La estructura fenomenológica de la afectividad en Husserl

Abstract

This doctoral thesis exposes and analyses some milestones of the affective doctrine of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, in light of his major works and research manuscripts that were practically unknown until now. His research on feelings had a peak period between 1909 and 1911, investigations that have remained unpublished for more than a century, to which we have had access in the Husserl Archives in Leuven (Belgium) and Freiburg (Germany) and which have been published only very recently (during the preparation of this thesis) in the philosopher's Collected Works. The opening chapters of the dissertation comparatively present the two models known to date of Husserl's affective doctrine, those of his two major works: the more subjectivist one of Logical Investigations and the more objectivist one of Ideas. The main new aspect of our work is the examination of Husserl's less well-known texts on feelings, specifically those from manuscripts from 1909 to 1911 (precisely the period between his two major works) and it is based on the theoretical cores that we have considered most relevant: the relationship between feeling and objectification, the phenomenon of "affect" (Affekt) and mood (Stimmung), the understanding of feeling as an act and as a state, and the discussion between Husserl and Geiger on the consciousness of feelings. As critical asessment, we show that the methodological and theoretical presuppositions that guided Husserl on his philosophical path led him to approach the study of feeling on the basis of these interests and to ignore other possibilities of understanding affectivity from within itself. We also conclude that when he studied feeling in itself in a more direct and concentrated way, some of the limits to which the phenomenological method itself led him become clear. The doctoral thesis points to Husserlian genetic phenomenology and its dialogue with Michel Henry's affective doctrine as promising future research from which to deepen and broaden the examination of affectivity.