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Affective anticipation occurs when we pleasantly or painfully anticipate some future prospect. For example, my anticipation of the harmful effects of nuclear war can itself be distressing despite the fact that I am not currently suffering any harms from a nuclear blast, while my anticipation of spending time with my loved ones tomorrow can itself be pleasant even before I am with them. Though Plato and Aristotle both theorized affective anticipation (albeit without using this exact terminology), there is no dedicated scholarly treatment of this phenomenon in the contemporary secondary literature. My dissertation rectifies this scholarly lacuna and shows that affective anticipations play a key role in the theories of motivation, emotions, virtue, and education that are found within two late Platonic dialogues, the Philebus and the Laws, and within Aristotle's ethical and psychological works.
In Chapters 1 and 2 I argue that affective anticipation plays a central role in complex forms of locomotion in Plato’s Philebus and Aristotle’s psychological works. In Chapter 3 I defend a distinction between two kinds of affective anticipation: (i) non-rational affective anticipation that is based off of memories and past sense-perception and (ii) rational affective anticipation that is based on an understanding of goods and bads. In Chapter 4 I turn to Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and argue that both take emotions such as fear, confidence, and shame to be partly constituted by affective anticipations. I contend that this explains the motivational force of these emotions and illustrates how affective anticipations pervade their moral psychology. Finally, in Chapter 5, I examine the theory of moral education (paideia) found in Plato’s Laws and Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. I argue that both take moral education to start with musical education that causes learners to feel the proper pleasant and painful non-rational anticipations (and the related emotions partly constituted from these) such that they are motivated to perform virtuous actions before understanding the nature of virtue. Full ethical perfection, however, requires a transition to rational affective anticipations that embody an understanding of what is good and bad in a human life.