Full Idea
Emotion is not an accident, it is a mode of our conscious existence, one of the ways in which consciousness understands (in Heidegger's sense of verstehen) its Being-in-the-World. …It has a meaning.
Gist of Idea
Emotion is one of our modes of understanding our Being-in-the-World
Source
Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III)
A Reaction
Calling emotions a 'mode' suggests that this way of understanding is intermittent, which seems wrong. Even performing arithmetical calculations is coloured by emotions, so they go deeper than a 'mode'.
Book Reference
Sartre,Jean-Paul: 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' [Routledge 1994], p.61