Pathos

The disorders of the soul

A pathos is a passion: for the Stoics, an excessive impulse, a movement of soul disobedient to reason and springing from a mistaken judgment about what is good or bad. They ranged the passions under four heads — desire and fear, pleasure and distress — and aimed to root them out in apatheia, replacing them with the good feelings. The Peripatetics, by contrast, sought only their moderation.