Sensibility and Values. Toward a Phenomenological Theory of the Emotional Life

Affects – quite especially, but not exclusively, bodily affects – “shape the mind” by general recognition – and emotions are more and more popular as a topic of philosophical research. Since Antonio Damasio’s well-received work proposing the “embodied mind” approach to emotions, feelings have been investigated with brilliant results from both a phenomenological and a neurobiological perspective (for recent examples see Ghallagher-Bower 2013 and Fuchs and Koch 2014). On the other hand, philosophers have become aware of the fundamental importance of the realm of feeling in both the cognitive and practical exercise of reason. Yet, although the relation between emotions and values is much discussed in analytic philosophy, contemporary research seems to be lacking a general theory of feeling, which would somehow connect the two levels of affective sensibility apparently concerned: one that is basically embodied, and one that is cognitively of a “higher” level, involved in a large variety of acts and behaviors characteristic of a rational and moral agent – such as a human being. This paper presents an outline of such a general theory. It draws on classic sources in phenomenological literature, yet aims to provide a somewhat independent response to some of the main questions in contemporary debates, including the crucial one concerning the objectivity/subjectivity of values and value judgments.