Robert Solomon’s philosophy of emotion should be understood in the light of his lifelong commitment to existentialism and his advocacy of “the passionate life” as a means of creating value. Although he developed his views in the framework of the “cognitive theory” of emotions, closer examination reveals many themes in common with a socially situated, transactionalist view of emotions.

In this article, I go deeper into the educational meaning of tiredness. Over and against the mainstream view that tiredness is an impediment for education, I show that this phenomenon is intrinsically meaningful. My arguments are based, first, on a detailed phenomenological analysis of tiredness, as proposed by Buytendijk. Tiredness can be defined as the point where lack of willpower and lack of ability become utterly indistinguishable. Second, I turn to Agamben’s genealogy of the will, which shows that willpower was (...) invented in order to control a more original, but also more arcane sense of what it means to be able to do something: potentiality. I argue that tiredness, as analysed by Buytendijk, is a state of potentiality. As such it has the power to interrupt the contemporary ordering of society and of the realm of education, which is fully predicated upon individual wilful self-commandment. More positively speaking, tiredness has an important educational value in that it grants the opportunity of beginning anew with the world. This article is also an attempt to show how phenomenological work and genealogical approaches can inform one another. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we argue (...) that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for “playing God” with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the (...) first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society. (shrink)

This paper offers a revisionary interpretation of Sartre's early views on human freedom. Sartre articulates a subtle account of a fundamental sense of human freedom as autonomy, in terms of human consciousness being both reasons-responsive and in a distinctive sense self-determining. The aspects of Sartre's theory of human freedom that underpin his early ethics are shown to be based on his phenomenological analysis of consciousness as, in its fundamental mode of self-presence, not an object in the world. Sartre has a (...) multi-level theory of the reasons-sensitivity of consciousness. At one level, consciousness's being alive to reasons is a matter of the affective perception of values and disvalues as features of phenomenal objects. This part of his theory, a development of Scheler's, is, however, situated within a broader phenomenological analysis resulting in the claim that the ultimate reasons acknowledged by consciousness neither are nor justifiably could be values adequately presentable as intentional objects. Consciousness's ultimate reasons are, in this sense, not given by the world but by itself. Section 4 reconstructs and assesses Sartre's argument that consciousness cannot rationally have an ultimate end other than self-transparent freedom itself. (shrink)

This paper provides an assessment of the bodily-attitudinal theory of emotions, according to which emotions are felt bodily attitudes of action readiness. After providing a reconstruction of the view and clarifying its central commitments two objections are considered. An alternative object side interpretation of felt action readiness is then provided, which undermines the motivation for the bodily-attitudinal theory and creates problems for its claims concerning the content of emotional experience. The conclusion is that while the bodily-attitudinal theory marks out a (...) distinctive proposal concerning the question of what emotions are, there remain significant issues which need addressing if it is to be a plausible competitor to existing theories of emotion. (shrink)

This paper argues for an understanding of emotion based upon Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of embodiment and passivity. Through a critical assessment of cognitive theories of emotion, and in particular Solomon's theory, it argues (1) that there is a sense in which emotions may be judgments, so long as we understand such judgments as bodily enactments of meaning, but (2) that even understood in this way, the notion of judgment (or construal) can only account for a subset of emotions which I call (...) "emotional clichés," and not for authentic passions. In contrast with Solomon's account which conceives the subject as constituting, this account of emotion requires us to understand subjectivity as moved by meanings in the world, and as sometimes, in an authentic passion, dispossessed by those meanings. (shrink)

Jean-Paul Sartre claims in his 1945 lecture ‘Existentialism is a Humanism’ that there are two kinds of existentialism: that of Christians like Karl Jaspers, and atheistic like Martin Heidegger. Sartre's ‘spiritual master’ Heidegger had no problem with Sartre defining him as an atheist, but he had serious problems with Sartre's concept of humanism and existentialism. Heidegger claims that the essence of humanism lies in the essence of the human being. After the Enlightenment, the Western concept of man has been presented (...) in education in the form of Kantian humanistic essentialism. At least in the Finnish educational system, Kantian humanism is almost an official ideological background of all national curriculums. Is such a kind of essentialism and metaphysics plausible in our modern or postmodern times? We examine the Sartre-Heidegger controversy on humanism and the concept of man in education using Freire's humanism and Gelassenheit education as exemplars. (shrink)

Several strands of contemporary cognitive science and its philosophy have emerged in recent decades that emphasize the role of action in cognition, resting their explanations on the embodiment of cognitive agents, and their embedding in richly structured environments. Despite their growing influence, many foundational questions remain unresolved or underexplored for this cluster of proposals, especially questions of how they can be extended beyond straightforwardly visuomotor cognitive capacities, and what constraints the commitment of embodiment places on the ontology of explanations. This (...) special issue aims to contribute to these foundational debates by drawing on important precursors to embodied cognition in mid-twentieth century gestalt psychology, its immediate successor ecological psychology, and their dialectical counterpart, phenomenology. Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists wrestled with many of the same foundational questions that still haunt us today, in a manner that seems refreshing in hindsight, and poised to contribute constructively to contemporary debate. Looking back on this history reveals deep commonalities across competing embodied approaches, exposing fundamental tensions that remain unresolved, but also paving the way to a more ecumenical and conciliatory embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Medical professionals seem to interpret their uses of humor very differently from those outside the medical profession. Nurses and physicians argue that humor is necessary for them to do their jobs well. Many (potential) patients are horrified that they could one day be the butt of their physician’s jokes. The purpose of this paper is to encourage the respectful use of humor in clinical prac-tice, so as to support its importance in medical practice, while simultaneously protecting against its potential abuse. (...) I begin by examining two extremes of supporting or chastising the use of medical humor. I look at these views through the lenses of popular theories of humor to help explain their theoretical bases. In this second section, I explain the emotional aspect of humor as an embodied and embedded transformation of the world. This clarifies the role that humor plays in our daily lives, as well as why the ethical or unethical nature of its use is dependent on context. Third, I address the potential problems in the relationship between humor and clinical sympathy, and how this further affects the relationship between medical professionals and their patients. I conclude by arguing that humor can conflict with clinical sympathy, but this need not be the case. If medical professionals actively engage with clinical sympathy and focus on using humor in a way that is respectful towards their patients, then humor can continue to be a positive force in their lives while still providing the best care for their patients. (shrink)

The view that moods are dispositions has recently fallen into disrepute. In this paper we want to revitalise it by providing a new argument for it and by disarming an important objection against it. A shared assumption of our competitors (intentionalists about moods) is that moods are “diffuse”. First, we will provide reasons for thinking that existing intentionalist views do not in fact capture this distinctive feature of moods that distinguishes them from emotions. Second, we offer a dispositionalist alternative that (...) we think does better. Finally, we disarm the objection that is responsible for dispositionalism’s bad press. (shrink)

Near the end of someone’s life, or when a chapter in their life closes, they may nurse regrets but no longer be able to act to change the situation they regret having caused. This paper asks what is the point of such vain regrets and contrasts them with the typical case where regret is effectual. Regret usually involves both anger at oneself for what one has done and sadness at having done it. Richard Wollheim takes regret to be an attitude (...) of hostility to oneself resulting from a fall in one’s secure sense of self as an ongoing person. His account is considered and rejected as unable to reveal the point of vain regrets. Sartre’s description of the emotions is adapted to the case of regret with its dual affective character. His idea of anger as a substitute for the suppression of another consciousness is used to show how regret involves a rejection of one’s previous way of seeing the world, by contrast with one’s present view. This enables us to see how regret, even when vain, can reinforce, rather than undermine, one’s sense of self and provide a form of self-understanding. (shrink)

It is typically held that Sartre is a thinker of transcendence, inasmuch as he retains a subject–predicate structure via intentional consciousness and ruptures an otherwise insular domain through his dialectic of the self. Against such interpretations, this article argues that in following the progression of Sartre’s thought, we will come to see a deepening engagement with, and development of, immanence in the spirit of Deleuze. Specifically, Sartre steadily develops a dialectic in which consciousness, while relating to an ‘outside’, is construed (...) as also thoroughly embedded in that outside through the subject-body of the flesh and relations of desire. From this comes a conceptualisation of the in-itself and for-itself as simulacra or topological variations of a more primordial intertwining or fabric of univocal Being. In this sense, we are immediately taken away from the subject of social contract theory, insofar as this presumes an asocial self, and the notion of identity as the sine qua non of politics, insofar as this presumes the terrain of an inexplicable transcendent Other. This brings with it a take on politics that prefigures and is concomitant with Deleuzian micropolitics, while also serving to complement it through the retention of the ego as a practical function. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a reconstruction of the basic psychoanalytic conception of the mind in terms of two historical resources: the conception of the subject developed in post-Kantian idealism, and Spinoza's laws of the affects in Part Three of the Ethics. The former, I suggest, supplies the conceptual basis for the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious, while the latter defines the type of psychological causality of psychoanalytic explanations. The imperfect fit between these two elements, I claim, is reflected in (...) familiar conceptual difficulties surrounding psychoanalytic theory and explanation. (shrink)

This article explores the way in which certain theoretical frameworks and analytical procedures combine to present stories about experience as objects of no depth, confusing this artefact with the phenomenon studied. By pointing out abusive potentials in a constructivist approach, it is argued that critical realism is needed in the field of narrative analysis. The creation of life stories as well as the project of analysing them involve interaction with a material world, and elaboration on it. We meet the Other, (...) not as disembodied spirits, but in and through our bodies, which allow us to infer realities beyond language. We need to open up the field of empirical study to include the plurality of all experienced facts. What is more, this plurality must be firmly grounded within theoretical frameworks that cultivate humility, contending that there will always be more to reality than what meets the researcher’s eye. And we need a theoretical framework that dares to use the concept of truth. Only by doing so may we accord our informants the status of making relevant truth claims. Critical realism provides a much needed theoretical framework and sensitizing concepts, allowing for life stories to bear witness to the multidimensional realities from which they emerge. (shrink)

This article is concerned with an apparent similarity between the conceptions of human nature found in the early work of Jean-Paul Sartre and certain forms of transhumanism, and the role of a particular conception of human nature in the application of transhumanist ideas to debates on performance-enhancement. The article begins with a brief outline of major features of Sartre's phenomenological work (?I). The article then gives a more detailed account of the relationship between Sartre's phenomenological ontology and the view of (...) human nature expressed in Existentialism and Humanism (?II). This is followed by an outline of the central features of Sartre's later work that have a bearing on his view of human nature (?III). This allows the articulation of two possible different uses of the expression ?human nature?. A contrast is drawn between the more satisfactory of the two and the view of human nature that appears to motivate transhumanism (?IV). The article will conclude by considering the implications of Sartre's view on human nature for the advocacy of what purports to be a transhumanist project in relation to performance-enhancement in sport (?V). (shrink)

The philosophy of science has produced numerous accounts of how scientific facts are generated, from very specific facilitators of belief, such as neo-Kantian constitutive principles, to global frameworks, such as Kuhnian paradigms. I consider a recent addition to this canon: van Fraassen’s notion of an epistemic stance—a collection of attitudes and policies governing the generation of factual beliefs—and his commitment to voluntarism in this context: the idea that contrary stances and sets of beliefs are rationally permissible. I argue that while (...) scientific inquiry inevitably favours a high degree of consensus in our choices of stance, there is no parallel constraint in the case of philosophical inquiry, such as that concerned with how scientific knowledge should be interpreted. This leads, in the latter case, to a fundamental and apparently irresolvable mystery at the heart of stance voluntarism, regarding the grounds for choosing basic epistemic stances. (shrink)

This dissertation contributes to the philosophy of empathy and biomedical ethics by drawing on phenomenological approaches to empathy, intersubjectivity, and affectivity in order to contest the primacy of the intersubjective aspect of empathy at the cost of its affective aspect. Both aspects need to be explained in order for empathy to be accurately understood in philosophical works, as well as practically useful for patient care in biomedical ethics. In the first chapter, I examine the current state of clinical empathy in (...) medicine including professional opinions about empathy, the dominant definition being employed, and the problems that arise from this definition. By trying to define empathy in a way that is useful to the current presuppositions in medicine, clinical empathy aligns with simulation theory, which has three problems: the discrepancy between the way empathy is defined and the way it is explained, the lack of diversity that this theory of empathy allows in our understanding of others, and the lack of affective understanding and affective engagement involved in the patient-physician interaction. These three problems are used to derive three questions that are important for any theory of empathy: (1) What is the phenomenon being explained? (2) What is the intersubjective context of empathy? (3) What is the affective dimension of empathy? The best theory of clinical empathy can be formulated by answering these three questions as they relate to phenomenological theories, which are more attuned to overcoming presuppositions. Chapters two and three each examine a different phenomenological approach to empathy from opposite extremes in their theories of intersubjectivity. Husserl and Stein begin from an isolated, transcendental subject that needs empathy to bridge the gap between itself and others, while Scheler begins from a primary intersubjectivity in which self and other are undifferentiated, making empathy a largely unnecessary skill. Despite their strongly opposed positions, and the acknowledgement that their theories of intersubjectivity necessitate their theories of empathy, I argue that both fail to understand the affective dimension of empathy. Husserl and Stein leave no room in empathy for it to be an affect, while Scheler prioritizes affects that reunite subjects, but leaves empathy itself as a non-affective skill. Chapter four explains Gallagher’s interaction theory as a more moderate approach to the relation between empathy and intersubjectivity. He draws on the insights of the other two theories, but conceives of empathy as a multi-leveled phenomenon that allows for an understanding of others. While this theory does aid in addressing the intersubjective context of empathy in a way that best solves the first two problems with clinical empathy, interaction theory still fails to fully address the affectivity of empathy, maintaining empathy as a largely cognitive ability. Gallagher does acknowledge the affective core of empathy, but he does not explain the way in which it is affective. In response to this problem, I explain Anya Daly’s application of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of reversibility to affectivity as a possible solution to the problematic gap in Gallagher’s theory. Chapter five focuses on theories of clinical empathy in order to address the neglected affective aspects of empathy, and respond to the problem of detached concern. The problems caused by detached concern are explained, as well as why the theories discussed in the middle chapters are still unable to solve them. This is done in two parts. In the first part, I explain the basis of this issue in the cognitive/feeling divide, as explained in the philosophy of emotion. Then, I give a brief overview of the phenomenology of affectivity to be used as a guide to the affectivity of empathy. In the second part, I examine three theories of clinical empathy that attempt to solve the problem of detached concern, noting their strengths and weaknesses based on their similarities to phenomenological approaches to empathy and affectivity. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to re-think the question of the world of persons with schizophrenia from the perspective of the German phenomenologist Max Scheler and that of the Japanese psychiatrist Bin Kimura. So far, no comparison between these two authors has been made, even though there are several convergences and evidence of Scheler’s indirect influence on Bin Kimura through Viktor von Weizsäcker. In recent years, Dan Zahavi, Louis Sass, and Josef Parnas have interpreted the modus vivendi of schizophrenic patients (...) in relation to a disturbance on the level of the “minimal self”. Subsequently, the discussion has highlighted the importance of disorders on the level of intercorporeality and intersubjectivity (Thomas Fuchs) and on the level of “existential feelings” (Matthew Ratcliffe). This paper argues that Max Scheler and Bin Kimura allow us to focus on an aspect which has been neglected so far: that of a “relational self” that relates to the very foundation of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality and that can thus be reborn in the encounter with the other and may position itself differently in the world. In Scheler’s perspective, the world of persons with schizophrenia is the result of an axiological disorder (valueception) that impairs contact with the primordial life impulse (Lebensdrang). As a consequence, they are incapable of attuning emotionally and socially with others: this prevents the singularity from being reborn in the encounter with the other and forces them to position themselves in their own solipsistic universe. Moving in a similar direction, Bin Kimura interprets the world of persons with schizophrenia as the result of a disorder of aida (one of the central concepts of Japanese culture that indicates the space of being in between). The disorder of aida compromises the basic relationship (Grundverhältnis in the sense of Viktor von Weizsäcker) and hinders what Bin Kimura calls festum, i.e. the birth of subjectivity, so that it is experienced by persons with schizophrenia only as ante festum. Starting from these two perspectives, I argue the existence of an axiological and anthropogenetic dimension of psychopathology. I begin with a discussion of Zahavi’s concept of minimal self and the thesis that reveals the disorders on this level of subjectivity as the origin of the world of persons with schizophrenia. I, then, analyze Max Scheler’s position and its historic importance for the emergence of phenomenological psychopathology. Thereafter, I introduce the concepts of “disorder of aida” (Bin Kimura) and “disorder of ordo amoris” (Max Scheler). Finally, I develop the concept of a “psychopathology of ordo amoris” by also comparing it with Ratcliffe’s thesis of “existential feelings”. (shrink)

The article illustrates a particular existential-phenomenological view of the emotion of fear and its connection to self-educative process of grasping the world and gaining self-knowledge. According to this view, originally promoted by Martin Heidegger and in educational philosophy Otto Friedrich Bollnow , fear is closely connected to a specific understanding of 'unconcealment', or 'disclosure' of truths. In the article it is shown, that this understanding sheds special educational insights on the connection between fear and gaining knowledge.

With the publication of the First Discourse, Rousseau initiated a famous debate over the social value of the arts and sciences. As this debate developed, however, it transformed into a question of the value of the intellectuals as a social class and touched upon questions of identity formation. While the philosophes were lobbying to become a new cultural aristocracy, Rousseau believed the ideological glorification of intellectual talent demeaned the peasants and working classes. This essay argues that amour propre, as put (...) forth in the Second Discourse, was in part designed to address this concern and is an attempt to highlight the dangers of making talent the measure of a human. (shrink)