Theodor Waitz's theory of feelings and the rise of affective sciences in the mid-19th century

Abstract

The German psychologist Theodor Waitz (1821-1864) was an important theorist of affectivity in the mid-19th century. This article aims to revisit Waitz's contribution to affective psychology at a crucial moment of its history. First, I elaborate the context in which Waitz's ideas were carried out by showing how affective sciences emerged as an autonomous field of investigation between about 1770 and 1910. Second, I discuss the principles of Waitz's model of affectivity and their contextual significance. Third, I deal with the first major category of affective states identified by Waitz, namely, "formal feelings," which are supposed to be involved in the appraisal of the relational properties between representations. Fourth, I investigate "qualitative feelings," the second major category of affective states identified by Waitz, which refer to affective processes that relate to specific representational contents, namely, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral feelings. In conclusion, I emphasize the genealogical link between Waitz's pioneering research on musical feelings and current research on emotion and expectation in music.