The last few years have seen increasing research interest in moods and atmospheres. While this trend has been accompanied by growing interest in the history of the wordStimmungin other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the wordStimmung, focusing on the period from Kant to Heidegger, as this period is, presumably, less known to researchers working with notions like mood, attunement or atmosphere today. Thus, considering this period (...) might provide conceptual resources not yet considered in current debate.Stimmunghas the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be inStimmung.Stimmungmight refer to the state or condition of being attuned, which is understood as a dispositional state, as well as the process or act of attuning, which includes self-activating and foreign-determined forms of attuning. The word was first used for the tuning of musical instruments, but was quickly transferred to the fields of aesthetics, psychology, and physiology. This paper will focus on the contrast between the psychological canonization ofStimmungas a type of mental state, and the use ofStimmungas an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing. (shrink)

In this second part of his lecture, Geiger deals with the question of empathy for non-human entities, like various kinds of objects. Again, Geiger differentiates between various questions that are usually mixed together in the relevant literature. Thus, he distinguishes the question of fact from the psychological theories about possible mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon. In the last part there is an interesting debate showing how different is the approach between experimenters and philosophers. In his conclusion, Geiger stresses again that (...) conceptual clarification is needed in order to avoid confusion in research designs. Finally, two commentaries emphasize how much empathy could be important in the context of psychiatry. (shrink)