What about Enthusiasm? A Rehabilitation
Pentecost, Pygmalion, 'Pathosformel'
By (author) B. Baert
The word enthusiasm is derived from the Greek enthousiasmos and means being captivated by a god. Even today, we use ‘enthusiasm’ to describe a special energy that can suddenly overwhelm us: an emotional affect that holds the glow for the subject within oneself, and which radiates inspiration out to an audience. Yet, through the ages, the concept has not always carried with it the positive connotations it had in ancient Greece. Despite a few flickers on the cultural historical time line, enthusiasm has mostly been marginalised in modern Western philosophy: as an excessive urge or as a harmful exaggeration of emotions. In this essay, I work towards a rehabilitation of inspiration within intellectual thought. Is enthousiasmos the subject of any iconographic traditions? Is enthousiasmos also an aesthetic concept? And can enthousiasmos be part of an epistemology?
- By (author) B. Baert
Other Titles in this Series
In Response to Echo
Beyond Mimesis or Dissolution as Scopic Regime (with Special Attention to Camouflage)
Volume 6
Signed ‘PAN’
Erwin Panofsky's (1892-1968) "The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline" (Princeton, 1938)
Volume 18
Late Medieval Enclosed Gardens of the Low Countries
Contributions to Gender and Artistic Expression
Volume 2
The Right Moment
Essays Offered to Barbara Baert, Laureate of the 2016 Francqui Prize in Human Sciences, on the Occasion of the Celebratory Symposium at the Francqui Foundation, Brussels, 18-19 October 2018
Volume 20
Rocks and Tears
Niobe's Fate and the Dynamics of Form. Lecture on the Occasion of the Aby-Warburg-Stiftungsprofessur 2023
Volume 25
Nymph. Motif, Phantom, Affect. Part II
Aby Warburg's (1866-1929) Butterflies as Art Historical Paradigms
Volume 4
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