Rick Anthony Furtak

Continually at issue in Dickinson’s verse are the possibilities and limits of knowing the surrounding world, including the minds of others. Many of her poems give voice to wonder, frustration, and the feeling of illumination or insight, along with other emotional states involved in exploring the promise of knowledge and confronting skeptical questions. My chapter is focused especially on moments in Dickinson’s poetry when an encounter with the natural or human world is portrayed as moving the speaker toward either an intensification or a partial resolution of doubt—a dialectic through which she articulates the affective struggle to make sense of the world and to find herself at home in it. As I show, the philosophical thinking that unfolds in her lyrics is preoccupied with a characteristic human lament about our finite limitations and with a contrary, but intimately related, longing to be reconciled with our finitude.

Rilke claims that the poet’s task is to reveal the qualitative valences of existence, thus enabling his readers to become emotionally aware of its meaning—in spite of all that might threaten our sense that life is significant and worth living. Insofar as Rilke’s _Sonnets to Orpheus_ enact this mode of vision, they embody an antinihilistic way of seeing. One who does not view the world in this manner must remain unaware of its axiologically rich features, because poetic vision brings tangible value to light for both poet and reader. This chapter discusses how this outlook is articulated in the musical aspects of the _Sonnets_—which heighten the affective impact of Rilke’s words, and often register powerfully felt shocks of recognition. The formal patterns of Rilke’s sonnets bring intense feeling and insight to voice: furthermore, the poet’s formal techniques contribute to his way of articulating a poetic vision of the world.

This essay examines the transformation of Raskolnikov’s characteristic emotions toward his crime and toward his entire life in the world. Specifically, I argue that it is through Raskolnikov’s capacity to feel guilt over a particular deed that he overcomes his ambivalent emotions toward the limits of finite human existence. His commission of a crime and the subsequent experience of guilt allow him to redefine his predominant attitude toward the world. For much of the novel, Raskolnikov seems to wish that he could hover tentatively above finite existence rather than be immersed in it, but through his experience of guilt Raskolnikov develops his potential to care for others. His eventual guilt and remorse for what he has done are thus not only about the murder: these emotions show Raskolnikov’s willingness to accept the intricate ways in which he is implicated in a finite, temporal, historically situated existence. Only thus can Raskolnikov wholeheartedly begin a morally accountable life among others. What is affectively at issue for Dostoevsky’s protagonist, as I will show, is the tension between his general antipathy for the world and his capacity to love.

Socrates is a man of faith whose love and pursuit of the truth is grounded in religious conviction. Faith, whatever else it may be, involves guiding one's life in terms of a transcendent dimension, recognizing a reality lying behind any particular experience. In Plato's Phaedo, a literary and philosophical masterpiece, we enter the narrative of Socrates' trial and execution on the day of his death, examining arguments for the immortality of the psyche. The dialogue combines logical argument and mythological speculation, and presents Socrates simultaneously as an abstract theorist and an unforgettably singular person. Distinct persons, such as Socrates, have an interest in continuing to exist as the individuals that they are. When we cease to exist, we lose the opportunity to engage in any activity that is worth doing, such as—emphatically, for some of us—doing philosophy. What Socrates is presented as having discovered in the Phaedo—with the ostensibly absent Plato lurking behind every line in this literary gem of a text—is a way of transforming oneself with an eye on immortality. That Socrates dies utterly without fear is the supreme vindication of the philosophical life.

Socrates is a man of faith whose love and pursuit of the truth is grounded in religious conviction. Faith, whatever else it may be, involves guiding one's life in terms of a transcendent dimension, recognizing a reality lying behind any particular experience. In Plato's Phaedo, a literary and philosophical masterpiece, we enter the narrative of Socrates' trial and execution on the day of his death, examining arguments for the immortality of the psyche. The dialogue combines logical argument and mythological speculation, and presents Socrates simultaneously as an abstract theorist and an unforgettably singular person. Distinct persons, such as Socrates, have an interest in continuing to exist as the individuals that they are. When we cease to exist, we lose the opportunity to engage in any activity that is worth doing, such as—emphatically, for some of us—doing philosophy. What Socrates is presented as having discovered in the Phaedo—with the ostensibly absent Plato lurking behind every line in this literary gem of a text—is a way of transforming oneself with an eye on immortality. That Socrates dies utterly without fear is the supreme vindication of the philosophical life.

Love, Subjectivity, and Truth engages in a lively manner with the overlapping areas of philosophy and literature, philosophy of emotions, and existential thought. “Subjective truth,” a phrase used in Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, is rich with existential connotations. It invokes Kierkegaard above all, but significantly Nietzsche as well, and other philosophers who thematize love, subjectivity, and truth. In Search of Lost Time is especially concerned about what we know about others through love. Insofar as it includes the conveyance and analysis of experience, the novel is capable not only of exploring existential issues but also of doing something like phenomenology. What we know is shaped by our way of knowing, as the properties of visible, colored objects are determined by the wavelengths of light our eyes can see. Nowhere does the subjective basis of our awareness appear so evident as it does when we view things through loving eyes. In Proust’s novel we find skeptical views about love expressed again and again. However, we also note countercurrents repeatedly arising, in which love is both said and shown to provide a unique type of insight. At these times, love seems to be a prerequisite of veridical apprehension. Love, Subjectivity, and Truth offers an investigation of this tension as it is played out in Proust’s fiction. Its central chapter delves into all the reasons given by his narrator, Marcel, for being skeptical about what love is able to reveal, alongside the opposed reasons for overcoming this skepticism.

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 261-264, October 2022. According to Jean Moritz Müller's The world-directedness of emotional feeling, the reason why emotions do not apprehend or disclose value is that one cannot apprehend what one has already apprehended: the value in question, he claims, is apprehended prior to the emotional feeling. Emotions, then, should not be conceived as apprehending value since they already presuppose awareness of it. I can be acquainted with a fact without feeling aware of the meaning it holds. Yet I argue that only an emotional reaction actually registers value or disvalue. My value-responsive concept of emotion is one that Müller rejects. Yet I contend that to recognize the loss of a beloved person, for instance, just is to feel the emotion of grief.

In this article, we illuminate the affective phenomenon of loneliness by exploring the question of how it relates to love and other forms of friendship. We reflect in particular on the question of how different forms of loneliness are relevant to human existence. Distinguishing three forms of loneliness, we first introduce two border cases of loneliness: unfelt loneliness in which one’s individuality is denied and one therefore cannot feel lonely; and existential loneliness in which the possibility of intimacy and existential communication are denied and one therefore cannot but feel lonely. We then turn to loneliness that occurs within intimate friendships—even the most intimate ones. In our analysis, we pay attention especially to the role of communication. In order to do so, we repeatedly turn to poetic expressions of loneliness. We argue that loneliness cannot reflect only the absence or partial failure of communication but also the inherent limits of communication. These limits in turn point back to the nature of human existence and love itself.

Beginning with de Sousa's question about how my position is related to that of "enactive" theorists, I spell out my emphasis on the unity of affective experience, and say more about my conception of the emotional "a priori." In response to Beisecker, I elaborate by way of a literary example on how a significant fact can exist without yet having 'registered' in one's emotional awareness, and on the basis of this I reject the claim that emotions constitute significance. Finally, prompted by Gallegos, I elaborate on why, on my view, a valuable thing must have indeterminately many axiological qualities, and explain how a multifaceted world can ground a plurality of emotional standpoints.

Those who are already familiar with Henry Bugbee's written work will almost invariably have encountered it first through his 1958 text The Inward Morning, subtitled A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form. This book, which originally appeared with an introduction by the French existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel, was reissued in a 1999 edition thanks to Edward F. Mooney, who served as editor and added a new introduction of his own. In the volume under review, David W. Rodick brings more of Bugbee's work back into print, a development that will surely be appreciated by admirers and newcomers alike. Or, in Rodick's own words, the aim of Wilderness in America is "to remove...

The emotions play a crucial role in our apprehension of meaning, value, or significance — and their felt quality is intimately related to the sort of awareness they provide. This is exemplified most clearly by cases in which dispassionate cognition is cognitively insufficient, because we need to be emotionally agitated in order to grasp that something is true. In this type of affective experience, it is through a feeling of being moved that we recognize or apprehend that something is the case. And that is why our emotions are epistemically indispensable: namely, because they give us access to significant truths. In this essay, I explain how the phenomenally felt character of an emotion is intimately linked with its intentionality. Intellectual activity divorced from affective feeling is profoundly lacking — not only in its qualitative feel, but also in its epistemic import, or its ability to inform us about matters of significance. A better appreciation of how the living body is involved in affective experience should help us to understand the distinctive kind of embodied cognition that emotional responses involve. It also ought to resolve confusions about phobic responses and other “recalcitrant” emotions, which are not divorced from cognition as many have claimed.

Martha Nussbaum’s new book Political Emotions is a contribution to political philosophy and, simultaneously, a moral-psychological study of the emotions. In it, she revisits some of the most prominent themes in her 2004 book Hiding from Humanity and her 2001 treatise, Upheavals of Thought. As Nussbaum points out in the opening pages of Political Emotions, one of her goals in this work is to answer a call issued by John Rawls for a “reasonable moral psychology” that would be conceptually refined and empirically grounded, since a complete theoretical account of the just society must be informed by a suitably complex, accurate conception of human emotions. On the whole, Political Emotions is a remarkably successful book that combines several areas of philosophical research in which the author’s proficiency is well known. It shows how problems that lie on the more intimate side of ethics, pertaining for instance to friendship and family life, have relevance for social justice and publi ..

Abstract   In his discourses on ‘the lily of the field and the bird of the air,’ Kierkegaard presents faith as the best possible response to our precarious and uncertain condition, and as the ideal way to cope with the insecurities and concerns that his readers will recognize as common features of human existence. Reading these discourses together, we are introduced to the portrait of a potential believer who, like the ‘divinely appointed teachers’—the lily and the bird—succeeds in leading a life that is full of care, but free of worry. Such a portrait, we claim, echoes Kierkegaard’s portrait of the knight of faith in Fear and Trembling . In this essay we suggest that faith, as characterized in the ‘lily and bird’ discourses, is a kind of existential trust that would allow us to overcome worry, while remaining wholeheartedly engaged in the finite realm of our cares and concerns. We claim that Kierkegaard’s goal in these discourses is not to belittle our earthly cares, but to invite us to develop a modified attitude toward all that we are susceptible to worry about. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11153-011-9322-5 Authors Sharon Krishek, Department of Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Rick Anthony Furtak, Department of Philosophy, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047

This chapter analyses Soren Kierkegaard's thoughts and opinions about ancient Greek philosophy. It examines the significance of Kierkegaard's references to Greek philosophy in his writings and suggests that his use of classical thought was part of his effort to define his own intellectual project. The chapter investigates how Greek philosophy influenced Kierkegaard's works and views about ethics, existential thought, Socratic faith, love, and virtue, and also considers what Kierkegaard believed was the legacy of ancient Greek philosophy.