What is an existential emotion?

My aim in this paper is to make more precise the idea of an existential emotion. The framework for my analysis follows Heidegger's account in Being and Time. In the first part, I will argue that Heidegger's notion of BefituHichkeit is essentially about what we call emotions and that emotions come in two types: I) moods and ii) object-specific emotions. I will argue that Heidegger takes both types (correctly) to be intentional, that is, directed at or about something. In the second part, I use the notion of existential in a way that applies to certain emotions, asking which emotions can be existential and what makes them so. Is it only moods that are existential? And, among moods, are there certain of them such as Angst that have a special claim to being existential in the sense used here? This will lead to me to the third part of the paper in which I pursue the various ways in which emotions can be seen as existential depending on how and what they disclose. In the end, I present a sort of template for the existential character of emotions and suggest how the notion of existential might be understood to apply to other things besides emo-tions (such as ideas or literary works).