Author: Moshe Menasheof
ISBN: 
Year of Publication: 2022
 
Emotions are of utmost importance for a person’s survival and function. Emotions and Feelings presents a comprehensive, systematic and reasoned theory of emotions. It shines a light on what emotions are, and provides tools to understand their effect on the decision making process and the various meanings of channeling them.
The theory is founded on a categorical distinction between emotion and feeling. Emotions (such as fear or anger) are defined as a person’s physiological and cognitive arrangement in situations they perceive as critical and requiring a quick and operative decision. A feeling (such as pain or enjoyment) is defined as an emotional directing factor, meant to recall to awareness contents influencing the decision making process.
Although the discussion in this book does not overlook studies on brain physiology, and sometimes even relies on them, it does not grant them sole authority. A discussion of feelings can never be determined according to purely scientific criteria. Human perception is complex and dynamic. Feelings and emotions are influenced by each person’s personal accumulated experience, as well as the norms in the society in which they were raised. In no moment does a person experience only one emotion, and no emotion is universally and objectively defined. Therefore, even though this theory of emotion was written with respect to important findings on brain physiology, it also presents some reservations regarding the validity of conclusions that seem to indicate parallels between the physiological and psychological processes, where feelings and emotion are concerned.
 
Feeling and Emotion continues the four essays comprising Dreaming and Memory: on perception, on memory, on sleep and on dream. It presents a systematic, clear and well argued theory of emotions, based on the theoretical assumptions presented in Dreaming and Memory, using, and further developing, the unique language and terms developed in that book. Written in every day language, it makes the philosophical discussion of emotion accessible to a wide and interested audience.
In recent years, Moshe Menasheof has written a number of essays, including The Dark Ages of Free and Creative Thinking (2017), Is it Necessary to Assume the Unconscious? (2017), The Basic Cause for the Change in Wittgenstein's Philosophy (2016), Reflex and Instinct (2019) and Free Will - New Reflections on the Issue of Free Choice (2020).
In addition, Menasheof has written three science fiction novels: Euphoria (1994), The Virtual Look-alike (2010) and The Others (2014); a philosophical-psychological novel: Amos – the Fate Redeemer (2012) and a rhymed philosophical short story: The story of Treasure on Certainity Isle (2012). He has also translated and edited Rumi’s poetry (2012) - a translation of poems from the Mathnawi and fragments from the philosophy of Jalal a-Din Muhammad Rumi (2013).