Passions, Emotions, and/or Sentiments: Eighteenth-Century Dubosian Origins

Does the distinction between the emotions and sentiment already find its privileged place starting in the Eighteenth century and particularly with JeanBaptiste Du Bos? This is the question that we attempt to answer here. Sentiment, whether conscious or not, being understood as judgment, though never aimed at new cognitive perception but rather at a progressive approximation to the values or disvalues of the artwork, lies at the heart of aesthetics from the Eighteenth century to today. It is a form of judgment that is progressive, enlightening, revealing, and never normative. Whether one believes that concepts have an affective component or that feelings include a cognitive component, the connection between intelligence and emotional intelligence is undeniable. Judging without conforming to a norm is precisely the prerogative of enjoyment, at least from the Eighteenth century onwards, that is, from the moment when emotions and sentiment, with their subjective yet shared and shareable component – “universal” as the Philosophes would say – began to form the basis of taste. Emotion and sentiment interconnect beyond any dualism that forces them into separation. Instead of clarity and distinction, there is, rather, an affective intentionality that operates in confusion and in a context always correlated with pleasure and displeasure.