On the relation between affective understanding and intellectual understanding

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to consider the relation between affective understanding and intellectual understanding, drawing on Kiyoshi Oka’s work. Based on his own experience of doing mathematics, Oka emphasizes the role of affectivity in understanding, which guides one to grasp the meaning of the object as a whole beyond/before the detailed intellectual understanding of it. Viewed from the current emotion research, Oka’s claim seems to correspond to the bodily perception theory of emotion. In this theory, emotion is regarded as a cognitive capacity to apprehend the value aspect of the given situation, as perception is a cognitive capacity to capture the fact aspect of the situation. In my view, the capacity of articulating an experience in words seems to integrate emotion and perception into the whole process of understanding. Affective understanding and intellectual understanding are mediated by our capacity of verbalizing what is experienced as an emotion.