Emotions, angels and demons of social mobilizations

Abstract

How to give emotions their due place in politics and social mobilizations? And how can we prevent the forms of its expression from becoming destructive of democratic customs? Answering these questions requires learning in its different aspects the role of emotions in politics and collective action. It is, therefore, a question of understanding where the habitual underestimation of this role comes from. It is the treatment of the passions, and more broadly of the sensibility opposed to Reason, by Western philosophy and modern psychology, that is at issue. The appeal to Reason to tame the passions loses all meaning as soon as we fail to endow the former with a transcendent status and specific power. Instead of a domestication scheme, it would be more promising to replace domination with co-operation, as the American pragmatists William James and John Dewey recommended.