Wednesday's Child

Beginning from Heidegger's insight regarding the intentionality of moods, the author argues that, with the recognition of a suitable field of consciousness, it ought to be possible to speak scientifically about non-cognitional and non-volitional but nevertheless rational moods within a type of social neuroscience capable of validating Heidegger's understanding of the centrality of angst as a "prime datum" of our human being. The author makes a case for a field theory validation of Angst within a twenty-first century scientific phenomenology which, with the help of the scientific advances of neurological imaging, affords us the philosophical opportunity to attend to a long neglected aspect of our phenomenological condition, and to assess the religious and non-religious uses of angst in our phenomenal experience.