Aesthetic emotions refer to emotions that are felt during aesthetic activity and/or appreciation. These emotions may be of the everyday variety (such as fear, wonder or sympathy) or may be specific to aesthetic contexts. Examples of the latter include the sublime, the beautiful, and the kitsch. In each of these respects, the emotion usually constitutes only a part of the overall aesthetic experience, but may play a more or less definitive role for that state.

The relation between aesthetic emotions and other emotions is traditionally said to rely on the disinterestedness of the aesthetic experience (see Kant especially). Aesthetic emotions do not motivate practical behaviours in the way that other emotions do (such as fear motivating avoidance behaviours).

The capacity of artworks to arouse emotions such as fear is a subject of philosophical and psychological research. It raises problems such as the paradox of fiction in which one responds with sometimes quite intense emotions to art, even whilst knowing that the scenario presented is fictional (see for instance the work of Kendall Walton). Another issue is the problem of imaginative resistance, which considers why we are able to imagine many far-fetched fictional truths but experience comparative difficulty imagining that different moral standards hold in a fictional world. This problem was first raised by David Hume, and was revived in current discussion by Richard Moran, Kendall Walton and Tamar Gendler (who introduced the term in its current usage in a 2000 article by the same name).Some forms of artwork seem to be dedicated to the arousal of particular emotions. For instance horror films seek to arouse feelings of fear or disgust; comedies seek to arouse amusement or happiness, tragedies seek to arouse sympathy or sadness, and melodramas try to arouse pity and empathy.

William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is also known to have been the author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka.

Due in part to Atkinson's intense personal secrecy and extensive use of pseudonyms, he is now largely forgotten, despite having obtained mention in past editions of Who's Who in America, Religious Leaders of America, and several similar publications—and having written more than 100 books in the last 30 years of his life. His works have remained in print more or less continuously since 1900.

William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 5, 1862, to William and Emma Atkinson. He began his working life as a grocer at 15 years old, probably helping his father. He married Margret Foster Black of Beverly, New Jersey, in October 1889, and they had two children. The first probably died young. The second later married and had two daughters.

Gary Kendall is an award-winning Canadian bassist, vocalist and band leader, best known for his longstanding association with the Downchild Blues Band.

Gary Kendall, originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, has been a working musician since the late 1960s, in addition to being involved with music as a record producer and booking agent. He is a multiple Maple Blues Award winner as bassist of the year, where, since 1999, he has acted as the musical director of the awards program. His distinguished musical career was so honoured by the Maple Blues Awards as early as 1993.

Kendall played with the Downchild Blues Band during the 1979-1983 period. With fellow Downchild alumnus Cash Wall, Kendall subsequently formed the Kendall Wall Blues Band, which was well-known in Toronto and area during the 1980s and early 1990s. As the house band at Toronto's Black Swan Tavern, the Kendall Wall Blues Band played with such blues legends as A.C. Reed, Pinetop Perkins, Eddy Clearwater, Tinsley Ellis, Little Willie Littlefield, Chubby Carrier, Bernard Allison, Eddie C. Campbell, Lefty Dizz, Eddie "Clean Head" Vinson, Eddie Shaw, Carey Bell and Fenton Robinson.

Vittorio Gallese is professor of human physiology at the University of Parma, Italy with appointments in the departments of neuroscience, psychiatry and psychology. He is an expert in neurophysiology, neuroscience, social neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. Gallese is one of the discoverers of mirror neurons. His research attempts to elucidate the functional organization of brain mechanisms underlying social cognition, including action understanding, empathy, and theory of mind.

Vittorio Gallese studied medicine at the University of Parma, Parma, Italy, and was awarded an M.D, in Neurology in 1990. He is a Full Professor of physiology in the Department of Neuroscience of the University of Parma. As a cognitive neuroscientist, his research focuses on the relationship between the sensory-motor system and cognition, both in non-human primates and humans using a variety of neurophysiological and functional neuroimaging techniques. Among his major contributions is the discovery, together with the colleagues of Parma, of mirror neurons, and the elaboration of a theoretical model of basic aspects of social cognition. He is actively developing an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of intersubjectivity and social cognition in collaboration with psychologists, psycholinguists and philosophers.