Abstract
To get an initial grip of what is and, in particular, what is not at stake in the phenomenology of SE, it is helpful to distinguish four dimensions of the sociality of emotions. As we shall see, the phenomenology of emotions, in the sense in which I will explore Walther ’s account, is primarily, though certainly not exclusively, concerned with the fourth dimension. Roughly, the three first layers or levels in which social relations and facts come into play in the affective life of individuals and groups are i) the interpersonal, ii) the group and intergroup, and iii) the sociological and sociocultural dimensions. Whereas most phenomenologists, and certainly Walther , touch upon the interpersonal and group -level dimensions (especially in terms of empathic understanding (Einfühlung) and analyzing various collective and group phenomena ), the intergroup and sociological and sociocultural levels have been mined extensively by sociologists, as well as cross-cultural and social psychologists. Here is how the social psychologists Parkinson , Fischer and Manstead concisely delineate these dimensions.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
One should also mention, first and foremost, Scheler ’s analysis (1926b) of the different strata of affectivity (especially, emotional contagion and feeling -in-common, or Miteinanderfühlen) corresponding to different social formations (see Szanto 2016a and Zahavi 2018), Husserl ’s analysis of communal spirit (Gemeingeist) (cf. Szanto 2016a), or von Hildebrand ’s account of social emotions (see Salice 2016).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Surely, grief is not necessarily other-directed, in the sense of involving other persons; though arguably non-standard cases, think of grieving for one’s own lost childhood or the loss of some good or value , etc. For an intriguing phenomenological account of grief as a form of social cognitions, see Ratcliffe (2016).
- 5.
For Goldie , the idea is somewhat more precisely that emotional experiences have an intentional, object-directed as well as affective or “feeling ” aspect. The two aspects are intrinsically interlinked. Thus, if I am affectively directed towards an object or person, the object is given as something that already and directly has a certain emotional import; I am “emotionally engaged” with it. To put it differently, affective intentionality picks out certain irreducibly emotionally salient properties of the emotional target. Schmid (2009, 64–77) has also suggested construing shared feelings in terms of Goldie ’s account of affective intentionality (see also Szanto 2015 and Sánchez Guerrero 2016). However, as we shall see, he arrives at different conclusions.
- 6.
For more on the relevant notion of “identifying-with ” in this connection, see León , Szanto, Zahavi 2018.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Schmid (2009, 61) critically and rightly points out that the emotions favored by Gilbert for shared affectivity , in particular collective guilt , presuppose a link to actions (I typically feel guilty for actions I have or have not done) that makes them more amenable to the conceptual tools of Gilbert ’s joint commitment account of collective intentionality and agency , inadequate tools, however, which Gilbert then simply reapplies to collective emotions .
- 10.
Notwithstanding my criticism of Gilbert ’s joint commitment account of SE (see also Szanto 2015), I do think that she makes an important and correct claim when it comes to collective intentionality , agency and beliefs (for detailed criticisms, see however e.g., Schmid 2005, 2014, and Salmela 2014).
- 11.
See also Schmid’s “difference condition” (2009, 79).
- 12.
- 13.
For a much more detailed criticism of Schmid’s and Krueger ’s token-identity view, see León , Szanto , and Zahavi 2018; for a view put forth by Krueger that is much closer to the present account of the different but strongly related issue of (socially) extended emotions, see Krueger and Szanto forthcoming.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
To be sure, Gurwitsch (1931, 173–179) attacks the more general claim that emotions and feelings as such—not only positive ones—are necessary for the constitution of communities (see also Schmalenbach 1922, 54 ff.). But as I try to show this is a criticism that Walther cannot (and should not) accept, at least not when it comes to communities sharing an experiential domain.
- 18.
- 19.
- 20.
For a further possible reply, see Roberts ’ convincing analysis according to which one can indeed have both emotions that one does not feel and emotions that one is unaware of having (2003, 60–69, 318–323).
- 21.
Regarding the normative implications, within the framework of the double aspect account, we may ask at least two sorts of questions: (a) what is appropriate of the individual ’s and the collective’s emotions vis-à-vis the evaluative target and (b) what is appropriate vis-à-vis the sharedness, i.e., in Stein ’s terms, what is “required” of an individual emotion to be part of our match a shared emotion , and what is “required” of a shared emotion to be appropriately shared and adequate to the respective group ? See especially Stein (1922, 117). Though Walther does not dwell much on such normative questions, she does briefly discuss the issue of authentic and inauthentic communal experiences (echte, unechte), namely when individual experiences “in the name of a group ” and the experiences “from the standpoint of the group ” itself come apart (1923, 107–109).
Bibliography
Ahmed, Sara. 2014. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Blomberg, Olle. 2016. Common Knowledge and Reductionism about Shared Agency. In Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94(2), 315–326.
Caminada, Emanuele. 2014. Joining the Background: Habitual Sentiments Behind We-Intentionality. In Anita Konzelmann Ziv and Hand Bernhard Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Contributions to Social Ontology. Dordrecht: Springer, 195–212.
Chelstrom, Eric. 2016. Gurwitsch and the Role of Emotion in Collective Intentionality. In Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran (eds.), The Phenomenology of Sociality. Discovering the ‘We’. London: Routledge, 248–262.
Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
de Rivera, Joseph, and Páez, Darío. 2007. Emotional Climate, Human Security, and Cultures of Peace. In Journal of Social Issues 63(2), 233–253.
Gilbert, Margaret. 1989. On Social Facts. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, Margaret. 2002. Collective Guilt and Collective Guilt Feelings. In The Journal of Ethics 6(2), 115–143.
Gilbert, Margaret. 2009. Shared Intention and Personal Intention. Philosophical Studies 144(1), 167–187.
Gilbert, Margaret. 2014. How we feel: Understanding everyday collective emotion ascription. In Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (eds.), Collective Emotions. Perspectives from Psychology, and Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 17–31.
Goldie, Peter. 2000. The Emotions. A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gurwitsch, Aaron. 1977 [1931]. Die mitmenschlichen Begegnungen in der Milieuwelt. Berlin: de Gruyter. Transl. F. Kersten, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Hatfield, Elaine, Carpenter, Megan, and Rapson, Richard L. 2014. Emotional contagion as a precursor to collective emotions. In Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (eds.), Collective emotions. Perspectives from Psychology, and Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press,108–122.
Hochschild, Arlie. 1979. Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. In American Journal of Sociology 85(3), 551–575.
Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity.
Kolnai, Aurel. 2007. [1936]. Ekel, Hochmut, Haß: Zur Phänomenologie feindlicher Gefühle. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Krebs, Angelika. 2015. Zwischen Ich und Du. Eine dialogische Philosophie der Liebe. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Krueger, Joel. 2014. Varieties of extended emotions. In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13(4), 533–555.
Krueger, Joel. 2016. The Affective ‘We’: Self-regulation and Shared Emotions. In Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran (eds.), The Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’. London: Routledge, 263–277.
León, Felipe, and Zahavi, Dan. 2016. Phenomenology of Experiential Sharing: The Contribution of Schutz and Walther. In Alessandro Salice and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality. Dordrecht: Springer, 219–236.
León, Felipe, Szanto, Thomas and Zahavi, Dan. Forthcoming. Emotional Sharing and the Extended Mind. In Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1351-x.
Litt, Theodor. 1919. Individuum und Gemeinschaft. Grundfragen der sozialen Theorie und Ethik. Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2013. Political Emotions. Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Otaka, Tomoo. 1932. Grundlegungen der Lehre vom sozialen Verband. Wien: Julius Springer.
Parkinson, Brian, Fischer, Agneta H., Manstead, Antony S. R. 2005. Emotion in Social Relations: Cultural, Group, and Interpersonal Processes. New York: Psychology Press.
Pfänder, Alexander. 1913. Zur Psychologie der Gesinnungen (I). Sonderdruck aus Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, Vol. 1, Halle: Max Niemeyer.
Ratcliffe, Mathew. 2016. Relating to the Dead: Social Cognition and the Phenomenology of Grief. In Thomas Szanto, and Dermot Moran (eds.), The Phenomenology of Sociality. Discovering the ‘We’. London: Routledge, 202–215.
Rimé, Bernard. 2009. Emotion Elicits the Social Sharing of Emotion: Theory and Empirical review. In Emotion Review 1(1), 60–85.
Roberts, Robert C. 2003. Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rochat, Philip, and Zahavi Dan. 2015. Empathy ≠ sharing: Perspectives from Phenomenology and Developmental psychology. In Consciousness and Cognition vol. 36, 543–53.
Salice, Alessandro. 2016. Love and other Social Stances. In The Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’. Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran (eds.), London: Routledge.
Salmela, Mikko, and Nagatsu, M. 2016a. How Does it Really Feel to Act Together? Shared Emotions and the Phenomenology of We-agency. In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 16(3), 449–470.
Salmela, Mikko, and Nagatsu, Michiru. 2016b. Collective Emotions and Joint Action. Journal of Social Ontology 2(1), 33–57.
Salmela, Mikko. 2012. Shared emotions. In Philosophical Explorations 15(1), 33–46.
Salmela, Mikko. 2014. The Functions of Collective Emotions in Social Groups. In Anita Konzelmann Ziv and Hand Bernhard Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents. Contributions to Social Ontology. Dordrecht: Springer, 159–176.
Sánchez Guerrero, Héctor A. 2016. Feeling Together and Caring with One Another: A Contribution to the Debate on Collective Affective Intentionality. Dordrecht: Springer.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1991 [1960]. Critique of Dialectical Reason Volume 1: Theory of Practical Ensembles. London: Verso.
Scheler, Max. 1926a [1980]. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Neuer Versuch der Grundlegung eines ethischen Personalismus. Bern: Francke. Engl. Edition: Transl. M. S. Frings, and R. L. Funk, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
Scheler, Max. 1926b [2005]. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Bonn: Bouvier. Engl. Edition: Transl. P. Heath, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schloßberger, Matthias. 2016. The Varieties of Togetherness: Scheler on Collective Affective Intentionality. In Alessandro Salice and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), The Phenomenological Approach to Social Reality. Dordrecht: Springer, 173–195.
Schmalenbach, Hermann. 1922. Die soziologische Kategorie des Bundes. In Dioskuren 1, 35–105.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard. 2009. Plural action. Essays in philosophy and social science. Dordrecht: Springer.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard. 2014. The feeling of being a group. Corporate Emotions and Collective Consciousness. In Christian von Scheve and Mikko Salmela (eds.), Collective Emotions. Perspectives from Psychology, and Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3–16.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard. Forthcoming a. Collective Emotions: Phenomenology, Ontology, and Ideology. What Should We Learn From Max Scheler’s War Propaganda? In Max Scheler Jahrbuch. https://www.academia.edu/17469415/Collective_Emotions_-_Phenomenology_Ontology_and_Ideology [01|08|2016].
Schmid, Hans Bernhard. Forthcoming b. Collective Emotions. In Kirk Ludwig and Marija Jankovic (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality. https://www.academia.edu/17270427/Collective_Emotions [01|08|2016].
Schmid, Hans Bernhard. Forthcoming c. We-Experience—with Walther. In this volume.
Smith, Eliot R., Seger, Charles R., and Mackie, Diane M. 2007. Can emotions be truly group level? Evidence regarding four conceptual criteria. In Journal of personality and social psychology, 93(3), 431–46.
Solomon, Robert C. 1994. About love: Reinventing romance for our times. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Stein, Edith. 2008 [1917]. Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Edith-Stein-Gesamtausgabe vol. 5 [ESGA 5]. Wien: Herder. Engl. Edition: Transl. W. Stein, Washington, D.C.: ICS Publication.
Stein, Edith. 2010 [1922]. Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften. Edith-Stein-Gesamtausgabe vol. 6 [ESGA 6]. Wien: Herder. Engl. Edition: Transl. M. C. Baseheart, and M. Sawicki, Washington, D.C.: ICS Publication.
Sullivan, Gavin. 2015. Collective Emotion. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 9(8), 383–393.
Szanto, Thomas 2012. Bewusstsein, Intentionalität und mentale Repräsentation. Husserl und die analytische Philosophie des Geistes. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Szanto, Thomas. 2014. How to Share a Mind: Reconsidering the Group Mind Thesis. In Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13(1), 99–120.
Szanto, Thomas. 2015. Collective Emotions, Normativity and Empathy: A Steinian Account. In Human Studies 38(4), 503–527.
Szanto, Thomas. 2016a. Husserl on Collective Intentionality. In Alessandro Salice and Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), Social Reality: The Phenomenological Approach. Dordrecht: Springer, 145–172.
Szanto, Thomas. 2016b. Collectivizing Persons and Personifying Collectives: Reassessing Scheler on Group Personhood. In Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran (eds.), The Phenomenology of Sociality. Discovering the ‘We’. London: Routledge, 296–312.
Szanto, Thomas. 2017. Imagining Collectives and Collective Imagination. In Michela Summa, Thomas Fuchs and Luca Vanzago (eds.), Imagination and Social Perspectives: Approaches from Phenomenology and Psychopathology. London: Routledge, 223–245.
Tönnies, Ferdinand. 1991 [1935]. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundbegriffe der reinen Soziologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Vierkandt, Alfred. 1928. Gesellschaftslehre. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke.
von Scheve, Christian, and Ismer, Sven. 2013. Towards a Theory of Collective Emotions. In Emotion Review 5(4), 406–413.
Walther, Gerda. 1923. Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften. In Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung 6, 1–158.
Zahavi, Dan 2015. You, Me and We: The Sharing of Emotional Experiences. In Journal of Consciousness Studies 22(1–2), 84–101.
Zahavi, Dan, and Salice, Alessandro. 2017. Phenomenology of the We: Stein, Walther, Gurwitsch. In Julian Kiverstein (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind. London: Routledge, 515–527.
Zahavi, Dan. 2018. Intersubjectivity, Sociality, Community. In Dan Zahavi (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Szanto, T. (2018). The Phenomenology of Shared Emotions—Reassessing Gerda Walther. In: Luft, S., Hagengruber, R. (eds) Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97861-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97861-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97860-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97861-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)