Kanjō to imi sekai (Emotions and the World of Meaning)

The aim of this book is to reveal the place of emotions in a person's experience. As the title, Emotions and the World of Meaning, implies, the place of emotions is to be found in how our emotions relate to the world of meaning. As an animal, human beings have a physical body with a certain structure and various functions with which we interact with our physical environment. But we also live in a world of meaning. By exploring the relation of emotions to the world of meaning, we can also come to understand the relationship between emotions and the characteristics and circumstances unique to humans that contribute to establishing the world of meaning. Our objective is to thereby reveal the place of emotions within the human experience.
 
Emotions are generally perceived as being irrational in contrast to what is rational, and as passive in contrast to volition, with the conclusion being that reason and volition are what allow a person to be autonomous and free. Without clarifying how this comes to be, however, we are left dealing with nothing more than a slippery slope of words. What we need to be discern is that there is a common world of meaning underlying both emotions and what we call reason and volition. The world of meaning is a world comprising diverse phenomena of meaning that open up our imagination, and unlike the reality of physical objects that exist within the passage of time or their sensory perceptions, the world of meaning acquires its import with each act of imagination (albeit, this action can be repetitive).
 
Now then, all the diverse phenomena of meaning have value. While our emotions echo our perception of that value on the one hand, on the other, our various types of imagination strive to impose order rather than arbitrariness, and this order is the substance of our reason and thought. Still, we have some freedom within certain limitations to decide to which of the diverse phenomena of meaning we will give most emphasis. We need to recognize that just about all of our emotions arise through meaning. Whether grief or resentment, our emotions have a reason and this reason derives from the circumstances within the dimension of meaning.
 
There are reasons for our emotions. Evolutionary theory also cites reasons for our emotions, such as that the emotion of fear, for example, is a survival mechanism that prompts us to escape danger. But this is not the reason for the fearful person's own realization or discovery of the meaning of the fear. In any case, the importance of emotions does not depend on how useful those emotions may be. Rather, emotions are what make us human, and that’s because at the core of every emotion is a confirmation of our individual being, a recognition that “I exist and I am.”
 
A word concerning this “Iam.” The concept is, of course, rooted in the reality of our physical body’s effort to sustain life, but we also, each of us, have a “self-image” of what we are. This self-image is shaped by our individual place in the world of meaning. As humans, we retain and assert our self-image through the vicissitudes of time. How we envision ourselves, our personal self-image, is something that we can choose, and hence is what gives us freedom and hope.

 

(Written by MATSUNAGA Sumio, Professor Emeritus , Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2020)