Abstract

This paper focuses on two aspects of Maximilian Beck’s philosophical reflection: his adherence to naive (phenomenological) realism and his claim to the autonomous existence of the affective qualities of the objectual world. Therefore, my contribution will be structured as follows: after a brief overview of Beck’s defence of naive realism (§2), I will attempt to show how, in his opinion, the affective qualities characterizing the world (i.e., the places and things we encounter) are in principle independent of the perceiver, possessing an objectivity of their own. It is pertinent to mention here that Beck calls these affective qualities “objective moods” (objektive Stimmungen) (§3). After that, I will try to illustrate the “externalist” aspects of Beck’s theory of the apprehension of Stimmungen, highlighting its differences from the “projective empathy” theses that were circulating at the time, particularly in the version proposed by Theodor Lipps (§4). In the final section, I will present two arguments that Beck puts forward in support of his theory of the objectivity of the Stimmungen (§5).