Abstract

In contrast to current opinion which locates mental states including moods and emotions within our head, phenomenology regards affects as encompassing phenomena that connect body, self, and world. Based on the phenomenological approach, the chapter gives a detailed account of: the feeling of being alive or vitality, existential feelings, affective atmospheres, moods, and emotions, emphasizing the embodied as well as intersubjective dimensions of affectivity. Thus, emotions are regarded as resulting from the circular interaction between affective affordances in the environment and the subject's bodily resonance, be it in the form of sensations, postures, gestures, or movement tendencies. A special section deals with the phenomena of interaffectivity, understood as the mutual empathic coupling of two embodied subjects. Psychopathological examples complete the phenomenological account of affectivity.