The feat of reason: foundational exclusion of emotions in modern political theory

Authors

  • Ramón Máiz

Keywords:

political theory, democracy, emotions, deliberation.

Abstract

The modern political theory was built from an underlying assumption: the radical exclusion of emotions as departure of a hyper rationalist argumentation. The aim of this paper is, first, to explain how this exclusion is semantically structured trough the dichotomy reason/emotion. We will analyze afterwards the various presences of this dichotomy and exclusion in the shared vision of politics as the reign of reason held by the main paradigms of the modern political theory. Finally, we pay attention to some new theoretic developments that broke with and depart from the old vision of the dispassionate political mind, opening a new horizon to rethinking politics and democracy.

Published

2010-10-01

Issue

Section

ARTICLES