Rethinking Emotion: Interiority and Exteriority in Premodern, Modern, and Contemporary Thought

This book reevaluates premodern, modern and contemporary conceptions of affects, passions and emotion by analyzing various historical manifestations of the discourse on emotion. Unlike most previous research, which-especially in the German tradition-often focused exclusively on the rise of the modern (Romantic) interiority without paying attention to the underlying dichotomy of “interiority / exteriority”, this study explores the historical preconditions, the internal logic and the possible shortcomings that inform our thinking of emotion.