Limited distribution phenomena related to negation and negative polarity are usually thought of in terms of affectivity where affective is understood as negative or downward entailing. In this paper I propose an analysis of affective contexts as nonveridical and treat negative polarity as a manifestation of the more general phenomenon of sensitivity to (non)veridicality (which is, I argue, what affective dependencies boil down to). Empirical support for this analysis will be provided by a detailed examination of affective dependencies in (...) Greek, but the distribution of any will also be shown to follow from (non)veridicality. (shrink)

This article examines how emerging technologies – particularly artificial intelligence – disrupt the moral and institutional foundations of contemporary military practice. While strategic documents from the United States, NATO, and other major actors anticipate profound institutional transformation driven by AI, their treatment of ethics largely confines itself to legal compliance and technical safeguards, leaving the ethical role of military leadership in managing disruptive change underexamined. Drawing on Seumas Miller’s distinction between social institutions that are merely instrumental to collective goods and (...) those whose defining ends are constitutive of such goods, the article argues that the military belongs to the latter category. Because the military’s core function – defending the sovereignty of a polity – is itself morally significant, technological disruption of its organizational structures simultaneously constitutes ethical disruption. The article thus reconceives change management during periods of technological transition as calling for a specific kind of military prudence, a practical wisdom exercised within and through the institution’s role-mediated ethical practices. By analyzing three concrete modes of techno-moral disruption, the article shows how AI may reshape ethical standards, redistribute professional knowledge, and alter organizational ethos, and why navigating these transformations responsibly is a central task of military virtue. (shrink)

In view of the philosophical problems that vex the debate on situated affectivity, it can seem wise to focus on simple cases. Accordingly, theorists often single out scenarios in which an individual employs a device in order to enhance their emotional experience, or to achieve new kinds of experience altogether, such as playing an instrument, going to the movies or sporting a fancy handbag. I argue that this narrow focus on cases that fit a ‘user/resource model’ tends to channel (...) attention away from more complex and also more problematic instances of situated affectivity. Among these are scenarios in which a social domain draws individuals into certain modes of affective interaction, often by way of attunement and habituation to affective styles and interaction patterns that are normative in the domain in question. This can lead to a phenomenon that is not so much ‘mind extension’ than ‘mind invasion’: affectivity is dynamically framed and modulated from without, often contrary to the prior orientations of the individuals in question. As an example, I discuss affective patterns prevalent in today’s corporate workplace. I claim that workplace affect sometimes contributes to what is effectively a ‘hack’ of employees’ subjectivity. (shrink)

In connecting embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition with affectivity and emotions, the framework of “situated affectivity” has recently emerged. This framework emphasizes the interactions between the emoter and the environment in the unfolding of our affective lives (Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Griffiths and Scarantino 2009; Piredda 2022; Stephan and Walter 2020). In the last decades, there has also been a growing interest in the philosophical analysis of technology and artifacts (Houkes and Vermaas 2010; Margolis and Laurence (...) 2007; Preston 2022). The aim of this special issue is to foster the interaction between philosophical reflections on affectivity and those on technology, further developing this fruitful borderland (Clowes et al. 2021; Colombetti 2020; Fasoli 2018; Krueger and Osler 2019; Heersmink 2018; Piredda and Candiotto 2019; Piredda 2020; Viola 2021). -/- . (shrink)

This paper aims to fill a gap in the literature on situated affectivity by proposing that the notion of _affective scaffold_ be extended to the case of companion dogs. Situated affectivity posits that emotions and affective experiences are profoundly shaped by and embedded within the social and environmental contexts in which they unfold. We argue that dogs, and likely pets more broadly, play a significant role in regulating and supporting the affective lives of their human companions – a (...) role that can be captured through key dimensions identified in the affective scaffolding literature, including trust, individuation, sharing, temporal scale, and reciprocity. After defending our main thesis, we briefly consider some ethical concerns that may arise when dogs are treated as affective scaffolds, focusing in particular on the risk of affective injustice. (shrink)

In this study I explore from a phenomenological perspective the relationship between affectivity and narrative self-understanding in depression. Phenomenological accounts often conceive of the disorder as involving disturbances of the narrative self and suggest that these disturbances are related to the alterations of emotions and moods typical of the illness. In this paper I expand these accounts by advancing two sets of claims. In the first place, I suggest that, due to the loss of feeling characteristic of the illness, (...) the narratives with which the patients identified prior to the onset of depression are altered in various ways, thus leading to the weakening or abandonment of the narratives themselves. I then move to show that these autobiographical narratives are replaced by new stories which possess a distinctive structure and I argue that this is dependent upon specific configurations of affective experience, such as existential feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and isolation, and particular forms of temporal and spatial experience. (shrink)

Several enactive-phenomenological perspectives have pointed to affectivity as a central aspect of mental disorders. Indeed, from an enactive perspective, sense-making is an inherently affective process. A question remains on the role of different forms of affective experiences (i.e., existential feelings, atmospheres, moods, and emotions) in sense-making and, consequently, in mental disorders. This work elaborates on the enactive perspective on mental disorders by attending to the primordial role of affectivity in the self-individuation process. Inspired by Husserl’s genetic methodology and (...) Simondonian philosophy of individuation, sense-making is described as the process of progressive concretization and structuration of the self-world structures that support the intentionality of conscious experiences. Accordingly, affectivity is described as the force that anticipates a partial self-world coherence in sense-making. Structurally different types of affective experiences are integrated into the genetic picture and, on this basis, a reinterpretation and classification of certain mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, and the anxiety spectrum, is provided. In this way, this work contributes to a phenomenologically informed enactive account of mental disorders as disorders of affectivity. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between affectivity and moral experience from a phenomenological perspective. I will start by showing how in a phenomenologically oriented account emotions can be conceived as intentional evaluative feelings which play a role in both moral epistemology and the motivation of moral behaviour. I will then move to discuss a particular kind of affect, "existential feelings" (Ratcliffe in Journal of Consciousness Studies 12(8–10), 43–60, 2005, 2008), which has not been considered (...) so far in the discourse on moral and affective experience. Relying on the notion of pre-intentionality through which Ratcliffe characterizes existential feelings (Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53(6), 602–626, 2010) and on some insights into the relationship between affectivity and ethics developed by De Monticelli (2003, 2006), I suggest that key to the role played by existential feelings in moral experience is that they determine the kinds of evaluations that it is possible for us to make and the range of our possibilities of action. I then illustrate and further develop this idea through a phenomenological analysis of some forms of psychopathological experience. More specifically, by considering some experiential features of depression and borderline personality disorder, I claim that, by acquiring an existential character, emotions such as guilt, feelings of isolation, anger and shame can radically alter the structure of the individual evaluative perspective, having a deep impact on both moral judgements and behaviours. (shrink)

This paper approaches Peter Handke’s “Essay on Tiredness” through the lens of phenomenology. Tiredness here is not treated as a marginal theme, but as a complex existential experience in which affectivity, embodiment, temporality, and sociality are all at stake. In dialogue with Levinas, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, I follow Handke’s text across ten sequences: from the frightening tiredness of childhood to its creative, erotic, contemplative, epic, and finally fundamental forms. These sequences show how tiredness unsettles the ordinary bearings of subjectivity (...) and reshapes the way the world is encountered – sometimes drawing the self into isolation, sometimes opening it to unexpected forms of relation. One might even say that Handke’s concern is therefore not with tiredness as a symptom of physical depletion, but with its power to disclose the world, to let being itself come to appearance. Seen in this light, tiredness becomes a phenomenological operator that places the self in a state of radical receptivity. At this point Handke’s meditation touches on what recent discussions have called ontological-existential exhaustion: not collapse into nothingness, but an exhaustion of being that allows new modes of presence to emerge. (shrink)

In this paper, I emphasise the relevance of affectivity in skilled acquisition and performance, an aspect that remains under-theorised in the philosophy of skills. Drawing on a phenomenologically informed enactivist framework, I argue that affectivity is not a mere by-product but an integral dimension of skilled agency. I identify two key ways in which affectivity shapes the dynamics of skilled performance. First, I discuss how affective appraisals serve as pre-reflective indicators of normative adequacy or inadequacy during performance, (...) guiding corrections, sustaining motivation, and fostering creativity. Second, I examine self-esteem as an existential feeling that configures our sense of agency and practical engagement with the world. In this context, I analyse the phenomenon of stereotype threat to show how interpersonal interactions and sociocultural norms modulate self-esteem, and how repeated exposure to negative stereotypes can gradually erode it, thereby undermining an agent's skilful performance. These insights invite a reconceptualisation of affectivity as central not only to the execution and development of skilled action, but also to its possible breakdown. (shrink)

In this comparative study, we examine experiential disruptions of embodiment and affectivity in Moebius Syndrome and schizophrenia. We suggest that using phenomenological resources to explore these experiences may help us better understand what it’s like to live with these conditions, and that such an understanding may have significant therapeutic value. Additionally, we suggest that this sort of phenomenologically-informed comparative analysis can shed light on the importance of embodiment and affectivity for the constitution of a sense of self and (...) interpersonal relatedness in normal conditions. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the emotional dimensions involved in the phenomenon of interpersonal violence, identifying various modalizations of affectivity occurring in the architectonics of this phenomenon. I will first concentrate on symmetrical violence, namely, on the emergence of irritation, annoyance, anger, and fury leading to fierce confrontation. Next I will explore asymmetrical violence, where the passive pole experiences the imminence of the other’s violence in fear and in being terrified. I will then focus on the (...) experience of the third in the face of violence, showing that here the affectivity is differently constituted each time, depending on the various situations of symmetrical and asymmetrical violence that the third witnesses. Finally, I will contrast the experience of real violence with the experience of violence-as-image, and I will pose several questions regarding the modifications of the affective experience of the third in the face of depicted violence. (shrink)

This collection of essays by scholars from Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America offers new perspectives of the phenomenological investigation of experiential life on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology. Not only well-known works of Husserl are interpreted from new angles, but also the latest volumes of the Husserliana are closely examined. In a variety of ways, the contributors explore the emergence of reason in experience that is disclosed in the very regions that are traditionally considered to be “irrational” or (...) “pre-rational.” The leading idea of such explorations is Husserl’s view that perception, affectivity, and volition are regarded as the three aspects of reason. Without affectivity, which is supposedly irrational, no rationality can be established in the spheres of representation and volition, whereas volitional and representational acts consistently structure the process of affective experience. In such a framework, it is also shown that theoretical and practical reason are inseparably intertwined. Thus, the papers collected here can be regarded as a collaborative phenomenological investigation into the entanglement and mutual dependency of the supposedly “rational” and the “irrational” as well as that of the “practical” and the “theoretical.”. (shrink)

This commentary explores the issues of separation and continuity in Marjolein Oele’s E-Co-Affectivity. I begin by providing a summary of what makes the book unique and its important achievements before moving on to a critical discussion of Oele’s concept of temporality. There, I claim that an overemphasis on the continuity between an organic being and the material interfaces that constitute it might be responsible for essential confusions in the understanding of time. My commentary begins by using Bergson’s philosophy to (...) distinguish two common views on time and then argues that in several instances, Oele’s descriptions of temporality are in fact describing space rather than time. As Bergson shows us, affect and emotion must be understood as qualities of experience rather than quantitative forms of presence. I then conclude by arguing that E-Co-Affectivity might benefit from further thinking about separation and auto-affectivity as essential features in the process of affectivity. (shrink)

My aim is to propose affectivity as a criterion for personal identity. My proposal is to be taken in its weak version: affectivity as _only one_ of the criteria for personal identity. I start by arguing for affectivity being a better candidate as a criterion for personal identity than thinking. Next, I focus on synchronic vs. diachronic and on ontic vs. epistemic distinctions (my proposal will concern diachronic ontic personal identity) and consider the realm of affectivity (...) in its temporal dimension. In my argument, I rely on the genuineness of affectivity and I exploit chiefly long- or everlasting feelings (or emotions) and those which involve the feeling subject more rather than less. I conclude by stating that genuine long-lasting feelings (or emotions) are constitutive of diachronic ontic personal identity. (shrink)

Recent epistemology and value theory have become more open to the role played by affectivity in the constitution of human knowledge of value. In this paper, two figures important to the phenomenological and personalistic traditions are retrieved as precedents for this contemporary development: Edith Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand. In the first part of the paper, Stein’s phenomenology of affective acts is adapted as an account of the structure of “value-grasping acts.” The second part of the paper identifies two (...) difficulties that arise on the basis of Stein’s account: how do we know that an emotion constitutes a response to intrinsic value, and how do we know an emotional response to value is most attuned to its object? The remainder of the paper responds to these difficulties, thereby legitimating the account as a viable moral epistemology. These responses draw inspiration from von Hildebrand’s phenomenological accounts of value-response and freedom. (shrink)

In this second part of the book we explored human affectivity. Most importantly, we looked closer at the fundamental dimensions of it. We learned that there is a fundamental type of affectivity that can be called “existential feelings”. Ratcliffe’s theory of existential feelings, complemented with Stephan and Slaby’s work, provides rich insight in how to understand this fundamental level of our affective lives. We have seen that affectivity is at the core of our being in the world. (...) We are in the world in an essentially affective way. This is much in line with the pointers of the Heidelberg School discussed in chapter “The Affective Turn” in Part I of this book. For example, the theory of existential feelings can be understood as rich and detailed exploration of the notion of sense in Pothast’s much broader and at times vague account. Our fundamental affects, namely existential feelings, are bodily feelings that shape all our experience and thought. They permeate how we perceive the world and our social environment, how we act in it, and the way we are aware of ourselves. This last aspect is most relevant for the project of this book. In some way, existential feelings seem to constitute our self-consciousness. Somehow we feel who and how we are in this world. Thus, it seems promising to address some of the problems of self-consciousness (as discussed in Part I) with the help of the theory of existential feelings. (shrink)

Stolorow and his collaborators' post-Cartesian psychoanalytic perspective – intersubjective-systems theory – is a phenomenological contextualism that illuminates worlds of emotional experience as they take form within relational contexts. After outlining the evolution and basic ideas of this framework, Stolorow shows both how post-Cartesian psychoanalysis finds enrichment and philosophical support in Heidegger's analysis of human existence, and how Heidegger's existential philosophy, in turn, can be enriched and expanded by an encounter with post-Cartesian psychoanalysis. In doing so, he creates an important psychological (...) bridge between post-Cartesian psychoanalysis and existential philosophy in the phenomenology of emotional trauma. (shrink)

During the first phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, Italy experienced problems of public order and maladjusted behavior. This study assessed the role of negative affectivity, right-wing authoritarianism, and anxiety of COVID-19 infection in explaining a variety of the maladjusted behaviors observed with an Italian sample. Specifically, we examined the effect of Negative Affectivity and Right-Wing Authoritarianism on maladjusted behaviors, and the moderating role of anxiety of infection. Seven hundred and fifty-seven Italian participants completed an online survey between March (...) 3rd to the 7th 2020, which was immediately before the lockdown. A moderated-mediation model was tested using a structural equation modeling approach. Results indicated that both Negative Affectivity and Right-Wing Authoritarianism were positively associated with COVID-19-related maladjusted behavior, and that Right-Wing Authoritarianism mediated the relationship between Negative Affectivity and maladjusted behavior. Furthermore, the effect of Right-Wing Authoritarianism on maladjusted behavior was greater for those with high anxiety of infection, and the indirect effect of Negative Affectivity on maladjusted behavior through Right-Wing Authoritarianism was moderated by infection anxiety. Findings highlight potential psychological paths that may inform communication strategies and public health initiatives aimed at promoting healthy behavior during an outbreak. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Affectivity and Personality: Mediated by the SocialMartin Heinze (bio)Keywordsaffectivity, sociality, personalism, psychiatric anthropologyBy emphasizing the concept of the person, Rosfort and Stanghellini are to be congratulated for overcoming a reductive concept self driven by the limits of neurobiological research. In this commentary, I emphasize some points about the context of these thoughts concerning the dialectic of nature and freedom and the social realm in which the connections of (...) affectivity and personhood are situated.As discussed in philosophical anthropology, the concept “person” involves both the human capacity for freedom and the legal status given to an individual in society. Nevertheless, even in its most intensive understanding as personality and lived freedom, human existence cannot be separated from its being natural (including being emotional). Moreover, being natural is the condition sine qua non for a free conduct of life. The dialectic of freedom and naturality is addressed by Rosfort and Stanghellini as “ontologic ambiguity” or, to use an older phrase, the structure of “homo duplex”. The aspect of passivity in human existence in which we are determined by our physiology, our environment, and our biography becomes visible. On the other hand, we also see the active dimension of personhood: the possibility to put ourselves into question, to relate to ourselves, to undergo change, and to invent ourselves anew. In the Plessnerian sense, the “ec-centric” nature of the human condition enables us to become active in this way. Plessner supplanted the dialectic between passivity and activity with his notion of Leidenschaft—passion. In the German word Leiden we find the double meaning of suffering and being passionate. Humans are bound to act between the spheres of nature and free will. They suffer from being in the world and can also be passionate by acting in this reality. Leidenschaft thematizes both passivity and activity as well as their unity. Human beings are passive through being dependent on their circumstances. They are passionate, however, when they reflect on these conditions or attempt to come to terms with them. From the dialectical understanding, a unique structure emerges as mutually conditioned, both active and passive. The “passionate man” (a term that Plessner uses to define humanity) synthesizes his being dependent on others with his own freedom to create himself. Passion can be understood as an enhancement of sensuality and spirituality in the context of the conditio humana: “Human reflectivity does not stop in front of sensuality but rather enhances it or weakens it—and both directions can be dangerous for sensuality.” (Plessner 1976, 167, author's translation). [End Page 273]With Kierkegaard, we have to express this even more intensively: a human being is not only shaped by the dialectic of freedom and nature, but—through living—is himself this dialectic. Thus, human personality and human freedom cannot be disconnected from the dimension of passivity that lies at the very heart of freedom. In Jacob Böhme's words, the human situation is that of Naturfreiheit—being free by and through its very own nature. It is neither apart from nature (naturlos) nor is its freedom abstract.The fundamental characteristics of human personality, as described by Rosfort and Stanghellini, are activity, responsibility, freedom, will, reflexivity, and self-distance, but also corporality. In the conduct of life, the realm where this is all realizes is the realm of human relationships to other human beings, that is, a shared world only out of which a successful self-relation can develop. In this sense, the authors quote Grøn: “The normative dimension thus pertains to the self that one already is in relating to others, to a world in between, and to oneself.” Grøn refers to Kierkegaard's attempt—but now with regard to psychopathology—to overcome the duality of human nature by transforming the concept of the self to that of the person. For psychiatric anthropology, there is no way to circumvent this. Thus, psychiatric theories that concern human being inevitably involve a personalistic perspective.Ferdinand Tönnies was the first to use the concept of person to describe social realities. In his classical study from 1887, “Community and Society” (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), he contributed to philosophical personalism. Insofar as the person seeks... (shrink)

In this paper I adopt Aquinas’ explanation of passivity and activity by means of acts remaining in the agent and acts passing over into external matter. I use it to propose a divide between immanent-type and transcendent-type acts. I then touch upon a grammatical distinction between three kinds of verbs. To argue for the activity and passivity of affectivity I refer to the group that includes acts of transcendent-type and whose verbs in both voices possess affective meaning. In the (...) end I focus on cases in which an act of affective f-ing is mirrored in its object as being affectively f-ed. (shrink)

E-Co-Affectivity is a philosophical investigation of affectivity in various forms of life: photosynthesis and growth in plants, touch and trauma in bird feathers, the ontogenesis of human life through the placenta, the bare interface of human skin, and the porous materiality of soil. Combining biology, phenomenology, Ancient Greek thought, new materialisms, environmental philosophy, and affect studies, Marjolein Oele thinks through concrete, living places that show the receptive, responsive power of living beings to be affected and to affect. She (...) focuses on these localized interfaces to explain how affectivity emerges in places that are always evolving, creative, porous, and fluid. Every interface is material, but is also "more" than its current materiality in co-creating place, time, and being. After extensively describing the effects of the milieu and community within which each example of affectivity takes place, in the final chapter Oele adds a prescriptive, ethical lens that formulates a new epoch beyond the Anthropocene, one that is sensitive to the larger ecological, communal concerns at stake. (shrink)

Neu's work is splendid. In addition to offering wonderfully illuminating characterizations of various emotions, it helps show that these individual characterizations, rather than an overall characterization of emotions or affectivity, have always been Neu's main concern. Nonetheless he is concerned with specific instances of, and often the general nature of, affectivity: what differentiates mere thoughts, desires, and values from emotions where the complex is affectively charged. I argue that his accounts of affectivity do not succeed — in (...) that they can be satisfied by what is affectless. (shrink)

Although previous treatments of affective injustice have identified some particular types of affective injustice, the general concept of affective injustice remains unclear. This article proposes a novel articulation of this general concept, according to which affective injustice is defined as a state in which individuals or groups are deprived of “affective goods” which are owed to them. On this basis, I sketch an approach to the philosophical investigation of affective injustice that begins by establishing which affective goods are fundamental, and (...) then considers which subsidiary goods—such as freedoms, resources, opportunities, and forms of recognition—may be necessary for the provision of those fundamental affective goods. Drawing from and developing ideas in the extant literature, I argue that two such fundamental affective goods include subjective well-being and emotional aptness. I then show that by analyzing deprivations of the subsidiary goods that enable a person to pursue and attain subjective well-being and emotional aptness, it is possible to shed new light on the cases of affective injustice that have been described in the extant literature, while also identifying other kinds of cases that have not been theorized to the same extent. (shrink)

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) is an eating disorder characterised by self-starvation. Accounts of AN typically frame the disorder in individualistic terms: e.g., genetic predisposition, perceptual disturbances of body size and shape, experiential bodily disturbances. Without disputing the role these factors may play in developing AN, we instead draw attention to the way disordered eating practices in AN are actively supported by others. Specifically, we consider how Pro-Anorexia (ProAna) websites—which provide support and solidarity, tips, motivational content, a sense of community, and understanding (...) to individuals with AN—help drive and maintain AN practices. We use C. Thi Nguyen’s work on epistemic “echo chambers”, along with Maria Lugones’ work on “worlds” and “ease”, to explore the dynamics of these processes. Adopting this broader temporal and intersubjective perspective, we argue, not only helps to further illuminate the experiential character of AN but also has important clinical and therapeutic significance. (shrink)

When we compare Henry and Levinas, we stumble upon a difficulty. Henry tries to reduce transcendence to immanence; Levinas, on the contrary, strives to call immance into question and to lend a new dignity to transcendence. Hence, the two thinkers seem to be diametrically opposed to one another. Yet, if one does not limit oneself to such an overall view, one finds some similarities between them. There is an affinity between the two approaches which results from the fact that both (...) thinkers establish a narrow relationship between originally passive affectivity and the selfhood of the self. Henry and Levinas are, despite all their differences, united in their efforts to ground selfhood on passivity and affectivity. Assuredly, it remains a question whether or not an originally passive affectivity is really capable of founding selfhood. Some doubt arises here from the observation that affectivity tends to anonymity. However, the observation that affectivity is marked by a tendency to anonymity has not only a negative and critical significance; it also characterizes affective states and arousals in a positive way, since one can maintain that the self could not be a ?self? unless it were constantly confronted with a tendency to anonymity. (shrink)

Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this (...) paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists. (shrink)

This paper explores Moritz Geiger’s work on the role of emotions in aesthetic appreciation and shows its potential for contemporary research. Drawing on the main tenets of Geiger’s phenomenological aesthetics as an aesthetics of value, the paper begins by elaborating his model of aesthetic appreciation. I argue that, placed in the contemporary debate, his model is close to affective models which make affective states responsible for the apprehension of the aesthetic value of an artwork, though Geiger also makes important concessions (...) to the intellectualist. Indeed, like proponents of the affective model, Geiger argues that a work’s aesthetic values are extracted by means of an affective state though the affective state in question is neither an emotion nor a feeling but a “liking”. In fact, like the intellectualist, he considers that a focus on the emotions might on certain occasions interfere in the aesthetic appreciation of the artwork. Next, I reconstruct Geiger’s distinction between surface and depth effects in terms of a distinction between two types of emotional responses to artworks. It is argued that Geiger’s distinction offers a powerful tool to distinguish those emotions that are intrinsically related to aesthetic values from those that are not and that this distinction can be useful to understand how different kinds of emotions contribute to aesthetic appreciation. I proceed to examine the historical sources of Geiger’s distinction between surface and depth effects in Theodor Lipps’s aesthetics and compare Geiger’s account with the works of other early phenomenologists working on values. In the final part, I illustrate the place of Geiger’s model in the contemporary discussion by means of an example. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the concept of environmental scaffolding can contribute to a better understanding of our affective life and the complex manners in which it is shaped by environmental entities. In particular, the concept of environmental scaffolding offers a more comprehensive and less controversial framework than the notions of embeddedness and extendedness. We contribute to the literature on situated affectivity by embracing and systematizing the diversity of affective scaffolding. In doing so, we introduce several distinctions that (...) provide classifications of different types of environmentally scaffolded affectivity. Furthermore, we differentiate eight dimensions (e.g., trust, individualization, or intent) that allow us to evaluate the quality and effectivity of scaffolds in particular applications. On that basis, we develop a taxonomy using paradigmatic examples of affective scaffolding. This taxonomy enriches the current debate by emphasizing distinctions that are often conflated and by identifying fields of application that are commonly overlooked. (shrink)

Affect and emotion have come to dominate discourse on social and political life in the mobile and networked societies of the early 21st century. This volume introduces a unique collection of essential concepts for theorizing and empirically investigating societies as Affective Societies. The concepts engender insights into the affective foundations of social coexistence and are indispensable to comprehend the many areas of conflict linked to emotion such as migration, political populism, or local and global inequalities. Each chapters provides historical orientation; (...) detailed explication of the concept in question, clear-cut research examples, and an outlook toward future research. (shrink)

Celebrities hold affective power—the ability to influence how others feel—because fans form stronger attachments, invest more affectively, and rely more on their parasocial relationship than celebrities do. While prior work highlights celebrities as emotional exemplars, viewing them through affective power reveals that they can also elicit and redirect emotions, and build communities around themselves. From this, we identify positive and negative responsibilities. Negatively, celebrities should try to not misuse their affective power in ways that emotionally harm their fans. Positively, celebrities (...) have strong reasons to redirect affective attention and support towards those in need, especially within marginalized communities. (shrink)

Oppression, marginalization, and other forms of disadvantage often come with emotional burdens, such as feelings of insecurity or stress. At the same time, some features of oppression are emotional in nature—for example, the dismissal of anger from victims of racial or gender injustice. The concept of affective injustice aims to capture the distinctively emotional wrongs that contribute to, or themselves constitute, unfair disadvantage. This article offers a critical overview of the existing literature on affective injustice, understood as the unjust interference (...) with people’s affective lives. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition (...) to recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

Psychiatric language and concepts, and the norms they embed, have come to influence more and more areas of our daily lives. This has recently been described as a feature of the ‘psychiatrization of society.’ This paper looks at one aspect of psychiatrization that is still little studied in the literature: the psychiatrization of our emotional lives. The paper develops an extended account of emotion pathologizing as a form of affective injustice that is related to psychiatrization and that specifically harms psychopathologized (...) people, i.e., people who are socially perceived to be mentally ill. After introducing an initial account of emotion pathologizing as articulated in Pismenny et al. (2024), we extend the account by demonstrating how processes and practices of emotion pathologizing are informed by (1) the dominant biomedical approach to psychiatry and (2) sanism, a system of discrimination and oppression that disadvantages people who have received a psychiatric diagnosis, or are perceived as in need of psychiatric treatment. We then argue that emotion pathologizing can manifest as an affect-related hermeneutical injustice that disadvantages psychopathologized individuals by unfairly constraining how they make sense of and understand their own emotional experiences. (shrink)

Recent enactive approach to social cognition stresses the indispensability of social affordance with regard to social understanding and contends that it is affordance that primarily solicits one’s reaction to the other, such that one becomes affected by the other and attends to the other’s situated appearance in the first place. What remains to be explored, however, is the sense in which social affordance is delineated by an affective sphere and the extent to which the affective sphere serves as a meaning (...) constraint for social sense-making. In this paper, we analyze Husserl’s genetic theory of affection, so as to better understand the nature of the social affective sphere. And we argue that social understanding takes places at different levels and it is at the passive and pre-reflective level that the social surroundings are pre-delineated by a sort of affective ambience where the empathizer and the empathizee come into contact. Once this is appreciated, we can better articulate the affective structure of social affordance and its meaning constituents. And we show that, at the passive level, social coupling is in nature an affective intertwinement between oneself and the other and it consists of a particular kind of corporeal intentionality with which one adverts to the other’s presence and responds to the other’s appeal. (shrink)

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and (...) spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies. (shrink)

What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons (...) for action only insofar as they are dispositions to have affective experiences. On this account, affective experience has a central role to play in explaining how desires provide reasons for action. (shrink)

Traces of many past events are often layered or superposed, in brain, body, and world alike. This often poses challenges for individuals and groups, both in accessing specific past events and in regulating or managing coexisting emotions or attitudes. We sometimes struggle, for example, to find appropriate modes of engagement with places with complex and difficult pasts. More generally, there can appear to be a tension between what we know about the highly constructive nature of remembering, whether it is drawing (...) on neural or worldly resources or both, and the ways that we need and use memory to make claims on the past, and to maintain some appropriate causal connections to past events. I assess the current state of work on situated affect and distributed memory, and the recent criticisms of the ‘dogma of harmony’ in these fields. I then deploy these frameworks to examine some affective dimensions of place memory, sketching a strongly distributed conception of places as sometimes partly constituting the processes and activities of feeling and remembering. These approaches also offer useful perspectives on the problems of how to engage – politically and aesthetically – with difficult pasts and historically burdened heritage. In assessing artistic interventions in troubled places, we can seek responsibly to do justice to the past while fully embracing the dynamic and contested constructedness of our present emotions, memories, and activities. (shrink)

Victims of oppression are often called to let go of their anger in order to facilitate better discussion to bring about the end of their oppression. According to Amia Srinivasan, this constitutes an affective injustice. In this paper, we use research on emotion regulation to shed light on the nature of affective injustice. By drawing on the literature on emotion regulation, we illustrate specifically what kind of work is put upon people who are experiencing affective injustice and why it is (...) damaging. We begin by explaining affective injustice and how it can amount to a call for emotion regulation. Then we explain the various techniques that can be used to regulate emotions and explain how each might be harmful here. In the penultimate section of the paper, we explain how the upshot of this is that victims of affective injustice are left with a dilemma. Either they try to regulate their anger in a way that involves ignoring the fact of their oppression or they regulate it in a way that is likely to be harmful for them. Finally, we consider whether there are any good solutions to this dilemma, and how this issue opens up the possibility for further research into emotion regulation and moral philosophy. (shrink)

We introduce the working concept of “affective arrangement.” This concept is the centerpiece of a perspective on situated affectivity that emphasizes relationality, dynamics, and performativity. Our proposal relates to work in cultural studies and continental philosophy in the Spinoza–Deleuze lineage, yet it is equally geared to the terms of recent work in the philosophy of emotion. Our aim is to devise a framework that can help flesh out how affectivity unfolds dynamically in a relational setting by which it (...) is at the same time modulated in recurring ways. With this orientation, this article contributes to the interdisciplinary study of situated affectivity and to the theoretical and conceptual unification of distinct strands of research from several disciplines. (shrink)

By spelling out the affective dimension of admiration, this paper challenges the view of admiration as a trustworthy means of detecting morally desirable qualities in exemplars. Such a view of admiration, foundational for the current debate on exemplars in moral education, holds that admiration is a self-motivating emotion essentially oriented toward the good and the excellent. I demonstrate that this view ignores the affective aspects of admiration explored widely in the history of philosophy on which the debate on moral exemplars (...) substantially draws. Focusing on Spinoza, Smith, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, I bring to light their largely skeptical views of the moral value of admiration. These thinkers indicate that admiration can be influenced by, and is often conflated with, other emotions, and can arise in us through behavioral mimicry; moreover, admiration is often oriented toward the mediocre and corrupt, is contagious, self-referential, collective, and has limited motivational power. Their remarks on the affective dimension of admiration call into question admiration’s applicability and usefulness in moral exemplarity. (shrink)

In this contribution I will offer a rough guide through “situated affectivity”,a small galaxy of theories, ideas, intuitions which are recently growing atthe boundaries between philosophy of emotion, philosophy of mind, philo-sophy of cognitive science. In the last years, we are witnessing a real “affec-tive turn” in the domain of analytic philosophy of mind and cognitive scien-ce, and situated affectivity is an excellent example of what is going on in thefield. In the first part, I will present the (...) main versions of situated affectivity,distinguishing between the ideas of situated or scaffolded emotions (Griffi-ths, Scarantino 2009; Colombetti, Krueger 2015) and properly extendedemotions (Carter et al. 2016; Colombetti, Roberts 2015), and showing theirlink to the corresponding idea of the mind: scaffolded, extended or otherwi-se. In the second part, I will further explore the connection between situatedaffectivity and the domain of extended mind: I will argue that, even if situa-ted affectivity could be in principle evaluated independently from any parti-cular theory about the mind, dealing with situated affectivity is, beside itsindependent interest, also a good way to tackle an unsettled problem in theliterature on extended mind, namely extended consciousness. (shrink)

As part of their professional practice, dancers allow their affectivity to enhance their kinesthetic work. Their intentional and disciplined use of personal, emotional resources ensures both creativity, interpretation, absorption, and connections in ways that extend beyond the traditional phenomenological understanding of affectivity as pre-reflectively based. The affective regulations dancers employ can be seen as an “artistic epoché,” and their layered performance awareness corresponds with Edmund Husserl’s descriptions of “image-consciousness.” Through qualitative interviews with three professional dancers, phenomenological theory, and (...) additional supportive literature, this article shows how affectivity can be experienced through high-order levels of Leib, constituting states of “bodily reflective” consciousness. The dancers’ primary goal in these efforts is to foster meaningful and artistic communication with their audience. (shrink)

This essay explores the place of qing in conceptions of the nature and being of the sage, focusing on the Tang Daoist master Wu Yun. What it seeks to show is that assumptions about the attainability of “sagehood” and the “nature” (xing) of human beings inform the interpretation of qing. In this context, the idea that the sage is quintessentially wuqing, marked by the absence of desire and emotions, will be examined. I will close with a comparative note on a (...) Confucian account of the same period—namely, the Fuxing shu by Li Ao. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the “place” where the obvious and sometimes surprising connection between unbridled pleasure and madness is rooted. Our argument will be that the link between pleasurable experiences and states of alienation is found, at the most archaic level of what Maine de Biran described as affective life, in the “sharing” of an experience at the outer limit of the realm of consciousness of the self, which reveals, however, different “faces” in pleasure and in madness.