Chapter  3 From  the  Psychologization of  Experience tothe Priority of  Emotions inSocial Life Lourdes Flamarique Introduction f Ithas become commonplace tostudy theubiquity of  emotions inmany areas of contemporary  culture. However  contemporary the inquiry  may seem, the role of emotions  in social  life was  highlighted  long  ago  bythe Greeks.  Plato,  for example, criticized poetry and plays that present false ethical conduct and models because oftheemotions and feelings that their plots and characters arouse intheviewer. He  emphasized that poetry's emotional force has the ability to  master the audience through imitation tothe point of  obscuring truth. Also Aristotle, inhis Rhetoric, largely attributes  the power of  persuasion  tothe  emotions,  a  power  that should be ver of taken into account inpublic affairs. Partly because ofthe influence ofthe stoics, medieval  ethics  pays  attention  tothe power ofpassion  and emotion  inhuman behavior.  Still, not until late modernity does an  explanation of  contemporary panemotivism"  emerge. The purpose  ofthis chapter istoprovide such an explanation. Tobegin with, the word "panemotivism"¹ contains a judgment: it considers that our culture and the ways ofbeing therein are marked byan  imbalance divided oftho bythe rationality ofthe objective social sphere and the  hyper-emotionality ofthe subjective sphere. Inthis discussion we are not somuch after the nature of  emotions, their variety andthe different networks  combined tomake semantic possibilities rtainty abont unpredictable because theemotions are  characterized bygreat uncertainty about the meanings that they present. What is ofinterest here, rather, is the  imbalance- the  hypertrophy of  emotions contrasted with themodern project that seems tobe, in  consequence, buta  variant ofthe internal dialectic of  enlightened modernity. a ndidentif Tobest understand human affairs, one must consider their origin and identify the factors involved, and sotoo with emotion. "Feeling is  everything," says Goethe's Faust. Yet, what is this "everything" identified asfeeling or  emotion? With Romanticism, feelings and emotions refer mainly to  experiences  that touch on the innermost being ofthe self. While once emotions and passions were felt on 1  Mestrovic's diagnosis provides an  interesting approach tothe same topic, defining our society as  post-emotional based onthe  mechanization of  emotions (Mestrovic 1997). 2 "Gefühl istalles."