"Would we have fallen in love in the same way if the word love did not exist?". This is one of the questions raised by Diego S. Garrocho last January 26 at a seminar organized by the department of Philosophy.

Garrocho, professor of Ethics and Philosophy Politics at the Autonomous University of Madrid, made an etymological journey based on sacred and pagan texts of the Ancient World to understand anger and charity as reactions to evil.

This evil of which he spoke is specifically moral evil, being that which hurts us most that of our own biography: the evil we have done or that which we have suffered, of which -following Socrates- the worst is the former. "I believe that there is a region of moral lucidity that is fundamentally expressed in the affective realm," he said.

"The history of emotions resembles the history of concepts. It is important to answer what are the words that name an emotional experience". Thus, Professor Garrocho devoted a large part of the lecture to analyze in depth the different terms used to designate charity and anger: the classic civil service examination between eros and agapé, the Hebrew root af (אַף, nose) which coincides with the denomination of anger, the Greek word haris (Χáρις) as a term similar to mercy or grace and which designates the disregard of what has happened.

Garrocho's reflection only adds elements to that adage that he takes from François de La Rochefoucauld and that heads this text: Is it possible that we only love because we have heard about love? And to what extent does the same thing happen with the nuances that etymology provides to different terms such as hatred, anger, mercy and charity of both humans and gods?