The Political Dangers of Emotion
Since September 11, 2001, historians and social scientists have rediscovered the political relevance of emotion. In the current climate of war and terror, public discussion is suffused with references to fear, hatred, and patriotism.
But what are the moral and political consequences when such passions enter the public sphere? One of the most famous political thinkers of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt, worried about the entry of emotion into politics. Emotions disfigure politics, she argued; political movements should be based on rational argument, not passion.
Yet there was one thing Arendt feared more than the intrusion of emotions into politics: a politics completely devoid of emotion. The “ice-cold reasoning” and bureaucratic rationality she discerned behind the Holocaust was infinitely more terrifying than any other political pathology known to man.
Arendt’s deep ambivalence toward emotions confronts us with a fundamental question: What is the proper place of emotion in politics?
See also Johannes Lang’s recent article, “Against obedience: Hannah Arendt’s overlooked challenge to social-psychological explanations of mass atrocity,” published in Theory & Psychology(requires password)
DIIS Experts
