午夜剧场

In daily life, when we speak of the "mind," we are likely referring to "emotions." While the mind has various functions such as perception, thought, prediction, and imagination, emotions are probably considered the representative example of the mind.

As such, one might think that emotions are the center of the "philosophy of mind," which studies the mind philosophically. However, that was not the case about 15 years ago when I first encountered the philosophy of mind. In Japan at that time, the "philosophy of mind" mainly dealt with the mind-body problem, such as "Are the mind and brain identical?" and "Can consciousness be understood as a physical phenomenon?" Of course, the mind-body problem has been the most important issue in philosophy since Descartes. Also, while there were a fair number of documents on the philosophy of emotion overseas at that time, I believe they were hardly introduced in Japan.

It was probably about five years ago that the philosophy of emotion began to attract attention in Japan. Around that time, several works based on overseas research were published, such as Yukihiro Nobuhara and Hiroshi Ota (eds.), "Series: New Philosophy of Mind III: Emotion" (Keiso Shobo, 2014), and Kazuhisa Todayama, "Philosophy of Fear" (NHK Publishing, 2016). At that time, I also translated Jesse Prinz's "Gut Reactions" (Keiso Shobo, 2016), which is considered a basic text in the philosophy of emotion. Since then, with the publication of Yukihiro Nobuhara's "Introduction to the Philosophy of Emotion" (Keiso Shobo, 2017) and Kiyokazu Nishimura's "Philosophy of Emotion" (Keiso Shobo, 2018), it can be said that the philosophy of emotion is currently popular in Japan.

As the number of Japanese documents has increased, it has become easier to take up emotions in university classes. In fact, I think emotion is a suitable theme for teaching philosophy. Philosophy has an image of being an abstract and unrealistic field, but in contrast, emotions are very familiar things that we experience daily. Therefore, by using emotion as a theme, students can learn philosophy concretely from familiar stories. In my classes as well, in liberal arts philosophy courses for all departments, I feel that students responded best when I dealt with emotions.

This book is a compilation of those lectures on the philosophy of emotion. If you are curious about "what kind of things are discussed in university philosophy classes," please pick it up.

Toru Genka

午夜剧场 Press

240 pages, 2,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and job titles are those at the time of publication.