Miroshnikov Yuri
In the article, an attempt has been made to reveal Rousseau’s views on the role of feelings (emotions) in human mentality and in spiritual activity. The author shows that according to Rousseau there is qualitative difference between perception and emotions (feelings). Rousseau considers emotional sphere “(heart)” to be the centre of human personality. The priority of emotion in human perception is crucially significant not only for moral behavior, but also for artistic, religious, political, legal and even scientific and cognitive activity. Thus, Rousseau severely criticizes rationalism of XVII–XVIII century philosophy and asserts the principle of emotivism in the form of sentimentalism.
Keywords: reason and emotion, objective and valuable features of being, rationalism and emotivism, priority of emotional and evaluative elements in cognition and self-knowledge, sentimentalism as form of emotivism.