Judgement occupies a peculiarly central position across the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as an epistemological category, a therapeutic lever, and an archetypal event. The Stoic tradition, reconstructed most rigorously by Sorabji, treats judgement as the constitutive core of emotion: Chrysippus insists that passions are not merely accompanied by judgements but are themselves erroneous acts of rational assent, specifically the compounded judgement that something is bad and that distress is an appropriate response. The therapeutic consequence is considerable — attacking the second 'appropriate to react' judgement becomes the preferred instrument of consolation. Merleau-Ponty interrogates judgement from the phenomenological side, arguing that the empiricist reduction of perception to bodily impression forces an incoherent appeal to judgement as supplementary interpreter, collapsing the distinction between seeing and thinking one sees. In the Tibetan Bardo literature, mediated through Evans-Wentz, judgement becomes an eschatological drama: the Court of Judgement externalises the karmic thought-forms of the deceased, the Mirror of Memory reflecting what consciousness has made of itself. Edinger, working alchemically, reads the Judgement of Paris as an act of separatio — a forced discrimination among life-values that can constellate the Self. The Hellenistic philosophers extend the inquiry to the epistemology of assent, where suspended judgement becomes a philosophical discipline. Taken together, these voices reveal judgement as the hinge between affect and reason, between karmic record and liberation, and between mere perception and ethical self-constitution.
In the library
19 passages
Judgements other than the main two come in only indirectly. In anger, for example, the judgement that it is appropriate to react may depend on further judgements that the injury was intended or undeserved.
This passage articulates the Stoic doctrine that emotion is constituted by a primary evaluative judgement and a secondary judgement of appropriate reaction, with subsidiary judgements feeding into the structure.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Disowning the judgement that a height is dangerous does not automatically calm the amygdala... it is hard to deny that the person with shell shock or vertigo... may be feeling emotion, or to insist that merely intellectual foresight constitutes fear.
Sorabji argues that neuroscientific evidence about the amygdala provides counter-examples to the Stoic identification of emotion with judgement, showing that emotions can persist when the relevant judgement is revoked.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Chrysippus needed to insist on the second 'appropriate to react' judgement for at least four reasons. First he thought it was the main thing that needed to be attacked in consoling the distressed.
The passage establishes that for Chrysippus the therapeutically crucial target is not the first evaluative judgement but the second, permissive judgement that emotional reaction is fitting.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Emotion is not false judgement, but disobedience to one's better judgement... emotion is not judgement but occurs on the occasion of judgement.
This passage summarises Zeno's refined position that emotion is not identical with judgement but arises on its occasion, while remaining a form of rational disobedience — a formulation that bridges intellectualist and akratic accounts.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
judging is not perceiving. But the alternatives of sensation and judgement force us to say that the change in the figure... can only depend on a change of interpretation, and that 'the mind's conception modifies perception itself'.
Merleau-Ponty identifies the phenomenological aporia: empiricism's invocation of judgement to supplement sensation collapses the distinction between perception and cognition, making hallucination and veridical perception indistinguishable.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962thesis
The men I see from a window are hidden by their hats and coats, and their image cannot be imprinted on my retina. I therefore do not see them, I judge them to be there.
Merleau-Ponty cites Descartes's formulation as the paradigm case of rationalist over-extension of judgement, in which inference substitutes for perception proper.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962supporting
Eris' golden apple brought comparison, judgement, choice, and war. The burden fell on Paris... to make a judgement among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite... His choice was an act of separatio and led him on to the next stage of development.
Edinger reads the Judgement of Paris as an alchemical-psychological act of separatio in which discriminating among competing life-values initiates individuation and may awaken the sleeping Self.
Edinger, Edward F., Anatomy of the Psyche: Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy, 1985thesis
the Mirror is memory. One element—the purely human element—of the consciousness-content of the deceased, comes forward, and, by offering lame excuses, tries to meet accusations against it... the Judgement proceeds.
Evans-Wentz interprets the Bardo Court of Judgement as a psycho-cosmological drama in which the Mirror of Memory externalises conflicting elements of the dying person's own consciousness-content.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis
The six deities... sitting in the Court of Judgement, three on either side, like a jury of subordinate judges, supervise the proceedings in order to ensure regularity of procedure and impartial justice.
This passage describes the iconographic structure of the Tibetan Court of Judgement, presenting it as a forensic allegory for the impartial review of a soul's karmic record.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting
the main thing in consoling people was to attack the second judgement, the judgement that it is appropriate to react... One borrowed by Seneca from the Pythagoreans was to counter anger by looking in a mirror to see how ugly it made you.
Sorabji catalogues specific therapeutic techniques directed at dislodging the second, appropriateness judgement, showing how Stoic theory generated concrete psychological practice.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
The shell-shocked are terrified by a slamming door, even when they realize it is not gunfire... The failure of the therapeutic 'It's only a door slamming' shows the wrongness of the analysis which makes a judgement of imminent harm necessary for fear.
Sorabji uses the clinical phenomenon of shell-shock to demonstrate that rejecting a judgement can fail to extinguish fear, undermining the sufficiency of the judgement-theory of emotion for therapeutic purposes.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
his sensation was true because the images existed, but his judgement that there were solid Furies was mistaken... the fault would strictly lie in the judgement.
The Epicurean epistemology locates error not in sensation itself but in the additional judgement superimposed upon it, distinguishing veridical impression from false inference.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
These were the people who suspended judgement about everything... Arcesilaus... accused him of rubbing off his doctrines about suspension of judgement and non-cognition on Socrates, Plato, Parmenides and Heraclitus.
This passage situates the Academic practice of suspended judgement within the broader Hellenistic epistemological debate, tracing Arcesilaus's epoché to a claimed Socratic heritage.
A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
fathers can be angry with their sons without thinking that revenge would be appropriate at all... in appetite or fear, action may not be judged appropriate because it seems hopeless, or alternatively immoral.
Aspasius's counter-examples show that emotions can be present without any accompanying judgement of appropriate action, weakening the Chrysippan equation of emotion with rational misjudgement.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
this emotion, Chrysippus would happily argue, involves judgements of sex as a supposed good to reach for... if emotion is aroused... merely by some kinship between the music and an emotion, it is less likely that an object for judgement and assent will be identified.
Sorabji uses the example of wordless music to probe whether emotion can arise without an identifiable object for judgement, finding that musical kinship with emotion may bypass the cognitive pathway.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
At the second stage there was a moral mistake of reason, but in this third stage one wills in disobedience even to that erroneous application of reason.
Seneca's three-stage analysis of anger distinguishes the moment of evaluative judgement from the subsequent volitional disobedience to that very judgement, mapping the structure of akrasia onto Stoic emotion theory.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
the dread of death distroubleth me, so that I cannot answer for myself. Here is my bad angel ready, and is one of my chief accusers, with legions of fiends with him.
The medieval Christian deathbed scene cited by Evans-Wentz presents judgement as a forensic ordeal in which the soul is helplessly arraigned before an impartial tribunal, paralleling the Tibetan Bardo iconography.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting
le jugement (chez Marc Aurèle : hypolépsis) qui est un discours intérieur... Marc Aurèle a souvent tendance à confondre jugement et représentation (phantasia).
Hadot notes that Marcus Aurelius tends to conflate judgement with representation, identifying both with the inner discourse the soul directs at an impression, which complicates a strict Stoic taxonomy.
Hadot, Pierre, What Is Ancient Philosophy?, 1995aside
emotions are softened in time, even if the beliefs remain that something bad has come to pass... a belief remains in the form that what is actually present is bad, but that as the belief grows older, the contraction abates.
Chrysippus's observation that distress fades while the underlying judgement persists creates a theoretical tension within his own system, since it suggests that emotion is not simply reducible to its occasioning judgement.
Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000aside