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Embodied Emotions: A Naturalist Approach to a Normative Phenomenon
// Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews //
Rebekka Hufendiek, Embodied Emotions: A Naturalist Approach to a Normative Phenomenon, Routledge, 2016, 189pp., $143.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781138100251.
Reviewed by Erik Myin, University of Antwerp
What is an emotion? Contemporary philosophical treatments of that question (almost) all basically agree that emotions are intentional, world-relating and evaluative. Many theorists further concur with Richard Lazarus' proposal of what emotions are intentionally related to, namely "core relational themes" (or CRTs, see Lazarus 1991). CRTs should be understood as different ways in which aspects of situations relate to the well-being of organisms -- for example, an organism's fear relates to the CRT that something in a situation can have harmful consequences for the organism. Philosophers who agree on the intentional and evaluative nature of emotions have nevertheless diverged widely in their further thinking about what emotions are. On one side of the spectrum stand those allied with cognitivism. Cognitivists tend to emphasize the...
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