Emotions As Original Existences : A Theory of Emotion, Motivation and the Self

This book defends the much-disputed view that emotions are what Hume referred to as ‘original existences’: feeling states that have no intentional or representational properties of their own. In doing so, the book serves as a valuable counterbalance to the now mainstream view that emotions are representational mental states. Beginning with a defence of a feeling theory of emotion, Whiting opens up a whole new way of thinking about the role and centrality of emotion in our lives, showing how emotion is key to a proper understanding of human motivation and the self. Whiting establishes that emotions as types of bodily feelings serve as the categorical bases for our behavioural dispositions, including those associated with moral thought, virtue, and vice. The book concludes by advancing the idea that emotions make up our intrinsic nature - the characterisation of what we are like in and of ourselves, when considered apart from how we are disposed to behave. The conclusion additionally draws out the implications of the claims made throughout the book in relation to our understanding of mental illness and the treatment of emotional disorders. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction (Demian Whiting)....Pages 1-7 Front Matter ....Pages 9-9 Emotions as Conscious Mental States (Demian Whiting)....Pages 11-36 Emotions as Original Existences (Demian Whiting)....Pages 37-88 Front Matter ....Pages 89-89 Urges of the Heart (Demian Whiting)....Pages 91-124 Emotion and Moral Thought (Demian Whiting)....Pages 125-151 Emotion, Virtue, and Situationism (Demian Whiting)....Pages 153-173 Front Matter ....Pages 175-175 Our Emotional Cores (Demian Whiting)....Pages 177-202 Emotion and the Fractured Self (Demian Whiting)....Pages 203-228 Back Matter ....Pages 229-233