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On Spatiality of Emotions Cover
By: Hilge Landweer  
Open Access
|Aug 2020

Abstract

The paper argues that all emotions possess a spatial and objective, social character. We can gain access to them only insofar as we are affected by them in a felt-bodily way. Therefore, we need a conception of felt embodiment if we are to achieve a philosophical understanding of the spatial character of emotions. Different phenomena, ranging from the atmospheres of landscapes to shared and individual emotions, illustrate the theses concerning the spatiality of emotions and atmospheres, exemplified by the social contrast of emotions, among other things. The next step clarifies why we should distinguish between the emotion itself and the felt-bodily affection by the emotion. By means of distinctions between two types of felt-bodily or corporeal interaction, a unipolar and a bipolar form, we can gain a better understanding of the spatial character of emotions but also how resonances of emotions work. One result of our examination is that we can explain why positive collective emotions become more intense through shared bodily experience.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2020-0014 | Journal eISSN: 2519-5808 | Journal ISSN: 0170-057X
Language: English, German
Page range: 165 - 180
Published on: Aug 17, 2020
Published by: Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA)
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 3 issues per year

© 2020 Hilge Landweer, published by Society for Gestalt Theory and its Applications (GTA)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.