Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cullhed, Eric

Titel

On the Deeply Moving and the Merely Touching

Ist Teil von

• The British journal of aesthetics, 2024-01, Vol.64 (1), p.17-32

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Oxford Journals 2020 Humanities

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Abstract Critics often link yet distinguish between ‘moving’ and ‘touching’ characters, scenes and artworks. It has been argued that being moved is a specific emotion, that its formal object is the thin goodness of exemplified final, important and impersonal thick values, and that being touched is an attenuated form of that phenomenon. First, I dispute that the values that move us must be impersonal, since we can be moved by the personal goodness of being loved, free or healthy. Second, I argue that being touched should be considered a distinct emotion type. To support this claim, I refer to apparent differences between the formal objects that the two affective phenomena relate to as well as to dissimilarities in cognitive sophistication and phenomenology. I suggest that we are touched by that which invites love. Vulnerable, innocently suffering and affectionate beings are touching insofar as they need and will be responsive to love.