Emotions and moods in Husserl’s phenomenology *

This chapter is about emotions and affective life in Husserl’s work. I will pay particular attention to the second volume of Studien der Struktur des Bewusstseins (Studies on the Structure of Consciousness) on emotions, but I will also take into account Husserl’s first writings on emotions (1982, 106–112; 2004a, 159–189), which contain valuable analyses on emotions. But emotions do not exhaust the entire field of the phenomenology of affectivity. Husserl places great importance on what he calls “sense feelings” (Gefühlsempfindungen), which he clearly distinguishes from emotions (Gemütsbewegungen, Gefühlsakt) and moods (Stimmungen). In this chapter, I will first introduce Husserl’s analysis in Studien by emphasizing the reasons that motivate these analyses of descriptive psychology, and their status in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in the late Freiburg period. I will then focus on the structure of acts, with a particular emphasis on three aspects stressed by Husserl in Studies: intentionality, the taxonomy of acts, and Brentano’s principle of the Vorstellungsgrundlage. The last three parts of this study outline the characteristic features of three fundamental aspects of affective life in Husserl’s phenomenology: emotions, sense feelings, and moods. I will conclude with some general remarks on the status of affects and values in Husserl’s phenomenology.