This book reevaluates premodern, modern and contemporary conceptions of affects, passions and emotion by analyzing various historical manifestations of the discourse on emotion. Unlike most previous research, which ? especially in the German tradition ? often focused exclusively on the rise of the modern (Romantic) interiority without paying attention to the underlying dichotomy of “interiority / exteriority”, this study explores the historical preconditions, the internal logic and the possible shortcomings that inform our thinking of emotion.