Description
Book SynopsisEmotions, as argued in this book, are contingent on historical variables. Even though men and women may have always felt and shown emotions, those have differed in style, object, intensity, and valence. While certain emotions got lost in history, other ones rose to prominence, depending on political incentives, social challenges, and cultural choices. In European societies, honour and shame practices have fundamentally changed over the course of modernity, gradually losing their grip on people's self -perception and attitude. At the same time, compassion and empathy have become crucial components of the modern "emotional self".Although they have motivated a plethora of humanitarian activities and institutions, they have nevertheless been hampered by severe obstacles and seen periods of dramatic decline.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments The Historical economy of emotions: Introduction Brussels, 2010: Emotional politics and the politics of emotion - The Economy of emotions: How it works and why it matters - The modern and the pre-modern Chapter 1. Losing emotions Losing emotions in trauma - Losing emotions in psychology and historiography - Losing emotions in the civilising process - Losing emotions in words: acedia and melancholia - Losing the mot-force: honour - Honour as an emotional disposition: internal/external - Honour practices: The duel - The emotional power of duelling - Shaming the coward - Equality and group cohesion - Crimes of honour, now and then - Chastity and family honour - Rape, sex, and national honour - The decline of honour, or its return? Chapter 2. Gendering emotions Rage and insult - Power and self-control - Women's strength, women's weakness - Modernity and the natural order - Emotional topographies of gender - Sensibility - Romantic families, passionate politics - Intense emotions versus creative minds - Schools of emotions: the media - Self-help literature - More schooling: armies, peer groups, politics - Collective emotions and charismatic leadership - New emotional profiles and social change - Angry young men, angry young women - Winds of change Chapter 3. Finding emotions Empathy and compassion - Social emotions in 18th-century moral philosophy - Self-love and sympathy - Suffering and pity - Fraternite and the French Revolution - Human rights - Abolitionism and the change in sensibility - Sympathy, lexical - Schopenhauer's Nachstenliebe versus Nietzsche's Fernsten-Liebe - Compassion and its shortcomings - Counter-forces and blockades - Suffering, pity and the education of feelings - Modern dilemmas - Humanitarianism and its crises Emotions lost and found: Conclusions and Perspectives Index
