Emotional Attunement

Feeling the Moods of Others


​see also Throbs of Emotional Energy: Whitehead's 
Idea that the Universe is Alive with Desire and Feeling
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The Basis of Experience is Emotional

According to Alfred North Whitehead, “the basis of experience is emotional” (1933/1967, 176). Whitehead writes that his philosophy “aspires to construct a critique of pure feeling, in the philosophical position in which Kant put his Critique of Pure Reason. This should also supercede the remaining Critiques required in the Kantian philosophy” (1929/1978, 113).

In what follows, I would like to work through this “critique of pure feeling,” and show how Whitehead opens the way to an affect-based account of human (and not just human) experience.

​For Whitehead, the questions of how we feel, and what we feel, are more fundamental than the epistemological and hermeneutical questions that are the focus of most philosophy and criticism (including Kant’s Critiques).
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Stephen Shapiro, Pulses of Emotion: Whitehead's Critique of Pure Feeling

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, one of the most haunting scenes unfolds on a storm-ravaged heath, where the aging king, betrayed by his daughters and unraveling in grief, rages against the elements. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” he cries, as thunder rolls and rain lashes down. The storm is not merely backdrop—it mirrors Lear’s internal chaos, his mental and emotional disintegration. I am reminded of a phone call.

"How's the weather?" a friend from Europe asked me in a phone call the other day. I glanced out the window and said, "It's raining today." She paused and said, "No, I mean the emotional weather—how you're feeling, and what's the mood of your nation these days?" Her question was a thoughtful reminder that sometimes the "weather" we talk about runs deeper than clouds and sunlight. It names something inward and collective—our felt atmosphere. I told her that, for many people in my country, at least half of them, it is raining inside, too. 

An important feature of process theology is its respect for feelings and emotions. They are not mere fluff compared to the so-called “real world” of physical objects in space; rather, they are integral to the very being, the very actuality, of the universe. In Whitehead’s philosophy, emotions—understood as prehensions and subjective forms—are among the eight categories of existence. They are as real, in their way, as are solid objects moving through space, or gravity, or God. To dismiss them as fluff is to make an ontological mistake. It is to reduce reality to billiard balls.

Accordingly, when we think of love in a Whiteheadian or process context, it includes not only doing things for others in helpful and life-nourishing ways, but also listening to others, being attuned to them, and being present with them. I will call this form of love emotional attunement.

An example might be sitting beside a grieving friend, saying very little, but feeling their sorrow with them—matching your tone to theirs, sensing when to speak and when not to, and offering a steady presence. No action is taken to “fix” the grief, yet love is powerfully present in the shared emotional space.

Such attunement can also take the form of shared joy. Imagine a child on the floor, fully absorbed in building a tower out of blocks. You sit with them—not instructing, not rushing, but simply watching with interest, smiling as the tower grows, laughing together when it tumbles. Your presence mirrors their excitement, honors their creativity, and says without words: your joy matters to me. In that quiet moment, love is expressed through mutual attention and delight.

Recognizing Anger, Grief, and Resistance

To be sure, sometimes when we feel the moods of others, we discover differences and conflicts, too. To feel the moods of others, to partake of emotional attunement, is not necessarily to agree with them or to approve of their actions. It is to enter, however briefly, the atmosphere of their experience—to sense the texture of their sorrow, their joy, their fear, their hope. It is to be affected, not absorbed; to be touched without being overtaken.

Emotional attunement does not erase difference. In fact, it honors difference by refusing to reduce the other to an abstraction. It says: You are feeling something real, and I will not pretend I do not notice. It is not the same as sympathy, which often remains external, nor is it always tender; sometimes attunement means recognizing anger, grief, or resistance that disrupts our own ease. But even in discomfort, it is a form of relational truth-telling.

The Fluidity of Emotions

Emotions are not sealed off inside individuals; they ripple outward and move between us. Like weather, they can sweep through a room, a household, a crowd. We prehend the feelings of others—sometimes subtly, sometimes powerfully—through tone of voice, facial expression, posture, silence. This process is not merely cognitive but bodily and intuitive. We feel with and through each other, and in doing so, our emotional lives are shaped by the moods and energies around us. One person’s grief, joy, or anxiety can become, in part, our own—not through imitation, but through a kind of emotional osmosis that process thought calls prehension. In this way, emotions are communal events, not just private experiences.

Some emotions are dramatic and collective—felt by entire communities during moments of crisis, celebration, or transformation. Think of national mourning after a tragedy, the electric joy of a shared victory, or the simmering anger that fuels protest and resistance. These emotions aren’t just individual feelings multiplied; they become communal fields of energy that shape how people act, speak, and remember. They bind people together or sometimes push them apart. They are part of a community’s story.

​But there are also quieter, subtler communal emotions—the emotional tones that emerge in classrooms, families, workplaces, or places of worship. These aren’t announced or declared. They’re felt in the air, like a mood in the room. One person’s anxiety can ripple outward. Another’s calm presence can ground a group. These everyday emotional climates shape our experiences too, often without words. In process theology, such shared feelings are real, relational forces—fields of feeling that connect us and co-shape who we become.

Intellectual Emotions

It must be added that emotions and moods are not cut off from the intellect. There are intellectual moods, too—moods of curiosity, confusion, wonder, insight, and resolve. These are not secondary to thinking; they are the very atmosphere in which thought unfolds. A classroom, for instance, may be tense with fear of being wrong, or alive with shared discovery. The life of the mind is never neutral. It breathes through moods as surely as it breathes through logic and language. Whitehead himself insisted that every act of knowing includes a “subjective form”—a feeling tone that gives color to the experience of thought.

Just as storms can gather in the sky, insight can gather in the mind—not always in sudden flashes, but sometimes as slow dawns, shaped by the emotional weather of attention, receptivity, and longing to understand. The philosopher seeking truth, the poet waiting for the right image, the student wrestling with a difficult concept—all dwell in emotional-intellectual climates. These climates matter. They influence what is possible to perceive, and how open we are to new forms of understanding.

In this light, emotional weather is also epistemological. It affects how and what we come to know. A mood of defensiveness may block insight; a mood of openness may let it in. Emotional attunement is thus not a distraction from knowing—it is its precondition. As we become aware of this, we also become more responsible for the climates we create in ourselves and with others: climates that either stifle or nurture the growth of shared understanding.

God and Emotions

So where is God - the Spirit of Amipotence - in all of this?

In open and relational theology, the Spirit is not a distant observer of emotional weather but an intimate participant in its unfolding. The Spirit is present in each moment of feeling—not as a detached ruler but as a quiet, inward lure toward emotional wisdom and depth. This lure is not coercive; it is a whisper in the soul, guiding each person toward a more truthful and compassionate response to life’s shifting moods. Emotional intelligence, in this light, is not just a human capacity but a divine calling: the ability to recognize, feel, and respond with care to the full range of inner and shared experience.

But God is not only a lure. God is also a receptacle—a deep, encompassing heart in which all emotions are received and held. The joy of a child, the anguish of betrayal, the quiet grief of loneliness—all are taken up into the divine life and felt fully. In process thought, this is the “consequent nature of God”—the aspect of God that feels with the world, suffers with it, rejoices with it, and weaves its emotional weather into a larger harmony of compassion.
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And yes, God feels. The divine life is not impassive. God is moved—not in reactive volatility, but in a profound responsiveness born of love. God’s emotions are not over and against ours; they are resonant with them. In every storm of anger, in every light of tenderness, in every field of shared mood, God is not merely present. God is there, feeling with and through us, helping us make meaning of our weathered hearts. God is, as it were, emotionally attuned. The lure of God within each of us is likewise a lure toward emotional attunement.

Politics

Politics is often framed as a contest of ideas, interests, and power. But beneath the policies and platforms lies a deeper terrain: the emotional landscape of a people—their fears and longings, their anger and hope. Emotional attunement in politics is the capacity to sense and respond to this terrain with integrity. It is the ability of a leader, movement, or citizen to feel with the public, to perceive the mood of a moment without exploiting it, and to respond in ways that foster understanding, not manipulation.

Without attunement, politics becomes coldly technocratic or dangerously performative. Policies may be correct on paper yet fail to reach the hearts of those they’re meant to serve. Conversely, demagogues may mimic emotional attunement by echoing public frustration, only to inflame division for personal gain. True attunement, by contrast, involves listening deeply—not just to words, but to silences, tones, and the subtle climates of collective emotion.

In a process-relational view, societies are fields of feeling as well as systems of law. Emotional climates influence what is possible, what is sayable, what is thinkable. Political wisdom, then, includes the capacity to sense these climates and help shift them toward justice, compassion, and creative possibility. Emotional attunement becomes a moral skill—a way of honoring the dignity of others by acknowledging the truth of their emotional experience, even when disagreeing with their conclusions or choices.

Democracy, at its best, is not just a structure of governance but a shared emotional project—an ongoing effort to feel with and for one another in the messy, vibrant work of collective life.

Family Life

Family life offers one of the most profound contexts for emotional attunement. In the ebb and flow of daily routines—meals, bedtime rituals, conversations, and conflicts—family members constantly prehend one another’s moods and energies, often without words. A parent senses the quiet withdrawal of a child after a hard day at school. A sibling picks up on a brother’s excitement about a new interest. In process thought, these subtle acts of feeling-with are not secondary to love; they are love in action. Emotional attunement in families creates a shared field of feeling that supports trust, resilience, and a sense of belonging.

Such attunement is especially important in times of vulnerability—grief, stress, or illness—when words may fail. A partner placing a hand gently on the other’s shoulder, sitting in silence, or simply staying nearby communicates care more deeply than advice or analysis ever could. This kind of presence doesn’t try to fix pain but acknowledges it and joins it, creating what Whitehead might call a conformal feeling—a resonance that honors the other’s experience while adding the warmth of relational support. In these moments, family becomes not just a social unit but a spiritual organism of shared experience and mutual becoming.

Emotions in the More than Human World

Emotions are not confined to the human heart or even to the lives of animals. In a process-relational worldview, feeling is woven into the fabric of reality itself. Animals clearly exhibit emotional expression—joy, fear, anger, affection—but so do more primitive forms of life in ways appropriate to their level of complexity. A single cell moves toward nutrients and away from toxins; it contracts, adapts, and communicates chemically with its surroundings. Though it lacks a nervous system, it responds to its environment in ways that can be seen as rudimentary forms of feeling—what Whitehead would call “prehensions” or “subjective forms.” These are not metaphors. They are actual modes of sentience, however primitive, by which the world comes to know and respond to itself.

Even at the molecular and atomic levels, this philosophy suggests, there is a kind of proto-feeling—a non-conscious but real responsiveness inherent in the becoming of each event. Molecules attract and repel, form bonds and break them, guided not only by mechanistic laws but by tendencies that reflect basic forms of affirmation or negation—what Whitehead calls adversion and aversion. These aren’t emotions in the human sense, but they are tonalities of relationship—ways that matter “feels” its own process of becoming. Each atom, each particle, is not a static object but a moment of activity, a pulse of self-organizing energy whose inner life, however minimal, is part of the universe’s ongoing emotional texture.

When we speak of emotions in the more-than-human world, then, we are recognizing that the universe is not cold and dead at its roots, but alive with feeling at every scale. From a grieving mother elephant to a migrating cell, from the turning of sunflowers to the oscillations of quantum particles, there is something like feeling at work—a responsiveness, a pattern of reaction and novelty, of continuity and disruption. Emotion, in this expanded view, is not just an add-on to an otherwise inert cosmos. It is one of the fundamental modes of existence. To feel is to be, and to be is always, in some way, to feel.