Zorn und Sanftmut Erinnerung an ein exemplarisches Stück klassischer Tugendethik

Abstract

The „emotional turn“ that has taken place in philosophy and cultural studies since the 1980ies has inspired a renaissance of
inquiry around the role of feeling in philosophical ethics. This development is partly intertwined with the renaissance of
study concerning the ethics of virtue. Both of these developments, however, have also been influenced by important contri
butions from Classical and Enlightenment philosophy. While focusing on one specific issue in the psychology of morals,
namely the problem of how to negotiate the affect of anger, this essay demonstrates the broader contemporary relevance of
Classical ethics and its Enlightenment reception. The focus is on the extensive reflections on the virtue of „Sanftmut“ (gen
tleness) in the largely forgotten ethical works of some of the most important representatives of German Enlightenment:
Christian Wolff, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Georg Friedrich Meier.