All posts by Paola De Cuzzani and Mirella Pasini

An introduction to the Proceedings of the conference “Rationality and political positivity of emotions: solidarity and benevolence”

Volume 17, no. 5 (2023), Introductory note

What form of rationality can interact with the world of emotions? What rationality can strengthen the so-called “public passions”? namely those passions able to form the emotional cement of social action tending to the creation of a common project, or to the elimination of the multiple forms of suffering and exclusion?

This issue hosts a number of papers on this topic that scholars from different countries discussed in a research meeting at the University of Bergen – Norway last June, funded by the Department of Philosophy.

Emotions are currently an issue at the heart of theoretical debates about political questions, from nationalism to identity and populism. Social and cultural theory placed emotions and affects at the centre of political research and analysis and opposed the liberal idea that politics should only be concerned with reasoned arguments. The so-called “Affective Turn” or “Turn to emotions” has taken place both in analytic and continental philosophy, and emotions are now examined in extensive multidisciplinary studies from evolutionary neuroscience to sociology and political science, from moral philosophy to cultural history. However, shortcoming of this “emotional turn” seems to be that it focuses on the study of emotions “per se” rather than their interaction with reason in social and political contexts. There are, thus, good reasons to be critical of the emotional turn in political theory and praxis. The contemporary conceptual displacement of the ideal political subject – as rational decision-maker who tries to maximize her preferences – by the “emotional” subject could easily undermine the delicate balance of the rational and the emotions requisite for sound decision making.

We can therefore ask ourselves what kind of relationships exist between reason and emotions. Or rather what kind of rationality we can delineate starting from this relationship.

Very often, the political subject affectively perceives certain aspects of reality, is emotionally attached to certain ideas, feels a strong belonging to its own tribe and often feels an equally strong rejection of other groups, desires what others desire. All these can have the most formidable political consequences, since emotions can easily turn into “sad passions” as envy or fear and erode social cohesion.  What kind of rationality is able to dialogue with this political subject?

Aristotle already emphasized the political and social function of benevolence (eúnoia) that he called “political friendship” (politiké philía), distinguishing from phílesis (affection), since it also arises for the strangers and exists among virtuous citizens not aimed at the defence of mere personal advantages. Benevolence therefore has a political-social sense “ab origine”, which is prolonged in modern thought and in the Enlightenment, in the tradition of the moral sentiment with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, and then in Hume and Smith.

Political and rhetorical uses of the term “solidarity” have increased over the past two decades in often conflicting theoretical contexts. Especially at the beginning of the pandemic crisis, the appeal to solidarity was almost unanimous on the part of the most diverse political factions. It almost seems that we are returning to the sense of solidarity already analysed by Louis Bourgeois in 1914: to a social evil, such as contagious disease, we respond with a common, solidarity struggle. In these various rhetorical uses, solidarity seems to be a vague and imprecise concept. In fact, the concept of solidarity has to do with numerous related concepts. Actually, it is often defined in relation to opposite or supplementary concepts. From the fraternity of the Jacobins to the social cohesion of Comte and Durkheim, there is talk of solidarity whether linked to consensus on interests or the pursuit of rights, or else to a generic disposition of benevolence, love and gift. Being part of the interpersonal socio-emotional skills, solidarity varies in relation to the emotional tones that guide agreements and contrasts: sympathy-antipathy, love-hate, fear-hope.

Obviously, this does not mean that benevolence and solidarity, like all emotional horizons, do not have a negative “side”, even capable of destroying us. The beneficence’s role of mediator between egocentric or selfish feelings, and altruistic ones has often been criticized, noting that benevolent love is nothing more than a disguised form of extreme selfish interest. The idea of ​​solidarity is also ambivalent, because, as Robert Michels observed, one is always in solidarity against someone. It can therefore be limited to an exclusive “we”, as opposed to a world of strangers or enemies.

Emotions are in fact ambivalent and unpredictable, they cannot only be distinguished into positive and negative: even positive emotions – benevolence, inclusion, love – are capable of deception and pitfalls; while “negative” passions such as shame and indignation can unite individual and society and help to build individual and social identity.

The speeches at the conference and the essays that we present here address these issues starting from the analysis of different concepts and emotional horizons. Concepts such as democracy, freedom of speech and justice were addressed, in relation to positive and negative moral feelings and solidarity.

Guðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson (Citizenship and emotions) and Pascal Nouvel (The making and unmaking of political emotions with narratives) discuss the theme of the relationship between emotions and politics. Frímannsson discusses the role of emotions in modern democracy. Nouvel addresses the theme through the analysis of the narrative.

The focus of Frimannsson is the concept of citizenship, the relation between an individual and a political authority; but above all the mutual trust of citizens. If feelings are infused with reason, they can and should be controlled in the public life of democracy. When everything is normal – says Frimannsson – they work in unison with reason, they are part of a well-ordered human rationality forming a whole human being. The problem is perhaps to understand what it means “everything is normal”.

Pascal Nouvel discusses the relationship between the three notions of affects, narratives, and politics referring to Renan, Halbwachs and Ricœur. Narratives are part of the core notion of what constitutes a nation through the affects of belonging. They also tend to generate the distinction between history and memory. Through the reference to Ricoeur the author argues that it is possible to arrive at a position that respects but also claims to go beyond this distinction.

The concept of justice and sentiments are analysed by Akim Erives (The role of indignation and other moral sentiments in the construction of a common (and solidary) sense of justice) and Dora Elvira García-González (Notes for the construction of a philosophy of peace through reason and emotions).

Akim Erives highlights how some “negative” moral sentiment, like anger, resentment, and indignation, can be related with the sense of justice, according to the Rawlsian interpretation. So,­­ the sense of justice, together with a sense of solidarity, channels them into a collective demand for justice and the construction of a common sense thereof.

Dora Elvira García-González joins Rawls’ theory of justice and the philosophy of care by Carol Gilligan. With both theories in ­conjunction, it seems possible to construct some approaches to thinking about peace both from a normative perspective and from its application.

Fabrício Pontin with Johannes Servan (From liberal prudence to open institutionalism) address the relationship between freedom and emotion. They argue that Mill’s conceptions of freedom of speech as a “market of ideas” agree with Adam Smith’s description of free market.  And Mill’s defense of freedom of speech is not unconditional since it is aligned with Adam Smith’s less familiar view of the conditions in which a market works, which are connected to moral sentiments and the development of positive emotions. The authors claim therefore that the model of the connection between an open space for expression and the liberal, institutional, progress of the public sphere has become increasingly unable to provide regulatory and moderating clues for late modern challenges.

Tensions are also the hallmark of communication through social media. Anne Granberg (The Absent ‘Thing’ and the Value of Distance: social media through an Arendtian lens) warns us of the risk regarding the new digital media. Observing the move from the early techno-optimism to dystopian vistas of a chaotic “post-truth” political landscape, Granberg refers to the Arendt’s critique of “the social” and suggests that some problems specific to how we interact on social media justify skepticism regarding the new digital media as an arena for political activism and public debate.

In a diachronic approach that opens to contemporary issues, Paola de Cuzzani (The principle of solidarity between sentiment and reason) reconstructs the genealogy of the concept of solidarity: from the juridical meaning to the sentiment, sense of the bond and the political rationality suggested by Leon Bourgeois. According to Bourgeois, solidarity is based on the reciprocal relationship that all individuals have among themselves, on the intergenerational debt, and on the “quasi contract”. The path proposed by Bourgeois – she argues – can be a starting point for elaborating a possible social and political principle that is alternative to the neoliberal model of governance centered on competition.

Hans Marius Hansteen (Brief Notes on Solidarity and Political Imagination) reflects on the politics of imagination by commenting Etienne de La Boétie’s “Discours de la Servitude volontaire” and his “disturbing” idea that commanding power is the result of obedience. By this de La Boetie introduces a relational and dynamic concept of power, which emerges from below. Based on this dynamic concept of power de La Boetie develops an image of what society might be like if people respected what nature and reason demand: acting freely, they would treat each other as brothers, and so implying solidarity as a fundamental social bond.

Alberto Giordano too (“Secure the Blessing of Liberty to our Posterity”: The Founding Fathers and Intergenerational Solidarity) goes back to the past, to the founding fathers of American democracy. He proposes a famous debate that involved Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, discussing moral and political obligations towards posterity not in terms of justice, but as a matter of intergenerational solidarity – though social, political and/or civic.

Lastly, Juliette Grange (Extreme Tension on the Right in France) brings us back to the present and to the political dynamics of extreme right in France, particularly the nationalist and populist approach, where strong emotions play a determining role.

 

July 2020 – Issue 15(2)

Announcement, , , , , ,

This special issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum contains the refined version of the papers presented at the conference on  reason and passion in politics, held in a period of two days at the University of Bergen in November 2019. The conference was organised as a joint effort by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, and the Department of Antiquity, Philosophy and History (DAFIST) of the University of Genoa, Italy.

The purpose of this conference was to approach the topic of the relations between rationality and emotions, wondering which part do they actually play in politics. In many ways, politics is the art of persuasion and often people are indeed persuaded to position  themselves on a given subject by emotional appeals rather than reasonable arguments. Within the political sphere, both past and present, one can actually find a complex mixture of rational arguments and emotional discourses.

In the dominant Western philosophical tradition, the relationship between reason and emotions has been marked by a conflict between various contrasting models of rationality and emotions. The sphere of rationality and that of passions have been often categorized according to a fundamental dichotomy: either the triumph of reason against the weakness of sentiments or, in the popular interpretation of Hume, the triumph of passions over reason. This dichotomy has also served as a starting base for conceptualizing politics, where already early-modern political theorists defined political autonomy as reason dominating the emotions and passions.

In The Passions and the Interests (1977), Albert Hirschman described how, in the process of modernization, the “passions”, motivating social and political behavior were transformed into modern “interests” and they were thereby assigned the role of containing the social and political destructive passions.

Until recent times, theorists have described both political movements and political affiliation as based on beliefs, ethics, and sentiments. In the last years, though, an “Affective Turn” has taken place both in analytic and continental philosophy, and in contemporary political studies. Emotions and affects are now becoming the object of extensive, multidisciplinary studies that challenge political liberalism’s idea that the emotions must be relegated to the private sphere. This “turn” highlights that the political cannot be understood without reference to human feelings.

However, the fundamental dichotomy between emotions and reason has not at all been overcome in the forms of current politics. While it is true that, today, emotions and passions are returning to the centre of the political scene, they often do so in a passive form. Contemporary politics consists more and more in an abuse and manipulation of the passions. Social media, for instance, has redefined the public sphere in ways that allow charismatic, intimidating and even hateful rhetoric to stand unchecked by editorial control. The space of public discussion has also increased to the point where quick “instinctive reactions” replace careful reasoning. One could ask if the “affective” political change consists in an increasingly oppressive use of the passions as forms of domination. The active function of passions and the way they can contribute to the processes of political democratisation and the conscious involvement of citizens need to be duly analysed; albeit always keeping in mind that  passions are ambiguous, for any feeling within a given political context, even the noblest – compassion and love, inter alia –, holds its limits and presupposes dangers.

This motivates the following questions: Do emotions, of any kind, pose a dangerous threat to rationality and political life? What, for instance, becomes of democracy when a rigorous and rational language in political debates is replaced by one that focuses on emotions, like hope or fear? Is it possible to build  up a democratic society with no recourse to passions, mutual trust and a belief in the right of every individual to participate in the social and political debates? If so, what kind of emotions are positive and what kind of emotions do hinder this development?

A key aim of the conference was seeking to define the possible paths of reflection on this topic and study the relationships between reason and emotions, concepts of rationality and “structures of feelings” as a marker of the political arena.

The European research team that has long been engaged in social and ethical reflection about cultural changes in the modern and contemporary epoch chose to address these questions by a variety of approaches.

(Paola De Cuzzani & Mirella Pasini)

A Short Introduction to the Proceedings of the Conference “The Reason of Passions: Emotion and Rationality in the Landscape of (Contemporary) Politics”

Introductory note, , , , , , , , , ,

We are well aware that political life has always dealt with passions. But today it seems, in fact, that the liberal, rationalistic approach to politics has been almost completely replaced by its emotional dimension. Therefore, it seems necessary to explore the changing ways in which thought and feeling, rationality and passion, reason and sentiments, have been understood both in practice and in theoretical discussions, focusing on their public standing.

This issue contains the refined version of the papers presented at the conference on this topic, held in a period of two days at the University of Bergen in November 2019. The conference was organised as a joint effort by the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bergen (UiB), Norway, and the Department of Antiquity, Philosophy and History (DAFIST) of the University of Genoa, Italy.

The purpose of this conference was to approach the topic of the relations between rationality and emotions, wondering which part do they actually play in politics. In many ways, politics is the art of persuasion and often people are indeed persuaded to position  themselves on a given subject by emotional appeals rather than reasonable arguments. Within the political sphere, both past and present, one can actually find a complex mixture of rational arguments and emotional discourses.

In the dominant Western philosophical tradition, the relationship between reason and emotions has been marked by a conflict between various contrasting models of rationality and emotions. The sphere of rationality and that of passions have been often categorized according to a fundamental dichotomy: either the triumph of reason against the weakness of sentiments or, in the popular interpretation of Hume, the triumph of passions over reason. This dichotomy has also served as a starting base for conceptualizing politics, where already early-modern political theorists defined political autonomy as reason dominating the emotions and passions.

In The Passions and the Interests (1977), Albert Hirschman described how, in the process of modernization, the “passions”, motivating social and political behavior were transformed into modern “interests” and they were thereby assigned the role of containing the social and political destructive passions.

Until recent times, theorists have described both political movements and political affiliation as based on beliefs, ethics, and sentiments. In the last years, though, an “Affective Turn” has taken place both in analytic and continental philosophy, and in contemporary political studies. Emotions and affects are now becoming the object of extensive, multidisciplinary studies that challenge political liberalism’s idea that the emotions must be relegated to the private sphere. This “turn” highlights that the political cannot be understood without reference to human feelings.

However, the fundamental dichotomy between emotions and reason has not at all been overcome in the forms of current politics. While it is true that, today, emotions and passions are returning to the centre of the political scene, they often do so in a passive form. Contemporary politics consists more and more in an abuse and manipulation of the passions. Social media, for instance, has redefined the public sphere in ways that allow charismatic, intimidating and even hateful rhetoric to stand unchecked by editorial control. The space of public discussion has also increased to the point where quick “instinctive reactions” replace careful reasoning. One could ask if the “affective” political change consists in an increasingly oppressive use of the passions as forms of domination. The active function of passions and the way they can contribute to the processes of political democratisation and the conscious involvement of citizens need to be duly analysed; albeit always keeping in mind that  passions are ambiguous, for any feeling within a given political context, even the noblest – compassion and love, inter alia –, holds its limits and presupposes dangers.

This motivates the following questions: Do emotions, of any kind, pose a dangerous threat to rationality and political life? What, for instance, becomes of democracy when a rigorous and rational language in political debates is replaced by one that focuses on emotions, like hope or fear? Is it possible to build  up a democratic society with no recourse to passions, mutual trust and a belief in the right of every individual to participate in the social and political debates? If so, what kind of emotions are positive and what kind of emotions do hinder this development?

A key aim of the conference was seeking to define the possible paths of reflection on this topic and study the relationships between reason and emotions, concepts of rationality and “structures of feelings” as a marker of the political arena.

The European research team that has long been engaged in social and ethical reflection about cultural changes in the modern and contemporary epoch chose to address these questions by a variety of approaches.

At the opening of the conference Anat Biletzki questions populism in the light of the relationship between reasons and passions, and wonders if it is an ideology or a tool. Retracing different definitions given by political scholars, Biletzki notes how some such as Kazin and Urbinati define populism as an instrument while others, such as Mudde, Kaltwasser and Pappas, consider it as an ideology. Through an in-depth analysis of the different forms of populism, the article highlights how, understood as a rhetorical tool, it can be used for the most different and contrasting ideologies of the right or left. If populism is an ideology, that is to say, a vision of the world that has people as the highest value, it implies a form of politics that combines reason and passion. And although on the right it can deteriorate into fascism, it can work on the left to extend democracy, as it requires to overcome a purely rationalist idea of ​​politics.

Some of articles have a common starting point in our time politics, that sees the advance of populism even in democratic countries; a populism characterized and also empowered by an emotional rhetoric, focused on what we could call negative passions such as hatred and anger.

Many papers try to understand this phenomenon and propose politically positive emotions, not without critical remarks. As Anne Granberg does: faced with Marta Nussbaum’s proposal to encourage socially positive emotions including compassion, she detects the limits of this suggestion and takes up Hanna Arendt’s observation that compassion is essentially an apolitical emotion.

After recalling several scholars, from Walter Lippmann to Edward Bernays and, closer to us, William Davies, according to whom politics was increasingly connected and based on both individual and collective emotions, Alberto Giordano highlights how post-truth and polarization threaten liberal democracy, since they persuade people to rely more on feelings rather than facts, in such a way as to manipulate collective decision-making. Recent suggestions to limit the influence of political emotions, such as epistocracy and e-democracy, seem not sufficiently sound both theoretically and practically. Giordano thus proposes an intergenerational republican compact as a possible and provisional solution to post-truth dilemmas.

More oriented towards overcoming the rigid dualism of reason and passions, Juliette Grange tries to define the “reasoned feeling”. After highlighting the convergence of the “affective sciences”, and the philosophical attention to emotions delivered by populism, Grange argues that the “reasoned feeling” is embodied by the republican passion for certain political ideals. Enthusiasm for an idea or an ideal, altruism and a culture based on knowledge and science, are basic traits of this feeling. The reasoned feeling is the founder of a civilization and a social morality proper to scientific and technical modernity. In order to be realized, this feeling must be combined with political rationality understood as a form of rationalism that allows “a plurality of axiological and social choices and the public space of their confrontation”.

The solution to the emotional dangers inherent in political options, regimes, opinions given by classical utopias is analysed by Jean Christophe Merle and compared with the imaginary dystopias of the 20th century. The utopias of the early modern times were proposed as a solution to the absolute political evil, namely discord, rivalry, desire to possess, domination and glory; and as an alternative to the classical theories of social contract. Dystopias, in so far as they constitute the opposite of the democratic and liberal rule of law, are based on the eradication of its members’ ability to think and act rationally. The failure of both shows the human inability to live without confronting the evil and the extreme difficulty in which attempts to resist the dystopian order often occur.

New signs of kindness and politeness to follow in social relations can help counteract the increase in passions and violent reaction in our democratic societies: here is Mirella Pasini’s proposal. After going over the old Galateo of Monsignor Della Casa and the new one by Melchiorre Gioia, she wonders if Gioia’s prescriptive goal of spreading civil education as part of the process of training citizens of a democratic nation could be a suggestion for our time. Almost the same proposal is virtually opposed by the agonistic and competitive rhetoric of the Norwegian public intellectual and author Georg Johannesen (1931-2005), illustrated by Hans Marius Hansteen, and proposed as a way to promote peace.

The speeches by Giorgio Baruchello and Pascal Nouvel, respectively, open to the epistemological dimension and the positive and negative role of emotions in the construction of knowledge, with its obvious ethical and political consequences.

Baruchello addresses the prejudice issue, whose area ranges from the cognitive sphere to the social dimension, according to a plurality and multiplicity of meanings that cannot be reduced to a single negative level. Faced with the inevitability of prejudice or the not-so-argued need to overcome it as a “poorly formed opinion, an unreasonable belief, an unjustified false assumption, a negative feeling”, Baruchello affirms the need to investigate its polysemy, also in the history of philosophical thought. By following this path, we could overcome prejudice as a source of error and bad behaviour.

Pascal Nouvel, on his side, questions the nature of political errors; because, if emotions and affects play a key role in politics, they can also play a role in political errors. A better knowledge of what is specific in political errors could therefore help to understand the relationships between reason and emotions, between rationality and “structures of feelings”. His starting point is the modern distinction – laid down by Machiavelli – between political errors and other fashions, with which they have long been mixed. In a brief “history of error”, Nouvel distinguishes four types, that is: perceptual error, conceptual error, moral error and, finally, political error, still not well defined. A key point is the distinction between moral error and political error, which appears to be speculative rather than factual. Understanding the nature of the political error can be useful in order to modify the affects: this is the basic thesis. As for the method, the narrative approach is in Nouvel’s intention a powerful way to manage political issues and, in some cases, avoid political errors.

The importance of political affections in contemporary European society is underlined by Paola de Cuzzani, who remembers at the beginning of her paper the rapid spread of growing xenophobic and racist sentiments, anti-Semitism, discrimination and violence against migrants, blacks and Muslims. For de Cuzzani the implications of these sentiments for the stability of our liberal democratic societies are evident. Spinoza’s theory of imitation of affects can help us in our attempt to understand the ease with which negative feelings come to be diffused even in the most civilized and democratic societies. It also clarifies the dangers that these negative feelings pose for the stability of the body politic.

It remains to be asked whether Spinoza’s lesson can also be useful in a positive way, in order to provide us with tools to fight negative affects, while not running the risk to erase affectivity but rather promoting a positive one.

Such is the legacy that this rich selection of papers offers for future studies and meetings of the research group.