Thrills, Orgasms, Sadness, and Hysteria

Austrian and German philosophers, in particular the heirs of Brentano, such as Stumpf and Scheler, as well as Wittgenstein, criticized in detail William James’s influential account of emotions. The chapter presents, analyses, and assesses these criticisms in the context of the largely unknown accounts of bodily feelings, sensory feelings, such as localized pains, and emotions given by Stumpf, Husserl, Scheler, and other early phenomenologists. In these accounts, the modes of emotions are distinguished from their contents and objects. Within the latter category, the proper object of an emotion, for example, a dog which is feared, is distinguished from the danger the dog represents and the fearfulness of the situation of which the dog is a part.