This paper examines the methodological significance of feelings and moods in Heidegger’s philosophy, challenging the modern philosophical view that prioritizes cognition over feelings in acquiring knowledge. Heidegger argues that by exploring the disclosive and disruptive qualities of feelings, philosophy can provide “philosophical knowledge,” which he considers superior to scientific knowledge as it entails knowledge about the world from which science originates. Heidegger’s assertion of the primacy of feelings is based on the notion that only feelings can reveal essential and yet concealed aspects of the correlation between humans and beings, and that these aspects are crucial for our understanding of the world. This paper will explore these claims by engaging with the strongest critics of Heidegger’s position, namely philosophers of the Neo-Kantian tradition, who claim that he has abandoned philosophy to the arbitrariness and irrationality of mere feelings.
Karl Kraatz (Mon,) studied this question.