Affects as Episodes: Axiological Motivation and the Temporality of Moods in Husserl’s Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (original) (raw)

2024

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the application of the Husserlian concept of “motivation” to the affective domain and specifically to moods (Stimmungen) (Lee 1998; Quepons Ramírez 2015; Zirión Quijano 2018), in light of the recently published second volume of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (Husserl 2020). In doing so, I aim at understanding affects as episodes that exhibit concrete temporal connections between experiences, which significantly enriches the formal structures depicted in the famous lectures on time (Husserl 1928). The paper revolves around a paradox about moods. Suppose I am attending a magnificent religious ceremony. During this event, I am intentionally directed towards its sacred value, which motivates a solemn feeling. However, such a feeling does not cease with the ceremony, but survives even when the value is no longer explicitly aimed at (Husserl 2004a, 176). In this perspective, moods can be regarded as feelings that persist after their axiological source of motivation has disappeared (Husserl 2020, 182). This claim, however, raises a major issue: how can these feelings endure (sometimes for days or months) after they have been ‘uncoupled’ from their intentional relation (Fisette 2021, 227)? The paper is divided into three parts. Part I explores the relationship between valueceptions (Wertnehmungen) and emotions (Gefühle). In the Studien manuscripts, Husserl, contrary to what has long been assumed (Tappolet 2000, 7; Mulligan 2010, 483; Müller 2019, 54; Yaegashi 2019, 73; Müller 2020, 116), does not regard the two as identical, but sees emotions as reactions motivated by appearing values (Husserl 2020, 55, 118; Delamare 2022). This ‘reactional’ interpretation appeals to an essential feature of the concept of ‘motivation’ (Perreau 2013, 60), namely, that the emotion is not a mechanical effect of the valueception (Husserl 2020, 171), but a meaningful response: I rejoice about a painting in light of (um … willen) its beauty (Müller 2021a, 4). These clarifications are then applied to the nature of mood, which Husserl defines as the continuation of the emotion over the course of the affective episode. Two explanations for such a continuation are examined. Part II (negatively) shows that the temporal structures of retention, memory, and sedimentation, are not sufficient to elucidate the status of moods as occurrent (as opposed to past) feelings. Part III provides the (positive) solution to this puzzle, drawing on the embodied dimension of emotions in the form of sensuous feelings (Gefühlsempfindungen). Aesthetic joy, for instance, is not a purely mental event, but involves a bodily resonance (Fuchs 2022), e.g., a shiver of pleasure. Such feelings, in turn, endure (Husserl 2020, 123), due to the inertia of the body, once the valueception is no longer enacted (Husserl 2020, 522–523), leading to the emergence of a new, diffuse form of intentionality, as a “coloring” of the whole situation (Husserl 2004a, 176; Husserl 2020, 172, 181). As a result, it is the definition of moods as “annexes of sensuous feelings” (Husserl 2020, 173), and thus as embodied affects, that accounts for their lastingness.