ABSTRACT
Aurel Kolnai is best known for his political and moral writings, but he also chiefly contributed to the phenomenology of the emotions. This chapter reconstructs Kolnai’s general approach to the emotions as embedded within the larger context of early phenomenology. It presents Kolnai’s analyses of hostile emotions by focusing on disgust, haughty pride, and hatred. Regarding the moment of intentionality, Kolnai’s view might be characterized by way of the following three aspects: First, he endorses a “cognitive model” according to which emotions require cognitive bases in order to occur. Second Kolnai does not conceptualize the intentionality of the emotions in terms of the intentionality of these other states on which the emotions are based, but rather, like many of Brentano’s followers, he understands such intentionality of the emotions as a sui generis form of reference toward their objects. Third, to be precise, this original emotive intentionality consists in disclosing values.
