Abstract

This aim of this chapter is to prepare the ground for the main argument of the book. In the first part, I elaborate on the nature of emotional feeling by examining the common characterization of emotions as affective or, alternatively, as stirrings of the sensitive mind (Gemütsbewegung). I reject the popular view that emotional feeling is a type of bodily sensation and argue that it is instead a form of psychological (dis)comfort (hedonic tone) that possesses a characteristic personal dimension. In the second part, I explicate the widely held view that emotions are correlated with a specific type of value property which plays an essential role in determining their intelligibility, fittingness and individuation conditions: their formal objects. Against this background, I precisify the axiological receptivity view (AR) and the intentionalist alternative I intend to develop, which are both interpreted as relating emotional feelings to their formal object.