Emotion and Embodiment: Fragile Ontology

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2018

In this article, we outline and discuss Maurice Merleau-Ponty's description of affective and emotional life as found in Phenomenology of Perception, including his portrayal of the affective body-subject. By relating his central phenomenological claims to bodily theories of emotion, exemplified primarily by Antonio Damasio's theory, we demonstrate Merleau-Ponty's continued relevance. Merleau-Ponty's challenge to bodily theories of emotion mirrors the (dis)connection between one's own body and the mechanical body. He shows that affect and emotion cannot be understood fully without taking the experiential, existential, and intersubjective situation into account and thereby challenges traditional bodily theories of emotion by exposing the affective incarnated body-subject as a fundamental capacity to feel and perceive meaning through incarnate, constitutive, and intersubjective relations.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 13: 507-511, 2014

Phenomenology, perhaps more than any other single movement in philosophy, has been key in bringing emotions to the foreground of philosophical consideration. This is in large part due to the ways in which emotions, according to phenomenological analyses, are revealing of basic structures of human existence. Indeed, it is partly and, according to some phenomenologists, even primarily through our emotions that the world is disclosed to us, that we become present to and make sense of ourselves, and that we relate to and engage with others. A phenomenological study of emotions is thus meant not only to help us to understand ourselves, but also to allow us to see and to make sense of the meaningfulness of our worldly and social existence.

Cultural Studies, 2013

This essay juxtaposes the ontological variant of affect theorized by cultural theory with what Catherine Malabou terms the ‘new wounded’ – bodies defined by their inability to produce and experience specific neurological affects. Ontological affect theory positions the capacity of a body to affect and be affected as the foundation for relation both beyond and between individuals, often drawing on neuropsychology for the legitimation of its claims. The new wounded, however, exist as a form of life that cannot be acknowledged by these theories. The varied pathologies that comprise the new wounded are identified specifically by the inability to produce the affects that supposedly ground the ontology of relation. The first part of this essay examines how neuropsychology constructs and identifies the pathological other of the new wounded through discursive, medical and technological means. A body's capacity to experience affect is not something biologically given, but is instead produced through techniques that sort proper and improper bodies, defining the new wounded as less than fully human. The second part discusses the mobilization of neuropsychological norms in ontological affect theory. The turn to the biological in affect theory, often made in order to theorize a non-representational sphere of existence beyond the symbolic, relies on but cannot acknowledge the discursive and technological production of affective and affectless bodies in neuropsychology. The ontology of affect, consequentially, should be thought of as a normative political construct defined by the absent and erased other of the affectless body. I conclude by claiming that a politics of ontology must acknowledge how materialist and realist constructs of the ontological such as affect are inherently produced within and mobilized by historical contingencies, contexts and conjunctures.

A lot has been said on emotion theory in psychological literature. There is an emerging trend however, that it may be wholly unfeasible to generate a satisfactory account of what emotion actually is with traditional cognitivist accounts of mind. The problem of emotion is certainly an issue that has been the main focus of philosophers, psychologists and other natural scientists for quite some time. proposed that the term 'emotion' is scientifically redundant, as we refer to so many different processes and components when we refer to emotion; perhaps the term should be replaced with the specific process of the emotional experience we refer to, such as appraisal, motivational aspects, valence, intensity and so forth. However, with emotion touching practically every aspect of our lives, and the relevance of phenomenological research becoming apparent, emotion may now be a problem to which we can contribute many important and interesting insights. Emotion will certainly be a contentious issue for the foreseen future, but for now we can hope to find some meaningful insights from contemporary trends in psychological and philosophical approaches to mind. Lewis (2005) also makes a very interesting point, in that psychological theory tends to gravitate to a level of description that is subordinate, global and functional; and this makes it difficult to form true explanations.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2014

Phenomenology, perhaps more than any other single movement in philosophy, has been key in bringing emotions to the foreground of philosophical consideration. This is in large part due to the ways in which emotions, according to phenomenological analyses, are revealing of basic structures of human existence. Indeed, it is partly and, according to some phenomenologists, even primarily through our emotions that the world is disclosed to us, that we become present to and make sense of ourselves, and that we relate to and engage with others. A phenomenological study of emotions is thus meant not only to help us to understand ourselves, but also to allow us to see and to make sense of the meaningfulness of our worldly and social existence. Within the last few decades, the emotions have re-emerged more generally as a topic of great philosophical interest and importance. Philosophers, along with psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists have engaged in inter-and intra-disciplinary debates concerning the ontology and phenomenology of emotions, the epistemic and cognitive dimensions of emotions, the rationality of emotions, the role that emotions play in moral judgments, the role that our bodies play in the experience and constitution of emotions, the gendered dimension of emotions (and whether or not there is one and the extent to which it is socially constructed), the temporality of emotions, and the cultural specificity of emotions, to name just a few. Contemporary phenomenological and scientific considerations of the emotions, however, have treated and continue to treat these questions and issues quite differently. The former takes a first-personal approach to the emotions that is guided by, rooted in, and engaged with our experiences in the world, where the felt quality of emotions provides important insights into the meaningfulness of human experiences. The latter often takes a third-personal or sub-personal approach to the emotions and focuses on their cognitive architecture and neurobiological mechanisms, which can be detached from and unconcerned with the ways that emotions are experienced in and connected to contextual, complex worldly human experiences. Both kinds and levels of analysis are

2020

The emotions occupy a fundamental place in philosophy, going back to Aristotle. However, the phenomenology of the emotions has until recently remained a relatively neglected topic. The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotion is an outstanding guide and reference source to this important and fascinating topic. Comprising forty-nine chapters by a team of international contributors, this handbook covers the following topics:

2008

The Routledge handbook of phenomenology of emotion, 2020

Second, talking of a 'rediscovery' of emotions in philosophy is, in fact, highly misleading. After all, emotions have never been completely ignored in the history of philosophy. Quite the contrary, the nature of affectivity and the role of emotions in human existence and social reality as well as the notorious relation of emotions and rationality always been at issue in philosophy-even where explicit discussion of the emotions is missing or is deliberately relegated to the conceptual background. Moreover, the relation of philosophical reasoning to emotions, and the role that emotions (ought to) play therein, has never been philosophically neutral. 'What's your take on emotion' seems, then, to be the 64,000-dollar question for philosophers, ever since emotions entered philosophical thinking (see Landweer and Renz 2012). 2 Affects and emotions have played a central role in Western 3 philosophy ever since they were introduced by Plato, Aristotle, and the Greek and Roman (Neo-)Stoics (cf. Nussbaum 2001). They were extensively discussed as key factors in rhetoric, political life, moral psychology, and social interaction. Most classical authors, such as Aquinas, Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes, Malebranche, or Spinoza, up until the Scottish moralists, explored a panoply of particular affects, sentiments, and emotions, taxonomizing the so-called 'passions of the soul' (Descartes); many of these authors also offered general theories of emotions. It is, however, also true that after Kant and Rousseau, starting roughly with the dominance of German Idealism, emotions ceased to play any systematic role in philosophy. 4 In this period of relative marginalization, we find only a few isolated discussions of specific emotions, such as compassion in Schopenhauer 5 or anxiety and fear in Kierkegaard.