Passions and the Emotions is based on The Royal Institute of Philosophy's London Lecture series for 2017-8. The fourteen papers in it include treatments of the concepts of emotion and passion themselves, and their intentionality, as well as love, guilt, forgiveness, desire and regret. The relationship between the passions and religious belief, and also to aesthetics is analysed, as well as the ethical and psychological implications of emotions. There are also studies of the connexions between the passions and our reading of fiction and our response to developments in fiction. Contemporary work in the area is discussed as well as the writings of Descartes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, William James and R.G. Collingwood.

On behalf of the Royal Institute I would like to thank our distinguished contributors for both the lectures themselves and the printed versions. I would also like to thank Toby Friend for his assistance in bringing the volume to publication.