Colloquium: Ambition as a Political Threat During the Early 19th Century

  • Date: Feb 6, 2018
  • Time: 05:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Javier Moscoso
  • Location: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin
  • Room: Small Conference Room
  • Host: Center for the History of Emotions
  • Contact: sekfrevert@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

The Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, led by Prof. Ute Frevert, cordially invites all interested to attend its winter semester 2017/2018 colloquium

Javier Moscoso, Institute of History of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid

Ambition as a Political Threat During the Early 19th Century

The aims of this presentation are twofold: first, the author touches on the cultural significance of ambition during the early 19th century, understanding ambition as both a pathological passion and a political threat. Secondly, he will shed some light on some of the physical and moral treatments of ambition that were explicitly or implicitly considered at the time. Since ambition was thought to lie at the very core of the Revolution and the Empire, the French Restoration produced a very significant number of treatises on public hygiene that included very often recommendations to avoid, regulate, or restrain immoderate ambition states.

Javier Moscoso is Professor of Research in History and Philosophy of Science at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). His previous book, Pain. A Cultural History, was published in October 2011 in Taurus, and in 2012 the English translation was released by Palgrave-Macmillan. The French edition received the Libr'à nous award from the French booksellers for the best history book of 2015. In April 2014 he was Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington in St. Louis, USA and most recently Georges Lurcy Visting Professor at the University of Chicago. His latest book, Broken Promises. A Political History of the Passions, was published (in Spanish) in October 2017.

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