eJournals Kodikas/Code 39/1-2

Kodikas/Code
0171-0834
2941-0835
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this paper, a social constructionist concept of emotion serves as a guideline to approach the questions of where to look for emotions in extant sources and how to 'read' across multiple source types to create a composite understanding of the emotions of a particular time period. Combined with a Heideggerian viewpoint, this concept facilitates a distinction between the rather practical embodiment and the rather theoretical reification of emotions. These levels of experience and 'enactment' respectively present an axis to assess and coordinate different types of sources. In order to structure the heterogeneous material, a narrative approach highlights the different levels of interpretation within individual sources. Two examples illustrate the contours of this theoretical framework and its methodological implications. Firstly, we follow Niklas Lumann on his exploration of the medieval roots of the romantic ideal of love and their development in the early modern world, revisiting the scope of Lumann's system theoretical perspective from a social constructionist point of view. Secondly, we address Machiavelli's mechanistic model of an emotional psychagogy as a means to analyze social discourses and processes and at the same time as a part of the social discourses and processes analyzed by Machiavelli.
2016
391-2

Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions

2016
Robin Kurilla
K O D I K A S / C O D E Volume 39 (2016) · No. 1 - 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions Machiavelli and Love Robin Kurilla (Essen) In this paper, a social constructionist concept of emotion serves as a guideline to approach the questions of where to look for emotions in extant sources and how to 'read' across multiple source types to create a composite understanding of the emotions of a particular time period. Combined with a Heideggerian viewpoint, this concept facilitates a distinction between the rather practical embodiment and the rather theoretical reification of emotions. These levels of experience and ‘ enactment ’ respectively present an axis to assess and coordinate different types of sources. In order to structure the heterogeneous material, a narrative approach highlights the different levels of interpretation within individual sources. Two examples illustrate the contours of this theoretical framework and its methodological implications. Firstly, we follow Niklas Luhmann on his exploration of the medieval roots of the romantic ideal of love and their development in the early modern world, revisiting the scope of Luhmann ’ s systems theoretical perspective from a social constructionist point of view. Secondly, we address Machiavelli ’ s mechanistic model of an emotional psychagogy as a means to analyze social discourses and processes and at the same time as a part of the social discourses and processes analyzed by Machiavelli. I To talk about how to source emotions is to talk about how to understand emotions. In order to explain my twofold approach to understanding emotions, I will start with a story. Stories bring foreign life worlds home to us, as I will elaborate in relation to the questions of where to look for emotions in extant sources and how to 'read' across multiple source types to create a composite understanding of the emotions of a particular time period. More than a decade ago, I studied at the Udayana University in Denpasar, Indonesia. I arrived in Bali shortly after the 2002 bomb attacks. Surprisingly, I did not encounter any strong expression of anger, sadness, fear, or despair in relation to the attacks. On a very reflective level based on the ethnographic literature I had read, I understood the Balinese lack of strong emotions or at least the lack of the corresponding expressions. According to Clifford Geertz (1993: 400 - 403), Balinese people cultivate a highly developed acting tradition that is motivated and sustained by the emotion lek. Gregory Bateson (1972: 112 - 115) describes the Balinese society as a system in a steady state to which the individual is only capable of adapting as a result of a certain early childhood education. And Margaret Mead (1942: xvi) classifies Balinese people as emotionally detached and therefore schizoid. I was convinced that I had come to a genuine understanding of the Balinese emotion world. I even admired the apparent emotional balance I was confronted with every day. After some months, however, I came to realize that I still experienced an empathetic gap between the Balinese people and myself, which often resulted in a feeling of isolation. I could see why people would not grieve in the case of a loved one ’ s death and not become angry or sad in the case of a severe insult, but this understanding was rather reflective and not so much empathetic. At some point, I even felt like I was living in a mirror cabinet, in a totally inauthentic world where no one conveyed her or his real thoughts and emotions but followed a strict protocol instead. I went to Lombok to come up for air, so to speak. When I arrived there, some children approached me quite angrily to ask for money. This also might have been a type of acting with the aim of intimidation. To me, however, it appeared to be much more authentic than anything I had seen in Bali among the local population. I instantly felt more at ease. Soon I would realize, however, that my problem of understanding had not disappeared. It had rather turned upside down. Lombok ’ s emotion world seemed so much more authentic to me but at the same time less comprehensible on a reflective level. As I will explicate in the following with the help of two Heideggerian concepts, the difference between empathetic and reflective understanding is of pivotal importance for the leading questions of this paper. II During this stay in Indonesia, I began to see authenticity as a culturally determined attribution rather than a biologically traceable fact, which led me to review social constructionist approaches to emotion. In my recent historiographical, theoretical, and cross-cultural study on the relations among emotion, communication, and conflict, I developed a particular understanding of James Averill ’ s concept of emotion. Averill (1980: 312) defines emotion as “ a transitory social role (a socially constituted syndrome) that includes an individual ’ s appraisal of the situation and that is interpreted as a passion rather than as an action ” . While I use the semantic surface of this definition, I specify the meaning of its components in a slightly but decisively different way. For our purposes, it shall suffice that I explain two of these changes. The first difference is that I relate the phrase “ a role that is interpreted as a passion rather than as an action ” to Heidegger ’ s distinction between readiness-to-hand and presence-athand. Without citing the great abundance of Heideggerian concepts related to this distinction, I will simply refer to a very common example to explain the difference between readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand. When a joiner hammers a nail into a piece of wood, he usually does not perceive an I that hammers or the hammer as an object. He rather pursues his activity in the habitual way without any reflection or reification. (Heidegger 1967: 69) Reifications would slow him down or make his activity too complex to handle. Heidegger (ibid.) calls the pre-reflective experience of activities the readiness-to- Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions 29 hand. Quoting Plato (2009: 98) on Heraclitus, one could say that in the readiness-to-hand “ all things flow and nothing stands ”— until the flow gets interrupted, which is the point where pre-reflective experience starts to turn into reflective experience. Returning to the joiner, we can say that there is no hammer and no reified self as long as the activity proceeds without being interrupted. Let us assume that the handle of the hammer breaks. If the joiner has no other hammer ready-to-hand and cannot fix the handle with some stuff, 1 he might start to reflect upon how he can repair the hammer or even invent better, unbreakable handles. Exactly here is where, according to Heidegger (1967: 61 - 62, 73 - 75), the joiner enters the sphere of the presence-at-hand, a world of reifications. Only here, Heidegger (ibid. 46, 49, 95 - 96, 98, 114 - 117) situates the I of the Cartesian cogito. Not reflective thought leads to practice, but practice, when it comes to a halt, opens the sphere of reflective thought. This does not imply, however, that the practice proceeds without any sense or meaning. Practical items gain their ‘ meaning ’ from their relatedness to other stuff and practical procedures — the hammer from its relation to the nail, the doorknob from its relation to opening the door, etc. (ibid. 68 - 69) What insights do we obtain by applying the distinction between readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand to the problem of understanding emotions? As pre-reflective phenomena, emotions gain their meaning from their relations to other stuff, just like tools. At first glance, it might not be evident that emotions are comparable to tools. Closer inspection reveals, however, that emotions motivate actions and, in a variety of ways, affect relationships. Emotions are not necessarily connected to the same situation and provoke the same motivational, expressive and interpersonal consequences independently of the culture they are enacted in. A situation that in the Basque Country would provoke furious shouting may provoke only shame related silence in Bali. (Kurilla 2013 b: 598 - 603, 632 - 638, 649 - 651) However, one characteristic seems to be constantly the same across cultures. Ready-to-hand emotions are perceived of as passive phenomena, as passions. A Balinese person will find her or his marah as hard to fight as someone from the Basque Country her or his enfado. 2 Both emotions are similar to anger. (ibid. 732, 738 - 739) Whereas ready-to-hand emotions seem to be generally experienced as passions, their reification as present-at-hand emotions may differ vastly across cultures and time periods. Emotions can be interpreted as a sort of possession, as divine or carnal phenomena, as outer or inner feelings, as morally acceptable or not, as a product of human society or an evolutionary heritage. The natural sciences and everyday life discourses in ‘ Western ’ cultures often employ the latter notion and thereby take part in the naturalization of reality. As reifications, present-at-hand emotions are linked within a web of concepts. In spite of their cross-linkage with other concepts of social reality, however, present-at-hand emotions are more susceptible to alterations within one culture or time period than ready-to-hand 1 Heidegger (1967: 67 - 68) uses the term “ stuff ” to refer to the practical items of everyday activities that gain their ‘ meaning ’ from their relatedness to other practical items and procedures as opposed to the conceptual relatedness of reifications. 2 I have shown elsewhere (Kurilla 2013 b: 562, 734 f ) that Geertz ’ depiction of lek as stage fright and the corresponding portrayal of the Balinese expression habit as the result of an elaborated acting culture suffer from ethnocentrism. Lek rather neutralizes marah prior to its onset and is comparable to but not identical with shame. This configuration renders acting unnecessary. 30 Robin Kurilla (Essen) emotions, since reflection on emotion generally proceeds more freely than a lived world of ‘ passions ’ . (ibid. 429 - 430, 454, 462 - 470) I come now to the second reinterpretation of Averill ’ s concept of emotion. Averill explicitly refers to Berger and Luckmann ’ s social constructionism. Unfortunately, he does not exhaust the analytical and theoretical potential Berger and Luckmann have to offer. According to Berger and Luckmann (1989: 129), “ society is understood in terms of an ongoing dialectical process composed of the three moments of externalization, objectivation, and internalization ” . The authors pay special attention to processes of institutionalization as the primary means of reality construction, in which all three moments of society are involved. Institutionalization advances dialectically between the phases of externalization, habitualization, reciprocal typification of actions as well as actors, and legitimation with the final product of reification. (ibid. 53 - 64, 89) Berger and Luckmann (ibid. 53, 56 - 59, 63, 83 - 84) often refer to the principally counterfactual example of a social reality constructed ab ovo on a desert island. I will employ a simplified version of this example in order to outline the process of institutionalization. Imagine that a man and a woman, both being individually shipwrecked in the literal sense of the word, have met on a desert island. At one point, they become hungry and go fishing. This is the externalization of social reality. As their fishing endeavor is successful, they repeat it, which eventually leads to habitualization and, at the same time, to reciprocal typifications of actions and actors, as expectations concerning the individual roles start to form in order to structure the individuals ’ experience and to coordinate their actions. (ibid. 56 - 58) The thereby constructed social reality has still a fragile character as both participants were present at its point of departure and therefore know that it was created more or less arbitrarily. The situation changes when a third element penetrates the scene. As soon as, for instance, the next generation starts to talk, questions arise to which the original members of society are forced to give explanations, which might be dogmatic or mere ad hoc constructions. (ibid. 58 - 61) The couple might say, “ we go fishing everyday at three o ’ clock because there are not too many white sharks around at that time ” , although they had simply acted out of a habit. Ideally, the children internalize the parental reality and reflect it back upon their parents, for whom, from this moment on, the formerly habitualized but still arbitrary reality also becomes an indisputable social fact. (ibid. 59) Institutionalization does not end here. It rather advances steadily, and the stock of social knowledge grows consistently. Years later, a study conducted by the Government of Western Australia ’ s Department of Fisheries (Fisheries Research Division 2012: 2, 6, 14) might show that the likelihood of being attacked by a white shark is the same at 3 pm as at dusk or dawn. Every new fact, though, has to find its place in the already existing webs of social facts, unless it comes to a paradigm shift or a social revolution. (Berger & Luckmann 1989: 68 - 72, 84 - 88) Although this might only be evident in the case of societies with a low degree of complexity, in principle it also holds true for highly complex and fragmented modern societies. From a historical perspective, the concept of legitimation is very instructive as it informs about the reification of emotions. In the process of institutionalization, the moment of legitimation assists in the objectivation of social reality and in some cases even leads to such a degree of objectivation that “ the objectivated world loses its comprehensibility as a human enterprise and becomes fixated as a non- Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions 31 human, non-humanizable, inert facticity, ” which Berger and Luckmann (ibid. 89) term “ reification ” . Berger and Luckmann identify four levels of legitimation, starting with the objectifying force of language and ending with all comprising symbolic universes. Between these two ends, Berger and Luckmann (ibid. 94 - 96) distinguish rudimentary theoretical propositions from explicit theories partly administrated by so-called full time legitimators as priests or scientists. It is particularly insightful to observe these legitimating processes as a means for handing down emotions. This opens the possibility of comprehending scientific theories, proverbs, and everyday life theories in novels, protocols of natural speech encounters, etc. as sources of present-at-hand emotions. As we have seen, the process of handing down present-at-hand emotions is conducted via reflective knowledge. In accordance with other scholars (e. g., Averill 1980, Hochschild 1979, Fiehler 1990), I call the knowledge gained through this process “ feeling rules ” or “ emotion rules ” . But how are ready-to-hand emotions passed on to the next generation? By definition, this cannot take place in a reflective way. One may learn how to draw a face by following certain rules such as “ the eyes are to be situated in the middle of the face. ” Alternatively, one may use a stencil, which leads to a more practical and less reflective way of learning. I will use the term “ emotion stencils ” to denote the means for handing down ready-to-hand emotions. This rather metaphorical usage mainly refers to learning processes based on joint attention in face-to-face interactions. (Kurilla 2013 b: 444) Historical studies suffer from the circumstance that we cannot participate in the relevant social situations that would enable us to understand the ready-to-hand emotions of a certain period. Moreover, it is generally problematic to directly inquire about pre-reflective experience, since this would incite reflections and thereby alter the nature of ready-to-hand emotions. I will now turn to two examples to discuss the issues related to the leading questions of this paper. These are Niklas Luhmann ’ s account on the medieval roots of nowadays ’ romantic concept of love and Niccolò Machiavelli ’ s psychagogy. III In 1982, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann published a book called “ Liebe als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimität ” . 3 In this book, Luhmann traces the development of love from its medieval roots to its present form. As a “ symbolically generalized communication medium ” , love enhances the probability of a certain form of communication — intimate communication — and thereby helps to reproduce a highly specialized part of modern societies — the family. (Luhmann 1983: 186 - 187; 1998: 980) Luhmann (1983: 26 - 30, 46, 200, 219 - 220) depicts love primarily as a code that, at times, has the awkward manifestation of a mutual imposition. With every decision they make, the partners of a romantic relationship have to take each other into account. Otherwise, the other does not feel loved. It is potentially troublesome, for instance, if one does not include her or his partner in decisions concerning the next holiday trip or concerning an employment offer in another city. The ‘ rules ’ of an intimate relationship can lead to bizarre situations in the day-to-day routine. Luhmann (ibid. 42) states that marriages are established in heaven and become separated in cars. The 3 “ Love as Passion - The Codification of Intimacy. ” 32 Robin Kurilla (Essen) driver simply drives in view of the traffic conditions, but her or his partner feels treated badly by the driver, which results from the habitual way of attribution within the code of love. According to this code, one partner ’ s actions have to be motivated by the other partner ’ s experience and not by his or her actions, as I will explain in more detail below. Luhmann discovers the first traces of the modern concept of love in the medieval model of fin amor. Despite its characteristic dichotomy between family relationships at home and external love relationships, the similarity to the romantic concept of love consists in the focus on one idealized person as the only object of one ’ s eroticism. “ Das zwingt den Ritter auf die Knie, ” as Luhmann (ibid. 52) puts it. 4 On this level, the loved one ’ s perfection justifies love, and the individual is passively subjected to it. In some cases, fin amor also evokes religious connotations. (ibid. 57 - 58) In the early seventeenth century, the freedom of choice is eventually attributed as well to women. (ibid. 59 - 60) As a result, new communication strategies are required. To fall on one ’ s knees while displaying rhetorically elaborated love confessions is not a guaranty for success anymore; it rather becomes grotesque. (ibid. 99) Around 1650, amour passion replaces the remaining traces of fin amor, and the first recipe books of love are published to assist one ’ s communicative seduction efforts. (ibid. 61, 64 - 65) These books offer communicative patterns to be copied by the individual. The single case is simply considered to be a duplicate of the general rule. (ibid. 65) Towards the end of the seventeenth century, however, this assumption increasingly becomes suspicious, since, by definition, freedom of choice cannot be regulated externally. (ibid. 58 - 60) According to Luhmann, the discourse of amour passion also becomes paradox, as love was thought of as a passion and at the same time as a social activity based on rules. (ibid. 61 - 62) For Luhmann, the gallantry and the friendship ethos temporarily provide communicable forms for these paradoxes. At the same time, a less noble, rather purely corporal sexuality is included into the concept of love while the difference of amour and plaisir helps to distinguish what sort of relationship the gallant wooer is interested in. (ibid. 53 - 54, 109 - 110) And yet, the problem of inauthenticity remains. Eventually, the gallant gestures become useless. (ibid. 99, 105, 134) At the end of the eighteenth century, the incommunicability of authenticity has become part of the everyday life knowledge. The particular form of the novel helps to gain this insight, since it communicates the incommunicable by avoiding to directly address the reader. (ibid. 160 - 161) In the nineteenth century, finally, the semantics of love change again to “ romantic love ” . Now, for the first time, love is justified without any external reference to moral, religion or economy but only by love itself. Love becomes the foundation of marriage, which up to this point had been confined to class reproduction. (ibid. 126, 163, 186) For Luhmann, the problem of incommunicability is now solved by the arrangement that the lovers have to react to experiences and not to actions. As soon as someone asks for flowers, a romantic dinner, or a short trip to Paris, it is already too late. Love is only considered authentic love if the lover does not appear to intentionally follow her or his partner ’ s expectations but rather acts without regarding them yet still in line with them. And this can occasionally indeed be viewed upon as a mutual imposition as mentioned above. It gets even more complicated because from the interlocutor ’ s perspective 4 “ That forces the knight onto his knees. ” Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions 33 the code “ acting according to the other ’ s experience ” turns into “ understanding the other ’ s actions as a result of one ’ s own experience ” , which helps us to understand the quarrel about driving styles I referred to earlier. At times, Luhmann ’ s depiction of romantic love as a present-at-hand emotion is quite convincing. Yet Luhmann ’ s theory of love suffers from a fundamental shortsightedness. At first glance, Luhmann seems to portray the everyday life reflections on love quite faithfully. At closer examination, however, it becomes clear that Luhmann forces these reflections into the corset of his highly abstract theory. For Luhmann ’ s systems theory, we fall in love to sustain a vastly specialized form of communication. According to Luhmann, intimate relationships offer a world of proximity as a counterpoint to modern societies ’ volatile identities 5 . (ibid. 13 - 17) Luhmann ’ s approach is also highly ethnocentric. The postulate of only one global love culture based on the medieval roots in European history can easily be falsified by empirical evidence from China (Mees & Rohde-Höft 2000: 245), Brazil (Schröder 2004: 119 - 125), and even the USA where Averill (1985: 92) distilled a variety of love concepts and Thomas Scheff (2011) found different kinds of love in pop songs, to name just a few examples. Apart from these restrictions, Luhmann shows how present-at-hand emotions can be sourced from literature sources. Ironically, Luhmann ’ s interpretations of the historical sources seem to be quite faithful as long as he does not employ too much of his own theory. As soon as Luhmann elaborates his empirical insights theoretically, his findings become estranged from their original context. The greatest shortfall of Luhmann ’ s account on love, however, lies in the fact that it can only regard love as a present-at-hand emotion. An additional inclusion of love as a ready-to-hand emotion would render Luhmann ’ s theory too complex to handle. IV Conversely, Machiavelli primarily describes emotions as ready-to-hand phenomena because he pursues the practical aim of providing a technique to establish and maintain power relations and thus social order. (Kurilla 2013 b: 530) Machiavelli delivers a preventive psychagogy, and emotions are among his primary control variables. (Kurilla 2013 a: 62) As a historian, Machiavelli employs a special reading technique that allows him to source emotions as ready-to-hand phenomena. Machiavelli ’ s method can be described as quasiexternal observation. Machiavelli does, however, not observe the supposedly meaningless world of natural sciences but a pre-interpreted relation structure. He reads history like a story. When Machiavelli observes emotions, he does not so much focus on what is said in the foreground of the story but rather extracts the underlying background assumptions. This might have come naturally because, as good storytellers like Livy, the authors of his antique sources most likely put more effort into the portrayal of actions and thus wrote about 5 I use the expression ‘ volatile identities ’ in relation to the sociological discourse on individualization as initiated by Georg Simmel. According to Simmel (1990), modern societies force people to freely choose their roles, which, in comparison to less differentiated societies, makes their personalities more complex and literally individual on the one hand but also more fragmented on the other. ‘ Volatile ’ indicates this notion of fragmentation. 34 Robin Kurilla (Essen) emotions as the ground rather than as the figure. Like the apprentice in the joiner ’ s workshop, Machiavelli is not so much interested in the hammer ’ s physical components but rather in its context specific use that is best learned by participant observation. We will now briefly turn to some of Machiavelli ’ s findings. According to Machiavelli, the control of hate in the people and in the aristocracy should be of the ruler ’ s primary concern. As causes of hate, Machiavelli (2008 a: 137) mentions among others envy, fear, jealousy (ibid. 167), depraved behavior (ibid. 271), the wrongful arrogation of virtues (ibid. 285), but also generosity (2008 b: 353). Machiavelli pays special attention to vengeance related causes of hate such as assault on women (2008 b: 358), deprivation of property (ibid. 354, 358; 2008 a: 226), defamation (ibid.) and insults (ibid. 201 - 202). In Machiavelli ’ s psychagogy, these antecedent conditions serve as parameters to control hate in particular and emotions in general. Accordingly, hate can be prevented or channeled away from the ruler by immediate punishment of theft (ibid. 265), the institution of public charges (ibid. 44), the protection of private property (ibid. 265), etc. Generally, love appears to be the principal antagonist of hate. Unfortunately, Machiavelli (2008 b: 338) considers love to be too context dependent and too fragile to provide the ruler with general advice on how to provoke love. Therefore, love receives the status of an ideal but uncertain objective of political action, whereas fear is considered to be a more reliable antagonist of hate. To control the harmful effects of hate, Machiavelli (ibid. 353 - 355) recommends a leadership that triggers balance acts between love and fear. Machiavelli is not only an observer and a describer of social reality; he is also a part of the social reality he observes and describes. The repercussions initiated by Machiavelli are still present today. As parts of the social reality he describes, Machiavelli ’ s reflections upon emotions are bound to the contemporary institutions of thought. And these institutions are about to be shattered due to social, technical and political developments that have a great impact on the history of ideas. According to Axel Honneth (2003: 14), rapid changes in trade, publishing, and manufacturing as well as the independence of principalities and cities, made it impossible that the social and political life could be explained within the Aristotelian scheme of teleological development. For Habermas (1967: 31), Machiavelli overcomes the antique frontier between practice and poiesis. In other words, science becomes subjected to technical purposes, a symptom of the modern period. From Hirschberger ’ s (1980: 54) point of view, Machiavelli creates eine Mechanik des Kräftespiels menschlicher Leidenschaften. Gegen eine bestimmte Kraft muss mindestens eine ebenso große stehen, wenn man sie halten will; und überwinden kann man sie nur durch eine noch größere. [. . .] Rund 100 Jahre vor Galilei war somit auch schon eine neue Physik geschaffen worden: die der menschlichen Vergesellschaftungen. 6 These insights from the history of ideas suggest that we interpret Machiavelli ’ s view on emotion as a purely mechanistic and empiricist approach. Machiavelli (2008 a: 305 - 309) indeed explicitly considers emotions as ahistorical phenomena that can only be marginally influenced by a given social environment. On the individual level, emotions appear as 6 “ [A] mechanistic approach to the dynamics in human passions. In order to hold one force, there has to be another force of at least equal impact; in order to overcome it, there has to be a stronger force. [. . .] About a hundred years prior to Galilei, a new type of physics was created: the physics of social relationships. ” Examining Sources of Medieval and Early Modern Emotions 35 coercive forces that are identical with physiological processes. Despite these mechanistic and biological depictions of emotions as presence-at-hand phenomena, however, Machiavelli ’ s portrayal of ready-to-hand emotions remains absolutely free of physiological postulates. Both sides of the emotion coin receive a clearly differentiated treatment. Machiavelli sources ready-to-hand emotions by applying a practical point of view to the pre-interpreted relations found in narratives. This point of view does not at all interfere with Machiavelli ’ s reflections on emotion from a purely theoretical angle. V To conclude, I will explicitly turn to the leading questions of this paper - where to look for emotions in the extant sources and how we 'read' across multiple source types to create a composite understanding of the emotions of a particular time period. Possible sources for the historical research on emotions are novels, scientific theories, religious texts, sculptures, paintings, mythology, journals, court files, acting receipts and theories, to name just a few. More important, however, is the way we approach these sources. The question of what to look for precedes the question of where to look. If we are primarily interested in present-athand emotions, we can describe how actors of a given time period reflect upon emotions, taking into account developments concerning the history of ideas as well as the social, political, and technological environments the actors are surrounded with. If we, on the other hand, are concerned with emotions as ready-to-hand phenomena, we cannot rely on our subjects ’ reflections, since they essentially alter this type of phenomena. To avoid the projection of the relations among the ‘ stuff ’ of our own life world, we can examine our sources for narratives or narrative episodes. Based on these narratives we may come close to relating the items of distant ready-to-hand experiences like contemporary actors, although we cannot age together with these actors, as Alfred Schütz (1993: 144) would describe it. The second question of how to 'read' across multiple source types to create a composite understanding can be answered accordingly. Firstly, a composite understanding of emotions has to take into account the two faces of emotion. Secondly, it is eclectic to review just one author or a small range of authors that, ex ante, is considered to form a representative sample. Qualitative induction seems to be the only choice to rule out that a deviant view on emotion is in circulation. If deviant data is indeed available, this data can, thirdly, be used to investigate whether there are more of such cases, using the comparison of smallest similarities and biggest differences. In this manner, fourthly, alternative emotion cultures may be discovered within one time period, which are of special interest for gaining a composite understanding. It is, however, more likely to find a homogenous narrative of culture and emotion in societies that encompass comparatively few literate people. As a result, the further one goes back in time, the more homogeneity can be expected. Whether or not this homogeneity is an artifact of research remains uncertain as long as there is no alternative to written records as a base for accessing contemporary interpretations. 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