Concepts of Fascination, from Democritus to Kant

This study presents a historical-systematic outline of the conceptual history of fascination. The argumentation is oriented to the term “fascination” and takes into consideration the variance of the scientific explanations and basic theoretical approaches linked to it. For the period of the Greek Antique up to the eighteenth century this article distinguishes four transitive approaches: the substance-based, the epistemological, the psychological and the erotic approach. A fifth approach, which is derived from the epistemological approach, defines fascination as intransitive. It dates from the eighteenth century and is the basis of the modern concepts of fascination.