Abstract

This paper is stimulated by and indebted to a study by Charles Altieri of the ways in which affect is present and articulated in art and literature, which, he argues, hold significance for the philosophy of emotion. I focus on Altieri's thesis that affective states may have aesthetic qualities and value. I pursue this notion first with reference to Nietzsche's attempt to recruit affect as a means of countering Schopenhauer's pessimism. I then attempt to show the coherence of the notion that passion may exhibit an aesthetic dimension, drawing on Richard Wollheim's account of certain ideas in psychoanalytic theory, for which I suggest precedents in the history of philosophy.