Kant’s Theory of Emotions
Federico Rampinini·
Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Italia
Review
of: Failla, Mariannina and Sánchez
Madrid, Nuria (eds.), Kant on Emotions.
Critical Essays in the Contemporary Context, Berlin-Boston, de Gruyer, 2021, 190 p., ISBN: 9783110720716.
In recent decades, Kantian scholarship has gone through
an “empirical turn,”, especially in the English-speaking world. Although this
phenomenon has sometimes resulted in studies that overlook consider properly
the transcendental nature of Kantian philosophy, it is undoubtedly noteworthy,
since it has cast light on some aspects not adequately explored. As a result,
increasing remarkable attention to Kant’s account of emotions, and its relation
to anthropology, morals, and aesthetics, could be reported in the last times.
The new book, edited by Mariannina Failla and Nuria Sánchez Madrid, aims to encourage this
field of study, joining Kant’s account with contemporary debate as well. Kant
on Emotions provides a well-balanced analysis divided into three sections,
which combine a traditional analysis of Kant’s account (Section 1: Mind,
Moral Agency, and Emotional Normativity) with approaches that engage Kant’s
philosophy in dialogue with contemporary thought (Section 2: Critical Emotions:
On Kant’s Aftermath) and recent viewpoints in the philosophy of mind
(Section 3: Kant’s Emotions and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind).
In a footnote of What Does it Mean to Orient
Oneself in Thinking?,
Kant expresses the belief that reason itself does not feel, but rather that it
produces feeling through inner drives as a “subjective need” (WDO 08: 139-140).
On that account, the authors analyse, according to
different perspectives, how reason itself can stimulate the human being to
achieve the different purposes of the faculties of mind, through emotions,
needs, and passions.
An account of Kant’s theory of human agency in the
light of the “emotional turn” is offered in the first section of the book.
Nuria Sánchez Madrid (in Kant’s Emotional Normativity and the Embodiment of
Reason: Interests, Reflection, and Feelings, pp. 9-23) explores Kant’s
considerations of those emotions that could be regarded as a way of promoting
an enduring dominance of reason over desires and inclinations. Although Kant
refuses every attempt to configure the principles of practical philosophy
starting from human empirical aspects, he also states that “the counterpart of
the metaphysics of morals […] would be moral anthropology, which, however,
would deal only with the subjective conditions that hinder men or help them in
fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals” (MS 06: 217). The difficulty of
defining the meaning of the term emotion, because it includes a wide set of
affective states, does not preclude the possibility to use emotions “to
support higher faculties of mind in their ability to improve and fully develop
the moral performance of the human agent” (p. 11). Furthermore, Sánchez Madrid
wisely highlights how psychoanalytical findings of the twentieth century were already
somehow in embryo in Kant’s account of emotion, since
he shows to be aware that emotional states do not overlap with the conscious
agency of the subject.
Ana Marta González (Unpacking Moral Feeling:
Kantian Clues to a Map of the Moral World, pp. 25-43) aims to attention to
the connection between practical reason, moral feeling, and the empirical
accomplishment of moral law. Starting from what Kant claims in What Does it
Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (in particular in
the footnote at WDO 08: 139-140), this chapter casts the light on moral
sentiment, considered an impulse to morality, in that reason, under the
influence of the moral law, feels called to moral action. As a result, González
analyses the role played by moral feeling as a tool for executing the moral law
in the empirical realm. Because the moral feeling only represents a principium
executionis, and never a principium iudicationis, is necessary to take a step forward to
claim that moral feeling plays a role in orientating ourselves in moral matters.
The author believes that to do so is necessary to look at what Kant claims
especially in the Metaphysics of Morals, where “the cartography of moral
life around the logical requirements of the categorical imperative for human
beings” (p. 41) is presented.
Mariannina Failla proposes an original
and interesting analysis of Kant’s account of emotions. In Edenic Animality,
Self-Sustenance, Loving and Dying: Corporeal Biological Needs and Emotions in
Kant (pp. 45-54), she investigates the joint between emotions, sentiments,
instincts, and moral action with the fruitful help of the Kantian reflections
on the beginning of history. Therefore, she shows how Kant’s considerations
about the Holy Scriptures are grounded in ethical and anthropological interests,
and how they can represent a psycho-corporeal genealogy of moral agency.
Outlining past philosophical systems to show their
reflections more effectively, there could be the risk of mistakenly ascribing
the views of philosophers to traditions they never actually identified with.
The English moral philosopher Bernard Williams, in Shame and Necessity
(1993), claims that Kant dismisses the role of shame, considering it as a
heteronomous element that does not deserve proper consideration. However, Ana
Cristina Falcato’s interesting analysis (Kant and
the ‘True Shame Instict’: Notes on the Future of the
Human Species, pp. 55-67) of textual sources ignored by Williams (see
Ethics’ courses in the 1760s) elucidates the Kantian thought about the role
played by the shame on the improvement of human beings. In addition, Falcato explores Kant’s view on the role of shame in
connection with the relationship between the sexes, expressed especially in the
third chapter of Observations of the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime.
The contribution by Maria Borges (Passions and Evil
in Kant’s Philosophy, pp. 69-83) casts light on the relationship between
passions and evil. The Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View
asserts that both affects and passions impede the sovereignty
of reason, yet their difference is accurately explained. Moreover, Borges
explores further these two states, as they are considered in the Religionschrift. Finally, she proposes an original
solution, which goes beyond Kant’s philosophy, to overcoming evil: an ethical
community.
The second section, Critical Emotions: On Kant’s
Aftermath, aims at considering Kant’s theory of emotion from the
perspective of contemporary aesthetics. However, the only essay that copes with
the Kantian legacy and its interpretation by a contemporary philosopher is that
of Daniela Angelucci, “An Emotion That Seems to Be
No Play”: Deleuze on Kantian Sublime (pp. 121-135). As this essay well
shows, Kant is a constant presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. Although at first
Kant is viewed as an enemy, because of his imprisonment within the philosophy
of common sense, later Deleuze recognizes his closeness to Kant. Angelucci states that the subject’s passivity during the
experience of the Kantian sublime–described as a “momentary inhibition of the
vital powers and the immediately following and all the more powerful outpouring
of them” (KU 05: 245)–is similar to what happens in
the case of a cinematographic image, according to Deleuze. The failure of
faculties, caused by this particular image, becomes
the genesis of the direct presentation of time, and therefore of the contact
with thought itself. For this reason, Angelucci
concludes by arguing that the Kantian sublime “can be considered a precursor of
the crystal-image, that is, the genetic moment of the time-image-one of the
most powerful concepts created by Deleuze to describe the accidental beginning
of a necessary though” (p. 135).
The other two essays in the second section deal with
two of the most debated topics of Kantian aesthetics, that is the nature of
aesthetic pleasure and that of aesthetic normativity. Igor Cvejić,
in Intentionality Sui Generis of Pleasure in Mere Reflection (pp.
87-106), addresses the well-known dispute about the intentionality or
not-intentionality of pleasure in Kant’s theory of taste. After rejecting
Guyer’s and Zuckert’s interpretations, the chapter
explores in detail the issue of pleasure in mere reflection. In addition, Cvejić reads the intentionality of the aesthetic pleasure
as sui generis feeling-intentionality, through which a beautiful object
is constituted. A reconsideration of aesthetic normativity is carried out by
Serena Feloj, in Exemplarity Emotions: A
Discussion of Normativity in Kant’s Aesthetic Judgment (pp. 107-120). In order to put forward a proposal to the current
English-speaking debate about aesthetic normativity, Feloj
tries to outline the a posteriori side of the Kantian judgment of taste,
whereas Kant had instead investigated its transcendental conditions. As a
result, this chapter discusses the normative character of aesthetic emotions in
Kant by calling upon the notions of exemplarity, considering Hume’s “standard
of taste” as well. In doing so, Feloj provides an
alternative reading of certain elements of Kant’s aesthetics of pivotal
relevance in contemporary debate.
The third part of the book (Kant’s Emotions and
Contemporary Philosophy of Mind) focuses on Kant’s thought on emotions in light of the contemporary research in philosophy of mind
and neuroscience. Pedro Jesùs Teruel,
in The Ambiguity of Kantian Emotions: Philosophical, Biological and
Neuroscientific Implications (pp. 139-154), proceeds his original inquiry
into the possibilities and boundaries of understanding transcendental
philosophy within the natural sciences. Therefore, Teruel
is aware of the absence of the current meaning of the term “emotion” in Kant’s
writing, nonetheless, he aims at showing the link between the Kantian approach
to the psycho-physical, embodied side of mood-rooted, pleasure-receptive
changes, whose reaction goes beyond the deliberative instances of the
individual, and the classic issue of pathos, more closely connected to the
Stoic view. As a result, a naturalistic interpretation of transcendental
philosophy, and in particular of Kant’s reflections on
emotion, is given, considering the connection with the brain’s functional areas
and neuronal facilitation as well.
Calibration Hypothesis: Rethinking Kant’s Place for
Emotion and the Brain’s Resting-State (pp. 155-169), by Dina Mendonça
investigates to what extent the predictive mind hypothesis can have its origin
in Kant’s model of rationality. According to Mendonça,
the Kantian view of emotions includes a mediate control over the emotional
landscape, in which one of the activities of the brain can be seen as
integrating experience and adjusting the subject’s general emotional structure
to better deal with future experiences. Although Mendonça’s
hypothesis must be empirically tested, it offers a new examination of the role
of emotions in Kant’s ethics.
In the last chapter, Kantian Lange Weile Within the Contemporary Psychology of Boredom (pp.
171-184), Josefa Ros Velasco retracts some of her past statements about the
Kantian approach to boredom. In fact, during the II Congreso
de la Sociedad de Estudios Kantianos
en Lengua Española (2014),
she confused the words of Kant and those of Hans Blumenberg:
it was not Kant, but Blumenberg who wrote that
boredom was a pain that motivated men to action. After an initial attempt to
show how Kant offers an ideal critique of the current understanding of boredom
as a mental disorder, Ros Velasco, reviewing Kant’s Anthropology, retraced her
steps and realized that Kant considers boredom as a result of
an inability to feel positive pain and his approach could contribute to the
present view of boredom as a pathology. In addition, because Kant’s approach to
boredom is cultural, not neurological, Ros Velasco can analyse
in-depth the peculiarities of this account, as it is expressed not only in Anthropology
from a Pragmatic Point of View but also in the three Critiques and Mrongovius’ Anthropology, showing how Kant
considers boredom a consequence of the socio-economic structure.
The book assumes a broad connotation of the term emotion, since there is no trace in the
Kantian writings of its direct German counterpart Emotion. In fact, in the Kantian corpus, we find many other terms
connected to this semantic field, such as Begierde, Neigung, Leidenschaft, Affekt, Gefühl, Rührung, Motion, Erregung,
etc. each of them has a particular meaning, each of which has its meaning, not
entirely overlapping to current’s one of emotion. As Teruel
points out (pp. 139-147), if emotion is an embodied, psychical, and conscious
reaction to internal or external solicitudes, the term “emotion” must be
understood in the proper sense as Affekt, arising through bodily and affective motion, which
is linked to the sensation of pleasure and displeasure. Nevertheless, giving a
broad connotation to the word emotion,
the book shows the relevance within Kant’s conception of the subject of the
empirical, effective, and emotional side.
In conclusion, this volume gives a crucial
contribution to an innovative approach to an important part of Kant’s
philosophy. On the one hand, it is analysed the role
played by emotions, understood as affective states, in transcendental
philosophy. Thus, it is shown the relevance of emotions in the human’s attempt
to meet the ends of reason. On the other hand, the fruitfulness and richness of
Kantian thought are emphasized in the light of contemporary scientific research
on moral agency.
