Surprise: A Circular Dynamic of Multi-Directional Verbalization
Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy June 4, 2018 DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2018.832 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Microphenomenology Surprise Emotions Ricoeur First person description |
| Key points | Argues that Ricœur's treatment of "emotion-surprise" in Freedom and Nature offers a distinctive descriptive-phenomenological account in which the apparent body-mind antinomy of surprise is circularized rather than resolved dualistically. Proposes tracing this dual model's genealogy across psychological and philosophical authors and reading first-person descriptions from "microphenomenological interviews" as evidence for the verbalization of surprise. |
Abstract
To understand the dynamics of the verbalization of surprise, I will start with the philosophical theoretical place that is, in my opinion, the most remarkable in terms of the descriptive phenomenology of surprise, namely, its approach by Paul Ricœur in Freedom and Nature in terms of what he calls “emotion-surprise.” This theoretical position will lead me to retrace, in a second step, the archeology of what Ricoeur calls the “circular phenomenon” or the “circular process” of surprise, which includes body language in a burst of "shaking" and the language of cognitive as well as aesthetic "shock". There is an a priori antinomy here that is based on a post-Cartesian duality of the body and the mind, but it is circularized by Ricoeur. On the basis of this dual model of surprise, I will retrace its genealogy in a number of authors (Darwin, James, Izard, and Ekman on the one hand, and Peirce, Husserl, Dennett, Davidson, on the other hand) and will analyze some first-person descriptions that come from “microphenomenological interviews” [entretiens d’explicitation].