Beginning with de Sousa's question about how my position is related to that of "enactive" theorists, I spell out my emphasis on the unity of affective experience, and say more about my conception of the emotional "a priori." In response to Beisecker, I elaborate by way of a literary example on how a significant fact can exist without yet having 'registered' in one's emotional awareness, and on the basis of this I reject the claim that emotions constitute significance. Finally, prompted (...) by Gallegos, I elaborate on why, on my view, a valuable thing must have indeterminately many axiological qualities, and explain how a multifaceted world can ground a plurality of emotional standpoints. (shrink)

After reviewing Freud's 1909 case of the Rat Man, the form of the patient's psychological life is analyzed from existential-phenomenological and socio-historical perspectives.The predominant structure of the analysand's individual life is characterized by the image of an incarcerated criminal. Its constituents include power expropriation, devaluation of self, and epistemic disavowal and oblivion that are subject to intermittent overthrow by lightening strikes of disruptively revolting and irresponsible arrogance. This individual existential structure is traced to the collective structure of the panoptical institutions (...) of modern society delineated by Foucault. An examination of anomalous data in Freud's case study, especially in his evening process notes, suggests a different though tentative and faint form of existence that is more proximally the patient's own, one based on authentic care in the sense of Heidegger. Freud's psychoanalytic treatment ingeniously extends and implements the panoptical social order. However, key modifications of modern discipline embodied in psychoanalysis undermine dehumanization and liberate the patient's subjectivity for a life of responsible action. Freud's interpersonal presence in this case shows such humanizing virtues as openness, respect, strength, mercy, trustworthiness, encouragement, and maternal acceptance at the heart of the therapeutic relationship. (shrink)