Remorse is also a state of mind. Emotionalization as a research perspective of contemporary german studies

Tobiasz JANIKOWSKI

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3374-8571

Abstract

Despite their presence in research typical of the humanities, phenomena broadly associated with emotions and affects have been downplayed and treated with insufficient attention, or even skepticism. The reason for it, as Christiane Voss puts it, is a tendency to classify emotions and affects as research problems that are blatantly contradictory with the faculty of rational cognition. Facing the existence of increasingly narrowing research perspectives based on structural, comparative, or hermeneutic methods, one is in a position to observe that emotionalization, due to its capacity to evoke a typically phenomenological perspective for interpretation, is now viewed as a promising and appealing field of study. The following article is an attempt to present the research potential of broadly understood emotionalization on the example of emotions related to the feeling of remorse.

Keywords:

emotionalization, remorse, affects, German-language literature, German studies