Lotze e Scheler: emotivismo e autocoscienza

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand it aims to show the main traits of Lotze’s theory of emotion, focusing specifically on the correlation between emotion and self-consciousness, and, on the other hand, to demonstrate how Lotze’s theory of emotion plays a key role in the phenomenology of emotional life as propounded by Max Scheler. Indeed their shared belief is that one should be able to understand one’s own individuality through one’s emotional state and not through theoretical operations such as reflection or thinking. Accordingly I argue that Lotze and Scheler suggest an emotional account of self-consciousness which manifests itself as closely related to an individual’s moral sensibility.