Bodily constitution of affective lived experiences in Ideas by Edmund Husserl

Tania Guadalupe Yáñez Flores

Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo

The purpose of this investigation is an exploration of the constitution of affective lived experiences in
corporality, and of the relationship between the experience of value and the lived body, as well, such as
they are expressed in the three tomes of Ideas by Edmund Husserl.1 To this end there are at a minimum
three main issues we must address. 1. The distinction of affective lived experiences according to their
intentional structure, as well as the clarification of the meaning of their intentionality. 2. In order to explore
which are the different moments of the apperception of value, it will be necessary to distinguish which are
the strata of sensibility as well as to analyze how sensible feelings (Gefühlsempfindungen) play a role
within the display of the emotive apperception of value. 3. The role that sensible feelings fulfill requires,
in turn, a clarification of the role of the lived body in such display, which is why it will be necessary to
make a phenomenological analysis of the constitution of the lived body, of how it appears and which are
the characteristics that show its specificity, and what distinguishes it from the physical body. This will be
the foundation from which we will explore the role the living body plays within the sensible manifestation
of values through affective life.
In tandem this work plan, it will be imperative that we first make a brief detour to establish the
meaning of intentionality in emotions. We will have to clear up how, according to husserlian theory,
affective lived experiences are not mere psychological states. Furthermore, we will explore how, within
affective lived experiences, noetical and noematical stratifications can be distinguished, as well as to
clarify in what sense we can speak of fulfillment of an experience of this kind, that is, which is the
conjunction between “matter” and “quality” of an act. In other words: the first section will be dedicated
to husserlian theory regarding the experience of value.
Regarding affective lived experiences, we must take as a foothold the analysis presented by Husserl
in his Logical Investigations, wherein he presents a distinction between emotions as an act (intentional
lived experiences), and as sensible feelings that, while they are not intentional lived experiences per se,

1
It is true that the theme of corporeity crops up in several Works by Husserl, such as Analysen zur passiven Synthesis or Zur
Phänenomenologie der Intersubejektivität, but one of the secondary objectives of this work is to attempt a systematization
of the question set forth in the three tomes of Ideas, starting from a few of the most relevant distinctions posited in Logical
Investigations.
they play a role within intentional apprehension. This foothold for the elucidation of affective life,
immediately takes us into the issue of the sensible display of the experience of value. To our
understanding, this is one of the objectives: to explain what is the specific role of sensible feelings in such
lived experiences. Husserl posits that, such as how theorical-doxic lived experiences possess inferior strata
(in a similar way to how perception has sensations from which other types of lived experiences are
founded, such as judgment), analogically there are sensible feelings within the inferior strata of affective
lived experiences, but these aren’t mere sensations, but they are already affective sensations in themselves
because they are not only apprehended as content which represents the object but as sensible feelings also.
These can be localized or not, some may be in intimate relationship with sensations that have a corporeal
reference and others are merely the base for the apprehension of the emotively represented object; we
must explore what is the relationship between sensible display of the apperception of value and localized
sensations. This is why it is required that we delve deeper in some aspects of emotive constitution of
corporeity.
Regarding the final section, and as a third general objective, we will have to make a
phenomenological analysis of the living body, its constitution and the particular intentional correlations
bound to it, specifically affective lived experiences. To this end we will have to show how and as what
the body itself appears for each. First of all, within the realm of sensation, we explore movement,
kinesthesis. The analysis of these is crucial, because for the lived body, which is the locus of orientation,
movement is at the source of representation and spatial correlations, in a way that it presides,
fundamentally, sensibility, by making localization possible as well as the displacement of every corporeal
extension, including the eyes. Immediate movement manifests that the lived body is not only subject to
laws of casual movement but it is also the organ of will; it is a capacity belonging to corporeity. It will be
necessary to clarify how the immediacy of movement takes place within it, while at the same time it is
subject to some sort of causality itself. Next to these sensations of movement, inside the framework of the
exploration of sensibility, tactile sensations (“sensings”, “ubiestesias” in Spanish) can also be found.
These localized sensations take part in the perceptive constitution of things, but also in the self-perception
of the body, in the perception of how the body feels itself.
To the extent of our understanding, in order to delve into the problematic expressed in the
beginning, these three research directives are key.