Kant on emotions, feelings, and affectivity

Alix Cohen

pp. 665-681

in: The Palgrave Kant handbook, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter examines Kant's general theory of affectivity, focusing in particular on his account of the nature of emotions, feelings, and desires. Cohen argues that while emotions may involve conative or cognitive states, they are distinct from them in a meaningful way since they involve a third faculty, the feeling of pleasure and pain, which differs from the faculty of cognition, which generates beliefs, and the faculty of desire, which generates volitions. On Cohen's interpretation, its function is to enable the affective awareness of the effect of a representation on the subject and the interplay of its mental faculties.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel