Abstract

The interest in the issue of emotions both in everyday world and in academic circles is a phenomenon that should not be ignored. It reflects cultural changes, but is also a result of deep thought on the world of feelings – their nature, social role and forms of expression. The aim of this article is to juxtapose the dominant ways of conceptualizing emotions in social and historiographical discourse. The conducted studies allowed identification of three basic conceptions about the role and nature of emotions. For the needs of this essay, they are named “inherent emotions”, “restrained emotions” and “constructed emotion”. They are based on differently understood nature of emotionality. Thus, the use of each of them leads to different conclusions in the constructed social and humanistic reflection.