The Emotions: Outline of a Theory by Jean-Paul Sartre

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre [Sartre, Jean-Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road
Published: 2012-01-16T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

A SKETCH OF A PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY

PERHAPS WHAT will help us in our investigation is a preliminary observation which may serve as a general criticism of all the theories of emotion which we have encountered (except, perhaps, Dembo’s theory). For most psychologists everything takes place as if the consciousness of the emotion were first a reflective consciousness, that is, as if the first form of the emotion as a fact of consciousness were to appear to us as a modification of our psychic being or, to use everyday language, to be first perceived as a state of consciousness. And certainly it is always possible to take consciousness of emotion as the affective structure of consciousness, to say “I’m angry, I’m afraid, etc.” But fear is not originally consciousness of being afraid, any more than the perception of this book is consciousness of perceiving the book. Emotional consciousness is, at first, unreflective, and on this plane it can be conscious of itself only on the non-positional mode. Emotional consciousness is, at first, consciousness of the world. It is not even necessary to bring up the whole theory in order clearly to understand this principle. A few simple observations may suffice, and it is remarkable that the psychologists of emotion have never thought of making them. It is evident, in effect, that the man who is afraid is afraid of something. Even if it is a matter of one of those indefinite anxieties which one experiences in the dark, in a sinister and deserted passageway, etc., one is afraid of certain aspects of the night, of the world. And doubtless, all psychologists have noted that emotion is set in motion by a perception, a representation-signal, etc. But it seems that for them the emotion then withdraws from the object in order to be absorbed into itself. Not much reflection is needed to understand that, on the contrary, the emotion returns to the object at every moment and is fed there. For example, flight in a state of fear is described as if the object were not, before anything else, a flight from a certain object, as if the object fled did not remain constantly present in the flight itself, as its theme, its reason for being, that from which one flees. And how can one talk about anger, in which one strikes, injures, and threatens, without mentioning the person who represents the objective unity of these insults, threats, and blows? In short, the affected subject and the affective object are bound in an indissoluble synthesis. Emotion is a certain way of apprehending the world. Dembo is the only one who has perceived this, though he gives no reason for it. The subject who seeks the solution of a practical problem is outside in the world; he perceives the world every moment through his acts. If he fails in his atttempts, if he gets irritated, his very irritation is still a way in which the world appears to him. And, between the action

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