On Disgust

US Books > Health, Mind & Body > Mental Health > Emotions

In On Disgust, pioneering philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1905-1973) draws on Husserl's phenomenological method to examine the experience of disgust. He distinguishes disgust from other emotions of aversion such as fear and contempt and shows how it relates to the five senses. Kolnai argues that disgust is never related to inorganic or nonbiological matter, and that its arousal by moral objects has an underlying similarity with its arousal by organic material: a particular combination of life and death. This book also includes an article published shortly before the author's death titled "The Standard Modes of Aversion: Fear, Disgust, and Hatred."