ABSTRACT
Emotions are either seen as material substances, e.g. as physiological phenomena, or as mental value judgements, with no material basis at all. Equally problematic are definitions which ignore or exclude important elements of the discourses on emotions. Since the discourses on the feelings are closely related to topical political events such as the danger of revolutionary masses losing control of their ‘passions’, a promising period seemed to be the first half of the 19th century with its considerable political, social, and cultural unrest. The French historian Lucien Febvre issued a rallying cry for the historical study of emotions in the early 1940s, pleading the cause for the ‘attractive subject’. One reason which may have hindered historians in approaching the emotions more readily is the difficulty of finding adequate source material for the analysis of mental and emotional processes.
