The Feeling of Being a Person

We thank Argyris Stringaris, Martin Heinze, Matthew R. Broom, and Havi Carel for their acute and thoughtful commentaries on our paper. The commentaries can be regarded as subtle reflections on our work, and as valuable suggestions for the future development of our theory. They all seem, more or less, to agree with our basic thoughts about the intimate relation between affectivity and personhood. We therefore use this opportunity to clarify some aspects of our theory that have been emphasized in the commentaries. We have chosen to do this in the form of one coherent response divided in three sections, each of which deals with one or two issues raised by the respective commentary. The three sections cover (1) The Affective Core of Being a Person (a response to Heinze), (2) Biology and Heideggerian Being-in-the-World (a response to Broome and Carel), and (3) Enduring Emotions, Values, and the Moody Person (a response to Stringaris). In this way, we hope to give due consideration to some aspects of the single commentaries and, at the same time, to show how their suggestions, in general, could improve our future research.

The Affective Core of Being a Person

Martin Heinze ends his commentary with the emphatic words:

we have to inquire into how human personality is not only shaped by affectivity but has affectivity as its very condition. Thus, in future we should not anymore be able to speak about ourselves in relation to our emotions. We will rather understand that we are our emotions, that our personality is in itself emotional, and that the notion of a person is abstracted secondarily from the bodily and emotional nature of human nature.

(Heinze 2009, 275)

This is an important statement with many implications for our proposed theory. These can be gathered in three categories: affective nature, relational ontology, and the notion of a person as a secondary abstraction. The issues will be dealt with in that order.

We agree with Heinze's emphasis on the affective core of being a person. This is a point that has been emphasized by the phenomenological tradition (e.g., Heidegger 1962/1996; Ricoeur 1960; Strasser 1956/1977), by recent developmental psychology (e.g., Rochat 2007) and by neuroscientific research (e.g., Pankseep 2005; Damasio 2003; Pessoa 2008). Human experience, action, and selfhood are embodied and, therefore, continuously pervaded by affectivity. When our attention is caught by something, it is because this something is somehow singled out on the background of our experiential field. We see, for example, a poorly dressed woman crying and stumbling her way on the side of the street on our way home from work. This catches our attention because we are somehow touched by the scene (touched is here not to be understood in any sentimental way, but simply as something that leaves an impression on our consciousness). We can choose to stop the car and ask her what is wrong or choose to ignore her and continue on our way home. But our being touched is shown by the fact that we often have to choose what to do with that which catches our attention. What we experience touches us and thereby constitutes the ground from which our actions arise. Our actions are heavily influenced by how we feel about what we experience, that is, how we are affected by the world around us. To disregard the affective dimension of human experience and action is a mistake in the sense that we thereby ignore what makes us human, namely, our refined sensibility expressed in the way we are touched by our surroundings.

With regard to the primacy of affectivity, we seem to be in full agreement with Heinze. This argument, however, brings us to the question of self and personhood in relation to this affective core of being human. When we choose to stop or to drive away from the poor woman, our self is somewhat deeply implicated in that action elicited by our affective state of mind. Our theory proposed a kind of relational ontology that emphasized the...