ABSTRACT
Following a brief period of marginalization, emotions are firmly back in the philosophical arena. This is certainly not news. Indeed, just stating that there has been a ‘rediscovery of the emotions in philosophy’ almost amounts to a platitude by now. What is a fairly new development, however, is the recent surge of interest in phenomenological perspectives on emotions. The decades-long jettisoning of the phenomenology of emotions, not just within the still largely analytic orientated philosophy of emotions but also within the phenomenological movement itself, is rather surprising. Over a century ago, early and classical phenomenologists such as Scheler, Stein, Husserl, Heidegger, Kolnai, and Sartre were already engaged in intensive discussions about the nature and function of emotions. Moreover, they offered detailed, sometimes book-length, analyses of specific emotions such as anxiety, fear or boredom (Heidegger), shame (Sartre, Scheler), disgust, hatred (Kolnai), or Ressentiment (Scheler).
