Abstract
This contribution seeks to explicitly articulate two directions of a continuous phenomenal field: (1) the genesis of intersubjectivity in its bodily basis (both organic and phylogenetic); and (2) the re-investment of the organic basis (both bodily and cellular) as a self-transcendence. We hope to recast the debate about the explanatory gap by suggesting a new way to approach the mind-body and Leib/Körper problems: with a heart-centered model instead of a brain-centered model. By asking how the physiological dynamics of heart and breath can become constitutive of a subjective (qua intersubjective) point of view, we give an account of the specific circular and systemic dynamic that we call “the rainbow of emotions.” This dynamic, we argue, is composed of both structural and experiential components and better evidences the seamless, non-dual articulation between the organic and the experiential.
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Notes
This project originally matured during discussions and email exchanges with Francisco Varela, as early as June 1997. We sketched the general structure as it appears in the introduction and then planned to begin by giving a central role to the articulation between Paarung and acoplamiento under the generic term of “coupling.”
In this article, we are suspending two investigations that will be at the core of our project. The first of these is a deeper investigation of the double-faced qualities of the organism, beyond attesting to its phenomenal truth. Is it possible to understand the organism’s temporalization, its specific generativity? The second of these investigations asks whether we can understand the heart as the focal place of emotions, the place where the excess of the body over itself has been traditionally pointed out.
About the image of the fold, cf. Depraz et al. (2003, pp. 41–43).
“Operational” needs to be taken quite literally, in its practical meaning of what is being put to work. It designates the very praxis of the living being in its openness to its environment. It might in some sense evoke Husserl’s notion of fungierende Intentionalität, and Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of intentionalité opérante. Varela does not refer to these authors in his development of this point. It seems to me that the phenomenologists use “operation” to designate non-objectifying lived experience, whereas Varela had in mind the radical working or effectuation of the living being.
Varela et al. (1991, Chap. 9).
We therefore speak below of a “rainbow of emotions,” because emotions refer to multifarious, differentiated, and strongly constituted “states,” while affect refers to a more basic valence-laden movement towards the object.
Cf. Richir (1993): “[Le] lieu du ‘vivre incarné’ n’est pensable dans l’expérience que s’il y a, en quelque sorte, dans le corps, quelque chose qui excède le corps, qui tend à s’en échapper, et par rapport à quoi le corps paraîtra toujours plus ou moins limité [...]” (7).
Depraz and Mauriac (2006).
Such an understanding of the “heart” as “the body of the body” stresses the amazingly bodily character of the heart as center or hearth of the body. The stylistic emphatic expression aims at deepening the role of the heart within the body as a the fundamental experience of inner feeling. Within the context of Eastern Christian theology the heart is thus described as the “body of the body” precisely because it provides us with such an inner self-transcending intensity.
As a first step, see Depraz (1999).
The German concept “Trieb,” used widely by Freud and invoked by Husserl in his later manuscripts, was first commonly translated in English psychoanalytic literature as “instinct,” but has more recently (and more aptly) been rendered by the term “drive.” The French translation of “Trieb” is “pulsion,” the English cognate of which is being employed here because of the way that it preserves the continuity between Triebintentionalität and the pulsation of the heart. See Depraz (2001c).
Varela shows such a generative continuity of first- and third-person approaches with regard, not to the heart, but to the thymic system and its self-regulative function in the framework of immunology. Cf. Varela (1997).
Plato (1997).
Tellenbach (1961, Chap. 2).
Cf. the articles “Cœur” and “Gemüt” in Cassin (2004, Vol. 27, pp. 493–494).
We do not intend to go into the etymology of breath and its link to soul and life (in Latin, in Greek and in Hebrew), which will need an article as such. For a first step, cf. Alter 3 (1995): “L’animal.” As for the link with speech, which is also noted in these traditions, it would require an articulation between the living being and the human being, which we prefer to leave open here.
Varela et al. (1991).
Cf. e.g., Chalmers (1995, 1996) (available at http://consc.net/papers/facing.html).
Given the general anti-naturalism of phenomenological philosophy, the literature here is too extensive to sight, as it would include the majority of the field.
Roy et al. (1999).
Cf. e.g., Pickard (2003).
Bruzina (2004).
Hanna and Thompson (2003).
Depraz (1998).
Varela and Depraz (2005).
For a discussion of the French use of this notion and a more detailed analysis of the concept, see Depraz (2001b).
Varela (1999).
Depraz (2001b, p. 103).
For more details on this matter, cf. Depraz (2003).
For a general and detailed account of these four time-scales of self-previousness, cf. Depraz (2001b, pp. 85–102).
Varela (1983).
Varela (1980/1987).
Varela, et al. (1991, Chaps. 8 and 9).
Varela (1999).
Allow me to mention the ongoing neurodynamical work done in the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Cérébrale (Paris) by Michel Le Vanquyen and some of his students on heart rhythms, as well as a common project (both empirical and philosophical) we have with Diego Cosmelli based on the experience of breathing.
Varela did not suggest a detailed understanding of his scheme. While, I could proffer some ideas and hypotheses, I was left with the task of explicating it.
In my view some crucial emotions are still lacking here: (1) “hope,” which the French language would differentiate in “espoir” or “espérance,” and which would well fit in the “Being”/Self-previousness” axis along with “joy” and opposed to “despair”; (2) “happiness” will take place on the same axis near to “serenity”; (3) suffering, pity, compassion may be situated on the “Concerns”/Intersubjectivity axis, between fear and anxiety for the first one, with respect and love for the two others; (4) as for “anxiety,” I would situate it on the “Being”/Self-previousness axis, and not on the “Concerns”/Intersubjectivity one, because it has to do with my ontological state more than with my relationship with others; (5) as for “shame,” we have in French two possible translations of it, either as “honte” or as “pudeur.” “Pudeur” is a positive emotion, which has to do with tact, modesty and a sense of decency. Furthermore, it seems to enter into a certain way of being with others, more than merely being in public, as “honte,” which is a more negative feeling associated with guilt and disgrace; finally I find that “self-esteem” and “pride” are in English basically positive emotions, whereas in French they possess an intrinsic ambivalence: “self-esteem” is at the same time “estime de soi” (+) and “vanité” (−); “pride” is “fierté” (+) and “orgueil” (−). But these are minor complements, additions or modifications to the general scheme.
Roy et al. (1999).
Bruzina (2004).
This is so despite Descartes claim that the brain is connected to the extremities by nerve fibers through which pass “animal spirits,” which he defines as “the most lively and finest parts of the blood, which have been rarified by the heat in the heart, [and which] constantly enter the cavities of the brain” (331), thus creating a link between the heart and the brain. Cf. Descartes (1985[1649]).
It is interesting to note that Descartes (following Plato and Aristotle) gave the emotion of “wonder” (astonishment) a privileged place among the primary emotions, calling it “the first of all the passions.” He claims that it is the most “philosophical” passion precisely because it is not “accompanied by any change in the heart or in the blood, such as occurs in the case of the other passions. The reason for this is that it has as its object not good or evil, but only knowledge of the thing that we wonder at.” As such, he argues, wonder “makes us disposed to acquire scientific knowledge.” He concludes from this that wonder only has relation to the brain because it is the brain “in which are located the organs of the senses used in gaining knowledge.” Through Descartes’ analysis of wonder, the brain is again given a primacy as more generative of philosophical and scientific knowledge than the heart, which is designated as the metaphysical seat of affects.
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Depraz, N. The rainbow of emotions: at the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology. Cont Philos Rev 41, 237–259 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9080-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-008-9080-y