“La potente fontana delle emozioni”. Günther Anders in dialogo con Jean-Paul Sartre

Abstract

Emotions have become a central concern in contemporary aesthetics and philosophy, moving beyond the traditional opposition between reason and affectivity. Against this background, the essay reconstructs the philosophical dialogue between Jean-Paul Sartre and Günther Anders on the nature and significance of emotional experience. Through an analysis of Sartre’s Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions (1936) and Anders’s Emotion and Reality (1950), the article compares two different conceptions of emotion: Sartre’s account of emotion as an intentional mode of consciousness and a teleological response to situations of impasse, and Anders’s view of emotions as original, operative, and intersubjective dimensions of human existence, challenging the reduction of emotional experience to a “magical world” devoid of real efficacy. The dialogue between the two thinkers offers a broader reflection on the relationship between emotions, reality, and action, highlighting the constitutive role of affectivity in being-in-the-world and in aesthetic experience.