Single Idea 24014

[catalogued under 18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / c. Role of emotions]

Full Idea

Joy is the magical behaviour which tries, by incantation, to realise the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality. [47] Emotions are all reducible to the constitution of a magic world by using our bodies as instruments of incantation.

Gist of Idea

Emotions are a sort of bodily incantation which brings a magic to the world

Source

Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III)

Book Reference

Sartre,Jean-Paul: 'Sketch for a Theory of Emotions' [Routledge 1994], p.46


A Reaction

I can't pretend to understand this, but I am reminded of the fact that the so-called primary qualities of perception are innately boring, and it is only the secondary qualities (like colour and smell) which make the world interesting.

Related Ideas

Idea 24013 An emotion and its object form a unity, so emotion is a mode of apprehension [Sartre]

Idea 5532 Colours and tastes are not qualities of things, but alterations of the subject [Kant]