Cultivating emotions: a rhetorical and agonistic framework for political passion, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, BC (2016), pp. 250-261 (original) (raw)
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Chapter 5. Reason and passion in political rhetoric
Argumentation in context, 2017
The central question, which I wish to answer with the help of the following case study in political rhetoric, can be formulated as follows: Can Louise Michel's revolutionary rhetoric successfully combine reason (logos), character (ethos) and passion (pathos)? Michel's revolutionary rhetoric is part of a long tradition of outstanding written and/or spoken freedom discourse. Moreover, it is an example of how an individual speaker adapts to and/or modifies existing preconditions and conventions within the genres of deliberation (communicative activity types within this genre: e.g. political speech, political essay, plenary debate) and adjudication (communicative activity types within this genre: e.g. court proceedings, arbitration; cf. van Eemeren, 2010, p. 143). In order to explore the general historical background of Michel's speech, I first briefly summarize the philosophical discussion of the concept of "freedom". After that, the central question will be tentatively answered on the basis of the classical Aristotelian trichotomy of logos, ethos and pathos. Louise Michel has been praised for her extraordinary courage, altruistic attitude and relentless energy. So there is no doubt that her ethos had a considerable impact on her rhetorical success. She was also highly efficient as far as the arousal of strong emotions in her audience is concerned (pathos). Less attention has been paid to Michel's anarchist arguments (logos) and their verbal presentation. In this paper, some of the most important arguments to be found in her political speeches and articles will be analysed and critically evaluated. Moreover, Michel's verbal presentation techniques will be described. Apart from the Aristotelian concepts of logos, ethos and pathos, Critical Discourse Analysis (cf. Fairclough & Fairclough, 2012) and Pragma-Dialectics, especially van Eemeren's (2010, p. 40) elaboration of the concept of "strategic maneuvering" and its adaptation to the context of political rhetoric (cf. van Eemeren & Garssen, 2012), will be taken as a theoretical starting point. I conclude that Michel only partially succeeds in combining rhetorical efficiency with standards of rational argumentation. All in all, however, her political discourse has to be taken seriously.
The Political Mind and Its Other Rethinking the Non-Place of Passions in Modern Political Theory
There is a hidden tension underlying current debates on issues such as liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism or nationalism in the field of political theory. 1 This hidden tension is at least as problematic as the tensions expressed by other, more explicit binary codes, such as community/individual, monism/pluralism or universalism/particularism. In this chapter, I will argue that the Reason/Emotion dichotomy, a foundational dichotomy or more precisely a dualism, originating in a partial and radical interpretation of Enlightenment thought, lies as an undisputed assumption behind those other binary codes, hindering the very possibility of arriving at new developments in the theory of democracy and of politics itself. The Reason/Emotion dichotomy induces with the "blissful clarity" of myth -using Barthes' expression -an undisputed and omnipresent hyper-rationality. In turn, this has very negative de-politicizing effects on a large part of the arguments advanced by political theorists. In this respect it is revealing that egalitarian liberalism is built on the notions of rational/reasonable and public reason/non-public reason. Furthermore, the creation of community networks is usually presented as a kind of escape from moral subjectivism by appealing to a presumptive objective rationality of tradition. Moreover, it is striking that demands for representation of individuals or social groups are normally defended by resorting to an individual or group interest. Also, deliberation is based on the ideas of 'rational consensus' and 'force of the 1 Translated from the Spanish by Marcos Engelken-Jorge en Livérbula s.l., under the supervision of the author. This chapter is part of the project SEJ2007-67482: The Quality of Public Deliberation in Contemporary Democracies. M. Engelken-Jorge (Eds.) et al, Politics and Emotions,
Politics bk. 5, which addresses the topic of stasis, is illuminated by Aristotle’s discussions of the passions in Rhetoric bk. 2. In the first part of this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s three fundamental analytic categories for understanding stasis: disagreements about shared conceptions of justice and moral matter; gain and honor; and more specific causes or principles. I indicate how the passions are determinately involved, particularly in the first and third categories, providing a passional substructure to stasis. In the second part, I discuss three passions, anger, hatred, and fear, in greater detail, showing how their dynamics as Aristotle describes them not only function in the production of stasis but also tend to produce each other. In the final part, I briefly discuss positive roles that the passions can play in politics.
The aim of the present issue of Lo Sguardo is to focus on the " emotional turn " that has taken place both in analytic and continental philosophy. In the last years emotions – and the connected and relational world they represent – are becoming the object of an extensive multidisciplinary analysis that includes contributions from moral philosophy to neuroscience. Considering the increasing amount of publications on this topic, we want to contribute to the debate developing a critical view based on a genealogical approach. The issue will question the very notion of emotion as a modern one, working out the implicit assumptions that it underlies. Which are the conceptual implications of the semantic shift between passions and emotions? Which anthropological paradigm are we elaborating through this new focus on the affections? And what kind of ontological, metaphysical and political relations it entails? Contributions at this issue should aim to a deconstruction and reconstruction of the notions of passion, affection and emotion, in order to develop a critical distance from the current conceptions. As we learn from the ancient philosophers, the tension between passions and reason rules not only the internal dynamic of the subject, but also the public realm as the natural human political dimension. It is possible to ask then about the origin and role of the emotions in contemporary political theory, narrative and action. It seems, in fact, that the liberal, rationalistic approach to politics – according to which politics is the sphere of negotiation of interests – has been lately replaced by a stress on its affective dimension and by a renewed claim for political passions, the " negative " as much as the " positive " ones: anger, rage, indignation, shame, pride, enthusiasm, compassion, love and solidarity are some of the keywords coming from very different standpoints of the political spectrum. Now it seems – as the ancients state – that politics is no longer just a matter of reason(s) and rational choices, but also of affections. More: that a certain kind of politicization or de-politicization of
2017
This paper sustains that rhetoric can be a fruitful way of practicing philosophy of language. The starting point is a suggestion drawn from the work of the Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito. According to Esposito, one of the main characteristics of the Italian thought is the focus on the necessary connection between language and extra-linguistic world. I argue that rhetoric (intended in an Aristotelian sense), thanks to its extra-linguistic aim (persuasion), pays particular attention to this connection. This has important consequences: 1. considering speakers and listeners as essential components of speech and assigning a key position to the listener; 2. including the sphere of emotion in the fi eld of refl ection on language; 3. considering truth as a social practice; 4. considering the agonistic dimension as a constitutive element of the speech.
2019
This article shows that human emotions, desires, and passions play an important role in Machiavelli's analysis and theory of politics. The article claims that Machiavelli developed a psychology of motivation that is political because it is mainly interested in the driving forces of political behaviors and actions. A political psychology of motivation allows a theorist to partly predict political events and actions and to give advice to politicians because the constant human passions and emotions such as ambition and greed, hatred and fear, will always have the same influence on political decisions.