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Geschichte und Gefühl: Grundlagen der Emotionsgeschichte

The book should be double-weighted because the research involved gathering sources in several languages (English, German, French, Russian) across more than two millennia (starting with Aristotle), from a wide range of disciplines, including history, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and psychology. Moreover, it is only the fourth monograph worldwide to engage neuroscience for history. Reviewers have praised the book’s thesis as trail-blazing: the social constructionism vs. universalism binary that has shaped all emotions research since the 19th-century maps onto a larger nature vs. culture binary that is as artificial as it is surmountable—the book outlines just how it can be overcome.

On the one hand, Geschichte und Gefühl synthesizes the history of emotions, including relevant research in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and the life sciences, up to the latest affective neuroscience. On the other hand, Geschichte und Gefühl intervenes in a rapidly expanding field of historical research. It makes plain its skepticism about facile borrowings from the neurosciences, while not ruling out the usefulness of such borrowings per se. In fact, the book shows how several areas of neuroscience—functional integration, neuroplasticity, and social neuroscience—currently look as though genuine cooperation with historians might become possible.