L’esperienza emotiva tra James e Dewey

Abstract

In this paper I intend to examine the theoretical contribution of James’s and Dewey’s pragmatist instances to the problem of emotion. I suppose that with their starting point of holistic base and the consequent attempt to transcend the classical dichotomies of body and mind, fact and value of both authors manage to understand the intrinsically aesthetic and anthropological bond of emotion as a distinctive qualitative constitution of experience – even though they explore it through different angles. They view it as a horizon of sense, full of emotional moods. From this standpoint, emotion is not investigated on intrapsychic and intraphysic level, but starting from the sensory media - in with which, and with which, it comes into being and takes shape, in an attempt to determinate not the meaning of emotion as such, but rather the significance of emotion.