The affective experience shows a particular level of subjectivity in animals, which is expressed in the interested condition that leads them to search the outside world with yearning. It could be defined as feeling something when looking at one’s landscape. In their dialogue with the context, animals are enveloped, as it were, within a fluctuating succession of feelings resulting from the transitory nature of the various emotions. At the same time, they are shaken by the tide of passions, when the appetites of the various innate motivations transform the environment into a space of possibility. Affective systems translate experience into bodily states, because the hedonic characterisation of feeling something in the encounter with a phenomenon inevitably produces somatisation. Experience, therefore, is never something neutral or external to the subject, but takes place in terms of internalisation of experience and personalisation. Affectivity therefore produces a state of self-ownership. We have seen that a primordial form of Self-referred subjectivity can already be found in the basic mechanisms of organised locomotion, since, as Giorgio Vallortigara points out, the difference between a self and a non-self becomes fundamental “when the organism moves actively with some form of locomotion mediated by cells that are separate from those in charge of receiving stimuli”. Indeed, to move it is crucial to be able to distinguish “the sensory signals that come from the outside world and those that result from the organism’s own movements in the world” (2021, 107). We can say, then, that the affective condition produces a second level of subjectivity, which can be defined as for-Self or referred to the condition of pleasure. The affective subjectivity of animality speaks not only of the dispositional character of the individual’s coming into the world, but also of two other things. First, (i) the aesthetic translation of sensory reports, whereby windows onto the world provide not only a landscape but also more or less pleasant sensations. Second, (ii) the hedonic consequences of homeostatic mechanisms, whereby needs become sources of pleasure (if fulfilled) or of suffering (if denied). At the heart of this level of subjectivity, which I have defined as for-Self, there is undoubtedly the condition of pleasure, which in some ways subsumes the Benthamian principle of “Can they suffer?” or Jacques Derrida’s inverted version of exposure to pain—as well as the Freudian principle of the Es. Affective subjectivity leads animals to constantly gauge their actions against the pleasure they may derive from them, so the individual’s fundamental compass is the search for pleasure, which can originate from various sources and is never predetermined. This brings us back to the principle of animal peripateticism, the act of “strolling” through the world seeking small sprinkles of pleasure deriving either from mitigating situations of need or from achieving gratifying objectives. One of the most important principles of learning, although overemphasised by the behaviourist school, is the law of effect developed by Edward L. Thorndike (1874–1949) in the first decades of the twentieth century. According to this law, learning is affirmed by a mechanism analogous to Darwinian selection, whereby a behaviour becomes more and more likely in the individual—just like a character within a population—the more its consequences are able to bring pleasure (positive reinforcement) or alleviate suffering (negative reinforcement). The hedonic system, constituted by the dialectic between pleasure and suffering, undoubtedly induces a given behaviour, for example when an animal wishes to escape from an unpleasant situation or to alleviate a particular yearning or restlessness. Talking about motivational dynamics, we have seen how (i) the appetitive phase gives rise to a condition of exuberance which, however, is also unrest that seeks expressive possibilities. We have also seen how, (ii) in consummation, the subject reaches a sense of fulfilment that extinguishes the restlessness and sometimes adds a hedonic supplement through the gratification resulting from achieving an objective. However, while being central in inducing or confirming behaviour, pleasure has so many sources that it is more of an orientation tool, a sort of rough indicator, than a predictive factor of behaviour. Pleasure is certainly the final goal of any action for-Self, but affective subjectivity presents a very wide range of potential hedonic returns. In other words, except for situations of expressive cogency, when for example there is a peak of motivational appetence or an urgent need, in most situations the animal finds itself at a table set with many courses, where some require a certain amount of effort while others are easily accessible snacks. This means that the plurality of options, even if marked by the hedonic meaning, leaves room for the ownership of choice. Thus, attributing a “for-Self” dimension to animals means no longer considering them as puppets passively driven by pleasure, but rather as subjects who, precisely by virtue of the affective condition, have reason and power of choice. Hence an aspect of subjectivity that is marked by complexity, indeterminacy, state singularity and above all creativity. Affectivity lays the foundations for choosing one’s behaviour at any given point in time, and this always involves a creative component. The factors of affective influence are multiple, the situations encountered in the world are variable and indeterminate, and the mixture of emotions and motivations experienced by the individual in the here and now is always unique: these are the reasons why the animal is able to choose. The complexity of affective influences leaves open a space of freedom that the animal fills through its choices, whether conscious or not. We could say, then, that the more plural the interests and influences in the subject’s present, the greater the space of existential ownership, because it is precisely in ambivalence that the subject needs to be able to make decisions. I shall return to this topic when speaking of the instruments of knowledge—the third level of subjectivity. For now, let’s just say that the greater the number of determining and influencing factors, the wider the scope of subjectivity. We must not, therefore, imagine the subject as an entity managing the different indications that come from the body, the mind or the environment, but rather as a space of superintendence that emerges from the plurality of factors at play. For this reason, the affective condition does not produce a cascading directionality of behaviour, but enables the ownership of choice in arranging a multiplicity of pleasant conditions.