Shared emotions: a Steinian proposal

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion of shared emotion. After contextualizing this notion within the broader research landscape on collective affective intentionality, I suggest that we reserve the term shared emotion to an affective experience that is phenomenologically and functionally ours: we experience it together as our emotion, and it is also constitutively not mine and yours, but ours. I focus on the three approaches that have dominated the philosophical discussion on shared emotions: cognitivist accounts, concern-based accounts, and phenomenological fusion accounts. After identifying strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and summarizing the elements that a multifaceted theory of shared emotions requires, I turn to the work of the early phenomenologist Edith Stein to further advance an approach to shared emotions that combines the main strengths of Helm and Salmela's concern-based accounts and Schmid's phenomenological fusion account. According to this proposal, the sharedness of a shared emotion cannot be located in one element, but rather consists in a complex of interrelated features.Keywords Shared emotions . Collective emotions . Affective intentionality . Communal experience . Edith Stein The last decade has seen an emerging debate about the possibility and nature of shared or collective emotions.1 As yet, however, there has been no agreement over precisely what these labels refer to. The aim of this paper is to clarify the notion of shared emotions. Following a preliminary definition, which contextualizes the debate on shared emotions within the broader research landscape on collective affective intentionality, I will discuss three major approaches to shared emotions in contemporary philosophical debate. After identifying shortcomings in these approaches and summarizing the elements that need to be accounted for in a multifaceted theory of shared emotions, I will turn to Edith Stein to introduce several suggestions from early phenomenology that can improve current theorizing on shared emotions.

Towards a Taxonomy of Collective Emotions

“…Many seem to reject this idea based on the intuition that first-person plural awareness will disappear with reflection (Salmela, 2012). However, I do not see a prima facie reason why reflection should not be able to validate the collective nature of the experience (Thonhauser, 2018).…”

Which Domains of Social Support Better Predict Quality of Life of Women with Breast Cancer? A Cross-Sectional Study

“…It should be noted that PSI may evoke a shared feeling of an elevated mood,[ 47 48 ] which might benefit the patients with some physical effects, including decreased pain. [ 49 ] Psychologically speaking, the intimate interactors (e.g., friends) in a social context tend to mimic smiles and empathize with the expressed happiness.…”

Collective Emotion: A Framework for Experimental Research

“…Alternative accounts contend that collective emotion does not necessarily imply iterative inferences and common knowledge about the emotions of other individuals. Rather, collective emotion entails "mutual awareness of a plurality of partaking individuals" (Thonhauser 2018(Thonhauser , p. 1008 or mutual awareness of co-presence (León, 2020). We describe two candidate mechanisms for mutual awareness in the context of collective emotion.…”

“…Furthermore, this account of emotional sharing insists that collective emotion not only relies on a feeling of connectedness but also on reciprocal or mutual awareness between partaking individuals (see Thonhauser, 2018 for an articulation of these two characteristics).…”