The feelings’ reasons: Modernity, emotions and contemporary history

Abstract

In the19th and 20th centuries, prevailed the view that the policy is only made with the head and not with any other part of the body or the soul. Emotions, then, were underestimated for a long time. But in 1908, Georg Simmel, who was rediscovered in the late 20th century as “the precursor of the sociology of emotions, drew attention to how the emotional bonds between men unite (and separate) them under any circumstances and in any historical period. After the emotional turn generated by the events of September 11, 2001, considered the catalyst for change historiographical trend, the emotional is present in the historiographical agenda and has called into question the concepts of modernity implicitly relied on a gradual decline of emotions in favor of rationality. To examine this deeper, the article analyzes the role of emotions in the metanarratives of modernity and implements these principles using the example of concrete manifestations of fear. It will finally answer the question of what consequences it can have the study of emotions to a new concept of modernity.