Fredrik Svenaeus is professor at the Centre for Studies in Practical Knowledge, Södertörn University, Sweden. His main research areas are philosophy of medicine, bioethics, medical humanities, and philosophical anthropology. He has published a large number of articles and books on various subjects within these fields, most often from a phenomenological point of view.

Too often, emotions have been seen throughout history as a distortion of an objective description of reality that should be conveyed by philosophy and science. 

But in fact, reality gets its structure and meaning precisely through emotions that open up a world that we can share with other people. It is the creative power of emotions that distinguishes us from machines, and that allows us to establish knowledge about the world as opposed to simply processing information about it.  In his new book The World Awakens: The Place of Emotions in Human Life (Gidlunds 2023), Fredrik Svenaeus tackles the nature of emotions by combining philosophical analysis with empirical research from biology, psychology, and anthropology. The arguments are illustrated with the help of experiences of the power and importance of emotions from everyday life and in our age. The interpersonal function of emotion is given a great deal of space, ranging from the sense of empathy and togetherness that is crucial for a good life to the more problematic group feelings that grow strong through the crowd and that can be exploited in politics. The path goes from the very first to the very last feelings – from birth to death – and along the way, life's most important types of emotions are passed, not least those associated with love and happiness or suffering and illness. The starting point is a phenomenological research tradition in which the first-person perspective guides philosophical reflection in combination with scientific investigations.