The present issue, an invitation to philosophy for psychologists, consists of three philosophers’ individual discussions of community and emotion, a tripartite talk about COVID-19 with a philosopher and two psychologists, and two comments by a philosopher and a psychologist related to the articles described above.

Although the historical origins of psychology as an established discipline can be traced back to philosophy and physiology, psychologists tend to remain more indifferent to philosophy than to physiology. Instead, philosophers seem to devote attention to psychology and make use of the psychological fruits. We have held joint symposiums with philosophers and psychologists three times to resolve the asymmetry. Following these experiences, we published this special issue as an introduction to philosophy.

The collective constitutes a pair together with the individual, whereas emotion makes one pair with reason and another with action. In Western philosophy, the individual tends to be considered before the collective. Reason and action are each considered superior to emotion. The arguments presented herein resist these tendencies by emphasizing the importance of the collective and of emotion. For the collective, joint action is irreducible to mere aggregation of the participants’ separate actions. One can speak non-metaphorically about (‘symmetrical’ and ‘asymmetrical’) shared emotion by conceiving of emotion as consisting of its propositional content rather than of its privately experienced aspect. For emotion, how an agent feels about action pertains to moral assessment of the action. The moral perfection of the agent’s emotive disposition contributes to attainment of rationality in the agent’s moral choice of action. Finally, the author argues that emotion admits of rational assessment in terms of its content.

In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Immanuel Kant argued that only the idea of “common sense” can justify the demand that one’s aesthetic judgment of taste be universally valid for all. This essay presents the interpretation of this Kantian common sense as the emotional or sentimental foundation of human sociability or community. The common sense, as an external sense of community, has its transcendental grounding in the harmony of human cognitive faculties (imagination and understanding) that each person feels internally. Then the common sense which has that grounding would contribute to the three moments of human life in a community: the aesthetic autonomy of each person, the plurality and communicability of our judgments, and the idea of universal consensus in the whole community.

Although being loved by someone we love is generally acknowledged as having special value, what that value is and from whence it derives remain unclear. As described herein, the author suggests two constituents of the special value of mutual love: the very nature of love, i.e., becoming happy by the happiness of one’s beloved; and a mutual recognition between lovers of this becoming happy by the happiness of one another.

After posing the question of the value of mutual love, the love–emotion relation is examined and defined in terms of relevant emotions. From this definition, the author examines a Union View of Love, inferring that this view clarifies neither the specificity nor origin of the value of mutual love. Finally, the author proposes the Echo View, explaining mutual love’s value by the nature of love and by lovers’ mutual recognition of their happiness, with some additional remarks about relevant issues.

This article is a modified record of “Philosophy and Psychology III: Contrastive approaches to the COVID-19 problems,” a public symposium held at the 84th annual convention of the Japanese Psychological Association on September 9, 2020 via webinar. Before this symposium, philosophers and psychologists joined and discussed emotions (2018) and justice (2019) to stimulate psychologists to have greater interest in and to devote more attention to philosophy. It had been noted that psychologists tend to be quite indifferent to philosophy despite the fact that historical origins of psychology as an established discipline can be traced back to philosophy and physiology. In the last symposium, we, two psychologists and a philosopher, discussed COVID-19 as a problem, particularly addressing topics of “freedom and publicness” and “the future of embodiment.” Through that discussion, results showed that philosophy and psychology can be complementary and productive for both.

The relation between psychology and philosophy is like one with a close relative and a distant relative. They have the same research object, i.e. mind, but their methodologies differ in kind. Emotion is a suitable subject for philosophy to dialogue with psychology. This essay puts forth the comment rather critically on three articles from a philosophical viewpoint. First, Ogihara’s article criticizes the prejudice that the reason is superior to the emotion in western philosophical tradition. Although I agree with his intention, I would like to point out some defects in his arguments. Secondly, related to Kido’s article about Kant’s conception of “common sense,” a query is raised that the double aspect of common sense amounts to a strange concept of “empirical a priori.” Thirdly, Murayama’s article represents an attempt to define the concept of “love” by way of “happiness,” but this definition might fall into a vicious circle. Lastly, joint research is proposed between psychology and philosophy to transcend the concept of causal relations in the mind–brain problem.

This article introduces comments on some articles in this issue. First, for discussion about dichotomy in Western philosophy, it is discussed by contrast with the Japanese idea by which an object cannot be classified as good or bad, but we can find a good side and a bad side in the object. The idea is discussed with the opponent process theory. Then, for commenting on “common sense”, it is discussed with olfaction, which shares names with gustation and tactile sensation. In this discussion, the similarity of the liking of foods with aesthetic evaluation is introduced. At last, for commenting on the similarity of loving and eating, it is discussed with the sharing of common brain areas and cognitive functions in these behaviors. After all, it is reconfirmed that psychology has topics in common with philosophy, and that one can find ideas among the topics of philosophy.