The concept of 'First Movements' — known in Latin as *propatheiai* or *prima motu* and in Greek as *prokataraktikai kinēseis* — occupies a decisive position in the ancient and early Christian psychology of emotion as treated by the depth-psychology corpus. Richard Sorabji's reconstruction of the Stoic lineage, from Zeno and Chrysippus through Seneca and Epictetus to the Christian appropriations of Origen, Evagrius, and Augustine, establishes first movements as involuntary, pre-emotional stirrings — contractions, expansions, trembling, pallor, the sinking feeling in the chest — that precede both assent and full-blown passion. The theoretical stakes are high: can the wise person claim freedom from emotion (*apatheia*) while still undergoing these unavoidable somatic perturbations? Seneca's innovation, traced by Sorabji against Cicero's earlier formulation of 'little contractions' (*contractiunculae*), is to locate first movements strictly before judgement and assent, opening a therapeutically vital time-gap in which the disciplined agent may decline to ratify the nascent impulse. The concept undergoes a signal transformation in Christian thought: Origen conflates first movements with 'bad thoughts' (*logismoi*), and Evagrius systematises them as the eight demonic temptations that precede sin, ancestors of the seven cardinal vices. Augustine mobilises the concept against his own will in the analysis of sexual desire. Margaret Graver's complementary account clarifies the Stoic delimitation of *pathos* against mere physiological arousal. The tension between voluntary and involuntary, between therapy and grace, gives this concept its enduring psychological resonance.
In the library
14 passages
I shall now turn to the way in which the concept of first movements was transformed by Christian thinkers, and how it was applied to a Christian debate on whether moderation or eradication of emotion was the proper ideal
This passage marks the programmatic thesis of Sorabji's chapter on first movements, announcing the Stoic-to-Christian transformation of the concept and its application to debates about *apatheia* versus *metriopatheia*.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
it shows how it may be possible to discount the mental first movements in a programme of keeping control. It was essential for exercising control that it should be possible to create a time-gap between the first movement and the beginning of the emotion.
Sorabji argues that the therapeutic significance of first movements lies precisely in the time-gap they create between involuntary somatic reaction and the full assented emotion, enabling rational intervention.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Seneca's new point is that his mental movements are not merely independent of judgement and emotion, but can actually occur before it. Surely his first movements of the mind are the little contractions and expansions of the mind, which Cicero has described as independent.
Sorabji identifies Seneca's decisive innovation — relocating Cicero's 'little contractions' (*contractiunculae*) to a position strictly prior to judgement — as the foundation of the first-movements doctrine.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Tears, trembling, and sinking feelings in the chest may well be produced by a fast track, but even earlier than Seneca said. It can happen before anyone has had time to entertain the idea of danger
Sorabji connects Seneca's first movements to modern neuroscience (LeDoux's amygdala 'fast track'), suggesting they occur even before any conscious ideation — deepening their pre-cognitive status.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
My interpretation goes against the view that first movements are not central to Stoic theory. They are central to later Stoicism if they can be used to answer Aristotle, to defend Chrysippus from Posidonius' objections, and if they are important to the understanding of therapy.
Sorabji defends the centrality of first movements to Stoic philosophy against scholarly minimisation, grounding that centrality in their polemical and therapeutic functions.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Origen's conflation of first movements with thoughts added to the unclarity over whether those undergoing first movements are experiencing emotion. Sometimes Origen reflects the Stoics very faithfully.
Sorabji traces how Origen's identification of first movements with *logismoi* (bad thoughts) both faithfully echoes and significantly obscures the original Stoic distinction between pre-passion and full emotion.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Irritation by seminal fluid is explicitly cited by Seneca On Anger, in the passage translated in Chapter 4 above (2.3.2) as an example of a first movement which is not yet an emotion.
Augustine's discussion of involuntary male sexual movement is shown by Sorabji to map imprecisely onto Seneca's original example of a first movement — an involuntary pre-emotional stir not yet constituting passion.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
The eight bad thoughts with which he wrestles in the desert can be shown to be first movements in a Christian disguise. They were later to turn into the seven cardinal sins.
Sorabji identifies Evagrius's 'eight bad thoughts' as the Christian transformation of first movements, tracing their genealogical descent into the medieval doctrine of the seven cardinal sins.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
The Stoic replied that the brief, but necessary and natural, jitters (pavor) were explained in the fifth book of Epictetus' Discourses, which he drew from his bag.
The Aulus Gellius anecdote demonstrates the practical Stoic account of first movements as natural and involuntary — here the Stoic sage's pallor during a storm — requiring no moral self-reproach.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
In the second stage the mind assents to the appearance of injustice and there is a will to the effect that it is appropriate (oportet) for me to be avenged… The third stage is introduced as one in which emotions are carried away (efferantur).
Seneca's three-stage analysis of anger provides the structural context within which first movements occupy the earliest, pre-assent phase, prior to both rational moral error and emotional dyscontrol.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
A person could undergo some verifiable physiological alteration, in the presence of the kinds of stimuli that frequently trigger emotion, and yet not have the emotion, if he or she does not also believe certain things.
Graver clarifies the Stoic demarcation: first movements, as purely physiological alterations without assent, fall outside the category of *pathos*, underscoring the voluntariness condition for full emotion.
Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 2007supporting
he tries to fill a lacuna in the Stoic list of eupatheiai by inserting a propatheia or pre-passion, namely bites and contractions, to serve as a eupathic counterpart of the emotion of distress.
Philo's attempt to supply a positive eupathic counterpart to the pre-passion of distress reveals a lacuna in the Stoic schema that the concept of first movements was meant to address.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
Disowning the judgement that a height is dangerous does not automatically calm the amygdala… there is sometimes in addition a consciousness of some of these reactions. In fear, t[here are bodily responses]
Sorabji invokes LeDoux's neuroscience to explain Posidonius's counter-examples to pure judgementalism, providing a modern biological analogue to the ancient doctrine of first movements as sub-cortical reactions.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside
the impulse (I presume the one that constitutes emotion) is often generated upon the movement of the soul's emotional element, instead of upon the judgement of the rational element.
In Posidonius's psychology, emotional movements can causally generate impulse without rational judgement, providing a Stoic internal rival to the purely cognitive account that contextualises the doctrine of first movements.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside