The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 1-16

3. Feelings and Formal Objects

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 17-50

4. Emotional Feeling as Receptivity to Value

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 51-88

5. Emotional Feeling as Position-Taking

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 89-112

6. The Evaluative Foundation of Emotional Feeling

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 113-143

7. Conclusion

   • Jean Moritz Müller

   Pages 145-148

8. Back Matter

   Pages 149-155

   PDF

This book engages with what are widely recognized as the two core dimensions of emotion. When we are afraid, glad or disappointed, we feel a certain way; moreover, our emotion is intentional or directed at something: we are afraid of something, glad or disappointed about something. Connecting with a vital strand of recent philosophical thinking, Müller conceives of these two aspects of emotion as unified. Examining different possible ways of developing the view that the feeling dimension of emotion is itself intentional, he argues against the currently popular view that it is a form of perception-like receptivity to value. Müller instead proposes that emotional feeling is a specific type of response to value, an affective ‘position-taking’. This alternative conceives of emotional feeling as intimately related to our cares and concerns. While situating itself within the analytic-philosophical debate on emotion, the discussion crucially draws on ideas from the early phenomenological tradition and thinks past the theoretical strictures of many contemporary approaches to this subject. The result is an innovative view of emotional feeling as a thoroughly personal form of engagement with value.

• emotion
• feeling
• value
• position-taking
• phenomenology

“Only at the moment when I feel awed by the breathtaking beauty of the Grand Canyon have I taken a stance, as it were, toward this beauty, which I already knew something about. So the more I notice how Müller's view does capture aspects of lived experience, the more plausible it becomes. I encourage others interested in the philosophy of emotions to spend time with this compelling new book.” (Rick Anthony Furtak ,The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 75 (298), December, 2021)

“This book should be read by those with interest in emotion. It is a perspicuous development of a distinctive view of emotional feeling.” (Jonathan Mitchell, The Philosophical Quarterly, May 19, 2020)

• University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

  Jean Moritz Müller

Jean Moritz Müller, PhD, is a research associate at the University of Bonn, Germany. He works in the philosophy of mind, with a particular emphasis on the philosophy of emotion, and related areas of meta-ethics.

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