In this essay I investigate the relation between emotions and atmospheres in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Our existence is a dialectic between a pre-personal anchorage in...Show moreIn this essay I investigate the relation between emotions and atmospheres in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Our existence is a dialectic between a pre-personal anchorage in the world and the personal act of taking it up. Because of this pre-personal anchorage in the world, this dialectic is fundamentally affective. There are two notions of freedom at play in the relation between emotions and atmospheres. One is a conditional freedom implied in the personal act of taking up the world. The second is a questionable power that is implied in atmospheres. Atmospheres are possible harmonies of sense that pre-personally motivate us to take up the world in the particular manner that affirms them and that opposes everything that does not suit this manner of taking up the world. The relation between personal emotions and atmospheres is a dialectic between a conditional freedom and a questionable power in a fundamentally affective existence.Show less
