Bodily expressions and affective experiences: a motivational connection

In this paper I will deal with the relationship between affective experiences and bodily expressions. In contemporary embodied constitution theories of affectivity, bodily expressions are argued to be constitutive parts of affective phenomena. Proponents of these theories often criticize the idea that bodily expressions are merely caused by the expressed affective experiences, but then they have the problem of accommodating the intuition that an affective experience somehow brings about its bodily expressions. In this paper I will propose a way out of this issue, maintaining that we can accommodate this intuition even without embracing a causal account of the relation between an affective experience and its bodily expressions. Indeed, I will maintain that such a causal account is to be rejected because it fails to adequately describe the phenomenon of bodily expressivity. I will propose that a motivational account, based on Husserl’s (1952) and Stein’s (1917) positions, is more apt. I will also show how it can account for the above-mentioned intuition, being therefore able to nicely complement embodied constitution accounts of affective phenomena.