Summary

The present work aims to restore the problem of the Warburg's method. First, we will analyze the influence of Jacob Burckhardt and Robert Vischer in the Warburguian proposal of a psychology for the approach of cultural phenomena. Then, we will discover that Warburg moves from this approach towards a new concern for the way in which impersonal forces produce historical-cultural senses. As we propose here, on the one hand, this movement is mediated by the configuration of a critique towards aestheticism and historicism (made explicit in 1900 through a famous epistolary exchange with André Jolles); on the other hand, it allows a better understanding of the notion of surviving pathos as well as the Warburgian interest for developing a theory of social memory, influenced by Richard Semon.