Emotional Politics – Some notes on anger, resentment and compassion

Abstract

This article presents some attempts to understand the recent political turn to authoritarian right-wing populism in terms of emotions – more specifically anger. This anger belongs, according to researchers, to a specific demographic; white, downward mobile, middle class men are the backbone of the populist far right in US and Europe. The move towards populist authoritarianism is, however, a worldwide phenomenon, and Pankaj Mishra links the authoritarian and illiberal turn to inherent problems in the global modernization process first envisioned by Rousseau and the failure of liberal political theory to take human emotions seriously. Martha Nussbaum’s Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice wants to amend this lack of attention to emotions in liberal theory. We do not only need abstract principles, she claims, governments should also actively encourage pro-social emotions such as patriotism, love and compassion in order to create a more just, redistributive and inclusive society. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s critique of compassion and pity in On Revolution I will discuss some potentially problematic aspects with Nussbaum’s suggestion that we ought to actively foster a political culture of compassion.