Introduction

Engaging with various happenings and events can vividly reveal the body’s reactions, such as inexplicable fear, anger, curiosity, magnetism, shock, or bliss. Maintaining awareness during these moments allows us to observe how external events influence the body, setting the stage for emotional reactions. Throughout our lives, we label these experiences as good or bad, storing them in our subconscious and memory. Consequently, the body becomes conditioned to respond to external stimuli in specific ways, often without our conscious awareness. As I discussed in my previous paper, the body is akin to a muscle that can be trained in different directions. The primary question that arises is: who is in control? Before delving further into this question, let us turn our attention to the emotional body.

Psychophysiology of Emotions

The intricate connection between the body and brain ensures our adaptive responses to the ever-changing environmental landscape. At the heart of this dynamic relationship lies psychophysiology, a field devoted to uncovering how our physiological processes underpin emotional and social experiences. Through the lens of psychophysiological methods, we gain profound insights into the symbiotic relationship between body and mind, emphasizing the body’s indispensable role in our emotional life.

The body and brain operate in concert to manage the myriad stimuli we encounter daily. The brain, as the processing hub, assesses sensory information’s significance and triggers corresponding physiological responses. Consider the amygdala, the brain’s sentinel for emotional processing, which activates the hypothalamus in the face of threat. This initiates the fight-or-flight response, releasing adrenaline, increasing heart rate, and heightening alertness—all preparing the body to confront or escape danger.

Employing psychophysiological methods reveals the nuanced ways these processes unfold. Techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow researchers to observe brain activity related to emotion regulation. Peripheral measures like heart rate variability (HRV), skin conductance, and muscle tension further elucidate the body’s response to emotional stimuli. By correlating these physiological measures with subjective emotional experiences, we map the intricate interplay between brain and body.

These methods illuminate the physiological foundations of our emotional and social processes. For instance, HRV serves as a key indicator of the autonomic nervous system’s capacity to manage stress. Higher HRV signifies better emotional regulation and resilience, reflecting a harmonious balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Similarly, variations in skin conductance mirror changes in emotional arousal, providing a window into our reactions to social interactions and environmental cues.

Emotions are not confined to the brain; they are embodied experiences manifesting through physiological changes. Joy, for instance, may increase heart rate, relax muscles, and evoke a sense of warmth. Sadness, conversely, may lead to a slower heart rate, muscle tension, and a feeling of heaviness. These physical manifestations of emotion underscore the body’s integral role in our emotional landscape.

Emotions serve adaptive functions, guiding our behavior in ways that enhance survival and well-being. Fear prompts avoidance of danger, anger motivates confrontation, and happiness reinforces behaviors that foster social bonding and cooperation. The psychophysiology of emotions reveals that these responses are not mere automatic reactions but finely tuned mechanisms shaped by evolution to optimize our interaction with the environment.

By delving into the psychophysiology of emotions, we unearth the profound interconnectedness of body and mind, uncovering the embodied nature of our emotional experiences. This exploration affirms that our physiological states are not mere backdrops but active participants in the emotional and social tapestry of human existence.

Yet, it would be a fallacy to assert that our emotions are solely influenced by external stimuli. I might fear a stranger, having never met them before, without any apparent psychological rationale, and be correct in sensing their danger. Conversely, I might harbor an ego-driven hatred for someone simply because they evoke memories of childhood trauma. Let us examine these examples more closely.

Moral Emotions and Behavior

The nexus between emotions such as shame, guilt, empathy, and moral behavior offers profound insights into the human condition. These moral emotions, far from being mere reactions, are intricately shaped by our cognitive processes and the workings of the ego. They serve as internal compasses, guiding our responses to moral and ethical situations.

Shame and guilt, for instance, are powerful emotions that compel introspection and self-evaluation. Shame arises when we perceive ourselves as failing to meet societal or personal standards, leading to a sense of worthlessness or exposure. Guilt, on the other hand, stems from specific actions that violate our moral code, prompting feelings of remorse and a desire to make amends. Both emotions are deeply tied to our sense of self and our awareness of others’ perceptions, highlighting the ego’s role in moral functioning.

Empathy, by contrast, involves the capacity to vicariously experience and understand the emotions of others. It is a cornerstone of prosocial behavior, fostering connections and ethical interactions. Empathy requires cognitive processes that enable perspective-taking and emotional resonance, allowing us to feel concern for others’ well-being and to act in morally appropriate ways.

These emotions—shame, guilt, and empathy—are not merely spontaneous reactions but are cultivated through our cognitive frameworks and egoic structures. They influence how we navigate moral landscapes, prompting actions that align with our ethical beliefs and societal norms. As Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek (2007) elucidate, these emotions are integral to our moral behavior, shaping our interactions and guiding us toward moral integrity.

In understanding moral emotions, we recognize the profound interplay between our cognitive faculties, ego, and emotional responses. This interplay underscores the complexity of moral behavior, revealing how our inner world of emotions and thoughts directs our outer actions in the realm of ethics and morality.

Thus, the perception of emotions is not a unidirectional process but rather a complex interplay where facial and bodily expressions exert reciprocal influence. This dynamic interaction is mediated by cognitive processes that provide context, highlighting the intricate ways in which our mental interpretations shape our emotional experiences.

When we perceive emotions in others, our understanding is guided by the synchronization of facial expressions and bodily cues. A smile paired with relaxed posture conveys happiness more convincingly than a smile alone. Conversely, a frown combined with tense body language accentuates the perception of distress or anger. This bidirectional flow ensures that our emotional perception is nuanced and contextually accurate.

Cognitive processes play a crucial role in this interplay, as they help us interpret and integrate these visual cues. Our mental framework, shaped by past experiences and cultural norms, provides the context necessary for decoding these signals. This contextualization allows us to perceive emotions not as isolated phenomena but as part of a broader, interconnected emotional landscape.

This reciprocal influence underscores the importance of context in emotional perception. Our brains do not simply process facial and bodily expressions in isolation; they integrate these cues with our cognitive understanding of the situation, thereby constructing a coherent emotional experience. This bidirectional flow demonstrates how our mental interpretations can profoundly shape our emotional realities, leading to a deeper understanding of the emotions we perceive in ourselves and others. Does this suggest that we might be overinterpreting our surroundings, attributing excessive significance to them?

Our physical form is not merely a vessel but an active participant in the symphony of social and emotional interactions, embodying and communicating our innermost experiences.

In the realm of social behavior, the body conveys a wealth of information through gestures, posture, and facial expressions. These non-verbal cues often speak louder than words, revealing our true emotions and intentions. A bowed head can signify shame, a clenched fist may denote anger, and a warm smile can express genuine affection. These physical manifestations are crucial for effective communication, as they help us navigate the complex terrain of human interactions, fostering understanding and connection. Psychologically, the body’s responses are intertwined with our emotional states. The bodily reactions are not just reflections of our emotions but integral components of our psychological experiences, reinforcing and amplifying what we feel.

Reflecting on the communicative behavior of the body, I wonder if nature “speaks” in a similar manner. Perhaps we lack the social and empathetic awareness to comprehend its language.

However, I wish to distinguish feelings from emotions, as we frequently conflate the deeper dynamics within the body with egoic emotional reactions. Existential feelings serve as a prime example of this distinction.

Existential Feelings

Existential feelings, distinct from emotional feelings, encompass sensations of homeliness, belonging, and the profound sense of being part of something greater. These feelings are not merely transient emotions but foundational aspects of our existence that shape our perception of reality and our sense of being in the world.

Unlike emotional feelings, which often arise in response to specific stimuli and are relatively fleeting, existential feelings permeate our consciousness, influencing how we experience and interpret our surroundings on a fundamental level. For instance, the feeling of homeliness imbues our environment with familiarity and comfort, anchoring us in a space where we feel safe and at ease. This sense of homeliness extends beyond the physical space, embedding itself in our interactions and daily experiences, providing a backdrop of stability.

Belonging, another crucial existential feeling, involves a deep-rooted sense of connection to others and to a community. This feeling transcends mere social interactions; it is a profound recognition of shared existence and mutual understanding. When we feel we belong, we perceive ourselves as integral parts of a larger whole, enhancing our sense of purpose and grounding us in a collective reality.

Being part of something greater also constitutes an essential existential feeling. It reflects our awareness of our place within a broader context—be it a community, a movement, or the universe itself. This feeling can evoke a sense of awe and wonder, reinforcing our connection to the world and imbuing our lives with meaning and significance.

According to Ratcliffe (2005), these existential feelings are integral to our sense of being in the world. They shape our reality at a foundational level, influencing how we engage with and interpret our experiences. By grounding us in a sense of place, connection, and purpose, existential feelings form the bedrock of our perception, coloring every aspect of our lived experience.

In exploring existential feelings, we delve into the core of our existence, uncovering the profound ways in which our sense of being is intertwined with our perception of reality. These feelings are not mere reactions to our environment but are intrinsic to how we inhabit the world, guiding our interactions and shaping our understanding of life itself.

To move beyond the limitations imposed by our mental constructs, it is essential to recognize the significance of this distinction. Our habitual overthinking leads us to shape the world through the lens of our cognitive biases and emotions. In doing so, we do not merely perceive emotions but, in a sense, we bring them into existence as part of the world we mentally construct.

This prompts us to question whether we can truly rely on our mental and emotional bodies or whether we might shift our attention completely to the physical and sensory aspects of our being. In my view, there exists another body, a guiding presence that acts as a captain, choosing which dimension of experience to attend to. Psychologists often attribute unexplained phenomena to the subconscious, much like Columbus mistakenly named every new land he encountered India. It is crucial that we delve deeper into this subject in the final section of constructing “Mapping the Multifaceted Human Being.”

Conclusion

In conclusion, this exploration affirms the indispensable role of the body in our emotional and existential lives, revealing it as more than a passive container of our being. The study of psychophysiology highlights the body’s active involvement in emotional processing, while the examination of existential feelings unveils the deeper currents of belonging and connection that shape our reality. This work challenges the primacy of the mental and emotional bodies, proposing instead a holistic view where the physical and sensory dimensions hold equal significance. As we continue to map the multifaceted nature of the human being, it becomes evident that our understanding of the body must evolve beyond rationality, embracing the full spectrum of our embodied experience.

Bibliography

“Bodies in mind: using peripheral psychophysiology to probe emotional and social processes” Gina M. Grimshaw, M. Philipp · 29. Juli 2020

“Moral emotions and moral behavior.” June P Tangney, J. Stuewig, Debra J. Mashek · 21. Dez. 2007

“Bidirectional contextual influence between faces and bodies in emotion perception.” Maya Lecker, R. Dotsch, Gijsbert Bijlstra, Hillel Aviezer · 1. Okt. 2020

“Bodies, Representations, Situations, Practices: Qualitative Research on Affect, Emotion and Feeling.” M. Willis, J. Cromby · 2. Jan. 2020

“The feeling of being.” M. Ratcliffe · 2005

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And while the essence of Scruton’s message is effectively communicated, the result is a documentary that is as much about Beauty- as it is about ugliness. At its best, it can arouse interest in investigating the “matter” of beauty a little further, but at its worst, it can leave the viewer with only a tragic sense of what is lost and irrecoverable. But how did we end up here? If Scruton, one of the best intellectuals of the conservative right, cannot lead us back to an original sense of Beauty, how are we ever expected to find this way on our own? Could there be some hidden resource that we could pull straight out of modernity itself, one that could offer us a glimpse of what is lost? This article claims to provide an original idea to the affirmative. But to begin by trying to answer the first of these questions, we need to think seriously about what the modern world really is. What are its hidden premises? Is it unspoken metaphysics? According to the dominant view of modern-day academia, all values, including beauty, are relative, as they are but a function of a particular time and place in history. This “historicism,” as this view is now called, will likely present the advent of modernity as inevitable: the end product of mostly random series of historical events. But that is not necessarily so. Because historicism itself has a history, and its ideas must, therefore, also be the product of a particular historical time, which is no other, of course, than the modern world they are trying to explain. To get out of this mental loop, therefore, and get a more unobstructed view of what is going on with modernity, we must step outside its historical horizon and look at our unique moment in history from a vantage point beyond it, namely, the ancient world, where Beauty had the original power that Scruton tried to communicate.

Seen through this prism, the modern world is premised on a refutation of the ancient worldview. This definition can be narrowed to a simple yet curious fact: the denial of eternity. Religion, so dominant among the ancients, was nothing but an expression, a personification even, of a more foundational concept, that of eternity. Man, according to the Greeks, was a being that was unique among others because it strived for its own perfection and could only be rightly understood in relation to that perfection. What Aristotle called “telos,” the natural end of Man, was seen as the only reference point that could explain man’s current and imperfect state. Man, therefore, was to be understood by what made him unique among the animals, his natural orientation towards perfection. Following this point, Beauty was identified by Plato as the natural instinct of the human soul that sought this perfection in the forms of time. The ancient world then was nothing if not a reference to eternity. And it’s precisely this reference that the modern world refuted, while the sciences that developed in its wake can be understood as an effort to find a new one.

And find it they did! But this “discovery” was premised on a total inversion of the ancient worldview. From this moment forward, Man was not to be explained as being “pulled” towards his ultimate goal but “pushed” by his lowest and most basic needs: his instincts and fears, his sex drive and hunger for power. In the realm of biology, this view was incarnated most visibly by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, where, for the first time in history, Man was explained not by what is different but by what is common between him and other animals. After Man’s outer form was explained successfully through Darwin’s evolution, Freud’s psychoanalysis continued with Man’s inner nature, and by following the same rules of thumb: explain the higher in terms of the lower, the drive for sex. This project of modernity came hand-in-hand with the radical egalitarianism of classical liberalism. If Man’s true nature is identified with those parts that all individuals share in common with each other, then Man’s true nature is one of absolute equality. Darwin and Freud later became the two ends of a pinch that squeezed out the ancient notion of Man as the transient being that strives towards eternity, explaining us… by explaining us away.  We can keep insisting that a white canvas exhibited as a work of art is absurd, but this is the result of ideas set in motion centuries ago. We are the children of a revolution that we were never taught at school, which barely touched our universities. And so, we never really understood the hidden assumptions of that revolution. Because if all truth is historical, subject to the material conditions that create it, following this premise to its natural conclusion, there must be at least one truth that escaped from this condition: the truth that states that “all truth is historical.” This truth, then, must be some “final” reality that will inevitably bring about a “final” culture… which is the much-prophesied “end of history.”

So now, let’s accept modernity at face value and repeat its basic premises. If modernity is built on a refutation of the ancient world, a denial of eternity, of which Beauty was the royal road, and if modernity has arrived at last at some “final truth,” the truth that all values are subjective. Then, at the end of its history, modernity must resemble a “perfect negative” of the ancient world. The shape that the modern world will take at the end of history will be a perfect “cast” of the statue that was the ancient world, and through it, we will get a proper reference to what has been lost: the sublime experience of Beauty. And so, maybe Scruton was right all along. Having traveled so far into modernity, maybe the key to restoring a sense of Beauty has to pass through its opposite. In the years following the documentary’s release, things have been moving fast towards an “end of history” that seems to follow the modernist agenda on every conceivable level: cultural, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual. Many of us feel that a cultural battle has already been lost. A campaign we were never summoned to. Some believe that what is truly needed is a complete return to a moment when the values and beliefs we hold dear become the norm. But as impossible as it is, even if that were to happen, would it not recreate the conditions that brought these values down in the first place? Yet, we cannot remain passive. Whatever is approaching us (and things are now moving at increasing speed), we cannot reverse it, and we cannot avoid it somehow; we have to go through it. And just like in Dante’s Inferno, at the lowest point of Hell, we will begin to get a glimpse of Heaven and once again see the stars.

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