closely cognitive concepts confrontation consciousness constitute context Critique crucial Daston and Park delight Descartes Descartes’s discussion earlier elements emotions ethical evaluative experience expression extraordinary fact familiar fear feeling Fisher G. E. M. Anscombe gaze grammar grandeur ground Hadot History of Astronomy human Hume Hume’s Ibid imagination inquiry intellectual judgments of value Kant Kant’s kind kind of wonder language linguistic linked look Malcolm Budd marvelous mastery mind moral narrative natural objects one’s ordinary ourselves Oxford Park’s Pascal’s passions phenomena philosophical Plato pleasure practices provoked question Rainbow reflection remarks response Robert Fuller role Rubenstein Schopenhauer Schopenhauer’s scientific sense Smith Smith’s soul specific spiritual stand sublime suggests Summa Theologiae surprise Theaetetus things tion turn understanding unfamiliar University Press virtue vision Wittgenstein wonder’s history Zorba Zorba the Greek