ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Franz Brentano’s theory of emotion. It focuses on three of its central claims: emotions are sui generis intentional phenomena, emotions are essentially evaluative phenomena, and emotions provide the basis of an epistemology of objective value. The chapter concerns only conscious emotion, putting aside attributions of emotional states or conditions that may be true even if the person is, say, in a dreamless sleep. Most contemporary theories of emotion accept the idea that emotions ‘have a phenomenology’. This contemporary use of ‘phenomenology’ should be distinguished from ‘phenomenology’ understood as a method of theorizing about consciousness which studies it specifically from the first-person perspective, the perspective of the experiencing subject. The fundamental pillar of Brentano’s theory of consciousness is that conscious mental phenomena are constitutively self-intimating. Brentano calls this essential self-intimation ‘inner perception’ and distinguishes it from external perception.
