Naturrecht und Emotion

Martin Mulsow
Naturrecht und Emotion
Eine Geschichte der Gefühle im 18. Jahrhundert
(series: Historische Geisteswissenschaften. Frankfurter Vorträge, Vol. 17)
Wallstein publishing house 2025
ISBN 978-3-8353-5853-9
236 pages
19 EUR

Natural law is the law of reason, but people are almost always governed by their emotions. Philosophy, medicine and theology around 1700 tried to find out more about this.

What happens when people are completely at the mercy of their feelings and instincts – because the voice of reason no longer has any effect? While today a political psychology that takes the intelligence of emotions as its starting point can make a positive contribution to the situation, around 1700 there was already an epistemic situation that confronted the power of emotions, but with a pessimistic undertone. What then remains to be done? Are the fear of punishment and the hope of reward the only legitimate emotions on which natural law and social peace can be based? Or are there liberations through which man can still find constructive ways of living? The multi-award-winning historian of ideas Martin Mulsow undertakes an exciting rollercoaster ride through the disciplines, touching on Philosophy and Theology, but also Medicine, Embryology and Criminal Law, Music and Economics, Philology and Church History, in order to explore what the knowledge of emotions was at the beginning of the 18th century. In this way, surprising perspectives emerge that allow discourses of today to be recognised in the distant mirror of the early Enlightenment.