The papers collected in this issue address diferent topics at play in the contemporary debate on positive feeling and emotion by virtue of both their primary function in everyday life and their embedded structure. Within this issue, specifc attention has been given to the intertwining of positive feeling and ethical issues according to diferent approaches whose goals consist in providing a description and clarifcation of the phenomena in question. The contributions gathered here give us a clear idea of the variety (...) and possible nuances that defne positive feelings and, with them, of the complexity of our lives and reality. Specifcally, they concretely show the degree to which the quality of an experience depends on the agent-environment relationship, the benefts we can derive from certain positive experiences, and the extent to which the valence of an emotion can affect our moral life. (shrink)

This paper discusses possible forms of loss or weakness of the ability to interact with others and the ways in which this arises. In particular, in the context of socio-affective knowledge and related failures, it focuses on certain deficits that primarily involve the body. The article aims to show that the “destiny” of our inner drives and our lives—the specific solutions to which they are forced in their vicissitudes—is less “blind” than it appears, leaving (albeit minimal) margins of escape, also (...) because it has a relational connotation. Starting from Bernhard Waldenfels’s recent work on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in which this question is addressed from a phenomenological-responsive point of view, this article reflects on the problem by establishing a comparison between Waldenfels’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s phenomenology of values. Beyond the differences that their approaches to the problem of relational deficits present, Waldenfels and Scheler can be put in fruitful dialogue with each other, starting from their common interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. Within this framework, it is possible to evaluate, adopting Scheler’s point of view, both a methodological aspect and a psychological presupposition of Freud’s ontogenesis of sympathy and love: associationism. From this perspective, Freud reveals himself in part as an heir to British empiricism. I will argue that, with and beyond Freud, the human being is not reducible to a mere sum of blind sensations or blind drives and that for both at least certain forms of inability to interact with others are derivative—deformations of normal responsivity and aberrations of normal pulsional-(relational) life—rather than originary phenomena. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an ecological, Schelerian-based description of the aesthetic experience that, without being exhaustive, may account for its complexity, perspective character and stratifications. Aesthetic enjoyment, aesthetic object and the creative process of the artistic type are all specific and necessary moments of an experience – an aesthetic experience – shared by different experiential “individuals”, who also contribute to its formation process. The content of this experience grows and develops in conformity with its own laws, like a living (...) being so to speak, able, as such, to turn its own gaze to the others’ gaze at the same time as they turn to it. In other words, I will deal with the dynamics of the artist’s interactions with the spectator, of those of the spectator with the artist and of those of both with the work of art, which, created by the artist, or rather, “brought to light” by the artist, becomes an object– a quasi-sujet in Dufrennian terms – unique to the spectator. In this context, I will try to rehabilitate the axiological virtues of beauty, not in the sense of a metaphysics of beauty, but in a sense nearer to our experiences of “seeing something in a new light”. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show the relationship between “health” and the “efficacy of colours” on human life. What is the importance of colours in our life? An interesting case, from a biological and philosophical point of view, is the neurologist and psychologist Goldstein’s investigation on colours. The first part of this article deals with his holistic theory of the human organism. The second part has to do with Goldstein and Rosenthal’s study on the effect of colours on (...) the human organism (1930). The final part of this paper analyses the positive or negative impact of certain colours on our psycho-physical health. (shrink)

The terms “destiny” and “fate” are often used interchangeably in common parlance. In the course of history, in its relation to morality and religion, fate has sometimes prevailed over destiny as an irrational law or necessity capable of determining the course of events according to an inscrutable order. Scheler— whose philosophy inspired this contribution on authenticity as a fundamental quality of one’s identity—excludes all possible forms of fatalism. In this regard, he phenomenologically distinguishes “destiny” from “individual destination” or “vocation” (individuelle (...) Bestimmung). On his view, it is only by identifying the first with the second, or rather by identifying a set of personal data, traditions, characters, and environments with the specific task that each of us has been called on to carry out in the moral cosmos, that fatalism can arise—where fatalism is linked to the necessity of the world and the absolute impossibility of carving out spheres of human freedom within it. This paper deals precisely with the link between the phenomenon of authenticity and the concept of a person’s vocation. How can we “be” or “become” our authentic selves if we do not know ourselves? If we do not feel what we really love or prefer? If we never feel the breath of freedom? This paper focuses on the role that otherness, understood as effective exemplarity, plays in the formation and moral growth of essential individuality. I will argue, from a Schelerian perspective, that the discovery of the “true” or “ideal” self and the exercise of freedom—as presuppositions of all authentic behavior—do not exclude but rather require the ability to establish meaningful interpersonal relationships. The aim of this work is to offer an axiological, dynamic-relational and embodied model of authenticity. (shrink)

Max Scheler’s Formalism – and other of his essays on the philosophy of psychology, such as The Idols of Self-Knowledge and Ressentiment – continues to be in dialogue with contemporary philosophers of mind, psychiatrists and neuroscientists. Moving essentially from Formalism and essays from the same period, this paper provides an outline of a genuine Schelerian philosophy of psychopathology, investigating the close connection between “identity” and “freedom”. Not only did Scheler contribute to phenomenological psychology, but he also took an original approach (...) to psychopathology. From this point of view, it is possible to shed further light on his fruitful cooperation with Kurt Schneider and to understand so-called ‘emotional blindness’ from a new perspective. Within this framework, what emerges is the crucial role, in the formation of certain affective disorders, of the modification of pulsions and tendencies. Insofar as it allows for the development of a Schelerian model of delusion and (self)-deception, this approach also has implications for the debate on delusion in the context of contemporary philosophy of psychiatry. (shrink)

This paper deals with a classical issue that remains at the core of the contemporary philosophical debate: the fact that the meaning of life is interlaced—in both negative and positive ways, with respect to morality—with happiness. On some historical conceptions, individual happiness must be sacrificed for the moral (universal, objective) good of a life, where the good fundamentally coincides with the meaning of life. On other approaches, happiness and flourishing (where flourishing is understood in terms of life’s meaningfulness) consist in (...) good action and a good life. On still other views, happiness, while equated with the meaning of life, is reduced to mere pleasure, to a sensorial state that can be influenced by outside forces. In the current literature, the prevailing interpretations of this question are largely deontological, eudaimonic or hedonic in character. Moving from the Schelerian theory of the stratification of the emotional life, and emphasizing the affective side of this broadly ethical question, this paper intends to examine this issue through the lens of phenomenology. From this perspective, the connection between happiness and the meaning not only of life but also of existence can be understood in light of what appears to underlie both phenomena: the entire existence of the individual, which is revealed most clearly in an act of personal love. Since this paper considers the condition humaine in all its complexity, that is to say, even in its fragility and vulnerability, within this framework I will also consider possible abnormal manifestations of happiness. Following Rümke’s clinical observations of pathological frameworks in which the feeling of happiness manifests itself, this paper shows how the deepest feeling of happiness, understood as a Schelerian personality feeling, can remain untouched by pathology. In his classic (but largely unappreciated) enquiry into the happiness syndrome, Rümke engages in a fruitful dialogue with Scheler, whose theory of the stratification of emotional life plays a crucial role in the former’s study of the phenomenology and the clinical aspects of happiness. Not only is Rümke’s Zur Phänomenologie und Klinik des Glücksgefühls an excellent example of applied phenomenology, but it also confirms the results of Scheler’s research on affective life. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between happiness and the meaning of life, where life is meant in terms of both its potentiality and its fragility, as incorporating both health and disease. Fundamentally, the problem at hand is an ethical or axiological one since it concerns the value of life and people’s judgments about the value of their own lives and existence—people who more or less share a world with others and who, consequently, must respect certain universal values. These values can (...) come into conflict with individual values or with individual value preferences. At times, respecting universal values and universal goods seems to demand the sacrifices of one’s own feelings, above all with what one considers one’s own happiness and individual good. The issue of happiness and the meaning of life or existence has received various treatments in the history of philosophy. In the current literature, the prevailing interpretations of this question are largely deontological, eudaimonic or hedonic in character. This paper deals with this problem from a phenomenological perspective, and in particular from a Schelerian one. Within this framework, “good in itself” does not necessarily conflict with “good for someone”. I will argue that happiness and the meaning of life (in the case of the deepest happiness or bliss) are co-originally grounded in an act of love; when an individual achieves it, she reveals herself in her personal unitariness and unicity. Recognizing that life (including the life of the mind) can involve suffering, this essay considers this problem from a psychopathological point of view as well, making use (and revealing the value of) the dialogue between Scheler and the Dutch psychiatrist Henricus Cornelius Rümke. In the first part of this essay, I consider the specific context of interaction between philosophy and psychiatry. I then describe the general traits of the Schelerian vocational ethic, focusing above all on Scheler’s theory of the stratification of emotional life—particularly on his interpretation of bliss—and on his concept of motivational efficay. In this context, I discuss the connection between happiness and the meaning of existence. In the second part of this essay, assuming as a leitmotiv the both Schelerian and psychological concept of a motiv, I concentrate on Rümkean phenomenology, his clinical psychiatric analysis of the feeling of happiness, and his clinical observations on the happiness syndrome within a pathological framework. Rümke’s clinical work presupposes (and at the same time empirically confirms) Scheler’s theory of the stratification of emotional life. Both in normal cases of happiness and in the pathological states observed by Rümke, the deepest feeling of happiness appears in itself as a genuine, non-pathological sentiment. Within this context, I also point out the limits within which it is possible to speak of the meaning of an existence. (shrink)

In this paper, I am generally concerned with certain mental disorders and the doxastic attitudes that sometimes characterize them. According to recent Anglo-American philosophical studies on this topic, the latter involve beliefs that have somehow “gone wrong”: strange or irrational beliefs and cases of “motivated irrationality”. I aim to focus on pathological and deceptive phenomena such as delusion and self-deception. From a phenomenological perspective, these can also be investigated with regard to their experiential content. Adopting this approach, and starting in (...) particular with the eidetic connection between the living body and its own environment, I will examine disorders of the ecological self. Psychiatric delusion, which is at the core of this examination, is a symptom of a great number of mental disorders, such as Capgras disorder, Cotard disorder and schizophrenia. Integrating dominant (propositional) models of delusion which reduce this pathological phenomenon to a certain kind of belief, I propose an eco-phenomenological understanding of its contours. From this perspective, delusion reveals itself primarily as an illusory experience: a delusional value-perception. In particular, I offer a Schelerian-based description of a peculiar case of delusion: Capgras delusion. People who suffer from Capgras delusion claim that an otherwise familiar individual has been replaced by an impostor. I consider, although in its negative variations, the contextual (rather than internalist) character of this type of delusion. (shrink)

The papers collected in this issue address diferent topics at play in the contemporary debate on positive feeling and emotion by virtue of both their primary function in everyday life and their embedded structure. Within this issue, specifc attention has been given to the intertwining of positive feeling and ethical issues according to diferent approaches whose goals consist in providing a description and clarifcation of the phenomena in question. The contributions gathered here give us a clear idea of the variety (...) and possible nuances that defne positive feelings and, with them, of the complexity of our lives and reality. Specifcally, they concretely show the degree to which the quality of an experience depends on the agent-environment relationship, the benefts we can derive from certain positive experiences, and the extent to which the valence of an emotion can affect our moral life. (shrink)

Naïve realism (also called ‘relationalism’ or ‘object view’) is becoming increasingly popular, but the specific outline of its commitments remains often underspecified by proponents and misunderstood by critics. Naïve realism is associated with two claims, both concerning genuine, veridical perceptual experience (where this excludes hallucinations). Constitutive Claim (CC): The phenomenal character of perception is (partly) constituted by the mind-independent objects in one’s surrounding and their properties. Relational Claim (RC): Perception is a relation to mind-independent objects in the environment and their (...) properties. Some philosophers use the two claims interchangeably while talking about naïve realism, while others use only one or the other, although they do not explicitly discuss if the other claim is also a core commitment of naïve realism, or if naïve realism can be held without the other claim. This raises the question of how RC and CC relate to one another, together with the most pressing question of what each claim ultimately commits one to. After discussing the shortcomings of alternative interpretations, I argue that naïve realism should be understood as committed to, first and foremost, RC. This should be understood as a claim about the phenomenal character of perception, rather than about its nature, structure or essence (whatever that means). CC, on the other hand, should be understood as a corollary of RC. This doesn’t only offer a better characterisation of how naïve realists understand phenomenal character: it also helps us understand how we can simultaneously claim that the object of perception is a constitutive element of perception, while also allowing for it to play a causal role in determining perception. (shrink)

Nonostante la pervasività della nozione di servizio e le recenti proposte per una Scienza dei Servizi unificata, esistono ancora parecchie inconsistenze tra le varie definizioni di servizio in uso nelle diverse discipline (e spesso anche all'interno della stessa disciplina). In particolare, a dispetto del fatto che l'obiettivo generale di questa scienza dovrebbe essere di permettere a persone e calcolatori di interagire agevolmente con i servizi nella vita di tutti i giorni, molti approcci alla modellazione dei servizi in informatica (specialmente quelli (...) centrati sui servizi web) sembrano focalizzarsi principalmente sugli aspetti connessi al flusso dati, per cui i servizi sono considerati come scatole nere che trasformano un ingresso in un’uscita, e che interoperano tra loro secondo modalità predefinite. Questo modello a scatola nera ha sicuramente i suoi vantaggi ma, stando a quanto dicono Petrie e Bussler, sembra funzionare bene sono all'interno di contesti omogenei, i cosiddetti parchi di servizi, dove l'interoperabilità è tecnicamente possibile solo perché i contenuti e le modalità di erogazione di ogni servizio sono predefiniti e condivisi da tutti i soggetti coinvolti. (shrink)

In this paper, we support a continuistic reading of Joseph Margolis' philosophy, defending the claim that in the 1970s, Margolis tackled the issues suggested by the analytic philosophy of art from an original theoretical perspective and through conceptual tools exceeding the analytical framework. Later that perspective turned out to be a radically pragmatist one, in which explicitly tolerant realistic claims and non-reductive naturalism converged with radical historicism and contextualism. We will endorse this thesis by focusing on two important concepts appearing (...) in Margolis' aesthetics essays from the late 1950s to the 1970s: the type-token pair and the notion of cultural emergence. On the one hand, we will emphasise Margolis' indebtedness to Peirce's first formulation of the type-token distinction, involving a strong interdependence between the two elements of the pair, as well as an anti-essentialistic, historicised, and contextualised notion of type. On the other hand, we will delve into Margolis' exploration of the concept of emergence and cultural emergence, involving a genuinely pluralistic view of ontology, as well as a non-reductive, continuistic form of naturalism. Finally, we will connect the criticism of the so-called closure of the physical world with Margolis' anti-autonomistic stance in defining artworks. (shrink)

Primary goal of this paper is to show that counterfactual reasoning, as many other kinds of common sense reasoning, can be studied and analyzed through what we can call a cognitive approach, that represents knowledge as structured and partitioned into different domains, everyone of which has a specific theory, but can exchange data and information with some of the others. Along these lines, we are going to show that a kind of ``counterfactual attitude'' is pervasive in a lot of forms (...) of common sense reasoning, as in theories of action, beliefs/intentions ascription, cooperative and antagonistic situations, communication acts. The second purpose of the paper is to give a reading of counterfactual reasoning as a specific kind of contextual reasoning, this latter interpreted according to the theory of MultiContext Systems developed by Fausto Giunchiglia and his group. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate some important trends in contemporary naturalist aesthetics in relation to two decisive issues. Firstly, it is important to explicitly clarify what kind of naturalism is at stake within the debate, more specifically whether an account of the topic involves forms of physical reductionism, emergentism, and/or continuistic views of art and culture with nature. Secondly, we argue that it is necessary to define what conception of art is assumed as paradigmatic: whether this conception deals with basically (...) autonomist approaches to art, assuming aesthetic experience to coincide with the disinterested contemplation of formal features, independently of cognitive, practical, and ethical implications, or whether the arts are considered an enhancement of the features of human expe- rience and developments of other human behaviours. The second part of the paper will investigate some recent developments in current neuroaesthetics and fresh enactivist proposals in the aesthetic field which display a tendency toward a non-reductive naturalism, views of the arts as continuous with other modes of behav- iour and more conscious attitudes about the risks of scientism within scientific in- vestigations. Generally speaking, we espouse an idea of culture as the natural development of human organic experience that involves new emerging properties depending on the re-organization of already existing natural resources and favour continuistic and emergentist views as more suited to dealing with specific prob- lems in the field of the arts and as better responding to the criticism of irrelevancy directed against the latter, compared to reductive naturalist approaches. (shrink)

With this paper I intend to rehabilitate the status of orality as medium of the public use of reason in the normative Kantian sense. As a first step, I reconstruct the reasons why Kant rejects the spoken word and designates the written word as the sole medium of public reasoning. As a second step, I argue for the possibility of employing the spoken word as medium of public reasoning while remaining within the normative framework of Kant’s concept of the public (...) use of reason. (shrink)