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In the limited space of this essay, we cannot embrace all of these fields. 6 All of these dimensions were of crucial importance in many realms of medieval thought and culture, from spiritual speculations to hagiography and mystic discourse, from anthropology to theology, from medicine to natural philosophy. Although their cursory treatment of medieval developments is understandable given their respective topics, all these scholars have surrendered to the mala fama of the Middle Ages while ignoring the interest and complexity of medieval thinking about affective life, with its nuanced meanings, manifold functions, and diverse social uses. 5 Dixon’s account, which deals specifically with emotions, reduces the medieval millennium to a passage from Augustine in the fifth century (who regarded the affects as part of the will) to Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth (who would restore a theory of passions). Kurt Danziger, also concerned with the recent history of psychology as a discipline, devotes but one line to medieval developments, which are presumably a continuation of ancient thought. 4 Focusing on a later shift, Hatfield and Vidal do not deal with the Middle Ages but begin their narrative in the sixteenth century. 3Īlong the same lines, Fernando Vidal and Gary Hatfield have explored the emergence of the notion of psychology in the sixteenth century and its development as an independent discipline in the eighteenth. Dixon notes that, even before this turn, there was a lively scientific investigation of the moral and affective dimensions of human life, but earlier Western thinkers mostly considered the “passions” and “affects” of the soul as notions embedded in a network of Christian categories. In his already classic book from 2003, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Category, Thomas Dixon proposed historicizing the category of emotion in psychology, which he assumes “did not exist until just under two hundred years ago.” 2 He emphasizes that the rise of the term “emotion” corresponded to a new opposition to reason, which, in turn, resulted from the secularization of Western thinking. The prevailing view of the development of Western thought on emotions is that it was only as late as the end of the nineteenth century, with the secularization of European society and thought, that a scientific psychology 1-and with it, a scientific consideration of emotions-emerged.
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Our essay analyzes the medieval psychology of emotions from a fresh perspective. Without departing from the Christian framework, which remained the basis of the growing, psychologically oriented literature, emotions came to be described in relation to the powers of the soul, and their sensory and bodily dimensions, as well as their cognitive, rational, and volitional functions, were increasingly considered in an integrated way. Emotions both positive and negative came to be regarded as important aspects of a more complex picture of human nature and attracted growing attention as such. From the beginning of the twelfth century onward, Western thinking about affective life began to engage new questions. In earlier medieval times, emotions were understood in terms of the dual moral perspective of vices and virtues, as defined by the parameters of the Fall and Salvation: affective life was largely reduced either to negative disturbances of the soul that a Christian should resist or to a positive love of God that one should cultivate.
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The shift took place gradually from the end of the eleventh century onward, both in the monastic context and in the new scholastic milieu. We would like to trace the steps of this development. In the context of the cultural renewal of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, Christian anthropology-the conception of the human being-was totally reshaped. This essay argues that a systematic psychology of affectivity emerged far earlier and can be found in Western Christian thought. The standard narrative of the development of Western thinking about emotions is that the concept of emotions emerged alongside the secularization of European society and thought and was linked to the emergence of psychology as a discipline.