The Rise of Loss of Self-Control

Abstract

This chapter traces the rise of ‘loss of self-control’. The rise of loss of self-control has two histories. The history mapped in this chapter tells the story of the cognition of loss of self-control as an alternative to outrage as a conception of anger. The chapter also looks at the foundations of modern law. It is concerned with the important developments in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as with the law’s philosophical foundations. During the 18th and 19th centuries, a new conception of anger emerged that was premised in philosophical foundations that were different from those of early modern law. One of the main causes lie in a change in the law’s conception of the relationship between reason and passions in the human soul.