“As for the intention [ma‘nā], it is a thing which the soul perceives from the sensed object without its […] having been perceived by the external sense, just as the sheep perceives the intention of harm [fullness] in the wolf, which causes it to fear the wolf and to flee from it, without harm [fullness] having been perceived at all by the external sense. […] [E] stimation [is now to be called the faculty] which perceives intentions in particular objects of the external senses, just as the sheep perceives that the wolf is to be avoided while her young one is to be shown affection.” (Avicenna [in Rahman 1952, 30–1])
Abstract
The article starts with a brief overview of the kinds of approaches that have been attempted for the presentation of Phenomenology’s view on the emotions. I then pass to Husserl’s unsatisfactory efforts to disclose the intentionality of emotions and their intentional correlation with values. Next, I outline the idea of a new, “normalized phenomenological” approach of emotions and values. Pleasure and pain, then, are first explored as affective feelings (reell lived-experiences). In the cases examined, it is shown that, primordially, pleasure and pain are recordings for our bodily and spiritual states resulting from our confrontation with beings and situations in the world. Delight and distress are, subsequently, approached as the first full-fledged emotive acts that animate or intentionally interpret pleasure and pain in specific ways. The elementary values of agreeableness and disagreeableness appear correspondingly to the latter in relation to the very pleasure or pain and to what has caused them. In other words, agreeable and disagreeable show how what we confront in the world weighs for us, what value it has for the embodied intentional consciousness, for its state and functioning as well as for its existentio-praxial possibilities in the lifeworld.
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Notes
After almost 40 years of research in the area, Solomon presents the situation in the philosophical and phenomenological research on the emotive phenomena in the following way. “As I have insisted that emotional experience concerns our ways of engaging the world, it more or less follows that the primary questions for a phenomenology of emotions concern describing how we do this rather than knowing what it is that we are emotional about” (Solomon 2006, 428). And in Crowell 2002, 2005 one can see Phenomenology’s concern with regard to the issue of normativity.
See Theodorou 2012 and cf. Smith 1976; Melle 1990, 2005; Schuhmann 1991. It should also be noted that in Crowell (2005, 102f, 104, 112; 2002, 49ff), Melle (2005, 234), Drummond (2006, 5ff; 2002, 17ff), Solomon (2006, 424), Theodorou (2012, 277ff), Rinofner-Kreidl (2013, 63–4, 68, 71–3), and Steinbock (2013, 94–5) one can detect some kind of dialogue concerning the issue of whether and in what sense Husserl sees or is forced to accept the view that emotions are judgments. I think that Husserl never manages to free himself from the ‘theoretical’ consideration of emotions, i.e., from seeing emotions as judgments and values as properties predicated of their objects. It may be thought, however, that Husserl’s later writings on Ethics, and especially his abandonment of the idea that praxis can be fully rationalizable in accordance with strict rules of preference regarding what should be, at each time, realized by reference to a rigid and objective hierarchy of values, actually show that he moves altogether beyond the limits of a ‘theoretically’ understood emotive intentionality. Melle 2005 and Drummond 1995, in particular, may be read as implying something like this. Nevertheless, this is only the mirage of a hope. The possibilities in the sphere of situated praxis do not and cannot actually concern the inner structure of emotive intentionality and of intentional value experience, which in Husserl is mostly and primarily understood along the lines of the judging act. (Cf., though, Melle 2005, specifically p. 234) The present context does not allow further elaboration of this point.
“Normalization” generally means a process of removing excessive aberrances from results which could be otherwise tidier and smoother. For example, in Physics, normalization is a process of removing statistical error from the results attained in different measurements of the same phenomenon. In the phenomenological investigation drafted here, this normalization is applied to the methodological presuppositions and overall assumptions maintained in the different approaches of the phenomenologists already mentioned above. For example, in the following paragraph I pose the issues at stake by following a path that keeps appropriate distances from the relevant but otherwise considerably deviating phenomenological views on the identity and content of pre-theoretical or primordial experience and on the relation between goods or tools and perceptual objects as well as among perception, emotion, and judgment. For more on this see Theodorou (forthcoming), especially introduction and chapter 9.
One could, of course object here: didn’t Husserl actually phenomenologize also this “in-between” space among the objects? Naturally, Husserl knows very well that next to the predicates found in the ‘internal’ constitution of the nature-thing (Naturding), we can also predicate other relational properties of it, e.g., that this apple is “smaller” than that apple, etc. This could have worked as a source for inspiration in his research regarding the intentional correlation between emotions and values. Since values are not to be found somewhere among the constituting elements of the pre-predicatively given nature-thing that is given to simple sensory perception (see Theodorou 2005), then it could be a good idea to search, somehow, ‘around’ the nature-thing in order to locate or discover the ground of our valuing comportment. Here we will see that we have to travel a considerable distance ahead, in order to approach the specifically emotive intentionality in which values appear.
In this sense, our task here will be to patiently prepare the ground for a phenomenological ethics and politics, without hurriedly fusing the two spheres of phenomena, i.e., emotions and action, as if we already knew what emotions and values self-evidently are. On this, cf. Drummond 2006, 6ff and Rinofner-Kreidl 2013, 69. See also note 12 below.
Let the first be considered as a friendly gesture toward Lotz, who in his Lotz 2002 uses a similar example, arriving at interesting but, from various aspects, different conclusions from the ones we are going to arrive at here, and the second as a kind of tribute to the famous episode back in 1933, when Aron introduced Sartre to the meaning and potential of Phenomenology: explaining the overall, situated, praxial existence of human beings by taking our departure from an apricot cocktail at a Parisian café.
The first systematic treatments of these phenomena appear in the works of Plato and Aristotle. For more see Van Riel 2000. For specifically informed surveys on the philosophies of pleasure and pain see also Katz 2009, Aydede 2013. Here I will make do with only a limited description, necessary for the purpose of preparing the account of the emotions as intentional acts and of values as their peculiar correlates.
For an analogous stance against the overwhelming domination of naturalism in the research on pain, see Geniusas 2013. Geniusas’ phenomenological elucidation of pain in terms of the ‘livedness’ of the aching body, the lived temporality of pain feelings, as well as the relatedness of pain with our lifeworldly existence finds me generally in agreement. I think, however, that the phenomenological analyses of pain cannot unfold their full potential if they are not suitably placed within the framework of a phenomenology of emotions―but also of moods―as intentional acts.
Compare this with another description of analogous situations: “To say that the valuable is the correlate of a feeling-moment in our evaluative experience is to suggest that the pleasant and the painful are all-encompassing evaluative categories. That is, since any evaluative experience involves an affective response, things valued positively will be valued as pleasing and as likable or desirable, and things valued negatively will be valued as painful and as disagreeable or undesirable.” (Drummond 2006, 6). Here, actually affective characters (painful) are already considered as value categories (pleasant), whereas more general or formal value categories (positive or negative) are placed before ultimate concrete values (disagreeable) or general regional value categories (likable). Certainly, this is not uncommon. For further examination of this not unambiguous connection between pleasure as something good and pain as something bad or evil, cf. also, e.g., Kahane 2009 and Goldstein 1989. The situation regarding such interconnections will be further clarified in §§4-5 of the present paper.
Husserl’s view on this is not quite right. In his LI, Husserl says that pain, e.g., the pain of a burn, must be “classed beside […] [the] sensory contents like rough or smooth, red or blue, etc.” and that all sensory feelings, e.g., pleasure too, “are blended [verschmolzen sind] with the sensations from the various sense-fields, just as these latter are blended with one another” (Husserl 1970, 572). Pleasure and pain are sensations that “belong […] among tactual, gustatory, olfactory, and other sensations” (ibid. 573). To this degree, “our sensations are here functioning as presentative contents in perceptual acts […] they function at least as other sensations do, in providing a foothold for empirical, objective interpretations” (ibid. 573) that co-constitute the appearing perceptual thing. Feelings of pain and pleasure, however, appear to be like the sensory feelings of sound or color, but not on the same level with them, not amongst them, and not presentative contents for the sensory perception of transcendent objects.
“Affective” refers to something we suffer, a πάθος, like in παθός μαθός (pathos mathos: learning comes through suffering), i.e., literally a passion. How am I actually “affected” by reality, however? Reality affects me by way of a causal action upon me. It causes this or that physiological change on my bodily parts and sensory systems. It does not cause colors or sounds. Much less does it cause pain or pleasure. The latter are my way of sensing the way in which effects, like the aforementioned, are registered in the sensory organs of my sentient constitution; they are my way of ‘bearing’ the direct results of my contact with reality. We will keep calling pain and pleasure “affective feelings,” in order to distinguish them from the known sensory feelings. But, as we will see later on here, the term “affective” is definitely not in any way suitable for the emotions. See also below note 17.
Serano de Haro summarizes Husserl’s view nicely and places it in its historical context, from Stumpf, Brentano, and Scheler to Henry and Scarry (Serrano de Haro 2010, 386–9, 392ff). He also makes this apposite remark: “In the usual Husserlian concept, sensory contents remain rather in the conscious background; sensory colours, luminous data and the like are not in primary sight of the ego; they are not seen, but rather serve in order for something else to be in sight, to be intentionally grasped. […] [T]he very opposite seems to apply by essence to pain. Pain leaps, so to say, into the sufferer’s sight and calls his or her attention. […] [I]n the basic Husserlian theory, sense-data are part of lived experiences, but they are not the primary intentional object nor are they part of this object. In order to become perceived objects, sensations have to be objectified through a new, reflexive act. In clear contrast, painful news do not reach us by a reflexive path, but rather as irruptive appearances” (ibid. 390–1). In other words, de Haro does not want to see any way in which pain could be discovered as being the complete analogon of the sensory feelings of, e.g., color, which are interpreted in full-fledged intentional acts with their own intentional correlate (as is the case with perception and its perceived colored object). It is precisely this obstacle that Husserl, too, wanted—but did not manage—to overcome. Before anything else, pain may indeed squat in the foreground, but not in any way differently to the bright and vivid color of a perceptual scarf or a tie or a sudden flash. More on this will be said in §4. Cf. also note 13 above.
Thymotic (from the Greek θυμός; read: thumos)―and not merely affective―appears to be a more suitable general term for emotive phenomena. It would have the meaning of our capacity to respond to the aforementioned effects with some kind of turbulence or turmoil (this is the meaning of the Greek term “θυμός”) in us, which is in each case an appropriate (or inappropriate) resonance and consonance (Stimmung), corresponding to what happens out there in the world and has some existentio-praxial significance for us. Each time we face some existentio-praxially significant circumstance, some turmoil is experienced in the lower part of our chest. The heart, also, is experienced as beating quicker or slower. It is probable that this fact gave rise to the idea that the heart is the seat of the emotions, but also to some kind of existentio-praxial intelligence. It is also interesting that the diaphragm, which is like the membrane of a drum, is located in the lower thoracic cavity. Perhaps the archaic mind may have also thought that the diaphragm membrane and the heart that somehow rests upon it comprise a system that is capable of being tuned to the ‘rhythm’ of the happenings that have an existentio-praxial significance for us.
Usually, discussions of this sort talk about “liking” sweetness or liking pleasure (having ἀρέσκεια for it) and “disliking” pain (having ἀπαρέσκεια for it). Here we will distinguish liking and disliking from delight (ἀπόλαυσις, fruitio) and distress (ἐνόχλησις, angustia). A phenomenological examination of these emotive states shows, moreover, that the latter are prior to the former. Liking and disliking are higher-level emotive responses to things felt or experienced. They even presuppose a certain detachment or, at least, some distance from what is felt or experienced. Delight and distress, on the contrary, appear to be more direct emotive responses. The presentation of the precise way in which these two couples of intentional emotive response are connected would demand greater space than that available here.
The cases of auditory and visual disgust appear to be much more complex that the other three cases of disgust. Nausea is also of great phenomenological interest. Other similar negative affective feelings are tickle, itch, dizziness, fatigue, etc. All have a complex etiology of occurrence and phenomenology of meaningful apprehension, but are generally recognized as pain-like feelings and thus as experienced in distress. Here only these elementary remarks, based on the fundamental feeling of pain, can be given.
Pain asymbolia is related with various lesions of the frontal part of the brain, lobotomy, cingulotomy, morphine analgesia, etc. For more, see, e.g., Grahek 2001.
The connection between the intense feeling of pressure and pain was above said to be contingent, dependent on our specific make up. The connection, however, between the sensory feelings of pressure or softness and the perceptually appearing thing is essential, and the same is here suggested for the connection between the feeling of pain and the experience of disagreeableness in distress, etc.
I refer here to Husserl’s description of the thought experiment of world annihilation (Weltvernichtung) as well as to his assessment of its results in his Ideas I (§49). A marvelous exploitation of the possibilities arising from the latter can be found in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. The precise correlation of the different sub-processes with specific brain damages will not be examined here. It is, however, something that could be better achieved if we had a fully developed phenomenological account of these partial interpretative procedures.
On all these, cf. Lotz 2002.
For a first presentation of these latter issues, see the analyses in Theodorou 2014, §4.
* I am indebted to two anonymous referees as well as to the two guest editors of this volume, Andreas Elpidorou and Lauren Freeman, for their very helpful remarks and comments on an earlier version of this paper. I also thank Simon Summers for his help into bringing the text to the present form.
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Theodorou, P. Pain, pleasure, and the intentionality of emotions as experiences of values: A new phenomenological perspective. Phenom Cogn Sci 13, 625–641 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9371-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-014-9371-1