Glasses, Sounds, and Feelings: Thinking about Emotions in Kiel, 1670-1720

Descartes – Huygens Lecture 2023 by professor Martin Mulsow (University of Erfurt)

In the years around 1700, affective theories of liberation from constraints and pain appeared, especially in northern Germany, and made unexpected suggestions: the healing of illnesses through music, but also through terror or anger. What significance in terms of the history of emotions do these beginnings of music therapy and other forms of therapy have? How did they come about? The hypothesis I would like to pursue is the following: especially in Holstein – at the University of Kiel and at the court in Gottorf – two lines of development came together in the late 17th century. On the one hand, several doctors worked there who were more or less students of Franciscus Sylvius, a doctor from Leiden who particularly examined the digestive system, the bile and the pancreas in a new way, both anatomically and from the chemistry of the glands and body fluids involved. But since for physicians the emotions (affects) rest on the bodily humors, it was then possible to ask anew how affects and physical conditions relate to one another. A kind of early psychosomatics was aimed at, based on an early kind of biochemistry. On the other hand, in Holstein there was at the same time a preoccupation with acoustics, with the human voice – and also with the influence of the voice on everything physical, not least on illnesses. Both together, the early form of psychosomatics and the early form of bio-acoustics, created the basis for the question of the healing powers of voice and music through the affects that they evoke in the body to come to the fore. In this way, something like the concept of music therapy emerged there for the first time.

Short biography

Martin Mulsow is an internationally renowned intellectual historian and one of the leading experts on the German Enlightenment. He is Professor at the University of Erfurt (Germany) and director of the Gotha Research Center for Early Modern Studies. Mulsow was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He is the author of more than ten monographs, winner of numerous awards and member of several academies. Before he became director of the Gotha Research Center, he was a professor of history at Rutgers University, USA. Among his books are: “Enlightenment Underground. Radical Germany 1680-1720” (2015), “Knowledge Lost. A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History” (2022) and “The Hidden Origins of the German Enlightenment” (2023).

 

Time:                  14:00h coffee and tea, lecture at 14:45h, followed by drinks (until 17:00h)

Location:            Belle van Zuylen room, University Hall (Academiegebouw), Domplein 29, Utrecht

Registration:     The event is free, but please register by sending an email to a.dendaas@uu.nl

                            If you would like to join online, you can use this link