Abstract
A very basic form of experience consists in feeling energetic, alive, tired, dispirited, vigorous, and so on. These feelings—which I call feelings of vitality or vital feelings—constitute the main concern of this paper. My aim is to argue that these feelings exhibit a distinctive form of affectivity which cannot be explained in terms of emotions, moods, background feelings, or existential feelings and to explore different paths for their conceptualization. The paper proceeds as follows. After introducing the topic (Sect. 9.1), I show that these feelings cannot be subsumed under any of the current categories of the affective mind (Sect. 9.2). Against this backdrop, I present and critically assess Scheler’s notion of vital feelings as an alternative model for capturing their distinctive nature (Sect. 9.3). Next, I explore varieties of vital feelings by focusing on different levels of the bodily-felt experience (Sect. 9.4) and analyze their specific form of self-involvement (Sect. 9.5). Finally, I conclude by showing how the study of vital feelings might contribute to phenomenological bioethics (Sect. 9.6).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This family includes affective states, affective dispositions and affective activities (here I apply to the field of affectivity the threefold distinction of mental phenomena found in Wollheim 1984, pp. 34–35). Some affective phenomena such as emotions, moods and sentiments can take two forms and are sometimes episodic and sometimes dispositional. Some phenomena are neither states nor dispositions but rather activities, such as the feeling of a state (e.g., the feeling of an emotional episode of fear can be suffered but it can be also enjoyed if I am watching a horror movie), or the feeling of an evaluative property (I feel the danger of the situation) or an expressive property (I feel the sadness of a situation) (see Scheler 1973, p. 256).
- 2.
Stratified models of the affective life were largely endorsed within early phenomenology. See, for instance, Stein (2000).
- 3.
For a phenomenological critique of Scheler’s rigid concept of hierarchy, see Kolnai (1971, pp. 203–221).
- 4.
For an alternative classification within early phenomenology, see Voigtländer (1910, pp. 25–30).
- 5.
In this regard, he keenly differentiates his account from Damasio’s view, emphasizing that vitality is “about the ‘feel’ of being alive and full of vitality” and not about what happens in the organism (Stern 2010, p. 46).
- 6.
As Scheler noticed, by virtue of being an object of empathy in other living beings (and in nature because we are able to feel the vibrancy of a forest), these feelings contribute to the consciousness of community. I do not have space to develop this point here, but this empathy with feelings of vitality would be a further dimension for exploration.
- 7.
As is common in phenomenological research, I employ the two expressions as synonyms.
- 8.
In a recent book on the topic, Gerhard Kreuch offers an analysis of the concept of self-feeling which is strongly influenced by Ratcliffe’s notion of existential feelings (Kreuch 2019, pp. 135–140). Though existential feelings can be conceptualized as self-feelings (see Vendrell Ferran 2008, pp. 218–222), the dimension of experience to which the concept of self-feeling refers cannot be wholly captured as long as we conceive them as existential feelings. Self-feelings focus on forms of affective involvement of the self and on the different types of self-awareness associated with them.
- 9.
This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
References
Carel, H. 2016. Phenomenology of illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Damasio, A. 2005. Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. London: Vintage.
Fuchs, T. 2012. The feeling of being alive: Organic foundations of self-awareness. In Feelings of being alive, ed. J. Fingerhut and S. Marienberg, 149–165. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.
Gallagher, S., and D. Zahavi. 2019. Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E.N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/.
Goldie, P. 2000. The emotions: A philosophical exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heidegger, M. 2008. Being and time. New York: Harper & Row.
Kenny, A. 1963. Action, emotion, and will. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kolnai, A. 1971. The concept of hierarchy. Philosophy 46 (177): 203–221.
Kreuch, G. 2019. Self-feeling: Can self-consciousness be understood as a feeling? Berlin: Springer.
Price, C. 2006. Affect without object: Moods and objectless emotions. European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 2 (1): 49–68.
Ratcliffe, M. 2008. Feelings of being: Phenomenology, psychiatry and the sense of reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scheler, M. 1973. Formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values. Evanston: Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.
Schmitz, H., R.O. Müllan, and J. Slaby. 2011. Emotions outside the box—The new phenomenology of feeling and corporeality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10: 241–259.
Slaby, J., and A. Stephan. 2008. Affective intentionality and self-consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 506–513.
Solomon, R. 1993. The passions: Emotions and the meaning of life. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.
Stein, E. 2000. Philosophy of psychology and the humanities. Washington, DC: ICS Publications.
Stern, D.N. 2010. Forms of vitality: Exploring dynamic experience in psychology, the arts, psychotherapy, and development. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Svenaeus, F. 2009. The phenomenology of falling ill: An explication, critique and improvement of Sartre’s theory of embodiment and alienation. Human Studies 32: 53–66.
Svenaeus, F. 2017. Phenomenological bioethics: Medical technologies, human suffering, and the meaning of being alive. Oxford and New York: Routledge.
Toombs, S.K. 1987. The meaning of illness: A phenomenological approach to the patient-physician relationship. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 12: 219–240.
Vendrell Ferran, Í. 2008. Die Emotionen. Gefühle in der realistischen Phänomenologie. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Voigtländer, E. 1910. Vom selbstgefühl. Leipzig: R. Voigtländers Verlag.
Wollheim, R. 1984. The thread of life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zahavi, D. 2005. Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vendrell Ferran, I. (2021). How to Understand Feelings of Vitality: An Approach to Their Nature, Varieties, and Functions. In: Ferrarello, S. (eds) Phenomenology of Bioethics: Technoethics and Lived-Experience. The International Library of Bioethics, vol 84. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65613-3_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65613-3_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-65612-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-65613-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)