Iain McGilChrist argues that feelings are not a reaction to cognitions; it is the other way around: Affect comes first, thinking arrives later. When making choices we make an intuitive assessment and then later use cognition to justify these choices. This is called the ‘primacy of affect’. Our affective judgement is based on the right-hemisphere of the brain.
Affect can be understood as our ‘disposition towards the world’. Affect includes emotion but is not limited to it. Affect is a way of attending, relating or a way of being in the world. Emotion too is closer to our being than cognitions. ‘Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings’, wrote Nietzsche. The body and emotion lies at the core of our being. Reason emerges from feeling.