This post is by Rick Furtak . Rick Anthony Furtak is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College, where he has taught for over twelve years. In addition to the philosophy of emotions, his other main area of focus is existential thought. He is also a poet and translator who is interested in the literary aspects of philosophy and the philosophical significance of literature. In this post, he talks about his new book Knowing Emotions . This book investigates the question of how our emotions can enable us to know. It claims that human emotions are not just feelings of physiological disturbance: rather, they are experiences in which we apprehend significant matters of concern. When Pascal noted that the heart has its own reasons, he indicated that our dispassionate rational faculty alone cannot grasp what is revealed in our affective experience. Knowing Emotions seeks to explain why human emotions are indeed capable of making us aware of significant ...
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