Husserl Stud

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-017-9221-4

Emotions, Motivation, and Character:

A Phenomenological Perspective

Elisa Magrì1 

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract  In this paper, I wish to explore whether and how emotions build on a
state of being motivated that is linked to character and requires the positive contri-
bution of habit. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of motivation (most nota-
bly Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s), I argue that the relation between emotions and
character depends on the institution of an emotional space, which is responsible for
our sensitivity to the values of the felt situation and yet it is open to changes and
revisions.

1 Introduction

What is the relation between character and emotions? Can we say that a person’s
jealousy draws on character traits, or do emotions depend on a more complex inter-
relation between character, motivation, and features of the experience? In this paper,
I wish to consider the extent to which emotions depend on certain dispositions that
are often identified in the literature as character traits. Unlike affective episodes,
character traits indicate subjective tendencies to experience some particular family
of emotions, or alternatively to not experience them in some particular way (Deonna
& Teroni 2012, p. 9). In this sense, as Deonna and Teroni write, character traits con-
nect in a stable and coherent way the cognitive and conative dimensions of human
behaviour. For instance, a kind person will have a greater tendency to experience
affection or gratitude, or a lesser tendency to experience rage.
The drawback of this view is that emotions contrasting with one’s alleged charac-
ter traits are usually considered as exceptional cases or as responses “out of charac-
ter”. In contrast to this view, I argue that character can be understood as a complex

* Elisa Magrì
elisa.magri@ucd.ie
1
UCD School of Philosophy, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

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stratification of motives whose relation to emotions and sentiments can be accounted

for without resorting to any “out of character” explanation. A phenomenological
appraisal of character explains how the subject apperceives relevant features of the
felt situation in a way that is open to variation and temporal updating, and yet this
does not lead us to embrace any form of subjective determinism either.
In order to clarify my view, I invite you to keep in mind an example of jealousy,
such as the story narrated by Proust in Swann’s Way. In the first volume of his In
Search of Lost Time, Proust recounts the story of Swann and how he falls in love
with Odette, a young coquette who used to attend the Verdurin’s club to which
Swann is also admitted. Unlike Swann, Odette is uncultivated, naïve, and superficial.
She is—quoting from her own self-description—“an ignorant woman with a taste
for beautiful things” (Proust 1992 [1928], p. 275). At first, Odette does not strike
Swann as being particularly beautiful or attractive. Quite the contrary, Swann does
not feel any desire, only “physical repulsion, as one of those women of whom all
of us can cite examples, different for each of us, who are the converse of the type
which our senses demand” (Proust 1992 [1928], p. 275). Despite this, Swann falls in
love with her to the point that he embarks on an excruciating path of jealousy before
realising with astonishment that Odette was not even his type. What then motivates
Swann’s attachment to Odette?
All that Proust says in this regard is that, when Swann first met Odette, she made
a casual remark that established “between their two selves a kind of romantic bond
which made him smile” (Proust 1992 [1928], p. 276). Proust further explains that
at the time of life, tinged already with disenchantment, which Swann was
approaching, when a man can content himself with being in love for the pleas-
ure of loving without expecting too much in return, this mutual sympathy, if it
is no longer as in early youth the goal towards which love inevitably tends, is
nevertheless bound to it by so strong an association of ideas that it may well
become the cause of love if it manifests itself first (Proust 1992 [1928], p. 276).
In other words, Swann is not captured by any particular quality of Odette’s character.
It is not even that Swann’s personality matches hers, or that some of Swann’s traits
create in him a disposition towards her. On the contrary, an emotional bond, which
is established first by Odette’s remark and then reinforced by Swann’s attitude at that
stage of his life, motivates Swann to fancy Odette before falling in love, with her.
It is noteworthy that Swann is not led by a mere “mood for love,” for—unlike
general moods—his emotional behaviour has a specific object, i.e. Odette and her
personality. Proust refers to “an association of ideas” so strong that it eventually
becomes the cause of love. That we may fall in love because of some association of
ideas is certainly a strong and apparently odd conclusion. However, by association,
Proust intends the fact that desire is motivated by certain ideas that are connected
to the felt situation. It is then the emotional atmosphere inhabited by Swann that
draws him towards Odette. By inhabiting that atmosphere, Swann feels immediately
acquainted with Odette, as if they were two lovers. In other words, she becomes so
familiar to him that she is no longer perceived as an unattractive stranger, but rather
as someone who shares a significant bond with him.

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According to Proust, habitude plays an enormous role in the emotional relation-

ship between two subjects. By habitude, Proust arguably means the institution of
an emotional space that is felt appropriate by the subjects, thereby motivating their
choices and influencing their characters. Habitude institutes an emotional space in
which it feels appropriate to Swann to be with Odette, and he is therefore projected
towards future possibilities of fulfilment. In this sense, one can find in Proust’s nar-
ration two important aspects inherent in emotional experience: (a) habitude as struc-
turing the relation between the felt situation and the apperceived properties of the
emotional object, and (b) motivation as the term linking character, emotion, and
habitude.
It is noteworthy that, in such an account, motivation does not simply structure
the relation between an agent and her/his action, but also and more fundamentally
the process of character formation. Motivation stands for the web of solicitations
that make a certain situation feel in a certain way for the subject who inhabits it. As
such, motivation is non-causal in nature, and it is embedded with possibilities that
may not turn into any action. As I will argue, both habit and motivation are of spe-
cial importance for understanding the nature of emotions in relation to character. In
contrast to standard explanations of character as a stable disposition, it is possible to
structure the relation between character and emotion in a way that admits openness
to change and mutability without falling back into subjectivism. This is an aspect
that contrasts with some contemporary approaches to emotions, as I intend to show
in the following.

2 Motivation and Character in Contemporary Accounts of Emotions

While purposiveness and motivation play a key role in cognitive accounts of emo-
tions, motivation is often equated with action tendencies. This involves the postula-
tion of a kind of goal towards which one’s own attitude is directed. For instance,
according to Solomon (2007 [1973]), emotions are short-term responses and they
are rational in that they fit into a person’s overall purposive behaviour. This does
not entail that a person’s purposes are often coherent. In fact, for the sake of emo-
tions, one can destroy marriages, careers or relationships. For Solomon, emotions,
like judgments, are purposive, but such motives may not be recognised. As Solomon
puts it, “emotions are essentially non-deliberate choices. Emotions, in this sense, are
indeed ‘blind’ as well as myopic; an emotion cannot see itself” (Solomon 2007, p.
21). However, to say that emotions have intelligent purposes means—on Solomon’s
account—that emotions enable or accompany our capacity for doing or changing
something. Thus, from Solomon’s point of view, the motivation of emotions is
equivalent to the purpose of an action. This view overemphasises the link between
emotions and action, thereby neglecting the role played by emotions in structuring
the intelligibility of the situation. By stressing the active (and causal) role of motiva-
tion, one overlooks another important sense of motivation which is involved in the
emotional experience as well and coincides with a more general sense of orientation
that does not necessarily lead to any action.

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From a non-cognitive perspective, Goldie (2002) argued that it would be a mis-

take to cram into the notion of emotional intelligibility aspects as different as beliefs,
values, and feelings, for emotions also refer to a person’s mood and character. From
Goldie’s point of view, emotions involve a stratification of beliefs, desires, and
wants, but not only may beliefs and desires have opposing directions of fit, they also
involve a stratification in terms of relevance, for the satisfaction of a craving may not
bring about the satisfaction of the first-order desire felt by the person. In this sense,
Goldie acknowledges, contra Solomon, that the rationality of emotions is more com-
plex and multi-faceted, for it cannot be reduced to either the standard belief-desire
model or to the equivalence of emotions and judgments. According to Goldie, both
models should be replaced by a “thicker explanation” which is based on motives and
desiderability as well as on personality and character (Goldie 2007).
Thus, one can find in Goldie a broader view of motivation that is linked to evalu-
ation and affective appraisal. More specifically, on Goldie’s account, “the notion of
motive is both summarizing and evaluative of what is in the mind of the person
doing the action, but it does not imply that the motive, as such, was in the person’s
mind as he did the action” (Goldie 2007, p. 107). In other words, for Goldie, motives
are not so much mental events as explanatory non-causal terms that reflect what
one feels appropriate in certain circumstances. In Goldie’s example, a man can be
“set on” revenge but not be thinking about revenge as such when he carries on with
his actions. For Goldie, motives dispense with explanations in terms of beliefs and
desire, because they are sufficient to explicate why certain subjects act in certain
ways under certain circumstances and against the specifics of their actions, provided
that we can make sense of what they felt to be appropriate at the time. At the same
time, one can refer to character and personality in order to explicate the dispositions
that make certain subjects more likely to have certain kinds of motives in certain
situations.
In his book, On Personality, Goldie expands on this topic and argues that char-
acter traits are deeper than personality traits in that the former are laden with values
and moral qualities, whereas the latter are dispositions for which there will be some
kind of “if–then” conditional (Goldie 2004, p. 10). To be a kind person—this is
Goldie’s example—one must have a relatively enduring disposition reliably to have
kind motives and to act in a kind way, so that the appropriate “if–then” conditional
can be applied to her: roughly, if Susan is in a situation where kindness is appropri-
ate, then she will reliably have thoughts and feelings that are characteristic of kind-
ness and thus will reliably act as a kind person should. Personality includes traits
of character, besides many other features, and it evolves over time. More precisely,
Goldie holds that personality traits can be divided into some broad kinds that merge
into each other, which are (a) ways of acting; (b) habits; (c) temperaments; (d) emo-
tional dispositions; (e) enduring preferences and values; (f) skills, talents, and abili-
ties, and (g) character traits (Goldie 2004, p. 11ff).
While Goldie was aware that “sometimes, the explanation [of an action] does
not refer to the individual’s mental condition (drunkenness, depression, anger)
and its influence on thinking, but instead it refers to the particular situation that
the individual is in” (Goldie 2007, p. 111), he does not account in more precise
terms for the relation between dispositions, felt situations, and character traits.

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Most notably, the role of the felt situation is derivative of various subjective fac-
tors, so that any emotion that contrasts with one of these element is simply a
response “out of character” that can happen here and then.
More recently, Deonna and Teroni (2012) have offered a more comprehen-
sive account of emotions that neatly circumscribes the relation between emo-
tion and character. They hold that emotions correspond to felt bodily attitudes
towards objects that are correct if and only if these objects exemplify a given
evaluative property. For example, “fear is an evaluative attitude, an attitude in the
light of which the subject will typically form specific desires such as the desire to
scamper up the nearest tree. Anger is an attitude in the light of which the subject
will form the desire to avenge himself in this or that way” (Deonna & Teroni
2012, p. 83). In their view, emotions correspond to a felt action readiness that is
solicited by the circumstances and exemplifies a specific evaluative property that
can be motivated, but not necessarily justified, by character traits, sentiments and
desires. In regard to this, Deonna and Teroni emphasise that explaining emotions
in terms of character traits has only the function of rooting emotions in a broader
evaluative outlook that helps recognise the weight or lack of weight the subject
lends to certain values or objects (Deonna & Teroni 2012, p. 115). Yet, while
character traits can positively contribute to the justification of emotions, “they do
not yield justificatory reasons in their favour” (Deonna & Teroni 2012, p. 115).
As they put it:
In order to say that there are justificatory relations between character traits,
sentiments, desires, and emotions, one must, quite controversially, conceive of
the former not merely as dispositions to undergo the latter, but rather as some-
thing like long-lasting affective states that are independent of the emotions to
which they give rise. Mark’s love for his niece is now viewed as a long-stand-
ing intentional relation to her that can be justified only if there is evidence that
she is indeed lovable. (Deonna & Teroni 2012, p. 114).
Deonna and Teroni’s proposal offers the undeniable benefit of clarifying the rel-
evance of character traits. Yet the specific limits they put to the explanatory capacity
of character traits is questionable. Mark’s sentiment towards his niece results from
the combination of a number of dispositions that are elicited by different qualities
of his niece as well as by a number of different situations in which his attachment to
her eventually developed. While this confirms that character does yield justificatory
reasons in favour of emotions, it does not attribute to character any long-standing
intentional relation independent of the emotional experience itself. Indeed, Mark’s
love does not need to be caused by any specific property of her niece in order to be
motivated. Following an Aristotelian model of character formation, it can be argued
that an inclination to behave or feel in a certain way need not result directly from
a disposition to have that kind of inclination as a response to a certain kind of fea-
ture (Webber 2006). It follows that, while character cannot fully explain why we
feel certain emotions towards others, the relation between character, emotion, and
felt situation needs to be grounded on a different kind of interdependence. Accord-
ingly, the notion of character should not be reduced to a settled disposition that is
established once and for all, but rather as an attitude in light of which a range of

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different emotional experiences are available, thereby modifying and enriching one’s
own personality.
In my view, to claim that character offers a more positive contribution to emotions
is not to vindicate a deterministic view of character traits. On the contrary, it means
that emotions and affects can be investigated not just in terms of their solicitation to
act, but rather as instituting a dimension wherein one’s own character evolves and
changes by developing affective ties to the felt situation. This calls for a reconsidera-
tion of the role of habitude as structuring the relation between character, emotion,
and situation. In the following, I propose to look at this problem from a phenom-
enological perspective. More precisely, I argue that a preliminary clarification of the
notion of motivation enables us to discern the different layers of motives that operate
within emotional experiences. I will mainly draw on Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s
accounts of motives, as they offer the tools to revisit the relation between emotion
and action as well as that between emotions and character.

3 Motivation is said in Many Ways

As is well known, Husserl draws, in Ideas II, an interesting distinction between

motives and causes. Unlike causes, motives are not “real” in that they refer to the
development of personality (what he calls Geist) rather than to alterations and
changes in nature. Unlike reasons, motives cannot be reduced to definite and explicit
goals to which a subject directs her action, because they also address the passive or
pre-reflective level of experience. More precisely, Husserl distinguishes motivations
of reason, which are active and conscious, from associations, habits, and analogical
nexuses. This partly corresponds to Bratman’s (1987) distinction between delibera-
tive and non-deliberative intentions. Deliberative intentions are formed on the basis
of deliberation about A at t2. In contrast, I might have formed this intention not on
the basis of present deliberation but rather at some earlier time, t0, and have retained
it from t0 to t1 without reconsidering it. In this case my intention is non-deliberative.
For Bratman, deliberative intentions require reasoning and a conscious disposi-
tion to undertake a certain course of action against a background of prior plans and
beliefs. Non-deliberative intentions, in contrast, need not be explicitly recalled at a
given time in order to be carried out, for they are embedded in the outlook of the
agent. Bratman also lists a third type of intention, which he calls policy-based and
that  refers to the general policy of acting in certain sorts of ways in certain kinds
of circumstances. For example, one may have the policy of turning down a second
drink before driving home. In these cases, one complies with a given policy that is
the product of deliberation, and yet deliberation is not required in order to apply the
policy in a certain situation.
Husserl’s account differs in two important respects from Bratman’s. First, Hus-
serl’s account does not consist in a list of different senses of motivation. On the
contrary, he offers (particularly in §56 of Ideas II) a genetic reconstruction of how
different types of motives cohere together in constituting the subject of concrete
intention. Second, Husserl’s view of motivation is not restricted to the explication
of agency, for it addresses the whole structure of experience. As stressed by Paci

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(1968), motivation encompasses a broad variety of experiences, from which the per-
sonal ego—the subject who takes a stance—stands out. Let me briefly focus on each
layer of motives separately.

3.1 Active Motivation: Motivations of Reason (Ego‑Motivation)

Motivations of reason are deliberate, since they depend on the active role of the sub-
ject in so far as s/he judges, values, or entertains a cogito that is linked to another in
virtue of nexuses of logical consequences and conscious judgments. Motivations of
reason can be interpreted noetically (e.g. in that the subject draws conclusions from
her own theses) or noematically (e.g. where the focus is on the matter of each thesis,
which is linked to another in terms of sedimentations of earlier sense-content). It is
worth noting that motivations of reason can also be irrational. For example, when
the subject fails to take responsibility for what s/he believes to be true and lets her-
self be drawn by impulses or instincts, she is motivated by reason only relatively.
Arguably, Husserl suggests that motivations of reason require the actualisation of
a cogito taken as the premise in light of which the ego determines its own attitude.
This, however, is not to deny the role of affects and emotions, which entail a differ-
ent form of motivation, e.g. passive motivation.

3.2 Passive Motivation: Associations and Habits

Passive motivation is crucially dependent on the sedimentation or precipitation

(Niederschläge) of earlier acts. These latter can be either rational acts that are origi-
nally posited by the ego but are connected independently of the ego’s contribution,
or they involve sensibility and the passive sphere of experience. In both cases, once
a connection is formed, there exists a tendency to follow or to continue in a direction
of similarity. For example, I am used to grapping the pen in the way that feels most
comfortable to the grip of my right hand, and I am subjected to hidden associations
between ideas and images that lead me to wonder how I linked them together in the
first place. In this case, Husserl’s general goal is to avoid any infinite regress in order
to examine the pre-reflective ground of associative connections. In this respect, Hus-
serl’s analysis centres on the affective prominence of sensory unities. As shown by
Nuki (1998), one can think of associations in terms of transmissions of awakening
that involve the receptivity of sensibility. Here, association is not a function of sheer
succession from one act to another. Quite to the contrary, association emerges pas-
sively when one constitutive moment of an act appears against the background of
an already formed and homogenous sensory field. Husserl’s idea is that in associa-
tion there exists a transmission of awakening such that whatever stands out from a
certain sensory field acquires affective prominence, thereby generating a transfer of
attention to a new sensory formation.
At this level, one can see that the essential feature of the law of motivation is—as
Husserl puts it—a relation of existential positing: the existence of an act (e.g. listen-
ing to a melody; touching the pen) demands a complementing act (e.g. apperceiv-
ing the tune; grabbing the pen). Complementarity does not refer to any cause-effect

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connection, but rather to the unification that results from apprehension and sensory
content at the level of affectivity. When I sing the tune of a song I enjoy, I expect
that there will be a certain unfolding of the melody, although I cannot anticipate it
before listening. Thus, my expectation is not built upon recollection, for I may not
have heard that melody before. Likewise, objects that are given in my perceptual
horizon solicit affective tendencies that are integral to my original apprehension of
them. Motivation is the law that institutes intentional nexuses between sensibility,
perception, and time consciousness, forming sedimentations of sense contents that
are constituted independently of the active contribution of the ego.
With regard to this, Husserl stresses the parallel between active and passive moti-
vation. While the former consists in active acts of position-taking (Stellungnahme),
such as judgments, the latter inscribes the possibility of meaningful connections on
affectivity. Yet these two forms of motivation cohere together in that passive moti-
vation provides the former with a background of solicitations that can be fulfilled
or not by the ego. Additionally, passive motivation can enter relations of judgment
by constituting implicit connections that can be eventually taken up by the ego and
endorsed in acts of judgment. But how can passive motivation contribute to active
position-taking, given that the latter, unlike the former, involves a predicative
form and conscious deliberation? At this level, it is necessary to reconsider the role
of “habitus” in this section of Ideas II. Habit is a fundamental ingredient of pas-
sive motivation in that it consists in a passive form of position-taking, namely in an
implicit form of assent.
Husserl introduces habitus at the pre-predicative level of experience in order to
account for the way in which we constitute perceptual regularities on the basis of
which—by apperceptive transfer—other objects of a similar kind also appear in a
preliminary familiarity and are anticipated according to a horizon. We could say
that the instauration of habit corresponds to the iteration of a series of transmis-
sions of awakening, which inscribe a pattern on sensibility. Basically, the operations
involved in apprehending and explicating the sense-meaning of an object are uni-
fied and retained in habit in such a way that, when a new occurrence of the object is
available, it is given within a familiar horizon.1 However, for Husserl, when I per-
ceive something I do not simply see something in the flesh, I also posit it as valid
until something else will change or modify my original certainty (Husserl 1939,
§21). It is in virtue of this connection between receptivity and certainty, which is
established through habit, that the world presents itself to me as familiar and known.
Accordingly, various sensory experiences are simultaneously unified and integrated
as one’s own dispositions towards specific situations.
In this perspective, circumstances are apperceived as familiar because habit
holds together our perception of the object as well as our assent to the event. For
this reason, Husserl speaks of “habitus”, meaning the disposition that provides the
nexus between sensibility, perception, and the felt situation. As a result,—precisely

1
  Not by chance, the position-taking at stake in habituality is ultimately rooted in the structure of time
consciousness, and more precisely in the net of intentional acts that underlie our memories and expecta-
tions (Hua IV, p. 227; 1989, p. 239).

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because the internalisation brought about by habit involves assent—habit is not

blind. For Husserl, habit cannot be resolved into sheer automaticity and repetition,
for it consists in the institution of a horizon of potential experiences (Moran 2011).
Unlike the standard conception of habit as “not knowing what one does when s/he
is doing it”, habit indicates that, even when we are not consciously entertaining any
thoughts, a permanent possession, which Husserl calls habitual knowledge (habitu-
elles Wissen) (Husserl 1939, p. 137; 1973, p. 122), is involved.
This process also helps explain the integration between passive and active moti-
vation at the level of judgments and beliefs. Using Husserl’s example, having once
believed M, with a certain sense and under a certain mode of representation, I then
believe M again in a new case (Hua IV, p. 224; 1989, p. 235). This corresponds to
Bratman’s notion of policy-based intention: my belief that drinking a second glass of
wine before driving home is not wise holds even when I do not deliberate about it.
When I hold the belief M, I stick to a certain connection of ideas without necessarily
reflecting upon the reasons why I judged M to be true. Unlike Bratman’s view, how-
ever, Husserl’s argument suggests that policy-based intentions do not depend on lack
of deliberation, but rather on the internalisation of motives that connect my original
commitment to the character and features of the actual situation. This is not to say
that any intentional act is marked by habituality in the sheer sense of following a
route. In fact, Husserl warns against the confusion of occurrences of motivation with
occurrences of habituality. While habit represents the glue of passive motivation and
contributes to the sedimentation of webs of motives into a pattern, motivation com-
prises a broad spectrum of intentional acts that is not reducible to habit.

3.3 Empirical Motivation: Analogy

Empirical motivation consists in the web of solicitations originated by the sense data
or hyle of perceptual acts. Such solicitations run back and forth, having the possibil-
ity of being fulfilled in actual experiences or not. For example, the taste of the Sach-
ertorte I enjoy on my first visit to Vienna brings me back the sensuous enjoyment
of the Sachertorte I first tasted when I was a student in my home country. While I
do not entertain any conscious representation of the Sachertorte I originally had as
a student, a web of expectations surrounds the Sachertorte I eat in Vienna for the
first time, just like the well known madeleine moment in Proust. Such expectations
are linked to the sensible qualities of the cake, and they can be fulfilled or frustrated
depending on the actual qualities of the Sachertorte I enjoy in the present. This sug-
gests that our experience of objects and events is open to affective solicitations that
are not completely under our control, and yet they constitute an atmosphere that is
affective and sensuous in nature.

4 Toward an Account of Emotional Space

The difference between a passive and an active sense of motivation is characteristic

of Husserl’s account and reflects two different yet connected senses of subjective

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position-taking. On the one hand, the personal ego is constituted on the basis of
our reflections and evaluations. By consciously endorsing certain beliefs and posi-
tions, the ego eventually forms its personality as reflecting her choices, values, and
beliefs. It is only when we take up certain motives as our own that we manifest free-
dom as agents, i.e. as persons and subjects of rational choices (Hua IV, §§59–60).
On the other hand, passive motives form an affective background within which we
apperceive events, gestures, and expressions as emotionally salient or relevant to
us.2 While the active sense of motivation is at stake in contemporary accounts of
emotions, the second one suggests that the relation between character and emotion
requires a more complex view of the self.
In several places, Husserl refers to the constitution of an environing world or
Umwelt that is completely actual for the self and represents the sphere in which the
ego lives and acts (Hua XI, p. 162; 2001, p. 210). In his Introduction to Ethics, Hus-
serl argues that subjectivity creates its own environing world through the various
forms of both its waking and passive life. It is precisely through such a dynamic that
the ego develops its own personality and character, that is to say an ever-changing
habitus (Hua XXVIII, §22).3 The constitution of character is a dynamic process that
involves an environing world, wherein the ego unceasingly constitutes itself and is
always motivated anew by the sleeping ego. Accordingly, a second nature arises
when the habitus of an individual is established as the concordant unity of all her
modes of behaviour.
However, the concept of second nature does not amount to the formation of a
determined identity based on the repetition of similar actions and behaviours. On
the contrary, it reveals the formation of a style, i.e. a unique personal development
that retains its identity on the basis of continuous variation and self-transformation.4
Basically, habituality underlies the synthesis of free motivation (e.g. conscious posi-
tion taking) and passive experience in order to generate an attitude that is character-
istic of specific circumstances, but it is also open to revision and temporal updating.
Indeed, every new position-taking of the ego institutes a new moment in the per-
sonal history of the self. It follows that character, for Husserl, is a dynamic process
that constitutes its own surrounding world (Umwelt) in the lived present.5 We can

2
  This is an important aspect that characterises Husserl’s account of pre-reflective experience, which is
not as unchangeable and stable as it is often supposed (see, for instance, Ratcliffe’s critique of Husserl on
the sense of reality: Ratcliffe 2008, pp. 70ff). The notion of affective background in Husserl is also very
close to that of mood, as shown by Lee (1998) and Quepons Ramiréz (2015).
3
  As is well known, Ideas II addresses several notions of the I (e.g. the self of the lived body, psyche,
spirit), which are not equivalent to each other, although all of them are grounded on the transcendental
unity of the ego. For a discussion of this problem, see Ferrarin (2017). In this paper, however, my argu-
ment is limited to the notion of personal character.
4
  For Husserl’s notion of style, see Meacham (2013, pp. 16–17): “Because style is instituted, it is con-
stantly in the process of reforming itself by referring-back to its own developmental history in such a
manner that its history is continuously acting upon it in new ways. At the same time, its history is retro-
actively transformed in its own development. And yet, an individual style retains its identity precisely on
the basis of this continuous back-referral, because it refers back to an idiosyncratic pathway of develop-
ment unique to that ego”.
5
  Contrast this with Scheler’s view of the value-laden “shell” carried along by each individual and whose
law of formation is prescribed—rather than instituted—by the value structure of the milieu (Scheler

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further characterise the notion of Umwelt in terms of emotional space, in order to

emphasise that character develops against an affective and emotional background,
and it is the interplay with such an environing or affective world that motivates emo-
tions rather than fixed character traits.
For Husserl, emotions have a characteristic structure in that they are founded on
objectifying acts like perception, representation, or judgment, which maintain a ref-
erence to their intentional objects (e.g. in love the reference is the loved person, in
joy the object of joy).6 Furthermore, as Husserl argues in Ideas I:
We are conscious of the value in valuing, the pleasant in being pleased, the
joyful in enjoying, but at times in such a way that, in valuing this or that, we
are simply not entirely “sure”. Or we may be conscious in such a way that the
subject matter merely suggests itself as valuable, as perhaps valuable, while
we still refrain from championing it in evaluating it (Hua III/1, p. 243; 2014,
p. 233).
This suggests that emotions are value-laden and entail a stance or positing, i.e., an
underlying doxic thesis. Emotions are indicative of a corresponding thesis or belief,
e.g. an appraisal of the world, that can be made explicit in a predicative form. Yet
Husserl also holds that at times we are not sure about the values that are manifested
in experience. Indeed, we often go through revisions and reconsiderations of the val-
ues we appraise, hence we avoid taking sides.
In this light, feeling an emotion that contradicts our values is not an experi-
ence “out of character”. From a Husserlian point of view, emotions presuppose the
instauration of an emotional Umwelt in which certain actions are felt to be more or
less appropriate depending not only on the value system endorsed by  the subject,
but also and more importantly on the development of her dispositions within the felt
situation. What makes emotions distinctive intentional experiences is the fact that
the emotional object is apperceived within an affective horizon, wherein the sub-
ject is presented not only with different possibilities for action, but also with differ-
ent opportunities to assent to or deny the felt values of the situation. In turn, such
response is capable of affecting, adjusting, or altering one’s own character and value
system. From this perspective, any individual emotional response is not an effect
or a result of certain character traits, but rather the expression of one’s own atti-
tude considered in her dynamic interaction with the situation. This is why Swann’s

Footnote 5 (continued)
1973, p. 100): “Man is encased, as though in a shell, in the particular ranking of the simplest values and
value-qualities which represent the objective side of his ordo amoris, values which have not yet been
shaped into things and goods. He carries this shell along with him wherever he goes and cannot escape
from it no matter how quickly he runs. He perceives the world and himself through the windows of this
shell, and perceives no more of the world, of himself, or of anything else besides what these windows
show him, in accordance with their position, size, and colour. The structure and total content of each
man’s environment, which is ultimately organised according to its value structure, does not wander or
change, even though he himself wanders further and further in space”.
6
  For a discussion of Husserl’s account of emotions with respect to the relation between their presenta-
tional and affective dimensions see Drummond (2013).

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 Husserl Stud

surge of jealousy for Odette cannot be ascribed to either Odette’s or Swann’s respec-

tive peculiar traits, but rather to the affective salience that manifests itself in Swann
and Odette’s encounters and rituals, and that attaches itself to the environing world
they share (e.g. the peculiar bond instituted among the members of the Verdurin’s
club, or the systematic ritual pursued by Swann in his meetings with Odette). When
Swann finds himself deprived of this affective and shared Umwelt, he falls into a
spiral of jealousy that reveals, more than his narcissism, the fragmentation of his
emotional space.
Following Husserl, it can be argued that the motivation underlying  emotions is
not to be equated tout court to action tendencies, because emotions are involved
in the instauration of an emotional space or Umwelt, wherein a course of action is
expected but not anticipated. It is in and through such space that action eventually
takes place, but the relation between emotion, motivation, and action is not straight-
forward. Indeed, motives are responsible for the complementarity of intentional acts,
i.e. for the unity and coherence of our experiences, but they do not guarantee any
consequentiality or causal relation between character and actions.
The notion of emotional space may help explain why we fall in love with a per-
son that does not even share our values, or why we feel emotions that contradict
our principles. Indeed, the “rationality” of emotions depends on the intertwining of
habitual disposition and free motivation (Hua IV, §59), that is to say on the free
interplay between receptivity and spontaneity. Yet there exists coherence between
a person’s set of values and her emotions, for each emotional Umwelt represents the
unfolding of character in the constant, surrounding space in which modifications and
changes in one’s character are always possible depending on the specifics of the situ-
ations as well as on the encounter with other selves.7
In my view, Husserl’s account allows us to reconsider the relation between emo-
tions, motivation, and character in that he brings to light the fact that motivation is
both active and passive, hence it cannot be reduced to an inclination to act. On Hus-
serl’s account, passive motivation enables us to feel acquainted with a situation and
to develop affective ties that eventually institute our own emotional Umwelt. In this
context, the emotional space makes apparent that our appraisal of the situation can
be marked by hesitation, uncertainty, or full adherence. From this point of view, the

7
  In his course notes from the College de France (1954–1955) on Institution and Passivity, Merleau-
Ponty takes into account the concept of the institution of feelings by referring to Proust. Even though
Merleau-Ponty was more interested in spelling out the problem of self-delusion and narcissism in
Proust’s description of love, Merleau-Ponty notices that emotions are bound to the felt situation accord-
ing to a process of sedimentation. In the case of Swann’s falling in love, Merleau-Ponty notices that “love
is not created by circumstances, or by decision; it consists in the way questions and answers are linked
together—by means of an attraction, something more slips in, we discover not exactly what we were
seeking, but something else that is interesting. The initial Sinngebung [is] confirmed, but in a different
direction, and yet that is not without a relation with the initial donation of sense” (Merleau-Ponty 2010,
p. 39). Merleau-Ponty’s idea is that the relation between character, motives, and emotions is structured
along a process of institution, which coincides with “the foundation of a personal history on the basis of
contingency” (Merleau-Ponty 2010, p. 36). For a discussion of emotions as institutions in Merleau-Ponty
see Maclaren (2017).

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Husserl Stud

relation between character and emotions is dynamic and stratified and it does not
imply any one-way directionality or causal action between the two.

5 The Patterning of Body and World

The notion of emotional space can be further developed by looking at Merleau-Pon-

ty’s Phenomenology of Perception, which develops further Husserl’s theory of pas-
sive motivation in light of the other relevant features of embodied perception. Like
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty argues that motives cannot be reduced to either reasons or
causes, as they include objects, states, and events that are present only tacitly in our
experience (Wrathall 2004). Most notably, Merleau-Ponty draws attention to the fact
that, in emotional experiences, there is a simultaneous patterning of body and world
(Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 219). By this, he means that emotions are embodied in ges-
tures and features of expression that do not simply convey whether one is angry or
happy, but they also reveal the physiognomic basis of perception.
As Merleau-Ponty writes: “Already the mere presence of a living body trans-
forms the physical world, bringing to view here ‘food’, there a ‘hiding place’ […]”
(Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 220). According to Merleau-Ponty, our perception of
spaces and objects is embedded within a Gestalt that is responsible not only for the
coherence and regularity of the perceptual content, but also for the way in which
things and events appear to us with a peculiar and familiar tonality. For this reason,
a warm place is felt as a shelter or as a hiding place, depending on our dispositions
and needs. In short, we do not perceive the environment “neutrally,” for even a city
like Paris presents itself to us  with an atmosphere and a style that reminds us of
an old friend. Such a  capacity, which has been correctly identified by Romdenh-
Romluc (2009) as “the power of summoning”, is at stake in perception and serves
the purpose of linking consciousness to the world though affective and habitual ties.
In perception, things appear to us as if they are embedded with a distinct famili-
arity, whereby the world summons us, i.e. it evokes a horizon of possible experi-
ences where we can project our acting and feelings. The power of summoning that
characterises perception is not always the same in everyone and it does change also
in the course of one’s life. For example, when I feel nostalgic, the relation between
the actual environment and myself is decentred, for I am no longer the centre of it.
In this case, I do not project myself in the actual world with an attitude of joy or free
expansion, therefore my  experience of the environment is gloomy and  marked by
uncertainty.
In this respect, it is important to notice that, for Merleau-Ponty, the physiognomic
patterning of the world establishes coherence on the basis of our bodily acquaint-
ance with situations and events. Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty argues that asso-
ciation is not obtained in virtue of an act of comparison or by reflection. If the shape
of a cloud brings to my mind the profile of the person I love, it is because the pattern
that structures my perception of the cloud already bears that resemblance with the
profile of the beloved, and not because I compare the cloud with the representa-
tion of the beloved. In this sense, perception is imbued with affective features that
draw on the emotional Umwelt that one inhabits. Accordingly, on Merleau-Ponty’s

13
 Husserl Stud

account, the transmission of awakening that characterises passive motivation is

grounded in our bodily experience, thereby instituting a subterranean logic between
the lived body, emotions, and the felt situation.8
In light of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis, the notion of emotional Umwelt can be fur-
ther enriched and articulated by looking at the way in which the spatiality of one’s
own body contributes to creating an “envelope” of habitual action (Merleau-Ponty
2012, p. 106). Bodily movement and kinesthesis facilitate our insertion in the world
in such a way that gestures can be considered as having a “melodic character” that
accompanies everyday life (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 107). When bodily movements
unfold, we find out that we possess not just fluidity of action but also a form of
self-acquaintance that enables our communication with the outer world. This is why
Merleau-Ponty argues that the body does not just have space, but inhabits space
(Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 140). In other words,  the body partakes in a system of
equivalences and concordances between one’s experience and the range of motor
tasks available in specific contexts. It is symptomatic that also for Merleau-Ponty the
central element that guarantees the coherent and dynamic unfolding of our orienta-
tion in the world is habituality in the form of the body-schema.
The body-schema provides us with a synchronic unity of movement and orienta-
tion that is grounded in our sensory-motor processes. By simultaneously delimiting
our fields of vision and action, every motor habit instantiates our own bodily space,
which, however, does not represent a closed system: “We have the experience of a
world, not in the sense of a system of relations that fully determines each event, but
in the sense of an open totality whose synthesis can never be completed. We have
the experience of an I, not in the sense of an absolute subjectivity, but rather one
that is indivisibly unmade and remade by the course of time” (Merleau-Ponty 2012,
p. 228). When an alteration (either pathological or non-pathological) occurs in our
affective and kinaesthetic horizon it reverberates as a fragmentation of our primor-
dial orientation in the world, for in those cases the perceptual field loses its “plastic-
ity” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 133).
If an individual’s Umwelt manifests such patterning of body and world, it can
be argued that emotions like grief, anger, joy or happiness are not simply manifes-
tations of states and feelings, but affective tonalities of the Umwelt. Joy and grief
are two distinct emotions that reverberate in my own Umwelt, tinging events and
subject with a tonality that reflects my own projection in the world, whether as
free expansion or as impoverishment. In this sense, the notion of emotional space
is particularly relevant when it comes to explicating the lived experience of others.
While the problem of empathy requires a  more extensive discussion that I cannot
provide in this article, I wish to suggest that the concept of emotional place may
play a crucial role for understanding the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. As is
well known, on both Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts, empathy is a specific,

8
  As shown by Heinämaa (2008), Merleau-Ponty employs the notion of sedimentation to account for the
necessary temporary relations resulting between perceivable objects and the constitutive originarity of
the body. Far from outlining a mere accumulation of events and experiences, the process of sedimenta-
tion refers to the emergence of spontaneity out of contingency.

13
Husserl Stud

pre-reflective experience that involves our apperception of other embodied selves.

As such, empathy draws on the passive sphere of experience, and it is strictly differ-
ent from both conscious inferring and simulation, because it depends on associative
nexuses established at the level of affectivity (Zahavi 2014). Yet this does not mean
that our basic and primary experience of others lacks social or cultural significance.
In empathy, there is a fundamental encounter between different styles and characters
(Hua IV, §60). While a total capture of the other’s style cannot be achieved because
of the dynamic nature of character, Husserl nonetheless argues that we can follow
the other’s motives, thereby making intuitive the other’s history and development.
As Pugliese has pointed out (Pugliese 2004, p. 91), every experience that we have of
the other has to become archaeology in order to bring to light the essential turning
points of one’s own story.
Thus, Husserl arguably suggests that our experience of others admits different
layers of stratification. This is what he hints at in the second book of Ideas when he
differentiates between the constitution of the psychophysical subject and the notion
of subject as character and personality. Following out another’s motives does not
entail that we need to figure out another’s course of action. In fact, it means that we
co-share or co-participate in another’s Umwelt, and that someone else’s emotional
space is apperceived analogously. Importantly, through empathy, we seek to under-
stand another’s existential projection in the world (Ratcliffe 2008). In order to do
so, we draw not just on the passive repertoire of our bodily experience, but we also
engage in a more complex stance of interpretation of another’s affective background.
In this sense, the stratification of motivation is essential for understanding empa-
thy as the intersubjective dimension that discloses the integration between passive
motives and features of character and personality. In this perspective, the notion of
emotional space does not anticipate the course of action chosen by the subject, but it
illuminates the non-causal entanglement between character, bodily experience, and
motivation.

6 Conclusions

In light of the notion of emotional space, it is possible to uncover the nature of emo-
tions as bodily responses to felt situations. While contemporary accounts of emo-
tions stress the active role of motivation, I have argued that motives have a pas-
sive dimension that plays a more fundamental role in relation to character. In this
regard, the phenomenological perspective that I have outlined emphasises that char-
acter is constituted at the pre-reflective level of experience and it is then subjected
to a continuous process of questioning and self-appropriation, having its own style
and  evaluative stance. In this light, emotions play a key role in that they disclose
the affective resonance that permeates the subject as well as her relation to the lived
situation, including other subjects. This suggests that we can speak of an emotional
subject besides the psychophysical self and the practical agent. The emotional sub-
ject is rooted in the psychophysical realm of motives and affects, and it represents
the dimension in which the surrounding world constantly resonates with possibilities

13
 Husserl Stud

and anticipations that may or may not be followed out, and whose development is
neither linear nor consequential.
It is important to notice that, from a phenomenological point of view, we would
never expect that a subject conducts herself according to standards of behaviour that
are rooted in character’s traits. This because character evolves over time and apper-
ceives events and situation within an emotional space that may influence but does
not determine the course of action chosen by the subject. Yet this is not to deny
responsibility and agency, for what holds us responsible for our actions lies not in
our character traits, but rather in our conscious acts of willing and acting. Like the
musical phrase that spellbinds Swann, it can be said that the relationship between
habit, character, and emotion consists in a web of motives that articulates and makes
intelligible our participation in the life-world but does not define our actual person-
ality once and for all.

Acknowledgements  I presented shorter versions of this paper on the occasion of the following meet-
ings: the conference Aesthetics of Emotions. Art and the Cognitive Sciences organised by Prof. Maddalena
Mazzocut-Mis at the University of Milan in October 2016, the staff work-in-progress meeting of the UCD
School of Philosophy in November 2016,  and the 48th Meeting of the Husserl Circle in July 2017. I
would like to thank all the participants in these events for the opportunity to discuss this paper and for
their encouraging feedbacks. I am also grateful to Fabrizio Desideri, Alessandra Fussi, Alfredo Ferrarin,
Niall Keane, Alice Pugliese, Jeremy Smith, and Salvatore Tedesco for reading and commenting on previ-
ous drafts of this paper. The completion of this article was made possible by research grants funded by
the University of Milan in collaboration with ACRI and the Irish Research Council for Social Science and
Humanities.

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