Toward a Phenomenology of Mood

Abstract

Martin Heidegger's account of attunement [Befindlichkeit] through mood [Stimmung] is unprecedented in the history of philosophy and groundbreaking vis‐à‐vis contemporary accounts of emotion. On his view, moods are not mere mental states that result from, arise out of, or are caused by our situation or context. Rather, moods are fundamental modes of existence that are disclosive of the way one is or finds oneself [sich befinden] in the world. Mood is one of the basic modes through which we experience the world and through which the world is made present to us. Moreover, moods are the lenses through which things, people, animals, events, and aspects in the world matter to us. In this paper, I make the case that Heidegger's insights with respect to mood can and ought to be extended beyond the narrow scope of his fundamental ontology (in Being and Time) in which they were developed. I argue that contemporary accounts of mood within psychology ought to take these Heideggerian insights seriously and use them when defining, studying, evaluating, and drawing conclusions about the nature of moods. There are three sections to my paper. In section 1, I delineate Heidegger's account of mood. In section 2, I turn to some key studies on mood in psychology, and I elaborate upon some of the main shortcomings in this literature. In section 3, I suggest how psychology might benefit from understanding and utilizing a Heideggerian‐inspired phenomenology of mood.

Pasifika women's choice of birthplace

“…There are clearly differences in the experience of being in a primary unit to being in a tertiary hospital. Each has its mood (Freeman, 2014). While our prejudice is that primary units are more relaxed (Smythe, Payne, Wilson, & Wynyard, 2013), some of the Pasifika women in this study found them foreign.…”

Is Profound Boredom Boredom?

“…Moods are the various, specific, and pre-reflective ways in which the world is disclosed to us and the background horizon or context through which we understand and make sense of the world and of ourselves. Importantly, they reveal the world as mattering to us and in doing so, they are the necessary conditions for our emotional existence (Freeman 2014). As understood in psychology, boredom would then be that which arises on account of the fact that as human beings we are already mooded.…”

Telic Attunements: Moods and Ultimate Values (Among Meditation Practitioners in the United States)

“…In order to understand how mood is related to ultimate values, it is important to discuss Heidegger's distinction between mood ( stimmung ) and attunement ( befindlichkeit ), since it has become a cornerstone for anthropological and phenomenological discussions of mood (Ratcliffe ; Elpidorou ; Ahmed ; Freeman ; Borneman and Ghassem‐Fachandi ; Gammeltoft , 2). For Heidegger, moods are fundamental affective dispositions which shape the way basic categories of existence (such as self, world, or other) appear to us, thereby providing a “frame,” as Bude (, 138) puts it, for how subjects encounter all objects in the world.…”

“…Rather, when I am melancholic and heavy‐hearted, the world is gray, dull, uninteresting, uninspiring, and unexciting. (, 450–53)…”

“…To be clear, mood and attunement are actually two sides of the same coin for Heidegger, corresponding to the ontical and ontological moments of disclosure. Thus, in Freeman's description above, the ontical experience of mood (in the form of melancholy, for instance) discloses an ontological attunement to the world as “gray, dull, uninteresting, uninspiring, and unexciting.” For that reason, a more synthesized translation of stimmung and befindlichkeit would be to talk about “mooded attunements” or “[b]eing attuned through mood” (Freeman ), since such phrases highlight the fact that one is only ever ontologically attuned through ontical experiences of mood.…”