A feeling that is directed toward an object or value. Intentional feelings are value-responses — they respond to the objective value-character of what is given (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 215 ff.). Examples are reverence, gratitude, indignation, and grief over a loss.
Hildebrand sharply distinguishes between intentional feelings and mere states. A mood-feeling (such as listlessness or irritability) has no intentional object. The intentional feeling, by contrast, is essentially directed toward an object. One grieves over something, one rejoices in something, one is indignant at an injustice.
This directedness (intentionality) makes the intentional feeling a genuine form of cognition. It discloses the value-dimension of reality in a way that remains closed to the purely theoretical intellect.
Affectivity, as the “heart” of the person, is the organ through which intentional feelings are enacted. Hildebrand speaks of the spiritual heart as the center of value-apprehension. Intentional feelings belong to the second dimension of personhood — to the actual enactment of personal acts — and are attributable to the person as personal acts.
The ontology assigns several subordinate concepts to the intentional feeling: reverence, joy, remorse, shame, and grief. Each of these feelings is a specific response to a particular value-aspect. Reverence responds to the sublimity of the entity, remorse to one’s own moral failing, shame to the exposure of interiority, grief to the loss of something valuable.
The distinction between intentional feeling and mere passion is ethically decisive. The passion, as it were, overwhelms the person and determines it from without. The intentional feeling, by contrast, is a free act of the person, though not one that can be evoked at will. The adequate intentional feeling-response — such as grief over a real loss — is morally required. The inadequate one — such as malicious joy — is morally reprehensible.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: personal act
- Subordinate concepts: reverence, joy, remorse, shame, grief
- Domain of: is-affective-response-to
- Range of: feels
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German)
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von: Ethics (1953/1972). Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press. (Distinction of intentional feelings from mere states and passions.)