Beyond Mood and Atmosphere: a Conceptual History of the Term Stimmung

Abstract

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 word Stimmung in other disciplines, this has not yet been the case within philosophy. Against this background, this paper offers a conceptual history of the word Stimmung, 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. Stimmung has the remarkable feature of encompassing the entire semantic field of mood and atmosphere, insofar as both subjects and objects can literally be in Stimmung. Stimmung might 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 of Stimmung as a type of mental state, and the use of Stimmung as an untranslatable, irreducible metaphor with unique semantic force allowing for original theorizing.