ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a case for how the eighteenth century’s own theory of affect bears on ongoing critical practices. I argue that David Hume’s sentimental empiricism allows us to attend to those aspects of criticism that inhere, not in making propositions, but rather in inducing dispositions or rendering sensations available for another’s perception. Cultivating a Humean orientation to affect allows us to register feeling’s possibilities as well as its limits as a resource for criticism.
