The Scheler–Sartre View of Emotion and Value

Abstract

Abstract This chapter outlines the qualified version of affective perceptualism articulated by Max Scheler and Jean-Paul Sartre. According to this version, immediately and intrinsically intelligible episodic emotions are experiential encounters with value properties as such properties, and some ‘psychic’ emotion types involve perceptual experiences, or derivative intuitional experiences, as of value properties in objects. This elaborated and qualified version of the view is a useful foil for discussing the main objections to affective perceptualism. Four prominent criticisms are considered. First, the perceptual model misdescribes even the kinds of emotional experience that are taken to be central by its advocates. Second, there are phenomenological disanalogies between conscious emotions and standard perceptual experiences. Third, there are fundamental differences in the rationalizing properties of standard perceptions and emotions. Fourth, the very idea of evaluative properties had by objects, and of these being directly accessible as such in emotional experience, is mysterious.