Philosophy as a Way of Life, Volume: 4
Brill
2023
Hardback
Reviewed by: Emilia Barile (Università di Bologna - Dipartimento delle ARTI)
Used by Plato in the cave myth of Politeia, the term periagoge (from which this book takes its title) corresponds to the moment the prisoner ‘turns’ his neck. In diverting the gaze away from the used world, periagoge signifies a total ‘conversion’ of the freed prisoner to an entirely new perspective on reality. The subtitle, Theory of Singularity and Philosophy as an Exercise of Transformation, clarifies how this happens, and its consequences for the constitution of the human being. In human existence, this ‘turn’ often occurs by means of the experiences of crisis and fall, thanks to which the human singularity assumes its unique form. However, this does not happen in isolation but with others, through practices of emotional sharing, particularly in relationships of care. This second moment becomes explicit thanks to the force of exemplarity.
Based on a first Italian edition[1], the book is almost entirely new, encompassing four main focus areas: 1. The ontology of singularity and its arising in human beings; 2. the constitutive function of emotion and feeling in this process; 3. the key role of philosophy (understood as an exercise of transformation) for the meaning of existence; 4. a final proposal for building up a new axis of social transformation.
A peculiarity of this volume is the constitutive role of images, with the help of which it has been grown: Starting with the iconic prisoner of the Platonic cave, other meaningful images surround Cusinato’s philosophical analysis. The second image is The Wave by the painter Hokusai: The typical curving of the crest of the wave at the center of this image, breaking the equilibrium, represents the process through which the human singularity assumes form in the experience of crisis and fall of one’s own certainties. Furthermore, two different depictions of the Annunciation (Botticelli’s and Titian’s) are shown: The anthropogenic process of formation does not stop after the impact of crisis or fall, but proceeds further. Concerning this second moment – which becomes explicit thanks to the force of exemplarity – relationships of caring for others and practices of emotional sharing are particularly crucial, thus involving the social feature.
The originality of this work mainly consists in rethinking the traditional question of the meaning of human existence, and in particular the conditions that are needed for it to arise, as a task that is closely interwoven with the anthropogenic process of formation.
Over more than 300 pages, Cusinato scrutinizes a number of different topics, as organized in the original structure of the book. Most of them remain pertinent in the contemporary philosophical debate: Self/person distinction, emotion/feeling relationship, social transformation in the era of narcissism and of ‘liquid society’, etc. Nevertheless, the author accepts some terms in a peculiar (and, sometimes, even idiosyncratic) way, so that sometimes it can be difficult to compare his own understanding with other approaches to the same topics (see, for ex., ‘self’, ‘person’, ‘feeling’, etc.). As such, the glossary introducing the volume turns out to be very useful. In the following, I will propose an analysis of some of the most interesting but also controversial terms.
The first of these is ‘person’ or ‘personality’, which is already much disputed. We mainly take ‘person’ for granted, understood as a very intuitively grasped concept: However, as soon as we address it more analytically, it suddenly turns out to be much more difficult to describe. As in Augustinus’s discussion on ‘time’[2], we know what it is only until we are asked for a definition. Beyond the approaches emphasizing the social role as an interchangeable ‘mask’[3], we usually consider personal ‘identity’ – understood as having moral as well as legal responsibility – as also exemplifying the definition of ‘self’ or consciousness.
Nevertheless, in order to indicate this concept of the ‘person’ that is acknowledged «as the self-referential subject that says ‘I’» (p. 3), Cusinato links it to what he calls the «little self»[4] (also identifying the dominant culture of narcissism as based on the very lack of distinction between ‘person’ and the ‘little self’). More precisely, personal «singularity» (as he defines it, rather than personal ‘identity’) is understood as the «result of a process of transcending one’s own little self» (p. 4). Under the impact of a crisis, the past horizons of the ‘little self’ turn out to be unable to give a form to her own new existence: So, she searches for further growth in the encounter with the other. Nevertheless, this ‘self-transcendence’ – which is intended as an immanent process, as part of the world – is a transcendence of the ‘little self’, and should not be confused with the existence of an otherworldly dimension (p. 6).
This definition, however, sounds somewhat puzzling for the reader used to the still ongoing debate about ‘self’ and ‘I’. First, in order to discriminate amongst the different levels at which we can deal with ‘subjectivity’, however understood, some approaches prefer to adopt the impersonal term ‘self’ rather than the personal ‘I’. Additionally, in the time sequence of biological evolution, personal identity is neither the principal nor the first organizational level, either phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Neurobiologically, this level corresponds to the so-called «autobiographical self»[5]: Its functioning requires a capacity for memory, for projecting into the future and into the past, starting from the present, within a social and linguistic context. Biologically understood, the autobiographical self can thus be identified with the reflective self that says ‘I’: This level is typically human and requires a language and the exercise of memory in order to be remembered. It is also the only level so far able to ‘witness’ the neural processes themselves, since it is endowed with self-reference, the ability to think about itself thematically. At a complexity level immediately below sits the so-called «core consciousness», or «core self», the preverbal core: Its neural basis is in the subcortical nuclei of the thalamus, and it is neurally configured as a transient coherent construction of a pattern, formed following the onset of any relationship between the body and an object/event of the world[6]. The so-called «proto-self», meanwhile, is the structure at the deepest level of stratification, at the base of all subsequent constructions. Forerunner of all the higher organizational layers of complexity, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, «the proto-self is the steppingstone required for the construction of the core self. It is an integrated collection of separate neural patterns mapping, moment by moment, the most stable aspects of the organism’s physical structure»[7]. Much deeper — in the footsteps of the researches of the last 25 years, collected by Tsakiris and De Preester[8] — the physiological underpinnings of subjectivity can be recognized at the physiological level of the interoception proper, as distinguished from proprioception[9], into which it is usually assimilated.
On the other hand, philosophy (mainly phenomenology) also seems to accept this ‘nesting principle’ structuring the different layers of ‘self’. Several phenomenologists nowadays understand subjectivity as based on ‘bodily self’ as its core dimension, and, eventually, on the «minimal self» hypothesis[10]. The perception of the body involved is the qualitatively distinctive experience of the body from inside, the ‘lived’ body [Leib] or the body-subject[11]. In between phenomenology and psychiatry, Fuchs has recently offered a detailed definition and taxonomy of self-experience as relevant for therapy of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression or borderline personality disorder (BDP). In James’s footsteps, Fuchs acknowledges ‘self’ as a «process» rather than a «mere construct or model concept»[12]. In opposition to Metzinger[13], he maintains that «selfhood is not a construct, but our fundamental reality»[14], whose disruption has pathological effects. Even if recognizing that we have still no shared definition of ‘self’ and that it is a difficult concept to grasp, he defines it, very broadly, as «a pole of experience contained in every experience, which centers the field of consciousness on a subject and establishes the unity of experience over time»[15]. The term ‘ego’ or ‘I’, which is traditionally used, thus has to be replaced by the narrower, lower and grounding dimension of ‘self’, that is bodily, unconscious and earlier developed in childhood. «The ego could therefore also be described as ‘the reflective self’»[16].
Following Gallagher’s ‘pattern theory’[17], Fuchs acknowledges ‘self’ as a ‘pattern concept’, grasping a multidimensional process developing at several levels in different periods of life. In a nutshell, Fuchs’s model recognizes two main levels of self-experience, i.e., the so-called «basal self» (basal, vital bodily, affective, social self, also acknowledged by Damasio[18], Gallagher[19], Zahavi[20], Rochat[21]) — which is primary, pre-reflective and always present at further levels – and the so-called «extended self», which is reflexive, narrative, existential and personal proper. These two main layers can be further distinguished in other sublayers: The basal self comprises the physical self, the ecological self, the primary social self; on its side, the extended, personal self includes the reflective self, the narrative self, the existential self[22]. When pathologically affected, different layers of self imply different therapeutic approaches as more appropriate. That’s why a working definition of ‘self’ is not only a sophisticated theoretical need, but, much more, a strong clinical urge.
Having said that, however, it is quite difficult to identify which of these understandings of ‘self’ or ‘person’ are shared by Cusinato in his book. Up to now the «little self» he deals with seems to be identified neither to any ‘minimal self’ nor to the personal self-referential subject sic et simpliciter. Going beyond the so-called myth of personal identity (marked by ‘continuity’, howsoever understood), the author makes his proposal compatible with a radical Humean perspective. He rather interprets «singularity» as self-transcendence and incompleteness of the starting condition of the so-called ‘little self’. Even if associating it with the personal level, which is understood «as the self-referential subject that says ‘I’» (p. 3), I would say that the author idiosyncratically uses the term (little) ‘self’, which is instead mainly adopted as an impersonal item in literature.
Cusinato further deepens the difference between the concept of individuality and identity and the peculiar singularity of human existence. This singularity listens to the voice of the daimonion of its own individual vocation, independent of biological and environmental factors. His definition is thus intended to leave behind the immunitarian, self-referential and the substantial and confessional conceptions of person. Reborn in the space offered by an exemplarity, once her own ‘little self’ has been transcended in taking care of the other, she herself becomes a space to be offered for the growth of the other. Distancing himself once again from the usual meaning of words, the author understands ‘exemplarity’ as the providing of a concrete testimony to the successfulness of an expressive pathway of self-transcendence and detachment from the ‘little self’ (an exemplarity can be a teacher like Socrates, a testimony to the successfulness of an act of self-transcendence out of the ‘little self’). Since the personal singularity assumes form in detachment from the ‘little self’, it is a ‘non-self’, in the literal sense of the term. To be more precise, it is a «personal non-self» (p. 46). The process of transformation [Umbildung] Cusinato describes is intended as a «transformation», understood as a discontinuous and irreversible process thanks to which an organic, social, or personal system creates a new equilibrium, giving a form to a being that is born without existential form. Anthropogenesis is thus understood as the process of formation that characterizes human beings, through practices of emotional sharing.
Connected to personal ‘singularity’ is the constitutive emotional aspect, which is another key insight of the book. ‘Self’, ‘person’, ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’ turn out to be closely intertwined: Along with the recognition of the fundamental role of affectivity, Cusinato outlines the importance of emotional sharing practices, particularly care and desire, in the process of anthropogenesis described. Amongst affective states, feeling is particularly significant: However, this term too is adopted in a very peculiar sense. Especially (but not only) in psychology, ‘feeling’ is mainly understood as the subjective component of emotions (emotion as it is ‘felt’), as distinct from the so-called ‘public’ dimension of emotion, i.e., posture, mime, facial expressions and behaviour. Although functionalist approaches à la Frijda[23], for ex., recognize ‘feeling’ as a mere epiphenomenon, the private dimension of an emotion can hardly be eliminated in the analysis as easily as the author suggests.
Cusinato understands ‘feeling’ not as referring to a subjective activity that remains confined to the psychological or mental level, but, more broadly, to «the ability of a living being to interact with the expressive level in such a way as to remain connected with the life of the biosphere» (p. 8). Along an enactive view[24], living and feeling imply each other: A similar perspective is also supported by Fuchs, outlining the very continuity – i. e., not identity (in Lewis’s[25] understanding) – between the organic ground of life [Leben] and the phenomenal level of experience [Erleben], as not just etymologically grounded. In his view, this continuity lies in the very double-faced description of the body as Körper and as Leib[26]. Furthermore, the most recent enactivist approaches, focussing on the affective dimension[27], endorse an integrated approach to the organic ground of ‘aliveness’ and the phenomenal level of ‘experience’ right from the start[28]. The reason for these multiple views lies in the fact that feeling too is a poorly defined concept: Yet despite this, psychologists, neurobiologists, philosophers etc. make broad use of it, in the most widely varying ways. As a result, they often use the same term to refer to very different phenomena. That’s also why the glossary proposed by Cusinato at the very beginning of the book turns out to be very useful, as well as stating explicitly in which sense the term is understood in the context analysed.
In my view, if we wish to work out a shared definition of ‘feeling’, we must not consider ‘feeling’ as related to emotions only. Emotion, in fact, is just one of the possible ‘felt’ states: Probably, not even the most interesting one. ‘Feelings’ are connected not only to emotions, but also needs[29], motivations, desires, etc.: All of these states include a hedonic component (at different levels of complexity) and feedback from the perception of the overall condition of the body. Moreover, the debate[30] on the definition and the classification of emotions seems to have arrived at a theoretical impasse: There are still no unified and shared taxonomies of emotions[31]. We go around in circles: Defining an emotion in a specific way implies a certain kind of classification following, and vice versa. In summary, the different theoretical views can be grouped as: Neuroscientific approaches[32], emphasizing the role of the physiological reactions (in the footsteps of the James-Lange theory[33]), and logocentric views[34], underlying the role of the cognitive evaluation (considered as primitive and antecedent to the physiological reactions). However, the emotion/cognition relationship is much more blurred than it is simplistically supposed to be: Even the most orthodox cognitivist views nowadays have to admit that emotions cannot be just ‘ignored’ or reduced to cognitive states.
Considering ‘feeling’ as mainly associated with ‘emotion’ probably derives from a typical overlapping in the English language, which often employs the terms ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ as synonyms. In contrast, the Romance languages distinguish these terms in a more refined way: The Italian language, for example, differentiates the term ‘emotion’ [emozione] from ‘feeling’ [sentire, provare] and from ‘sentiment’ [sentimento]. Cusinato acknowledges this, underlining the same distinction made in the Italian language between feeling as a noun [sentiment] and feeling as a verb [sentire]. He also proposes adopting the nominalized infinitive ‘il sentire’ in translating ‘feeling’ as that state «through which a living being remains connected to the biosphere, to emotions» (p. 8). Nevertheless, as I have suggested elsewhere[35], we can understand ‘feeling’ as distinguished not only from ‘emotion’, but also from ‘sentiment’: The last is defined as a mental state proper, always aware, following an emotion, or, more precisely, a combination of emotions. A complex sentiment like ‘friendship’, for example, is not simply a consciously perceived emotion: It is a long-term state, involving a set of emotions[36]. That’s why I share Cusinato’s preference for the Italian translation of ‘sentire’ instead of ‘sentimento’ and I also accept the term ‘feeling’ to refer to the entire set of states that can be ‘felt’ (like emotions, but also ‘needs’, ‘drives’, ‘motives’ etc.).
Amongst the different layers of feelings, the author focuses in particular on a specific kind of feeling, i.e., the so-called ‘primordial feelings’. Cusinato writes: «(…) There are different levels of feeling: from primordial feeling, through which a living being remains connected to the biosphere, to emotions, which represent feeling that orients the movement of an animal organism endowed with a body schema, a social self, or a personal singularity» (p. 8). At the biosemiotic[37] level, he recognizes at least three ramifications of primordial feelings: The feeling of the living body, the feeling of the social self and the feeling of the personal singularity (p. 156). However, ‘primordial feeling’ is not a notion that can be taken for granted either: It is not at all a shared object in our conceptual armoire.
Amongst other scholars, particularly Damasio (and also Colombetti[38]) recognizes ‘primordial feelings’ in the taxonomies of affective states: Examples of these basic feelings are the feeling of ‘existence’, the feeling ‘of the body’ or the feeling ‘of life’, the feeling of ‘being alive’[39]. Over recent decades, Damasio’s conceptualizations have become very popular in the affective sciences community, including outside neuroscience. Philosophers such as Ratcliffe[40], Slaby and Stephan[41], Varga and Krueger[42], psychologists such as Stern[43] and also psychiatrists such as Fuchs[44] acknowledge his organic portrayal of feelings as the neurophysiological counterpart of their philosophical/psychological concepts. However, in my view Damasio’s conceptualizations have been often misinterpreted[45], especially in the equation of the affective layer of ‘primordial feelings’ and the previously recognized layer of «background feelings»[46], to which these scholars usually refer. Even if the relationship between background feelings and primordial feelings is intimate[47], these concepts cannot be simply equated. Background feelings – such as a (felt) ‘tension’ or a (felt) ‘edginess’ – are discrete feelings (i.e., different kinds of feelings, such as «edginess», «wellness», «malaise», etc.[48]), while «the feeling of being alive» or the «feeling of existence», classed among the so-called ‘primordial’ feelings, concern the overall feelings of the body[49]. Primordial feelings provide the overall ‘sense of the body’: They originate from a number of different sources, such as interoceptive and proprioceptive maps of the body as a whole.
Damasio recognizes that, in essence, his definition of ‘primordial feeling’ can be traced back to Panksepp, in particular to his notion of «early feelings»[50]: Both feelings share the characteristic of preceding any interaction with the world, or any feeling arising from the emotions. Nevertheless, there are also some differences: Panksepp relates the primary consciousness emerging from primordial feelings mainly to motor activities in structures of the brain stem, while Damasio emphasizes the role of sensory structures[51]. Moreover, concerning interaction with the world, Damasio is somewhat incoherent: He underlines that Panksepp’s views differs in that ‘early feeling’ appears to be necessarily related to external events in the world[52], while for Damasio, in theory, primordial feelings occur «regardless of whether the protoself is engaged by objects and events external to the brain. They need to be related to the living body and nothing else»[53]. Later on, in the same book, he maintains that «Panksepp also gives emphasis to the notion of early feelings, without which the process of consciousness cannot proceed. The detailed mechanism is not the same, but I believe the essence of the idea is. More often than not, treatments of feeling assume that they arise from interactions with the world […] or as a result of emotions. But primordial feelings precede those situations, and presumably Panksepp’s early feelings do too»[54].
This point is also controversial in Cusinato’s understanding of primordial feelings as the feelings «through which a living being remains connected to the biosphere» (p. 8), thus revealing an intrinsic relationship to the world that is in line with other phenomenological views (cfr. Ratcliffe’s «feeling of being» — i.e., the feeling of being-in-the-world[55]). Moreover, he defines ‘primordial feeling’ enactively, recognizing it in every living being: «Sunflowers feel light at the level of primordial feeling and so follow the movement of the sun. This is a process of expressive positioning» (p. 129).
In contrast, Damasio’s primordial ‘feeling of life’ (understood as the feeling ‘of the body’) turns out to be a feeling ‘of the body’ from ‘inside’[56], so to speak, and not the feeling of the body as ‘being-in-the-world’. This does not mean that the body is not in the world: It cannot exist in isolation, of course. In my view, Damasio’s view does not presuppose a different ontology: He just focusses on the body rather than the intentional relationship with the world, as in standard intentional feelings, from which the primordial feelings such as the feeling of being alive differs[57]. According to him, the ‘feeling of being alive’ (and the other primordial feelings to which it belongs) is independent of any connection to any object in the world. This, I believe, is explicitly clarified in the following: «There is some deeper feeling to be guessed and then found in the depths of the conscious mind. It is the feeling that my own body exists, and it is present, independently of any object with which it interacts, as a rock-solid, wordless affirmation that I am alive»[58]. Damasio’s primordial feelings entail a relationship to the body, as a whole[59], and not a relationship to the world, as a whole[60] – even if the body is in the world anyway, and does not exist in isolation. Moreover, concerning the questionable intentionality[61] of the feeling of being alive described as ‘the feeling of the body’ as a whole, some further explanations need to be added.
First, regarding the ‘independence’ of any connection to any object in the world[62]: Even if the interrelation provided cannot be a kind of standard intentional relationship from the body to the world, in my view there has to be something like a body-world interrelation that is not intentional. Otherwise, the question of how the body might be able to experience itself as a whole[63], without any contact with the world as a kind of ‘other’ or border of the organism, seems hard to explain[64].
Second: To be ‘objectless’ (that is, the main feature of ‘background’ states as background feelings, as well as primordial feelings) does not mean not being-in-the-world. In my view, it is rather a matter of ‘focus’. Damasio underlines that, while standard emotional-feelings focus on the specific/aspecific object of emotions rather than on the body, background feelings (such as «tension» or «surging») or the primordial feeling of being alive, for instance, reveal an intrinsic relationship to our own body as a whole – so, coming into the foreground. In contrast, in feelings connected to emotions or other more cognitively structured states, the body always stands ‘in the background´, unattended.
In contrast to this view, and adhering to Scheler’s Gefühlsdrang[65], Cusinato defines ‘primordial feelings’ as «the most elementary way in which the organism interacts with the expressive level thanks to the laws of biosemiotics» (p. 113, my emphasis [NoA]).
In sum: The first part of Cusinato’s book offers a new ontology of personal singularity as a result of the anthropogenic process. Seeking to separate the problem of ‘singularity’ from that of personal ‘identity’ (marked by continuity, howsoever understood), the author goes beyond the ‘myth’ of personal identity and interprets singularity as self-transcendence and incompleteness of the starting condition of the so-called ‘little self’. This process of antrophogenesis comprises practices of emotional sharing (particularly, care and desire): The book thus highlights the interconnection between the antrophogenic process and the affective dimension (emotions, feelings, and the ‘phatic’). Cusinato supports the hypothesis that emotions and especially feelings (and their particular order) guide the expressive process by which our existence assumes form in the world through society, culture, and language.
The second part of the book assumes philosophy as an exercise of transformation. This periagogic turn is conceived as the starting point for the arising of personal singularity. The periagogic conversion – changing the order of priorities and allowing an entirely new perspective on reality, beyond common sense and common feeling – coincides with a philosophy understood as an exercise of transformation. However, there is a difference between the transformation concerning the ‘little self’ or the singularity. In the case of the ‘little self’, the transformation implies a process of pain and suffering: The earthquake fault is experienced only as crisis, severance, separation. In contrast, for the singularity, transformation can additionally involve very intense positive emotions, since it does not necessarily coincide with suffering or pain, but it also includes a kind of ‘rebirth’. The cultivation of emotions as desire represents a way of transformation of human beings that is primarily based on the plasticity of feeling.
In this process, philosophy plays a key role. Since human existence has no pre-stated meaning, but only possibilities of meaning, human beings need to do philosophy: They lack a pre-determined existential form. Since this process is connected to emotions and feelings as its drivers, identifying the most effective techniques for promoting a maturation of all affective layers should be placed today at the center of philosophy. Once reawakened, the new order of feelings themselves will produce orientation and a horizon of meaning, thanks to practices of emotional sharing and the force of exemplarity.
This is significant not just at an individual level, but also at a social level: The last section of the book is devoted to this aspect. Starting from an analysis of the failure of social transformation in the era of narcissism, Cusinato ultimately proposes a new axis of social transformation, based on a reorientation of emotions in the public sphere.
[1] Guido Cusinato, Periagoge. Teoria della singolarità e filosofia come cura del desiderio (Verona: QuiEdit snc di Fill & C., 2014).
[2] Augustinus, Confessiones [400].
[3] Carl G. Jung, “Two Essays on Analytical Psychology”, in The collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. VII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 264.
[4] My emphasis [NoA].
[5] Antonio R. Damasio, Self Comes to Mind. Constructing the Conscious Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010).
[6] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 22 – 23.
[7] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 190.
[8] Manos Tsakiris & Helena De Presteer, The Interoceptive Mind. From homeostasis to awareness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
[9] Charles S. Sherrington, “On the proprioceptive system, especially in its reflex aspect”, Brain 29, 4 (1907): 467-482.
[10] Dan Zahavi, Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective (Boston: MIT Press, 2005).
[11] Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie II: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Nijhoff: Den Haag, 1952); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la Perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945).
[12] Thiemo Breyer and Thomas Fuchs, eds., Selbst und Selbststörungen (Freiburg: Alber, 2020), 34.
[13] Thomas Metzinger, “Precis: Being No-One”, PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 11 (2005): 1—30.
[14] Breyer and Fuchs, eds., Selbst und Selbststörungen, 34.
[15] Breyer and Fuchs, eds., Selbst und Selbststörungen, 31.
[16] Breyer and Fuchs, eds., Selbst und Selbststörungen, 33.
[17] Shaun Gallagher, “A Pattern Theory of Self”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013). DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00443.
[18] Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness (Harvest edition, 1999).
[19] Shaun Gallagher, “Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4, 1 (2000): 14 – 21.
[20] Dan Zahavi, Self-awareness and alterity: A phenomenological investigation (Northwestern University Press, 1999).
[21] Paul Rochat, “The emergence of self-awareness as co-awareness in early child development”, in The Structure and Development of Self-Consciousness, Zahavi, Parnas, Gruenbaum, eds. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004).
[22] Breyer and Fuchs, eds., Selbst und Selbststörungen.
[23] Nico H. Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
[24] Francisco J. Varela, “Organism: A meshwork of selfless selves”, in Organism and the Origin of Self, ed. A. Tauber (Kluwer, 1991): 77–107.
[25] David K. Lewis, “An Argument for the Identity Theory”, The Journal of Philosophy 63, 1 (1966): 17-25.
[26] Thomas Fuchs, “The feeling of being alive”, in Feelings of Being Alive, eds. Marienberg & Fingerhut (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012): 149.
[27] Durt, Fuchs, Tewes, eds., Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture: Investigating the Constitution of the shared World (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2017); Giovanna Colombetti, The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind (Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2014).
[28] Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind (Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2007).
[29] Cristiano Castelfranchi, “Affective Appraisal versus Cognitive Evaluation in Social Emotions and Interactions”, Affective Interactions. IWAI 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ed. A. Paiva (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2000), vol. 1814. https://doi.org/10.1007/10720296_7.
[30] Anthony Hatzimoysis, ed., Philosophy and the Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
[31] Julien Deonna & Fabrice Teroni, The Emotions: A philosophical introduction (London: Routledge, 2012). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203721742.
[32] Jaak Panksepp. Affective Neuroscience: The foundation of human and animal emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Jacques E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life (Simon and Schuster, 1998); Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error. Emotion, reason and the human brain (New York: Quill, 1994).
[33] William James, “What Is an Emotion?”, Mind 9 (1884): 188-205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-IX.34.188; Carl G. Lange, The Emotions (Baltimora: William & Wilkins, 1885).
[34] Nico H. Frijda & Jaap Swagerman. “Can computers feel? Theory and design of an emotional system”. Cognition and Emotion 1, 3 (1987): 235-257; Ortony, Clore, and Collins, The Cognitive Structure of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The intelligence of emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
[35] Emilia Barile, Minding Damasio (Roma: Ledizioni, 2016).
[36] Barile, ‘Dare corpo alla mente’. La relazione mente/corpo alla luce delle emozioni e dell’esperienza del ‘sentire’ (Milano: B. Mondadori, 2007).
[37] Guido Cusinato, Biosemiotica e psicopatologia dell’«ordo amoris». In dialogo con Max Scheler (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2019).
[38] Colombetti, The Feeling Body.
[39] «I now introduce this fundamental feeling as a critical element of the ‘self’ process, which I had not deemed necessary to note in earlier approaches to this problem. I call it primordial feeling, and I note that it has a definite quality, a valence, somewhere along the pleasure-to-pain range. It is the primitive behind all feelings of emotion and therefore is the basis of all feelings caused by interactions between objects and organism» (Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 185).
[40] Matthew Ratcliffe, Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, psychiatry and the sense of reality (Oxford: Oxford University, 2008); Ratcliffe, “The phenomenology of existential feeling”, in Feelings of Being Alive, eds. S. Marienberg & J. Fingerhut (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012): 23–54.
[41] Jan Slaby & Achim Stephan, “Affective intentionality and self-consciousness”, Consciousness and Cognition 17 (2008): 506–513.
[42] Somogy Varga & Joel Krueger, “Background Emotions, Proximity and Distributed Emotion Regulation”, Rev. Phil. Psych. 4, (2013): 271-292.
[43] Daniel N. Stern, Forms of vitality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[44] Fuchs, “The feeling of being alive”.
[45] Barile, “Are Background Feelings Intentional Feelings?”, Open Journal of Philosophy 4 (2014): 560-574.
[46] Antonio R. Damasio. Looking for Spinoza. Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain (Harcourt, 2003); Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens.
[47] «Prominent background feelings include: fatigue; energy; excitement; wellness; sickness; tension; relaxation; surging; dragging; stability; balance; imbalance; harmony; discord. The relation between background feelings and moods is intimate: drives express themselves directly in background emotions and we eventually become aware of their existence by means of background feelings» (Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 125).
[48] Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, 286.
[49] «There is some deeper feeling to be guessed and then found in the depths of the conscious mind. It is the feeling that my own body exists, and it is present, independently of any object with which it interacts, as a rock-solid, wordless affirmation that I am alive» (Damasio Self Comes to Mind, 22, 185) .
[50] Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience.
[51] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, ch. 1, note 17 (my emphases [NoA]).
[52] Barile, “The Interoceptive Underpinnings of the Feeling of Being Alive. Damasio’s insights at work”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09900-7.
[53] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, ch. 1, note 17 (my emphases [NoA]).
[54] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, ch. 8, note 3 (my emphases [NoA]).
[55] Matthew Ratcliffe, “The Feeling of Being”, Journal of Consciousness Studies 12 (2005): 52.
[56] «Primordial feelings [to which the feeling of being alive belongs] result from nothing but the living body and precede any interaction between the machinery of life regulation and any object» (Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 101; my emphases [NoA]).
[57] Barile, “The Interoceptive Underpinnings of the Feeling of Being Alive. Damasio’s insights at work”.
[58] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 185 (my emphases [NoA]).
[59] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 76.
[60] Ratcliffe, “The Feeling of Being”, 52.
[61] In my view Damasio’s formulation of the deepest level of primordial feelings (2010) definitely endorses a non–intentional account of this kind of non-emotional feelings, at least in the standard meaning of intentionality. Following his latest analysis, both according to the meaning of «aboutness» and the meaning of «directedness» (in Goldie’s (2002) understanding), Damasio’s background feelings – and above all the primordial feelings on which they are based – turn out to be not intentional (see Barile, 2014).
[62] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 185.
[63] Damasio, Self Comes to Mind, 76.
[64] Barile, “The Interoceptive Underpinnings of the Feeling of Being Alive. Damasio’s insights at work”.
[65] «I have developed this concept while thinking of the one proposed by Scheler in 1926 by means of the term “primordial impulse of feeling” (Gefühlsdrang). Cf. GW VIII, 336; in GW VIII, 443, he also speaks of “exstatische[m] Gefühlsdrang”» (Cusinato, Periagoge, 113, note 6).
