Le corps social à l’origine de l’invention du mot « émotion »

• Main Author: Nicole Hochner
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Centre de Recherches Historiques 2016-05-01
• Series: L'Atelier du CRH
• Subjects: Claude de Seyssel; Nicole Oresme; political imaginary; Emotion; humoral theory; motion
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/acrh/7357

Despite the fact that historians analyze emotions of classical antiquity, the term 'emotion' itself is a rather recent term that appears only in the fifteenth century. The 'invention' of the word 'emotion' is a French one, but it quickly reaches other languages, such as English. At first the word 'emotion' has a political meaning and designates an uprising or a popular rebellion. The present study proposes first to examine the precise context of the formation and appearance of the word 'emotion', which oddly has not attracted systematic study so far. In reality, the investigation of the political origins of the word will prove that the political agitation and upheavals of France at the time are not enough to explain the appearance of the new term. It is indisputable that political realities have their room in the cultural and political context of the invention of the word emotion, but this article will argue that the indispensable and constitutive element to the formation of the word 'emotion' is the imaginary body politic that is profoundly transformed during that is profoundly transformed by Nicole Oresme. This article will demonstrate how and why the body politic image should be considered as the metaphorical cradle of the word 'emotion' that since then has completely lost its political resonance