Abstract
I consider the experience of surprise within the context of my current work on the emotions. To do this, I examine surprise in terms of its belief structure, distinguishing it from a startle (1). I then suggest that surprise is a being caught off-guard that is related to being attentively turned toward something (2). As the latter, I qualify surprise as an emotion in its being thrown back on an experience in a way that is different from affectively turning toward something (3). This constitutes surprise as a disequilibrium in distinction to a diremptive experience like we find in the moral emotions of shame or guilt (4). Finally, I distinguish surprise from a gift, which is peculiar to the experience of humility. I then suggest that surprise is an emotion while being neither an affect, like a startle-reflex, nor a moral emotion, like shame, guilt, or humility.
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Notes
- 1.
Aristotle, Poetics, ed., and trans., Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1454a 4; 1455a 17. Regarding wonder [to thaumazein] as the beginning of philosophy, see Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books I-IX, trans., Hugh Tredennick (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933), 982b 12–17.
- 2.
Aristotle, Poetics, 1452a 4–6; 1460a 12–14. See 1460a 26–27: “Things probable though impossible should be preferred to the possible but implausible.” Impossibilities are justifiable if they make that portion of the work more astounding (1460b 23–29).
- 3.
Adam Smith, The Early Writings of Adam Smith, ed., J. Ralph Lindgren (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1967), esp., 30–31, 33, 39. Wonder is an elaboration of surprise, concerning the singularity of the succession.
- 4.
See Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans., Anthony J. Steinbock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), esp. Part 2, Division 1.
- 5.
I would like to thank Natalie Depraz for bringing these works to my attention.
- 6.
Donald Davidson, Rational animals. Dialectica 36: 318–27 (1982). And Donald Davidson, Problems of Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
- 7.
Daniel Dennett, “Surprise, Surprise,” Commentary on O’Regan and Noe, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (5), (2001), 982.
- 8.
I do not consider here the protraction of a shock or the relation of shock to trauma, how it can be repressed, etc. Nor am I considering the experience of grief as a possible subsequent response to surprise or shock.
Hegel never uses the term “Überraschung” in his Phänomenologie. However, for experiencing consciousness (not absolute Subject) every new structurally distinct encounter would throw this consciousness back on its experience such that it provides a motive for a step back or rather, discovery, and re-conceptualization. Perhaps “surprise” is a suitable term for the encounter of what seems incidental and alien to its own making (positing), rupturing its expectation, and being thrown back on experience, and then testing, experimenting, and eventually reconceptualizing it.
- 9.
See Husserl, Analyses, esp. Part 2, §7.
- 10.
See Husserl, Analyses, esp. Part 2, Division 1. There is no feeling necessarily in the latter, no existential import.
- 11.
René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, trans., Stephen Voss (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1989), Art. 53. It is the first of six primitive passions: love, hate, desire, joy, sadness. See also, Sara Heinämaa, “Love and Admiration (Wonder): Fundaments of the Self-Other Relations,” in Emotional Experiences: Ethical and Social Significance, eds., John J. Drummond and Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl (London: Rowman & Littlefield Int., 2018), 155–74.
- 12.
See Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, Art. 70.
- 13.
In order of foundation we would find: judgment, surprise, wonder, attention. Natalie Depraz concludes that wonder is the emotional immediate after-effect of surprise while attention is its cognitive after-effect. See Natalie Depraz, “Surprise, Valence, Emotion: The Multivectorial Integrative Cardio-Phenomenology of Surprise,” this volume, chapter 2.
- 14.
It is also interesting to observe that a startle has an immediate bodily resonance, usually expressed in a kind of “jump,” a violent twitch, or sudden reflex movement. While surprise is often expressed in raised eyebrows, a widening of eyes, or a stepping back, etc., I can still experience surprise without any such facial or bodily gestures.
- 15.
See Husserl, Analyses, esp. §§37–39.
- 16.
See Husserl, Analyses, Part 2, Div. 3.
- 17.
Immanuel Kant, Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, ed., Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1980), §55, §74. “Der affekt ist Überraschung durch Empfindung, wodurch die Fassung des Gemüts (animus sui compos) aufgehoben wird.” In Kant’s Kritik der Urteiskraft, when discussing humor (the joke, and laughter), he writes that “Das Lachen ist ein Affekt aus der plötzlichen Verwandlung einer gespannten Erwartung in nichts.” Thus, it is an affect that arises from a sudden transformation of a tension-filled expectation into nothing. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed., Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1974), §54.
- 18.
See Depraz, “Surprise, Valence, Emotion.”
- 19.
If we examine a discordance of an otherwise concordant experience, say, walking down the stairs while conversing with a friend, a misstep might constitute a rupture of that experience of walking, and if I am very much absorbed in the conversation, I may not even notice the misstep until after I reflect on what happened—how I scuffed my shoes, for example, or how I hurt my knee. Even if something is placed in my way and I trip, and then I regain my footing, this may be unexpected, it may be a rupture of my gait, but would this necessarily be constituted as a surprise? I don’t think so, since simply because things do not go according to how we expect them to run their course does not necessarily mean that it is surprising. That is, we could experience a rupture of experience, and this rupture or discordance (as an anomaly of concordance) could be integrated merely within a passive level of experience.
- 20.
Hence, there is a fundamental difference between “I accept what I cannot accept” and an “I accept that I cannot accept.” The former would characterize, in part, surprise; the latter only that my commitments do not entail what I thought they did, or alternately, a second order epistemic affirmation of what is not the case: “I believe that I can’t believe that X is the case.” The latter would not necessarily be the experience of surprise.
- 21.
See Anthony J. Steinbock, Moral Emotions: Reclaiming the Evidence of the Heart (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 2014).
- 22.
See Steinbock, Moral Emotions.
- 23.
See my Moral Emotions, chapter 2. Shame and guilt (as well as pride) belong to the order of the emotions of self-givenness. Shame is self-revelatory (as is guilt), whereas surprise is not.
- 24.
Certainly, I can be thrown back on myself before “another”—where precisely I am that “other,” like when I surprise myself (as in the example given above). This means that surprise can be a diremptive experience in certain circumstances. However, it need not be, and this is one reason that, while an emotion, it cannot be understood on the same order of embarrassment, shame, or guilt. I would like to thank Ellie Anderson for bringing to my attention this issue of a possible diremption within the experience of surprise.
- 25.
Jacques Derrida, Donner le temps. 1. La fausse monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1991), 152–57; 186–90; 198. English translation by Peggy Kamuf, Jacques Derrida, Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 119–23; 147–50; 156.
- 26.
For this notion of the “Myself,” see my Moral Emotions.
- 27.
We could undertake a similar analysis for, e.g., trusting or repentance. See my Moral Emotions, esp., ch. 5 regarding the experience of hope.
- 28.
See my Moral Emotions, ch. 7.
- 29.
See my Moral Emotions, comparing pride and humility.
- 30.
Max Scheler, Vom Umsturz der Werte: Abhandlungen und Aufsätze, ed., Maria Scheler (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1955), 18.
- 31.
It could happen that I epistemically “expect” that someone may thank me for something I did for him (knowing his character), but in fact, I never expect anything at all for what I did, not even any kind of acknowledgment, and in this sense, “expecting thanks” does not even cross my mind.
- 32.
See Anthony J. Steinbock, Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), “Introduction.” And see my Moral Emotions, “Introduction.”
- 33.
It is true that receiving the gift can also a transformation of the one who receives, but this already takes place in the presence of another. In pride, there is an exclusion of the gift through a rigidity of the self rather than a “being with” the other person. Receiving the gift, then, is an openness to the other as the openness to myself/Myself, which means the transformation of Myself as open to the other person. It is essentially interpersonal. Ultimately, I receive Myself as from another, as not self-grounding.
- 34.
Compare, Derrida, Donner le temps, 39; Derrida, Given Time, 24. See chapter 5.
- 35.
This chapter was originally published as “Surprise, Gift, Humility,” in It’s Not about the Gift: From Givenness to Loving (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).
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Steinbock, A.J. (2018). Surprise as Emotion: Between Startle and Humility. In: Depraz, N., Steinbock, A. (eds) Surprise: An Emotion?. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98657-9_1
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