What significance do feelings and emotions have in the work of Immanuel Kant? This project attemps to develop a new understanding of Kant's philosophy through an answer to this question. The project is funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
The aim of this research project is to extract from Kant’s writings a systematic Kantian account of the nature and function of emotion. It will suggest a novel way of construing emotions as 'feelings', which are irreducible, sui generis mental states that play a unique role in our mind, namely that of tracking and evaluating our activity in relation to ourselves and the world so as to orient us. Given their orientational function, it will argue that we cannot understand the Kantian picture of the mind without a proper account of the place of emotions therein. This account will thus offer not only an original contribution to our understanding of Kant but also a novel philosophical account of the emotions.