The Paradox of Axiological Coldness: An Original Husserlian Solution

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of our experiences of values – our valueceptions. In the recent literature, two main standpoints have emerged. On the one hand, the ‘Meinongian’ side claims that axiological properties are experienced exclusively in emotions. On the other hand, the ‘Hildebrandian’ side contends that since valueceptions can be ‘cold’, they are not accomplished in emotions but rather reside in ‘value-feelings’ – emotions, in this framework, being conceived of as reactions to the values thus revealed. The aim of the paper is to argue that the Husserlian phenomenology of affectivity, especially as it is developed during his Göttingen period, can help to overcome these two accounts. I start by pointing out that, contrary to what most scholars have assumed so far, Husserl’s theory of valueception is not tantamount to Meinong’s, as it is very sensitive to ‘Hildebrandian’ arguments (Part 2). The core of the paper is then devoted to a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s solution to this controversy. Drawing on the analogy between thing-perceptions and value-perceptions (Part 3), I show, first, that ‘cold’ valueceptions are to be identified with empty apprehensions (Auffassungen) of value, in which an emotion is not actually experienced but is anticipated in such-and-such kinaesthetic circumstances (Part 4); second, that the realization of this anticipation amounts to the fulfillment of the valueception (Part 5). As a result, Husserl acknowledges the relevance of ‘value-feelings’, yet his account appears more satisfactory than traditional ‘Hildebrandian’ theories in that it demystifies these ‘value-feelings’ by reducing them to potential emotions.

1 Introduction. The Paradox of Axiological Coldness

As Husserl recognizes as early as Ideas I (1976, 58), values (or axiological properties¹) are not subsequently ‘added’ to an exclusively factual world, but pertain, phenomenologically speaking, to the things themselves: it is the person that I cross in the street who is beautiful, it is the political system that is unfair, etc. In other terms, our environment is originarily imbued with values.

In what follows, I aim at taking this fundamental state of affairs seriously. I will thus assume such an ‘axiological realism’ and will be interested exclusively in the ‘epistemological’ side of the problem: how can values appear as worldly entities?

A first way² of dealing with this question would be, following Alexius Meinong³, to account for our experiences of values – our valueceptions – in terms of emotions. This ‘emotionalist’ standpoint argues that only emotional experiences give us access to what is significant for us. For instance, while our intellectual capacities enable us to determine all the legal and empirical details of a law that discriminates against a minority, it is only through indignation that we experience the injustice of this measure. Conversely, without emotion, our world would be deprived of axiological texture or “meaningfulness” (Fuchs 2022).

This ‘emotionalist’ claim, however, faces important challenges (Deonna & Teroni 2012, 66–75; Müller 2019, 58–63; Vendrell Ferran 2022, 75–76). In particular, it has been argued – following Max Scheler (1916, 263) – that the type of intentionality at play in emotions diverges from that of knowledge: while we say that we are indignant ‘in light of’ an injustice, we would not assert that we have a perception ‘in light of’ the perceived object (Müller 2022, 5). In this perspective, the manifestation of the value is not itself the emotion, but the reason for the emotion, while the latter is, in turn, a reaction motivated by such a manifestation⁴.

Yet, another, more straightforward way to establish this distinction between valueception and emotion – and thus to rule out the ‘emotionalist’ standpoint – is to emphasize the phenomenon of axiological coldness, that is, the possibility of being aware of a certain value without experiencing any emotion. For example, I notice a novel on my bookshelf that I read some time ago. As I do so, it immediately appears to me as dull and uninteresting. Yet, such a valuing does not require me to be currently bored. I thus have a presentation of a value that is not based on an emotion.

This ‘axiological coldness’, in addition to its common character, is also evidenced by psychopathological considerations, in particular by Damasio’s studies of patients suffering from frontal damage (such as Phineas Gage). When confronted with shocking pictures (e.g., homicides), these patients apprehend the negative value of the scenes, but they do not react emotionally (Damasio 1994, 211). To prove this fact, Damasio measured the subjects’ skin conductance (Damasio 1994, 207): an emotional response, even a weak one, causes perspiration, which reduces the resistance to electricity, the latter being determined very precisely with electrodes. Using this technique, Damasio shows that “the patients with frontal lobe damage failed to generate any skin conductance responses whatsoever. Their recordings were flat” (1994, 209). This experiment reveals that the phenomenon of axiological coldness must be endorsed in a radical sense: the coldness in question does not refer to ‘calm’ passions – to take up Hume’s expression (1960, 417) – but to a total absence of any current emotional experience.

Historically, the significance of the phenomenon of axiological coldness was first acknowledged by the members of the so-called ‘Göttingen Circle’, especially by Reinach, Scheler, and von Hildebrand (Reinach 1989, 296; Scheler 1973, 250; von Hildebrand 1916, 167)⁵. It prompted them to develop a new account of valueception (Reinach 1989, 295–297; Scheler 1973, 173, 258; von Hildebrand 1916, 163, 212)⁶, which has recently been revived by John J. Drummond, Kevin Mulligan, Jean Moritz Müller, and especially by Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (2022). According to these authors, there exist special ‘value-feelings’ (Wertfühlen) that are intentionally directed towards values. These feelings are to be distinguished:

1. From intellectual acts. As Scheler puts it, “a spirit limited to perception and thinking would be absolutely blind to values” (1973, 68)⁷. Consequently, Wertfühlen belongs to the general kind of affective state (Drummond 2009, 366; Engelsen 2018, 240; Mulligan 2009, 139; Vendrell Ferran 2022, 77). Value-feeling theories thus remain sentimentalist.

2. From emotional acts (Drummond 2009, 366; Engelsen 2018, 240; Mulligan 2009, 144, 2010, 486). Taking up the first objection to the ‘emotionalist’ standpoint mentioned above, these authors claim that emotions are not disclosures of values but responses to the (dis)values unveiled in value-feelings (Engelsen 2018, 245; Müller 2019, 63; Mulligan 2009, 151; Vendrell Ferran 2022, 83): “Sam admires Maria because she is generous” (Mulligan 2010, 485, emphasis added).

However, this ‘Fühlen’ solution, in turn, encounters very serious objections, for it seems to appeal to a kind of “magical” capacity, “some special faculty”, “utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else”, as Mackie has put it (1990, 38)⁸. In particular, ‘value-feeling’ – unlike the various classes of emotions – is nowhere to be found among the usual psychological categories (Mitchell 2019, 786; Yaegashi 2019, 76). Furthermore, the alleged distinction between feelings and emotions is quite obscure (Drummond 2009, 368; Engelsen 2018, 240). What exactly is a ‘feeling’ that is not admiration, nor joy, nor despair, nor shame, etc.? As a result, as Deonna & Teroni (2012, 94) aptly point out, the nature of this experience remains highly mysterious⁹.

This failure leads to a serious paradox: on the one hand, only emotion seems to be a credible candidate to account for valueceptive acts; yet, on the other hand, there are irrefutable cases of non-emotional experiences of values.

This paper aims at showing that Husserl, especially in the second volume of the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (Husserl 2020a, hereafter abridged Studien II), developed an unexplored yet stimulating solution to this paradox which overcomes the weaknesses of the two standard conceptions.

The paper is divided into four parts. In part 1, I briefly emphasize that Husserl’s position, contrary to what is traditionally assumed, cannot be aligned with Meinong’s, as he was well aware of the arguments of the ‘Hildebrandian’ side. In parts 2 and 3, I reconstruct his positive approach to the ‘paradox of axiological coldness’. This task is achieved first (part 2) by clarifying the puzzling Husserlian concept of Auffassung (“apprehension”) in the case of perception. I show that an apprehension occurs when the subject anticipates the sensations she would experience in determinate kinaesthetic circumstances. In part 3, I apply this account of apprehension, by analogy, to the affective case: a valueception is nothing more than an affective apprehension, whereby the subject anticipates the affective sensations she would experience in certain kinaesthetic contexts– and that is why it can take place in the absence of a current emotion. In the final part (4), I reveal how this conception of valueception sheds new light on the phenomenon of affective evidence. In the conclusion, I argue why Husserl’s position overcomes both the Meinongian and the Hildebrandian standpoints.

2 The Studien II: Husserl’s Traditional Interpretation Revisited

In the last thirty years, thanks mainly to the publication of his 1908–1914 and 1920 lectures on ethics (Husserl 1988, 2004a), the prejudice of an ‘intellectualist’ Husserl has been definitively defeated. In these texts, as several scholars have underscored (Le Quitte 2013, 6, 135; Lobo 2005, 38; Mulligan 2006, 87; Pradelle 2020, 368), Husserl is chiefly interested in establishing the existence of an axiological reason, that is, the possibility of knowing values. According to numerous passages (Husserl 1988, 277, 323; 2004a, 75), this knowledge is supposed to be accomplished in emotions, such as acts of Freude (joy), Genuss (delight), or Trauer (sadness). From this perspective, Husserl’s account of valueception seems to be identical to Meinong’s ‘emotionalism’.

However, as is revealed by the manuscripts collected in the recently published Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins (volumes XLIII/1–4 of the Husserliana series), such an interpretation, despite being endorsed by almost all scholars involved in the controversy (Müller 2019, 116; Mulligan 2010, 483; Tappolet 2000, 7; Yaegashi 2019, 73), is incomplete, because Husserl was in fact very sensitive to the ‘Hildebrandian’ standpoint (Delamare 2022). Indeed, many texts throughout these volumes contend that emotions are responses to appearing values rather than discoveries of value. For instance, Husserl claims that emotions are “motivated” (Husserl 2020a, 106) or “excited” by (Husserl 2020a, 123), “founded” on (Husserl 2020a, 177), or are a “reaction” to (Husserl 2020a, 118), the manifestation of a value. Even more importantly, he explicitly appeals to examples of axiological coldness. For instance, in a 1911 manuscript, he writes:

I see a beautiful female shape. Once I am ravished (entzückt), the other time she leaves me cold (kalt), although I find her equally beautiful. […] The feeling as a grasping of value (Das Fühlen als Werterfassen) is to be distinguished from the delight (Genießen), from the higher affective reaction (Husserl 2020a, 102).

This quotation – among others (Husserl 2020a, 97, 140, 169, 171, 211, 531)¹⁰ – shows that Husserl’s viewpoint on valueception is much more sophisticated than traditionally thought and integrates the most fundamental features of the ‘Hildebrandian’ perspective.

At this point, however, we have not moved an inch in the direction of a solution to the paradox of axiological coldness: if not a full-fledged emotion, what sort of lived experience is the cold valueception?

As I intend to show now, Husserl does offer a positive, promising, and as yet unexplored answer to this question. In a nutshell, ‘cold valueceptions’ amount to cases of empty axiological apprehensions (Auffassungen). In this perspective, it is first necessary to shed light on this bewildering notion of Auffassung in the perceptual case.

3 The Problem of Auffassung in the Case of Perception

3.1 The ‘animist’ Definition of “apprehension”

Husserl famously argued (Liu 2019, 151; Lohmar 1993, 111, 2009, 4; Mulligan 1995, 183) that having sensations is not sufficient to perceive objects (Husserl 1913, 385; 1976, 192). Rather, the sense data serve only as a support for an “apprehension” (Auffassung)¹¹ that ‘informs’ them and is responsible for the manifestation of things.

Yet, in these descriptions, the notion of Auffassung remains particularly cryptic: it looks more or less like a wave of a magic wand that would breathe life into initially dead contents. This impression is reinforced by Husserl’s constant recourse to terms like “gleichsam” (1913, 385; 1962, 166; 1976, 192), which indicate the approximate character of the description, and above all by his use of metaphors, especially those of “animation” (Beseelung) (1913, 75, 129, 351; 1976, 192; 1984, 809–810; 2004b, 12) or “spiritualization” (vergeistigend) (1962, 166).

The inadequacy of such a characterization led Husserl to refine this concept and to remove its ‘magical’ flavor. This is especially the case in the famous 1907 lectures on Ding und Raum¹² (Husserl 1997, 39–40). The whole issue revolves precisely around the puzzling “excess” (Plus or Überschuß) (Husserl 1913, 385; 1973a, 45–46) brought about by the Auffassung: how is consciousness able to “transcend”¹³ the hyletic data that are currently experienced and to intend an object as such?

A promising approach is offered by cases of conflicting apprehensions, illustrated by the famous example of the wax lady (Husserl 1913, 442–444; 1966, 33), which Husserl takes up in Ding und Raum (Husserl 1997, 39). The hyletic substratum is assumed here to remain unaltered, yet it nevertheless serves as a basis for two incompatible Auffassungen.

One might at first be tempted to ascribe these two apprehensions to divergent conceptual activities: to apprehend the ‘true lady’ would be to subsume the appearing object under the concept of ‘lady’. Yet, Husserl warns very strongly against such an ‘intellectualistic’ viewpoint in the 2^nd Logical Investigation (Husserl 1913, 172; Mulligan 1995, 207, 229). In particular, to regard an individual as belonging to a species (an A) is a “founded” act that already requires an underlying sensory apprehension (Husserl 1913, 109)¹⁴.

3.2 Apprehension as the Experience of the System of all Possible Images Under all Possible Kinaesthetic Circumstances

Yet, how can I ‘go beyond’ the current data without entering the realm of conceptual thought? Husserl replies: because I am able to ‘anticipate’ the ‘behavior’ of the presented object. To perform the ‘lady apprehension’, this means that I anticipate that, if I speak to her, she will respond, that if I approach her, I will see her breathe, her eyes and lips move, etc. The ‘mannequin apprehension’ is utterly different: in the same circumstances, I anticipate that the latter will remain silent or entirely motionless. Hence, the difference between the two Auffassungen refers to the ‘possibilities’ (Serban 2016, 78) of the apprehended thing.

These ‘possibilities’, however, are not mere ‘ideal’ nor ‘physical possibilities’ but are motivated (Husserl 2002a, 133) by the determinate conditions at stake. In Ding und Raum, Husserl explores these ‘possibilities’ via more basic illustrations, such as spheres, dies, or houses. What does it mean that I perceive a red sphere as such, as opposed to merely having sensations of red? Precisely that: I anticipate that if I turn around the sphere, then I will sense such-and-such new visual data, namely those corresponding to its ‘back’. Such an anticipation is absent in the pure and simple sensation.

In this framework, each of these ‘motivated possibilities’ is defined by three components:

1. The first is the current adumbration (Abschattung) or ‘image’ (i₁) (visual, auditive, tactile, …) that is now properly experienced – e.g., the content corresponding to the front side of the red sphere.

2. The second component refers to the ‘if’ part, that is, to the “motivating circumstances” (Ferencz-Flatz 2014, 27; Husserl 1997, 201), which in turn amount to the famous kinaestheses (K), or “self-movements” (Hardy 2018, Chap. 2; Husserl 1997, 134; Soueltzis 2023)¹⁵, such as asking a question, turning around the sphere, etc.

3. The third component is the new ‘image’ (i₂) that is anticipated¹⁶ as a result of this self-movement¹⁷. This image must again be understood in terms of hyletic data – e.g., those corresponding to the ‘back’ of the sphere.

Each ‘motivated possibility’ can thus be schematized by a sequence or “line” (Husserl 1997, 159):

$$ {i}_{1} \to K\to {i}_{2}$$

An act of apprehension, however, does not consist merely in anticipating one such line. Instead, it refers to a multiplicity of ‘paths’. As Husserl puts it, to apprehend an object requires the co-apprehension (1997, 81) of all the ‘images’ that would be obtained under such-and-such kinaesthetic circumstances. Let’s consider, for example, the perception of a house. I now see its front (i₁). To apprehend this image i₁ as that of a house means that I anticipate that, if I take such-and-such steps (K), I will see its back (i₂); but also, that if I go inside (K’), I will feel warmth (i₂’); and again, that if I touch the wall (K’’), I will feel its roughness (i₂’’). Hence, many lines radiate from the same initial image i₁ depending on the kinaesthetic path followed:

$$ {i}_{1}\to K\to {i}_{2}$$

$$ {i}_{1}\to K{\prime }\to {i}_{2}{\prime }$$

But this is still not enough. So far, the description has been limited to one initial image i₁. Now, let us assume that the circumstance K was executed and that I now see the image i₂ (‘the back of the house’). This image is, again, animated by an apprehension. That is, I once again anticipate the emergence of other images i₃, i₃’, etc., under determinate kinaesthetic conditions:

$$ {i}_{2}\to K\to {i}_{3}$$

$$ {i}_{2}\to K{\prime }\to {i}_{3}{\prime }$$

Yet, the apprehension at play is not a new one: since the same object, the same house, is continuously perceived, the apprehension animating i₂ and the original apprehension animating i₁ must be identified. Consequently, the very same Auffassung can animate many different input-images. This is why Husserl describes it as “an ideal system of possible continuous series of appearances in temporal coincidence with possible, continuously motivating kinaesthetic series” (1997, 159).

Such a “system”¹⁸ of “if–then” series (Husserl 1989, 62, 91) can be represented in a matrix (Table 1 below).

Table 1 An apprehension-matrix

This matrix reads: if the initial image is i₂, and if K₃ is performed, then image i_2,3 will result¹⁹.

The idea of “animation” is thus now greatly demystified. As Husserl puts it:

Apprehensions animate presentational contents and give them a presentational function by pointing (hindeuten), as it were, to lawful sequences of such contents under the motivating circumstances (1973a, 237; 1997, 201)²⁰.

3.3 The Associative Genesis of Apprehension

One point still deserves to be underscored, which concerns the genesis of these apprehensions. It seems straightforward that the latter were learned by association: in the past, the subject observed an invariable coupling between the antecedent (i_n, K_m) on the one hand and the consequent (i_n,m) on the other (Husserl 1997, 151–152). Gradually, her acquaintance with the object increased, and the matrix became more and more determinate.

It is now well known (Bégout 2000; Holenstein 1972) how Husserl tried to deprive the concept of association of its original empiricist-mechanical flavor and to adapt it to the framework of his genetic phenomenology. It must nevertheless be emphasized that he already appealed to this notion in a positive way in Ding und Raum:

The title ‘association’ here is not a matter of a genetic-psychological fact […]. On the contrary, association here refers to the phenomenological fact of a certain appurtenance and of a certain reference of the one to the other (Husserl 1997, 149–150).

This text thus exhibits one of the most important features of Husserl’s mature account of association (1950, 114; 1966, 118; 1973b, 75; 1989, 43), namely, that it is a form of intentionality, that can be phenomenologically observed. This explains why the ‘system’ of lawful paths is neither a ‘theoretical construction’, nor an ‘unconscious hypothesis’, but is present to consciousness. Of course, the various possible sequences are not explicitly seized one by one, for instance in an act of imagination²¹; yet, their multiplicity as a whole is nonetheless ‘grasped’ by the subject, and such implicit, immediate grasping is nothing other than the act of perception itself.

This specificity of the conscious character of the ‘apprehension matrix’ is emphasized many times in Ding und Raum (Husserl 1997, 158, 160, 240), but is even more precisely portrayed in a 1928 unpublished manuscript:

Every empty consciousness is what it is as an implicit association-series (Jedes leere Bewusstsein ist was es ist als eine implizite Assoziationsreihe) (but not an arbitrary series) of associative data, thus of data which, according to the series, are conscious as to be expected, as forthcoming (als zu erwartende, als kommende). This series has the peculiarity of a consciousness series (Bewusstseinsreihe), the present positional consciousness carries it implicitly in itself and is itself nothing other than the potentiality of this series (ist selbst nichts anderes als Potenzialität dieser Reihe) [emphasis added], as a mode of experience from which the latter is to be obtained through an unfolding (Auslegung) (A VI 31, 54a).

4 Solution to the Paradox of Axiological Coldness: Valueceptions as Affective Apprehensions

4.1 The Concept of “Affective Sensations”

My purpose now is to demonstrate that valueceptions should be understood as apprehensions of value, precisely in the sense of ‘apprehension’ just unveiled.

To do so, the first step is to recall (Fisette 2021, 220; Jardine 2020, 54) that, in Husserl’s framework, there is an analogy between ‘sensory sensations’ and what he calls “affective sensations” (Gefühlsempfindungen) or “sensible feelings” (sinnliche Gefühle), such as pleasure (Lust) – a pleasant smell – and displeasure (Unlust) – a painful burn (1913, 392; 1976, 193).

On this topic, Husserl sides with his second master – Stumpf (1928, 57) – against the first – Brentano. For Brentano²², the pain of a cut, like every mental phenomenon, is intentional, as it is directed towards the cut²³ understood as “a particular sensory quality analogous to color, sound and other so-called sensory qualities” (1973, 63).

Husserl, for his part, rejects such a position, especially because he discards Brentano’s equation between mental phenomena and intentionality. Sensations, Husserl claims, are experienced, yet are devoid of any directedness (1913, 369). The same holds for Gefühlsempfindungen, which are not to be classified alongside convictions, but alongside sensory contents, such as red or smooth (1913, 392). Like these canonical sensations, Lust and Unlust are indeed parts of the immanent flow of consciousness. In other terms, affective sensations belong, as the Bernau manuscripts put it, to the “originary sensuality (Sensualit?t)” from which “anything egoic” is abstracted (Husserl 2001, 275–276). This explains why, as affective “data”, they pertain to the pre-intentional sphere of the “hyle” (Husserl 1976, 193).

One important difference between sensory and affective sensations must nevertheless be pointed out: Gefühlsempfindungen necessarily presuppose (voraussetzen) sensory contents (Husserl 2020a, 101) – that is, they are founded on the latter (Fisette 2021, 226; Husserl 2020a, 37, 85). This (one-sided) relationship of foundation, Husserl asserts, leads to a genuine “fusion” (Verschmelzung) (1913, 392; 2020a, 61) of the two hyle, whereby “they form together the unity of an immanent experience [….] in such a way that the inner constituents of the primary content and the feeling coincide (decken) in inner time-consciousness” (Husserl 2020a, 92–93).

4.2 The Originary Emotional Constitution of Value

It is precisely this form of unity between sensory and affective sensations that accounts for the emergence of affective apprehensions.

Consider the following example. Suppose, that, as a child, I became familiar with cigars, yet without smoking them. In this situation, I have gradually constituted the ‘apprehension matrix’ of these objects through my sensory experience: if I touch the cigar, I will feel softness; if I get closer, I will see the folds of the wrapper leaf, and so on. Yet, because I have never enjoyed them, they have remained axiologically neutral.

Now, one day, I decide to taste a cigar. As I smoke it, I experience feelings of pleasure (Lust) in my mouth. These Gefühlsempfindungen, as we have just seen, are fused with the underlying taste sensations. But these taste sensations, in turn, are not ‘isolated’. By virtue of the ‘sensory associations’ depicted in part 2.3, they directly attach themselves to the visual and tactile sensations that are already constituted into a system of apprehension thanks to my previous encounters with cigars. As a result, the pleasant taste immediately integrates and enriches the cigar’s apprehension matrix. This is why the taste sensations are at once apprehended as the objective taste of the cigar.

Now, since we have assumed that the taste data are united with a certain Lust, the cigar matrix is not only augmented by new sensory sensations but also acquires an affective sense. Just as the taste is ‘objectified’ through its association with the other sensory sensations, the pleasure is objectified as well through its fusion with the objectified taste. Hence, the apprehension of the Lust as an objective axiological quality functions in exactly the same way as the apprehension of the taste as an objective thingly quality: the Lust too undergoes an “animation” (Husserl 2020a, 70), whereby it now appears as an objective property of the cigar itself. This process captures the genesis of a value as a transcendent determination.

Two features of this value-experience need to be made explicit:

1) First, it cannot be cold, since it involves current Gefühlsempfindungen. This is a general equation in Husserl’s framework: “warm” (warme) feelings (Husserl 2020a, 169), corresponding to what is ordinarily called emotions, such as joy (Freude), ravishment (Entzücken) or delight (Genuss), are precisely those feelings that are bodily felt through certain affective sensations (2020a, 102–103, 109, 111–113, 123, 172–173, 176, 404, 522). This is, one might say, the Jamesian side of Husserl’s affective doctrine.

2) Second, Husserl, like Sartre (1995, 35), rejects the idea that the pleasure of the cigar is reducible to felt bodily changes – this, by contrast, is his anti-Jamesian side. The first smoking of the cigar is indeed an intentional experience, and moreover an experience directed towards the value of the cigar. As Husserl puts it in the Studien II (in a text from 1911):

I can experience the ravishment for the first time. I can live in it without “apprehending” the object as ravishing. But doesn’t it stand there as that after all? (Aber steht es nicht doch als das da?) And can I not pay attention to it? If I do, then I do not need to relate the object to me, to the subject. I pay attention to the “wonderful”, to the “magnificent” (2020a, 126).

Hence, the very first encounter with the cigar is already an intentional valuing. In order to emphasize the parallelism (Husserl 2020a, 99) between such an axiological constitution and the canonical perceptual constitution, Husserl speaks, on several occasions (Husserl 2020a, 99, 125, 398, 400, 401, 429), of an “enlarged apperception” (erweiterte Apperzeption) (Husserl 2020a, 128), which only “extends” (übergreift) (Husserl 2020a, 125) the usual thing-apprehension towards an “other dimension” (Husserl 2020a, 127) of the object.

For this reason, it is also legitimate to represent the value-apprehension by a matrix (Table 2 above).

Table 2 An affective apprehension-matrix

This matrix reads the same as before, except that g’s (for Gefühlsempfindungen) have been added next to the sensory images i’s with which they are “fused”. Of course, some cells may be free of such g’s – for instance, the tactile sensation of a cigar may be said to be ‘neutral’. If all cells are ‘neutral’ in this sense, then the object is precisely an adiaphoron. It is also possible for an object to be positively valenced with respect to one image and negatively valenced with respect to another. A piece of cheese, for example, can be pleasant in its taste, unpleasant in its smell, and visually neutral.

4.3 The Sedimentation of the Originary Emotion and the Anticipatory Recognition of Value

As we have seen, the phenomenon of axiological coldness cannot occur during the first encounter with the object. If I am not moved by the cigar, then no attribution of value takes place, and the cigar remains an adiaphoron. It is thus only in subsequent confrontations that a discrepancy between valueception and emotion can arise, as Husserl mentions in a 1911 manuscript:

If I have often liked something, then I apprehend it in the new case from the outset (von vornherein) as beautiful, as ravishing (entzückend), etc., before I really experience the actual ravishment (aktuelle Entzücken). I see a famous Madonna by Raphael from afar and apprehend it as the famous and “beautiful” work (2020a, 136).

How is this possible? At first glance, one might suggest that the grasping of the value amounts to a memory of the past encounters (Husserl 2020a, 126). However, this solution is ultimately rejected by Husserl because the painting is seized von vornherein (“from the outset”) as beautiful. I do not need to perform an explicit act of remembering to achieve the valueception.

Rather, the essential phenomenon at play is that of recognition (Erkennen) (Husserl 2020a, 137, 540–541). The originary evaluation of the object, like any activity of sense-bestowing, is sedimented into “secondary sensibility” (Husserl 2020a, 217) in the form of a “habitual axiological conviction” which, as its correlate, generates “enduring values” (Husserl 2020b, 178–179) that pertain to the sense of the object (Gegenstandssinn) itself (Husserl 2020a, 217). As a result, when the same object – or a similar one (Husserl 1962, 405; 2004a, 291–292) – is met anew, it immediately (without the contribution of a memory) leads to an axiological apprehension.

The important point then is this: the reactivation of the sedimented axiological meaning does not necessarily imply the reactualization of the originary emotion. Husserl expresses this idea in a text dating from 1920–1925:

To the axiological grasping (Werterfassen), the grasping of a beauty-value, but also of a good-value, does not belong an actual delight (ein aktuelles Genießen), an actual joy, desire etc. In order to recognize (erkennen) that this table is good, that a truth, this one, is good, that this painting is beautiful […], for this, I do not need a perception of the value-object (Wahrnehmung des Wertgegenstandes)²⁴and an actual evaluative feeling related to it (Husserl 2020a, 531).

It is now clear that the phenomenon of recognition is the source of ‘cold’ valueceptions. Yet, what type of consciousness is involved in this phenomenon?

To understand this point, it is necessary, once again, to return to the analogy with perception. Just as apprehending the cigar means grasping its motivated sensory potentialities (see 2.3), apprehending the value of the cigar means grasping its motivated affective potentialities. In the formalism of the matrix: suppose I see again a cigar²⁵ in front of me (i₁). I therefore anticipate, not only that if I pick it up with my hand, put it in my mouth, and light it (K₁), I will experience its specific taste (i_1,1), but also that this taste will be fused with a certain Lust (g_1,1). The anticipation²⁶ of such a pleasure is precisely ‘enveloped’ in the apprehension as well and accounts for it being a value–apprehension. In other terms, just as perceiving the cigar amounts to grasping its system of sensory “if-then”, so perceiving its value amounts to grasping its system of affective “if-then”²⁷.

Husserl displays this conception of valueception on many occasions (Husserl 2020a, 33, 431, 543). One of the most clear-cut illustrations is the following, from a 1911 manuscript:

I apperceive a violin as magnificent. It ‘has’ a ravishing sound (einen entzückenden Ton) and ravishes (entzückt) itself by virtue of it [the sound]: actually, perhaps, the sound of the violin really played previously ravished, and the violin itself ravished by virtue of that sound, but then, when I only see it, while it is not played, I like it (gefällt sie). We have, so to speak, an apprehending liking (ein sozusagen apprehensives Gefallen), a liking of the violin in virtue of the fact that if it is played, it gives a magnificent sound, a beautiful sound and a ravishing sound (Husserl 2020a, 140, emphasis added).

Another crucial manuscript in this respect is the text n°23 of the Studien II, dated January 1910. Husserl asserts that the constitution of a transcendent (transiente) pleasure (2020a, 395) requires that, beyond the current Lust, new hedonic moments are also “anticipated”:

The momentary pleasure taken at the object is not simply founded by (durch) the sensible pleasures (Empfindungslüste) of the sensation-adumbrations (Empfindungsabschattungen), but is, as we saw above, an anticipation (Antizipation) […] pointing (hinweisend) to the pleasure sequences ensuing in the continuous sequence of the object-adumbrations, to the pleasure-series (Lustreihen) (Husserl 2020a, 399).

The important point is that such a hedonic anticipation can also occur without a current Lust. To illustrate this possibility, Husserl (in the same text) refers to the case of a beautiful velvet carpet that is seen but not yet touched: in this situation, the liking (Gefallen) is merely “anticipating” (antizipierende), and not yet actualized (aktualisiertes) (Husserl 2020a, 396).

4.4 Husserl’s Solution to the Paradox of Axiological Coldness and the Distinction Between Three Forms of Feelings

This is precisely the basis for Husserl’s solution to the paradox of axiological coldness.

We have seen that emotions are those experiences that are embodied by current Gefühlsempfindungen. Valueceptions, on the other hand, are those experiences that ‘anticipate’ motivated Lust and Unlust thanks to prior affective associations. They are thus ‘cold’ in so far as the anticipated Gefühlsempfindung is not yet actualized. In case such an actualization occurs, a new, reactional emotion is then experienced.

This account leads to the distinction between three different forms of ‘feelings’:

1. There is, to begin with, the originary feeling that is experienced at the first encounter with an object. Such a feeling is necessarily emotional, as outlined above (see 3.2), and is “originary” (originär) (Husserl 2020a, 128) in the sense that it is not a response to a value. This is why Husserl characterizes such an emotion as being “without reason” (“grundlos”) and devoid of “motive” (Husserl 2020a, 59). I simply taste the cigar and pleasure comes to me, as it were, as a ‘present’ or a ‘grace’ that was neither motivated nor expected. At the same time, it is already an intentional valuing of the object.

2. This originary feeling is genetically responsible for subsequent Wertfühlen. In contrast to originary feelings, Wertfühlen are cold in that they are merely “anticipatory” and thus do not involve, by themselves, bodily affective sensations.

3. The third form of feeling is that which arises in response to the Wertfühlen, as mentioned in the first part. This feeling has the peculiarity of being a secondary emotion. Like the originary emotion, it is embodied in current Gefühlsempfindungen and is the bearer of an axiological intentionality; yet it is no longer “grundlos”, to the extent that it was anticipated by the Wertfühlen and thus motivated by it.

5 Cold Valueceptions as Empty Axiological Apprehensions and Their Fulfillment in Actual Emotions

5.1 Emotions as Fulfillments of Cold Valueceptions

One of the most significant implications of this ‘anticipatory’ account of valueception concerns the question of affective evidence. As is well known, Husserl asserts on several occasions (1959, 104; 1976, 323; 1989, 11; 2002b, 43) that the distinction between empty and intuitive intentions is also at stake in the affective sphere (Delamare 2022, 61–62). In defending this extension of evidence beyond the intellectual domain, Husserl follows Brentano’s footsteps in Vom Ursprung der sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889, 19; see also Melle 2012, 65; Mulligan 2006, 82). Both acknowledge that the distinction between an instinctive impulse and a rational, luminous assent, which is at play in the case of judgments, also applies to feelings (Husserl 1988, 323, 342–343; 2020a, 292). At this stage, however, the precise nature of this ‘affective evidence’ remains, as the 1908 ethics lectures confess, a “mystery” (Mysterium) (Husserl 1988, 344).

This lacuna prompted Husserl to elaborate, in many manuscripts throughout the Studien, a more instructive explanation of this crucial phenomenon that essentially draws on the anticipatory account of Wertfühlen. In short, a cold valueception corresponds to an empty apprehension, while the emotion that it motivates amounts to its intuitive confirmation; that is, we fulfill a Wertfühlen by transforming it into an emotional feeling, that involves actual Gefühlsempfindungen.

Such a conception is, again, introduced in the text n°23 from January 1910, with reference to the above example of the carpet:

Newly seen and previously not co-seen moments arouse a new liking (Gefallen), other determinations of the object, which were previously co-perceived, come to a fulfilling perception (erfüllender Wahrnehmung), and thus the “anticipating” („antizipierende“) liking belonging to them, e.g. the one taken at the velvet soft, […] experiences a certain modification as well: it becomes an actualized liking, so to speak fulfilling (erfüllend), consolidating (bekräftigend), realizing (einlösend)²⁸ the liking-intention (Gefallensintention) (Husserl 2020a, 395–396).

Even more decisively, another, later text, from 1931²⁹ – published in the Studien III – considers the anticipatory liking as an axiological ‘supposition’, while its emotional fulfillment legitimizes this supposition by self-presenting the value itself:

The valuing of affectivity (Das Werten des Gemüts), the feeling valuing (das fühlende Werten), is thus to be understood as an “attitude” of the ego in which it “lives in feeling”, and this living can be feeling in the way of pre-feeling (Vor-Fühlens), of feeling-anticipation (Gefühlsantizipation), a mere presumption of value (Wertvermeinen), and it can have, or acquire in the fulfillment-transition, the form in which the value is originally “realized” („verwirklicht“), constituted, as itself – the terminating (terminierende) delight in the way of the being-myself-as-feeling-ego-at-the-value (Selbst-als-fühlendes-Ich-beim-Wert-Sein) (Husserl 2020b, 178).

As a result, the fulfillment of an affective intention deeply shapes its epistemological status. While the cold apprehension remains an “indirect”, “symbolic” (Husserl 2020a, 457), “inadequate”, or “improper” valueception (Husserl 2020a, 271), its fulfillment in an actual ravishment leads to an authentic “seeing” (Sehen) (Husserl 2020a, 25) or “givenness” (Gegenbenheit) (Husserl 2020a, 24) of the value, in which the latter is possessed “in person” (leibhaft) (Husserl 2004a, 86)³⁰. As Husserl has it in the 1908 lectures on ethics, the emotional fulfillment (emotionale Erfüllung) thus plays the role of an “affective justification” (Gemütsbegründung) (1988, 241). This epistemological enhancement of the valueception is finally the source of fully rational axiological judgments (Husserl 1988, 281).

5.2 Affective Disappointments

The phenomenon of affective fulfillment has its essential counterpart in affective disappointment, in case the emptily intended value is eventually falsified by the subsequent feeling (Husserl 2020a, 549). As Husserl puts it in his 1920 lectures on ethics:

In the opposite case a rejection (Abweisung), a disappointment (Enttäuschung), in that the ego, in the attempt at an original appropriation, convinces itself that the thing held to be valuable (die für wert gehaltene Sache) is in truth quite unpleasant (unerfreulich), that the thing held to be beautiful is in truth a nasty kitsch etc. (2004a, 120).

Again, these examples are entirely analogous to cases of doxic disappointment (e.g., the illusion of the wax lady), which occurs when one of the perceptual ‘if-then’ lines enveloped in an apprehension is contradicted by the unveiling of new data. In turn, such a disappointment brings about the establishment of a new apprehension (‘this is not a lady, but a mannequin’) in accordance with this new experience (Husserl 1997, 81)³¹. The same happens in the axiological case: the experienced affective sensation (e.g., a certain feeling of unpleasantness, in Husserl’s example) is incompatible with the original axiological apprehension (the beauty). Such a discrepancy induces a revision of the apprehension (‘it is actually a nasty kitsch’) so as to satisfy the new Gefühlsempfindung.

5.3 Emotional Anticipations as Affective Phenomena

The relationship of fulfillment between emotions and valueceptions finally explains why the latter, despite their ‘coldness’, must also be considered as affective phenomena, and not as intellectual acts. Anticipations (or protentions) are indeed among the most archaic structures of time consciousness. As such, they do not per se belong to any of the three classes of lived experiences (Verstand, Gemüt, Wille). Rather, their categorization will depend on the nature of the content expected in them. A protention of mere sensory sensations is the basis of an intellectual act; if, in addition, Gefühlsempfindungen are anticipated alongside sensory sensations, the intentional experience becomes affective. If this were not the case, and given that a fulfillment relation can only obtain between acts of the same class, an emotion could never justify the anticipatory valueception. Husserl emphasizes this very important point in another 1931 text:

A feeling as well can be pre-expectation (Vorerwartung) of delight. The pre-expectation of delight is at the same time pre-joy (Vorfreude), is a feeling-anticipation (Gefühlsantizipation) and itself feeling (und selbst Gefühl) [emphasis added]. The fulfillment in delight is “verification” (Bewährung) […]: the feeling-intention (Gefühlsmeinung), the feeling itself of the pre-joy is legitimized or is “delegitimized”³² (wird berechtigt oder wird „entrechtigt“) (2020b, 191).

6 Conclusion: Husserl’s Overcoming of the Meinong vs. Hildebrand Controversy

In conclusion, the investigations carried out in this paper have important consequences both for the scholarship on Husserl and for the general philosophy of emotions. Regarding the former:

1. We have first challenged the traditional image of Husserl as a ‘Meinongian’ with respect to the epistemology of value, since he proved to be very aware of the points and distinctions developed by the Hildebrandian side.

2. In addition, our fresh account of Auffassung helps to unravel this key concept and to understand it in a new, dynamic way.

3. We have also shed new light on another puzzling concept, that of ‘affective evidence’.

4. Finally, our investigations invite – following Maria Gyemant (2018, 105) – to reconsider the usual chronology of Husserl’s thought, according to which genetic philosophy is introduced in the Bernau manuscripts before being fully developed only in the 20s³³.

Now, as far the systematic philosophy of emotions is concerned, the Husserlian stance offers a very promising way to overcome the shortcomings of the two standard accounts:

1. First, in contrast to the ‘emotionalist’ view, Husserl’s position is able to deal with the phenomenon of axiological coldness. Since valueceptions are acts in which an emotion appears as ‘to be experienced’ in such-and-such kinaesthetic circumstances, they do not involve current affective sensations and can therefore be ‘cold’.

2. At the same time, however, Husserl’s viewpoint appears more satisfactory than traditional ‘value-feeling’ theories insofar as it explains how non-emotional acts can nonetheless be non-intellectual. Since valueceptions genetically involve past emotions and teleologically refer to their emotional fulfillment, they cannot be performed by purely intellectual beings, as Scheler assumed but did not rigorously demonstrate (1973, 68). Moreover, Husserl’s account helps to explain why value-feelings are nowhere to be found in ‘folk’ or ‘traditional’ psychology. Just as the lived experience of grasping the back of a chair is not a ‘new’ type of act but must rather be regarded as a ‘modality’ within the unitary psychological kind ‘perception’, so the value-feeling is not a new, sui generis type of affective act, but must be regarded as a special ‘modality’ within the kind ‘emotion’.