Wednesday's Child: From Heidegger to Affective Neuroscience, a Field Theory of Angst

Philosophy of emotion is a vital topic within contemporary philosophy of mind. Beginning from insights latent in Heidegger's early philosophy, Wednesday's Child is an argument that, with the recognition of a suitable field of consciousness, it ought to be possible to speak scientifically about our non-cognitional and non-volitional but nevertheless rational moods, in particular "that most celebrated mood," namely, Angst. With the emergence of twentieth-century existentialism and its attention to human experience, and with Heidegger's revolutionary insight that an emotional mood such as Angst (long-term anxiety or anguish) has intentionality, the time was ripe for serious phenomenological work on the emotional aspect of our human being. Much more recently, advances in neurological imaging have enabled us to contemplate the phenomenon of human emotion scientifically. At present, the new discipline of social neuroscience affords us a philosophical and scientific opportunity to attend to the emotional aspect of our being, a long-neglected aspect of our humanity. Proceeding from Heidegger's insight regarding the intentionality of moods, this book adumbrates a type of social neuroscience capable of validating Heidegger's understanding of the centrality of Angst for human being. Wednesday's Child concludes with an Afterthought pointing to the religious and non-religious uses of Angst, which the author depicts as a "prime datum" of our human being and includes a glossary, an appended outline of the book's argument, and an annotated bibliography. Book jacket.Read less