Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Therapeutics of Solitude in the German Enlightenment

This essay charts the German eighteenth-century physician and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann’s monumental work on solitude. The essay draws on but also challenges recent historiography on two counts. First, it situates Zimmermann’s discourse on solitude in the context of the early modern cultura animi tradition, in which philosophy provided a cure for a soul perceived as diseased and perturbed by passion and desire. Placed in this context, solitude comes into view not primarily as a passive state of rest and tranquillity connected to the rural life, but as active, therapeutic and exercise-oriented work on the self. Second, it argues that Zimmermann also shaped his discourse in relation to the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century exploration of subjectivity and selfhood, an exploration that reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the unique individual and autonomous self.

History of Emotions: Where Are We?

As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the CHE, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion (initially focusing on Europe 1100–1800 and with the late Professor Philippa Maddern as its founding Director) and the fifth anniversary of the launch of the journal Emotions: History, Culture, Society (founding Editors: Katie Barclay, Andrew Lynch, Giovanni Tarantino), it is only pertinent that we look back and assess our efforts by hearing from some prominent emotions scholars who contributed in different ways and capacities to this pathbreaking intellectual journey.