Workshop Phenomenology Today
Vita-Salute San Raffaele University
Faculty of Philosophy
Research Centre PERSONA
Tuesday May 7th, 2024
11:00 – 13:00
Room DO 203
Palazzo Donatello, Campus Milano 2
Alexis Delamare (Panthéon-Sorbonne University – Paris I)
What appears when I am joyful? Direct self-presence and indirect personality discovery in emotional experiences
Abstract
What appears when I feel an emotion, e.g., when I am joyful? It is a commonplace in contemporary philosophy–both analytic and phenomenological–that emotions are intentional experiences, whose directedness is linked to our acquaintance with worldly values. The general aim of this talk is to challenge this pervasive approach and to defend, by contrast, that emotions are essentially a kind of self-experience. My claims are the following: 1) Emotions are not intentional, that is, they are devoid of any intrinsic directedness towards mundane objects and events; the ‘dogma of emotional directedness’ arises from the close association between emotions and other, genuinely intentional affective experiences, especially desires and aversions. 2) Emotions are self-revelations, in two ways: on the one hand, they are essentially a form of ‘self-feeling’, and thus affectively and directly manifest the subject to herself as ego; on the other hand, they indirectly enable the subject to discover what deeply matters to her, thereby shedding light on her intimate personality. To substantiate these two claims, I will draw on insights from early phenomenology as well as from Michel Henry’s thought, in close dialogue with contemporary analytic positions. The talk will be divided into four parts. I will first raise objections to a standard view (‘axiological emotionalism’), according to which what appears in emotions are values. In the second part, I will generalize this line of thought and claim that nothing mundane appears in emotions, i.e., that they constitute non-intentional states. Two arguments will be developed in this perspective: a phenomenological argument emphasizing the continuity between emotions and moods, and a linguistic argument showing that expressions describing emotional states are intelligible in the absence of an object, in contrast to, e.g., expressions describing conative or perceptual experiences. The third part will be devoted to an examination of the ‘self-presence’ occurring in emotions; there I will argue that the specific ‘self-feeling’ characterizing emotional phenomena essentially relies on their bodily character. Finally, in the fourth part, I will explain how emotions can help us enhance our ‘self-knowledge’, by indirectly revealing the deep, intimate desires and attachments at the core of our personality.
Download the flyer here.
Scientific Direction: Vincenzo Costa, Roberta De Monticelli, Francesca De Vecchi, Francesca Forlè.
Commenti recenti