This essay reshapes our understanding of the origin and trajectory of the phenomenology of feelings. In contrast to accepted interpretations, I show that Husserl’s 1896 manuscript “Approval, Value, and Evidence”—and not his 1901 Logical Investigations—is the foundation of his subsequent phenomenology of feelings as it is found in Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory, Ideas I, and other manuscripts. This is for two reasons. First, in the 1896 manuscript—published in Studies Concerning the Structures of Consciousness—Husserl introduces the core problem, which continues to motivate his philosophy of feelings. He sees that feelings are not just affective, but also surprisingly rational. Second, Husserl addresses this enigmatic duality, by pioneering the method of analogizing, which he would employ for the next twenty years. In sum, I show that the 1896 manuscript introduces the problems and methods, in the absence of which Husserl’s later phenomenology of feelings appears inconceivable.

We argue in this paper that unveiling of concepts is a viable means of promoting the growth of African languages in contemporary African studies. We show that African languages face serious threat of extinction due to neglect from their users and undue influence of colonial languages. We contend that the ratio of indigenous languages used as official languages compared to colonial languages is poor and despicable. The growth of African languages has been stunted due to the multilingual nature of African continent. It has rendered the languages underdeveloped, thereby limiting their propagation and audience. We demonstrate how conversational thinking aids the growth of African languages and philosophy through conceptual articulation. Conversational thinking whose arumaristic approach aims at creating new thoughts and unveiling new concepts offers African philosophers a robust tool for expanding the vocabularies of African indigenous languages by creating concepts from underexplored African traditional wisdom and clichés.