Concept
Fear
Overview
emotion induced by perceived danger or threat
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Fear is discussed.
As these exertions have often been prolonged to the last extremity, the final result will have been utter prostration, pallor, perspiration, trembling of all the muscles, or their complete relaxation. And now, whenever the emotion of fear is strongly felt, though it may not lead to any exertion, the same results tend to reappear, through the force of inheritance and association.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The special significance of this form of fear, particularly in early childhood, has escaped the notice of the older school of child psychologists; it has lately been established by Groos and by us. “Fear of the unaccustomed seems to be more a part of primitive nature than fear of a known danger” (Groos, p. 284). If the child meets with anything that does not fit in with the familiar course of his perception, three…
Bertrand Russell, Education and the good life
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; opens on it
"This feeling of fear occurs in many men even in their own house after dark, although it is much stronger in a dark cavern or forest. The fact of such instinctive fear is easily explicable when we consider that our savage ancestors through innumerable generations were accustomed to meet with dangerous beasts in caverns, especially bears, and were for the most part attacked by such beasts during the night and in the…
William James, Psychology
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
We deem it quite a matter of course that the savage fears a cannon or an eclipse of the sun, while the white man, who can handle the instrument and prophesy the phenomenon, does not fear these things. At other times superior knowledge promulgates fear, because it recognizes the danger earlier. The savage, for instance, will recoil before a footprint in the woods, meaningless to the uninstructed, which reveals to him…
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
names the idea; opens on it
To the first group belong the fear for snakes, thunderstorms, darkness, vermin, etc., as well as the typical moral overscrupulousness, and the forms of doubting mania. Here the available fear is merely used to strengthen those aversions which are instinctively implanted in every man. But usually a compulsively acting phobia is formed only after a reminiscence is added to an experience in which this fear could…
Sigmund Freud, Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
names the idea; states what it is
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Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Deism.