Emotions and the Conceptual Space of Human Life*

Abstract

Christoph Demmerling defends the thesis that emotions are conceptual phenomena. He assumes that the capacity to acquire a language and thereby the capacity to possess concepts in an exacting sense fundamentally changes the human mind and, ultimately, the human being as a whole, including in relation to its physical condition. Although emotions do not presuppose language, the capacity to use and understand a language can nonetheless change their content. In following on from recent discussions on affective intentionality, Demmerling conceives of emotions primarily as modes of qualitative awareness of something. In an emotion, one is connected sufficiently to a section of the world that one can feel this relation. With regard to the question of whether emotions are conceptual phenomena, Demmerling distinguishes between a conceptuality and a propositionality thesis. In essence, his considerations speak in favor of the conceptual character of emotions without viewing them as linguistically or propositionally structured phenomena. He elucidates three understandings of the view that emotions are conceptual, and speaks in favor of the view that registering the content of emotions presupposes concepts, though these emotions are not therefore made up of concepts.