The World-Directedness of Emotional Feeling: On Affect and Intentionality [Hardcover]

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, M?ller 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. M?ller 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.

Chapter 1: Introduction.-  Chapter 2: Feelings and Formal Objects.- Chapter 3: Emotional Feeling as Receptivity to Value.- Chapter 4: Emotional Feeling as Position-Taking.- Chapter 5: The Evaluative Foundation of Emotional Feeling.- Chapter 6: Conclusion.

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 M?ller'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)