Husserl´s Account of Emotional Acts and its Ethical Implications

CABRERA CELIA

Kaunas

Congreso; Phenomenology of Emotions. The 4th Conference on Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement in Central and Eastern Europe; 2018

Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas.

Emotions are an important topic in Husserl´s ethics. According to him, without taking emotions into consideration all ethical concepts lose their meaning (Hua XXXVII, 147 f.). In order to understand this claim, we have to take into account the motivational relation between valuing and willing and the conception of valuing acts as affective acts: Every action is motivated by a previous valuation and every valuation involves feelings. A key aspect of Husserl´s account of emotions is his understanding of the foundation relations between different levels of constitution: according to his first approach, emotional acts are intentional experiences of a higher order directed to the value properties of an object, and they are founded on cognitive acts by virtue of which they obtain their objective reference. Being founded means that the higher level intentional constitution built upon the founding experience forms a higher level unity, that is, value-properties are not reducible to properties given by the founding acts but form a unity "of a new kind" (Hua III.I, 355). In this context, the following questions arise: How do these different levels integrate into higher order unities without being reduced to each other? How should the contribution of emotions in relation to the theoretical constitution be understood? And further: How should this relation between emotional and cognitive aspects be understood in order to overcome, as Husserl intends, the traditional dispute between emotionalism and intellectualism?The paper seeks to analyze Husserl´s conception of emotional experiences by examining its relation with cognitive acts, and to reflect on the ethical implications of his account of the emotional sphere. In order to do this, I will first offer a brief introduction to the above-mentioned issues. Then, I will consider some approaches to emotions that can be found in Husserl´s works. The first corresponds to the Logical Investigations, where emotional acts are interpreted as a form of non-objectifying intentionality founded on an objectifying intentionality, as "qualities" added to what is given in the founding act. The second is developed in the years after the Logical Investigations, in the context of Husserl´s theory of reason. According to this perspective, that can be found in Ideas I and in the Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory, emotional acts are positional acts that refer to a particular intentional object and stand under norms of correction. While these two approaches correspond to static phenomenology, the third corresponds to the genetic analysis. The static model shows a stratified foundation of valuing and volitional acts on pure theoretical acts. And, even though there have been some changes within the early theory, it maintains the primacy of theoretical reason that provides the foundation for emotional acts, which are thus conceived as higher order phenomena. In contrast, the analysis of passive intentionality developed in the framework of genetic phenomenology challenges the early account of the relation between the three spheres of experience insofar as it exhibits its dynamic character, shows a multi-sided foundation, and accentuates a certain priority of the emotional sphere. Finally, I will offer some conclusions about the consequences of these interpretations in the conception of moral agency. The focus here will be the question regarding whether it is necessary to maintain that emotional and volitional acts are phenomena of a higher order founded on intellectual acts in order to approach decision-making from a normative perspective. Approached from the other angle: whether the intertwining of the three spheres and the conception of emotions as originary phenomena emphasized in the genetic analysis is compatible with this task.