The Difference Between Melancholy and Depression

Abstract

Although from a medical point of view, melancholy and depression are indistinguishable, I will try to argue that, from a philosophical perspective, there is an important distinction between the two related affective states. Analyzing various philosophical, literary, poetical, psychiatric and musical works, such as Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Butler’s Characters (1659), Goethe’s Werther (1774), Novalis’s Hymns to the Night (1800), Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata (1801), Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil (1857), Cotard’s report on the Hypochondriac Delirium (1880), Kraepelin’s Textbook of Psychiatry (1883), I will try to clarify the psychological ambiguity between melancholy and depression.