Earnshaw Owen
Department of Philosophy, Durham University, 50 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN UK.
Philosophia (Ramat Gan). 2017;45(4):1697-1708. doi: 10.1007/s11406-017-9854-8. Epub 2017 May 27.
Starting from a comparison of the similarities between a poem by Sylvia Plath called and the words of someone in the thrall of a delusion I develop a phenomenology of how mood is basic to our articulation of the world. To develop this argument I draw on Heidegger's (1962) concept of attunement [befindlichkeit] and his contention that basic emotions open up aspects of the world for closer inspection and articulation. My thesis in this paper is that there is an underlying structural similarity between the forms of words used in poems and those found in medically diagnosed delusions and this similarity is based on the role of mood in both arenas. The difference, I argue, is that although both forms of articulation are negotiated 'as if' the subject matter was literal, the person writing the poem is self-aware that their uses of language are figurative and metaphorical. This is because the emotional lens they use to describe a situation poetically can always be removed by a return to a ground-mood of acceptance, that prevents them from becoming lost in the poetical mood. The person experiencing psychosis, on the other hand, is unable to extricate herself from the mood that underlies their delusional utterances as they have lost access to the ground-mood that the poet takes for granted. I illustrate the point using Hume's famous statement about the mood he philosophises in and look at ways sufferers from delusions could regain a sense of the non-literal projections of their words.
从比较西尔维娅·普拉斯的一首诗与受妄想束缚之人的言语之间的相似性出发，我发展出一种现象学，来探讨情绪如何在我们对世界的表达中处于基础地位。为了阐述这一观点，我借鉴了海德格尔（1962年）的“情调”[befindlichkeit]概念，以及他的观点，即基本情绪为更细致的审视和表达打开了世界的各个方面。我在本文中的论点是，诗歌中使用的词语形式与医学诊断的妄想中发现的词语形式存在潜在的结构相似性，这种相似性基于情绪在这两个领域中的作用。我认为，不同之处在于，尽管这两种表达形式都是在“仿佛”主题是字面意义的情况下进行协商的，但写诗的人自我意识到他们对语言的使用是比喻性和隐喻性的。这是因为他们用来诗意地描述一种情境的情感透镜总是可以通过回归到一种接受的基础情绪而被移除，这种基础情绪能防止他们迷失在诗意的情绪中。另一方面，患有精神病的人无法从构成其妄想言语基础的情绪中解脱出来，因为他们已经无法接触到诗人视为理所当然的基础情绪。我用休谟关于他进行哲学思考时的情绪的著名表述来说明这一点，并探讨妄想症患者如何能够重新认识到他们言语的非字面投射。
