Damasio's errors: homage to a source of inspiration

• Autor(a) principal: Dores, António Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/6034
• topic: Social theory; Interdisciplinary approac; Emotions; Human social nature

The 80´s developed the Sociology of the body and the Sociology of emotions. Both thematized “embodiment” and argues that traditional specialized social theories are not useful to understand body or emotion, as social study objects. My proposal is to consider a review of classic sociological intuitions about embodiment, taking in account the new understanding of cerebral neurobiology of emotions and feelings, personal and social. The present essay refers to a study of the Damasio´s theory applying to social emotions, developing it to look at sociological fields, as politics of modernity. Human beings are mutable beings, according to our genetic special ability to adapt. We adapt, as persons and groups, by conquering Nature but also by transforming our bodies and our minds and souls in adequate manners we feel and we know useful for each occasion. The social study of human feelings (the key of human transformism out of redutionist rational choice theory) is not only a new subject: it is best a proposal for a theoretical turn in Social Theory To do that we can take the same path of neural biology turn proposed by Damasio.