The Strength of Emotions and the Weakness of Feelings: The Phenomenology of Affectivity as an Educational Challenge

Emotions and feelings affect human existence in different ways. While we are subjected to our emotions in a way, we are nevertheless the subjects of our feelings. Receptivity or passivity, in affective experience, is always counterbalanced by responsivity and intentionality. In our time, emotionalism has taken the driving seat: the striving for ‘strong emotions’ that characterizes contemporary life is associated to a superficiality and inconsistency of feeling that impoverishes our interpersonal relationships and existential choices. Value-based judgment has therefore been replaced by taste-based judgement, and this has far-reaching consequences in existential, ethical and political terms. A sketch of the phenomenology of emotional life and some grounding principles for an affective education beyond psychologism and subjectivism are presented here. The aim of this paper is to help recognize the different levels of the emotional life (moods, emotions and feelings), in order to provide a deeper understanding of the nature of feeling and the task of education. Despite the contemporary emphasis on ‘emotional intelligence’ and the development of emotional skills (somehow conditioned however by a sort of economism of the emotional life), the essence of the ‘education of the heart’ remains obscured and neglected. Yet, educating the heart is the very core of Bildung, because it is responsible for the formation of one’s personality and moral character. Personal maturity coincides with the development of a person’s ability to feel the world and its requirements (values): a purpose that supposes the capacity to shift from self-centredness to self-transcendence.