Emotion and Deliberation
Emotion and Deliberation
The Autonomous Citizen in the Social World
This chapter assesses the relationship between emotion and democracy. Emotional theory poses a challenge to several of the central verities of democratic theory. Mainly, it challenges the dominant assumption that the passions play no beneficial role in the process of deliberative democracy. In challenging that assumption, emotion theory raises subsidiary questions about the valorization of autonomous thought and action, the low regard for rhetoric and persuasion, the dismissal of the role of intuition, and the focus on universalizable principles that inform much of political discourse. The valorization of autonomous thought and action needs to be revisited, not only because it enshrines a descriptively inaccurate goal but also because it enshrines one that is normatively questionable.
Keywords: emotion, democracy, emotional theory, democratic theory, deliberative democracy, autonomous thought, autonomous action, political discourse
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