What Is an Emotion?: A Sublime Book

A concise and influential essay examining the nature of emotion and its relationship to bodily response.

In this foundational text, William James advances the argument that emotion is not the cause of physical reaction, but its consequence. Rather than trembling because we are afraid, James proposes that we feel fear because we tremble. This reversal of common assumption reshaped psychological inquiry and helped establish modern theories of affect and physiological response.

Originally publis...