Des Chene is among 187 U.S. and Canadian Guggenheim Fellows selected this year from nearly 3,000 applicants for awards totaling $7.5 million. Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Des Chene's fellowship is for calendar year 2007. He will be examining theories of emotions — or passions, as they were called then — in the 17th century, and in particular how philosophical views about emotion were transformed in light of the new mechanistic, experimental science of the period.

"Many 17th-century philosophers included in their systematic thought a theory of the passions," Des Chene said in his proposal. "That theory was both a psychology of emotion and a morality of virtue and character, a bridge between psychology and politics.

"I propose to write a book-length study of the principal figures in the history of the passions, placing them in the context of its scholastic, stoic and epicurean antecedents, and to examine its reception in practical works of advice. The aim is to show how theories of the passions provided a substitute for ancient wisdom and for religious instruction consistent with the new world picture of the natural sciences."