The Logic of Affect

Many attempts to trace the roots of current scientific approaches to the mind have ignored the contributions of post-Kantian German idealism. In this work, Paul Redding seeks to show the relevance of this philosophical tradition to an understanding of the mind and its embodiment as well as the relation of feeling to cognition. Redding observes how Fichte, Schelling and Hegel struggled with the problem of reconciling Kant's normative approach to experience and thought with the naturalistic stance of the emerging medical sciences. A century later, William James, Freud and Jung also addressed the interconnection of thought and feeling, reaching views similar to those of the post-Kantian idealists. In particular, Redding argues, the idealists conceived of a logic of affect that re-emerged in Freud's concept of the primary process and in modern evolutionary ideas of subcoritical processing. The book demonstrates how new insights can be brought to the study of mentality and consciousness by considering previously overlooked interpretations. Redding shows that these early theorists of the unconscious can bring scholars to a better appreciation not only of classical thinkers like James and Freud but also of contemporary debates about the mind and emotions.