Emotions, Science, and Generativity. A Husserlian Perspective

Abstract

I start by addressing certain issues from Husserl’s static and genetic approaches, and then use the latter as leading clues to the generative approach as applied to Husserl’s concept of science. However, in order to justify our understanding that these three approaches are inextricably intertwined and correlative, we can use Husserl’s words from The Crisis, that “we find ourselves in a sort of circle” and that “we have no other choice than to proceed forward and backward in a zigzag pattern.” Indeed, the phenomenological reduction’s static approach is a regressive (deconstructive) inquiry into the structures, functions, and modes of subjective life, whereas the genetic/generative ones reconstruct the progressive paths of the individual and collective (i.e., historical) constitutions of meanings and validities. Finally, since the cognitive, emotional, and volitional spheres of conscious life and their preconscious strata and functions are essentially intertwined, the role of emotions in the constitution of “epistemic values”—and “cognitive biases”—is also addressed.