Unlike human beings, landscapes, cities and buildings cannot feel anything in the literal sense. They do not have nervous systems. Nevertheless, we attribute “Stimmungen” such as peacefulness and melancholy to them. On what basis? With what right? And why does it matter anyway? This paper attempts an answer to this bunch of questions. The first section clarifies the concept of “Stimmung,” by distinguishing its three major meanings, namely harmony, mood and atmosphere. Section two discusses various models of how “ (...) class='Hi'>Stimmung” is infused into our natural and artificial environment. Section three lists several ways of how we experience atmosphere, preparing the ground for the specifically aesthetic claim in section four: how, when we experience atmosphere aesthetically, we respond to it by resonating or feeling at home. (shrink)

Thought style and thought collective are two well-known concepts from Ludwik Fleck’s theory of science, which he originally formulated in Polish and German. This paper contends that these two concepts cannot be fully understood without a third—Stimmung/nastrój, which is one of the musical metaphors that play an important role in Fleck’s thinking. Because it is most often translated into English as “mood”, Fleck’s musical metaphors are mostly lost in translation, appearing as mere rhetoric. Only if and when we understand (...) Stimmung/nastrój in the musical meaning of attunement, we can fully understand thought collectives, for which Stimmung/nastrój is sine qua non, and thought style, which appears if and when a collective turns out to be an enduring and not a momentary one. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the significance of mood for a philosophical approach to emotion. Are moods problematic because they constrain us in an affective cage? Or do they rather give us access to the world? The starting point for this investigation is the work of Martin Heidegger: I analyze what he defines as vorweltlich arguing that this term refers to the emotional dimension of human existence, in particular, to mood, or, in Heideggerian terms, Stimmung. Human existence is not (...) just a neutral being-there but a being-affected, a being-in-a-mood. I then move on to consider the role of mood in relation to the concept of transcendence, providing an analysis of two main source of inspiration in Heidegger’s thought: Augustine and Aristotle. This allows us to distinguish three aspects of Stimmung : Stimmung as openness to the world, Stimmung as teleological movement, and Stimmung as event of ontological difference. In the final section, I discuss the contribution of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought to the contemporary debate on emotions. (shrink)

Stimmungen bilden in der Wiener Moderne einen experimentellen Zugang zur Ich-Welt-Einheit. Sie führen Leib, Sprache und physikalische Welt in einen Zusammenhang, der sich jedoch begrifflichem Erfassen entzieht. So ist die Einheit, die Stimmungen vermitteln, paradoxerweise nur mehrdeutig sagbar. Sie drückt sich als eine bewegte Konfiguration aus Stimmung, Leib und Sprache in Texten der Wiener Moderne aus. Gisbertz' Studie fokussiert auf gemeinsame Strukturen und Funktionen von >StimmungStimmungStimmung.

Epidemiological studies of the last decade have shown a low prevalence of hypomania and bipolar I disorder in Western societies while pointing to a prevalence of unipolar mania in non-Western societies. This work seeks to investigate the explanatory role of the Stimmung concept to understand these differences, as much as the increase in the number of cases of mania in the West in the last two decades. It attempts to explore the relationship between the phenomenology of hypomania and its (...) adaptation to the atmosphere of its environment. Our hypothesis is that the experience of hypomania would be in harmony with the narrative of Western societies and with Stimmung (in the sense of the term used by Spitzer and Heidegger) of these societies. Finally, we will present a clinical case and analyzes of business leadership manuals that will illustrate the phenomenological relationship of Stimmung and mania, as well as its transformation in the sphere of work. (shrink)

Pragmatism is usually understood as a philosophy defined through action, but philosophical thought is typically contrasted with action. Where do we get the psychic energy for action, if thought is not its effective motor? Affect is the pragmatist answer proposed here. Our passionate nature, our feelings, emotions, or mood provide the dynamic trigger for action, including the action involved in cognition and inquiry. This paper explores the crucial, multiple cognitive roles that affect plays in pragmatism’s three founding fathers, Charles Sanders (...) Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, but also in Richard Rorty’s contemporary pragmatism. Discussing the different affective terms of “emotion,” “mood” and “feeling,” I show how William James emphasized the distinctive notion of “the strenuous mood” in propounding his pragmatist philosophy and then show how this mood is likewise expressed in the pragmatism of Peirce, Dewey, and Rorty. (shrink)

Few cinephiles would deny the importance of mood in film, yet the aesthetics of mood are curiously overlooked today. On the one hand, mood is an essential dimension of cinema: we define certain genres, for example, by suggesting the moods they evoke. On the other hand, words frequently fail us when we try to articulate such moods in a more abstract or analytical vein. I offer in this essay some critical reflections on the significance of mood, suggesting that mood works (...) in narrative film by the disclosure of cinematic worlds. To explore variations in the aesthetics of mood — what I call disclosive, episodic, transitional and autonomous moods — I shall consider some selected mood-sequences from Brokeback Mountain, Fa yeung nin wa/In the Mood for Love, Habla con ella/Talk to Her and Mulholland Drive. My aim is to suggest the virtues of taking a more phenomenological approach to the aesthetics of mood, understood as a way of revealing or opening up a cinematic world; and to show how mood, in revealing distinctive cinematic worlds, is essential to our aesthetic and emotional engagement with film. (shrink)

This paper reconstructs Friedrich Schiller’s aesthetics from a compatibilist point of view. I shall argue that it is Schiller’s conception of individual self-determination that motivates his aesthetic critique of Kant’s moral philosophy. Schiller conceives of aesthetic self-determination in terms of a compatibilism between reason and nature. As such, Schiller’s aesthetics can be interpreted as an ontological category. His concepts of love, play and the aesthetic state must therefore be understood in terms of volitional structures that describe human freedom in nature, (...) history and society. (shrink)

This synthetic survey of the models on which theEinflihlungstheorie is based has showed the deficiency of a pattern and the oscillation of a distinction.The hydraulic model, which following a radical subjectivism is specified as a projection or transfer of pathemic contents from the subject into the object, experiences a crisis if confronted with the rights of the object, which claims to be empathized in this way or in that way. Such a claim induces to recognize a character proper to the (...) object, which does not accept to be reduced to a mere neutral container ready to receive the subjective pathemic contents.Consequently, the distinction between empathy towards the human and empathy towards the sub-human — which appeared to be a major difference —vanishes, since the relation with the object (natural or artistic) is specified in terms of intersubjectivity andalter-ego.The subjectivistic hydraulic pattern is not just substituted by an opposite, objectivistic pattern, which would create the same difficulties, only upset; but rather by ananalogic model, in which sense is established in the correlation between subject and object, and on the aesthetic ground of the qualitative affinities, which determine a horizon of style.It is an analogic model which characterizes, in Husserl, the constitution of the transcendental intersubjectivity: empathy becomes the condition of possibility of the comprehension of other subjects in their typic or stylistic structure.InAesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft Max Dessoir severely criticizes the theorists of empathy because they hyposthatize organic metaphors creating a “schablonenhafte Versprachlichung.”44 Empathy is certainly metaphor, yet not in the sense of a figurative expression, but as a realmetapherein ortransfert: as translation of sense — not from a full to an empty vessel, but rather in the circular form of the analogic circuit. (shrink)

RESUMO: A relação entre arte e filosofia é examinada com base na noção de Stimmung, que surge no século XVIII, na teoria musical, como relação de proporção entre tons ou instrumentos, sendo, em seguida, transposta para a estética, no final do século, com Kant e Fichte. Em Kant, a Stimmung refere-se à disposição das faculdades de conhecimento para um conhecimento em geral, isto é, como o pressuposto da apresentação estética, por meio da qual se preserva a noção de (...) proporção entre as faculdades. Em Sobre o espírito e a letra na filosofia, Fichte assinala que a disposição estética é o modo de atuar do impulso estético, ligado livremente e diretamente à faculdade da imaginação e à atividade de criação. Essa tradição estética é revista pelo historiador Aloïs Riegl, em 1899, no ensaio intitulado Die Stimmung als Inhalt der moderne Kunst, no qual o conceito de Stimmung é pela primeira vez apresentado em chave histórica, enquanto conteúdo da arte moderna, no sentido de atmosfera, isto é, da vivência de uma relação por meio da qual a consciência, em conformidade com a lei imanente, adquire alguma certeza. Revisão semelhante foi realizada pelo jovem filósofo György Lukács, em A alma e as formas, de 1910, na qual o autor pensa as diferenças de sentido entre as noções de Stimmung e de atmosfera. ABSTRACT: The relationship between art and philosophy is examined based on the notion of Stimmung, which appears in eighteenth-century music theory as a proportional relationship between tones or instruments; it was then incorporated into aesthetics at the end of the century in the works of Kant and Fichte. In Kant's works, Stimmung refers to the capacity of the faculties of knowledge for knowledge in general, that is, as a presupposition of aesthetic presentation through which the notion of proportion between the faculties is preserved. In his On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy, Fichte points out that the aesthetic disposition is the mode by which the aesthetic impulse acts out, connected freely and directly to the faculty of imagination and to the activity of creation. This aesthetic tradition is revisited by the historian Alois Riegl in 1899 in the essay Die Stimmung als Inhalt der moderne Kunst, where the concept of Stimmung is first presented from historical perspective as content of modern art in the sense of atmosphere, i.e., the experience of a relationship by which awareness, in accordance with immanent law, acquires certainty. A similar review was done by the young philosopher György Lukács in 1910 in Soul and Form, where the author conceptualizes the differences in meaning between the notions of Stimmung and Atmosphäre. (shrink)

Se abordan aquí algunas dificultades de la ‘psiquiatría fenomenológica’ directamente en relación con la aprehensión de las patologías ‘psíquicas’ o ‘mentales’ dentro de un modelo de ‘normalidad’ derivado de la psicología del siglo XIX de inspiración filosófica. Desde el concepto de ‘sospecha’ freudiano, los estudios de las patologías mentales de Binswanger, los análisis de algunos problemas nucleares sobre la síntesis pasiva husserliana, Richir pretende explorar una nueva ‘vía’, más allá de los límites de la psiquiatría fenomenológica, que incluya, de manera (...) cuasi estructural, las formas de temporalización y espacialización que funcionan en las ‘flexiones’ patológicas del Dasein. En otras palabras, trata de relacionar sistemáticamente la temporalización/espacialización husserliana, entendida como síntesis pasiva, con la filosofía de la afectividad, de la Befindlichkeit heideggeriana, que pone en juego la dimensión de una pasividad originaria del Dasein, entendida bajo el signo de facticidad. Para ello, Richir comenta detallada y magistralmente el conocidísimo §29 de Ser y Tiempo, con el objetivo no solo de captar la matriz transcendental de la división interna de la Stimmung y de la Verstimmung sino, también, mostrar justamente cómo puede logarse, por un lado, cierta articulación de lo que Husserl denomina como síntesis pasiva de la temporalización con la Stimmung y la Befindlichkeit heideggerianas y, por el otro, una posible vía de articulación entre Stimmungen normales y V erstimmungen patológicas, esto es, de una división interna a la Stimmung que haga posible al menos la versión patológica en la Verstimmung. (shrink)

In Being and Time and What is Metaphysics? Heidegger made a revolutionary use of the "mood". He said that the mood, and in particular the mood of Anxiety, had ontological significance. Not only is the mood nothing merely "subjective," but it has significance for the understanding of universal being itself. Anxiety is a "moodful experience of Being," a mood in which not one thing or a few things, but the very Being of beings itself, is illuminated and brought into view (...) for "Dasein." In a 1960 review of the third edition of Otto Bollnow's Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Otto Poeggeler reprimanded Bollnow for misunderstanding the genuinely ontological character of Heidegger's investigation, and thus for having reduced it to something anthropological; at the same time Poeggeler called for a recognition of the important place that such an ontological analysis has in the Western tradition. In 1958 Karl Rahner had suggested that the ontological analysis of mood in Heidegger had been anticipated in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, in the latter's discussion of a "consolation without a preceding cause." De Mendoza's book is an attempt to confirm Poeggeler's criticism of Bollnow and to work out, expand upon, and justify Rahner's thesis. He does this in an elaborately argued work filled with careful textual analyses of the writings of both Loyola and the early Heidegger. The thesis, as De Mendoza points out, is especially provocative in view of the three years which Heidegger spent in Jesuit training, during which time he was thoroughly exposed to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius may represent another of the long line of religious figures--Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard--who have influenced Heidegger's thinking in Being and Time.--J. D. C. (shrink)

In Being and Time and What is Metaphysics? Heidegger made a revolutionary use of the "mood". He said that the mood, and in particular the mood of Anxiety, had ontological significance. Not only is the mood nothing merely "subjective," but it has significance for the understanding of universal being itself. Anxiety is a "moodful experience of Being," a mood in which not one thing or a few things, but the very Being of beings itself, is illuminated and brought into view (...) for "Dasein." In a 1960 review of the third edition of Otto Bollnow's Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Otto Poeggeler reprimanded Bollnow for misunderstanding the genuinely ontological character of Heidegger's investigation, and thus for having reduced it to something anthropological; at the same time Poeggeler called for a recognition of the important place that such an ontological analysis has in the Western tradition. In 1958 Karl Rahner had suggested that the ontological analysis of mood in Heidegger had been anticipated in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, in the latter's discussion of a "consolation without a preceding cause." De Mendoza's book is an attempt to confirm Poeggeler's criticism of Bollnow and to work out, expand upon, and justify Rahner's thesis. He does this in an elaborately argued work filled with careful textual analyses of the writings of both Loyola and the early Heidegger. The thesis, as De Mendoza points out, is especially provocative in view of the three years which Heidegger spent in Jesuit training, during which time he was thoroughly exposed to Ignatian spirituality. Ignatius may represent another of the long line of religious figures--Augustine, Luther, Kierkegaard--who have influenced Heidegger's thinking in Being and Time.--J. D. C. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the phenomenological nature of gratitude. Nevertheless, gratitude would be an affective response triggered by a certain action or object, it has to be considered not properly “intentional” as it seems to be rather a Stimmung. Accordingly, I distinguish two accounts of gratitude and then, I argue that it may be considered a mood only if it is addressed toward the life itself in a way that allows to cover the entire phenomena (...) of someone’s existence. Finally, I argue that Epicureanism is the main philosophical approach that fully recognizes the role of utmost importance played by gratitude toward life, to the extent that it positively accepts its finite nature. (shrink)

This uniquely fascinating volume is not merely a learned treatise in historical semantics; it is itself a stupendous display of world harmony as a creed-a vivid demonstration that "all is all.".

Although Kant had to write his Critique of Judgement with an eye to the Prussian censorship, he nevertheless valued in his aesthetic theory the achievements of the French Revolution. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to analyze the underlying political philosophy of Immanuel Kant's third Critique in the context of the aesthetic theories of his time. The paper presents a brief account of his aesthetic theory (especially of his concepts of "harmony" and "free interplay" between the cognitive faculties) and (...) gives special attention to the question why, in Kant's opinion, political speeches were legitimate objects of aesthetic judgments. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the ontological meaning of mood in Heidegger’s conception of Attunement, in order to relate this notion of Stimmung specifically to our “attunement” to a form of life, as conceived in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language. It claims that moods spell out the constitutive impossibility to grasp and found the human experience as such. However, this impossibility is not a lack of human knowledge, but rather corresponds to the necessary opacity, indeterminability and groundlessness of every human experience, which (...) make it possible as such. The paper argues that the ontological mood of anxiety in Heidegger’s thought cannot be understood as a dark feeling, since it points to a constitutive sense of disorientation, which involves the impossibility to found and ensure the very familiarity of our ordinary experience. Moreover, the paper claims that the same impossibility is also involved in our “attunement” to language and to a form of life, as described by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. By analyzing the mood of trust sketched out by Wittgenstein in On Certainty, the paper suggests that the ontological mood of trust, as the groundless certainty of our praxis, points to the very impossibility to found and ensure every human experience. From this perspective, moods reveal the groundlessness of human experience and make us acknowledge it. (shrink)

This article analyses three basic concepts of Ludwik Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. It shows first that Fleck’s notion of „directed perception“ is closely linked to Jakob von Uexküll’s writings on the „Umwelt“ of animals and humans. The article then proposes to regard the epistemological debates surrounding parapsychology as an important testing ground for the Fleckian concept of „mood“ and his concomitant hypotheses about „the tenacity of systems of opinion and the harmony of illusions“. It finally argues (...) that Fleck’s modification of Wilhelm Jerusalem’s idea of the „social consolidation“ of knowledge helps us to understand the indebtedness of Fleck towards early functionalist sociology as well as his strong belief in „specific historical laws governing the development of ideas“. The historical semantics of Fleck’s works hence proves that his insights are neither marginal nor revolutionary but rather deeply rooted within scientific traditions from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (shrink)

Recensendo nel 1923 il film Phantom di Murnau (1922), Balazs lo descrive come «un buon film tedesco»: tedesco non a causa del luogo in cui è stato prodotto ma del suo «stile» particolare, caratterizzato dal tentativo di «spiritualizzare la tecnica cinematografica». Questa possibilità di conciliare spirito e tecnica si fonda, secondo Balazs, sulla capacità del film di captare fotograficamente la Stimmung - termine intraducibile, che renderemo a volte con ‘tonalità affettiva’, ‘situazione’ o ‘a...

Alois Riegl’s essay “Die Stimmung als Inhalt der modernen Kunst” has been one of art historiography’s early attempts to bridge art and science. In this text, Riegl not only presents the background of some of his theoretical and methodological premises but he also provides an overarching argument for the way natural sciences af- fect modern spectatorship. In this way, he establishes the basis of a Kunstwollen for the ‘age of the natural sciences’ and describes its appropriate artistic traits. Addressing (...) the intellectual and historical context of the Stimmung Essay, this article shows how Riegl’s ideas work in a subtle and intricate manner, involving the combination of sensual and phenomenological observations to modes of knowl- edge. In this respect, the relation of art and science does not seem to be settled on a fixed contemplative basis but on the combination of the art with cognition and affects. (shrink)

The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the wordStimmungin other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the wordStimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period (...) might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate.Stimmunghas the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be inStimmung.Stimmungmight refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization ofStimmungas a type of mental state, and the use ofStimmungas an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing. (shrink)

El ensayo explora las nociones de “coloración” (o “resplandor”, “luz” o “brillo”) afectiva o emocional, así como la noción de Stimmung (temple anímico o estado de ánimo), tal como son expuestas en los manuscritos que integran el proyecto que Husserl denominó Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, con una mención previa de otros dos textos que preceden a los Studien: las “Notas sobre la doctrina de la atención y el interés” de 1893 o 1894 (en Husserliana XXXVIII) y un pasaje (...) del § 15 b) de la Quinta de las Investigaciones lógicas. La revisión de los Studien destaca una primera noción de coloración como “sensación emocional” (Gefühlsempfindung), luego una segunda noción como una coloración afectiva transeúnte (o trascendente). Después de exponer las “expansiones” o “transferencias” emotivas, la revisión alcanza la noción de temple (Stimmung), la sitúa dentro del esquema de las vivencias afectivas y describe su carácter unitario, su motivación y su peculiar intencionalidad, señalando su relación con la conciencia de fondo y con las llamadas (por Husserl) “corrientes de sentimiento”. Con ello, se ponen las bases para una revisión de la noción de temple o estado de ánimo, revisión que queda pendiente. (shrink)

El presente artículo es una reflexión sobre los paisajes naturales y los jardines como paisajes construidos, a fin de hacer comprensible su importancia en las ciudades, así como la necesidad de reincorporarlos a la vida citadina y al diseño urbano. Para ello, me he centrado en las consideraciones filosóficas de Simmel y Watsuji sobre el tema, con el propósito de mostrar que el encuentro poéti- co entre la naturaleza y su contemplador no sólo permite reconoce el carácter particular o (...) class='Hi'>Stimmung del paisaje natural con el cual nos vinculamos, sino que, al habitar poéticamente con la naturaleza, se manifiesta nuestro Kimochi, éste revela nuestro vínculo existencial e histórico con el clima y los eventos naturales, nos invita a desarrollar un lazo cultural existencial con los demás y con nosotros mismos. De ahí la necesidad de incorporar la naturaleza en las ciudades y apren- der a habitar poéticamente con ella. (shrink)

Stimmung in music -- The philosophy of Stimmung -- Playing in between -- History -- Duration -- Aftersong.

This essay provides an analysis of the role of affectivity in Martin Heidegger's writings from the mid to late 1920s. We begin by situating his account of mood within the context of his project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time. We then discuss the role of Befindlichkeit and Stimmung in his account of human existence, explicate the relationship between the former and the latter, and consider the ways in which the former discloses the world. To give a more (...) vivid and comprehensive picture of Heidegger's account of mood, we focus on the experience of anxiety by articulating both its function within fundamental ontology and, relatedly, its revelatory nature. We conclude by considering the place of emotions in Heidegger's thinking from this period. In a companion essay, ‘Affectivity in Heidegger II: Temporality, Boredom, and Beyond’, we complement our present analysis by revisiting the issue of affectivity in terms of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of Being and Time. We also expand our present discussion by considering the fundamental mood of boredom and other specific moods that Heidegger considers within his later thinking. (shrink)

Dans cet article ici en traduction inédite, dont la première version allemande date de 2011, Hermann Schmitz s’interroge sur les éléments qui, se déployant dans l’interaction entre les édifices et la vie sensible et affective des habitants, constituent l’atmosphère d’une ville. Dans cette perspective, il met à contribution plusieurs grands concepts de sa philosophie (la « Nouvelle Phénoménologie » développée dès les années 1960), destinée à élucider l’expérience vécue involontaire : dynamique du corps de chair (Leib), suggestions de mouvements, caractères (...) synesthésiques. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's account of attunement [Befindlichkeit] through mood [Stimmung] is unprecedented in the history of philosophy and groundbreaking vis-à-vis contemporary accounts of emotion. On his view, moods are not mere mental states that result from, arise out of, or are caused by our situation or context. Rather, moods are fundamental modes of existence that are disclosive of the way one is or finds oneself [sich befinden] in the world. Mood is one of the basic modes through which we experience (...) the world and through which the world is made present to us. Moreover, moods are the lenses through which things, people, animals, events, and aspects in the world matter to us. In this paper, I make the case that Heidegger's insights with respect to mood can and ought to be extended beyond the narrow scope of his fundamental ontology in which they were developed. I argue that contemporary accounts of mood within psychology ought to take these Heideggerian insights seriously and use them when defining, studying, evaluating, and drawing conclusions about the nature of moods. There are three sections to my paper. In section 1, I delineate Heidegger's account of mood. In section 2, I turn to some key studies on mood in psychology, and I elaborate upon some of the main shortcomings in this literature. In section 3, I suggest how psychology might benefit from understanding and utilizing a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology of mood. (shrink)

Un’analisi del film di Ejzenštejn La corazzata Potëmkin – e in particolare della scena della lamentazione funebre del popolo di Odessa attorno al corpo del marinaio Vakulinčuk – offre l’occasione di riflettere intorno a una dialettica fondamentale che si instaura nella teoria e nella pratica filmica del regista russo: la dialettica fra montaggio ritmico e montaggio tonale, fra immagine-taglio (obraz-obrez) e immagine-atmosfera (obraz-sreda). Sreda significa «milieu» in tutti i sensi del termine: ciò che costituisce l’elemento materiale, seppur diafano, del visibile (...) (il medium, quindi); ciò che instaura un campo (Feld) percettivo; ciò che disegna l’ambiance nella quale abitiamo (la nostra Umwelt, o mondo-ambiente), cioè lo spazio emozionale (Stimmung) che ci sollecita dinnanzi a un’immagine. Nel caso particolare analizzato, alla lamentazione funebre dei piangenti attorno al cadavere del marinaio, che viene dettagliata dal montaggio ritmico dell’obraz-obrez, risponde quel che Ejzenštejn chiamava il «lamento delle nebbie» nel porto di Odessa: tramite un montaggio tonale, l’obraz-sreda del paesaggio si fa «risonatore psichico» che consuona e amplifica il lutto degli esseri umani, istituendo con questo una peculiare «somiglianza». L’istituzione di tale somiglianza consente a Ejzenštejn di mettere al contempo in discussione (in sintonia con le riflessioni sviluppate negli anni Venti da teorici formalisti quali Šklovskij, Ėjchenbaum, Kazanskij, Piotrovskij) la presunta specificità del medium filmico, a tutto vantaggio di un’interazione fra differenti paradigmi mediali – pittoricità, musicalità, poeticità – che si illuminano a vicenda, mostrandosi come altrettante articolazioni del ritmo. (shrink)

This essay comprises two chapters from the first part of Bollnow’s book on moods, namely the second chapter on the concept of Stimmung and the third chapter on Stimmungen as the sustaining foundation of the soul. It argues that moods constitute the simplest and most original form in which human life comes to know itself. Moods are understood as a specific harmony between, first, the inner and outer world; second, the states of the body and the soul; and, third, (...) the individual faculties of the soul. Moods differ from emotions in the narrow sense, which are always intentionally directed towards a specific object, whereas moods do not have any specific object; they are states of being, structuring and coloring human existence as a whole. Hence, no system of moods is provided, but their extensive diversity is indicated. Furthermore, transient, unsteady, or “moody” moods are distinguished from persistent or basic moods. (shrink)

Listening is not an incorporeal experience; we do not listen with our non-extended minds. We listen with all our body, and music can change completely our personal structure. It is through sound experience that we change and asset ourselves. Studies in the doctrine of affects often use sonorous metaphors and concepts such as Stimmung, resonance, consonance, that refer to sound experience. In this paper, I try first of all to show how listening is rooted in body experience. Then, I (...) argue for a new consideration of the notion of person that takes into account the fundamental sonorous basis – psycho-acoustic – of its constitution. Thanks to sounds we can reach a new conceptualization of emotional relations between persons which we attain through the person’s ordo amoris. Additionally, with the analysis of sounds we grasp some aspects of emotional experience related to the singular person (intra-personal). So, if sounds are profoundly related to corporeal experience, so strongly involving affects as to modify our personal structure and form a person’s constitution, and affects can really do that, their relationship need to be inquired where both sound experience and affection are rooted: corporeity. (shrink)

Excerpt from Vom Lebenswege, Gesammelte Vortrage und Aufsatze "Ich habe Gedanken fur manche Menschen an allen Enden meines Weges verstreut. Etwas wird aus allem und jedem; was, - das kummert mich nicht. Aueh in den Waldern fallen die Blatter ungezahlt zu Boden; wer fragt naeh ihnen und hebt sie auf? Aber die Wurzeln der Baume, die sie schutzend deeken, wissen von ihnen und wachsen auf zu hohen Kronen, die uber alles Land ihre Bluten schutten." Villers. Dem Motto, das Friedrich Jodl (...) dieser Sammlung eines Teiles seiner kleinen und allerorten zerstreuten Schriften selbst vorausgesetzt, ist nicht viel hinzuzufugen. Es druckt vollkommen die Stimmung aus, in welcher er dieselben schrieb und sehr oft seine Vortrage hielt. Wie tief ihm selbst auch seine Zeit ans Herz gewachsen war und wie eng er ihre Note und ihre Hoffnungen, ihre Wunsche und Bedurfnisse mit seinem innersten Ringen und Streben verband - er wusste es doch sehr genau, da Ber mit vielen seiner heiligsten Gedanken und Uberzeugungen der Zeit fremd blieb und daB der Same, den er ausstreute, nicht Felder bestellen konnte, sondern nur da und dort zu neuer Blute und Frucht trieb. Aber so klar er das uberschaute und erkannte, so klar und selbstsicher, so voll Zuversicht schaute er auch in die Zukunft. Es gab fur seinen Geist keinen Zweifel daruber, dass das, was er der Welt zu sagen hatte, einmal auch von den Vielen begehrt werden wurde und dass er es sagen musse, um sein Teil an der fortschreitenden Entwicklung der Menschheit zu leisten. Von Jugend an lebte er nach diesem, seinem innersten Gesetz, ohne rechts oder links zu sehen und den Rucksichten des Tages oder wissenschaftlichen Modestromungen Rechnung zu tragen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

This essay focuses on and attempts to uncover the truly radical character of Nietzsche’s early “philological” work, specifically asking after the benefit he claims the study of classical culture should have for our present, late-modern historical moment. Taking up his study of the Pre-Platonic thinkers in 1873’s Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen , the first section analyzes Nietzsche’s statement that history’s principle task is the uncovering of Persönlichkeiten . I argue that it is not at all the subjective character (...) of a psychologized individual that Nietzsche has in mind, but rather the moment of persönliche Stimmung or ‘being attuned’ to the world, which grounds and gives rise to thinking. In the second section, I show that the phusis or ‘nature’ to which the thinker is exposed in this attunement is comparable to the tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian natural forces in tragic poetry, as Nietzsche understands it. This dynamic conception of phusis does not provide a metaphysical substrate or an objectively real ground to which we might return via that Greeks, but is rather essentially phenomenal , i.e. it is nothing other than the movement into and out of appearance, which always entails and requires its reception by the human being to whom it appears. In the final section of the essay, this origin proves for Nietzsche not to be located in a distant past moment. Rather, it is the abyssal origin of the tradition that is always already effective in our present moment, informing our contemporary conceptions of our world and ourselves. (shrink)