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Department of Philosophy

Staff

Publication details for Prof Matthew Ratcliffe

Ratcliffe M. (2005). The Feeling of Being. Journal of Consciousness Studies 12(8-10): 43-60. (German translation published in Slaby, J. and Stephan, A. eds. Affektive Intentionalität. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag, 2011).

Author(s) from Durham

Abstract

There has been much recent philosophical discussion concerning the relationship between emotion and feeling. However, everyday talk of ‘feeling’ is not restricted to emotional feeling and the current emphasis on emotions has led to a neglect of other kinds of feeling. These include feelings of homeliness, belonging, separation, unfamiliarity, power, control, being part of something, being at one with nature and ‘being there’. Such feelings are perhaps not ‘emotional’. However, I suggest here that they do form a distinctive group; all of them are ways of ‘finding ourselves in the world’. Indeed, our sense that there is a world and that we are ‘in it’ is, I suggest, constituted by feeling. I offer an analysis of what such ‘existential feelings’ consist of, showing how they can be both ‘bodily feelings’ and, at the same time, part of the structure of intentionality.