Abstract
This episode is part four of six of the lecture series [HTA 14] on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939].
Primary Source
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions. Translated by Philip Mairet with foreword by Sebastian Gardner. New York: Routledge Great Minds, 2014.
Guiding Questions
Introduction
- Why is phenomenology better suited than psychology to offer a complete account of human-reality, the world as synthetic totality, and self-conscious subjectivity (i.e., consciousness)?
I. The Classical Theories
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What is the finality of emotion?
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Why are James’s peripheric theory and Janet’s intellectualist theory of emotion similarly inadequate solutions to the mind-body problem, for the same reason?
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What is Sartre’s alternative, which is an adaptation of Janet’s theory?
II. The Psychoanalytic Theory
- Why is the psychoanalytic theory of emotion as an unconscious resolution of drives, urges, impulses, or tensions still inadequate?
III. Outline of a Phenomenological Theory; Conclusion
- How does emotion as a transformation of the world imply and provide evidence for the reality of the magical world, i.e., for the world as fundamentally magical?