Rationality and Positive Political Roles for Emotions: Solidarity and Benevolence
The purpose of the second symposium is to investigate the interactions between rationality and passions suited as emotional cement for concerted social action: benevolence and solidarity.
Main content
Questions around the constructive vs. destructive potential of emotions have recently returned into the focus of academic debates about nationalism, identity, and populism in theory, practice, and discourse. Placing the emotions and passions at the centre of political research and analysis, followers the so-called “Affective Turn” oppose the liberal idea that politics should exclusively focus on reasoned arguments. In social and political contexts, the consequent conceptual displacement of the ideal political subject as preference-oriented, rational decision-maker by the “emotional” subject threatens to prevent striking the delicate balance between the rational and the emotions that might be essential for sound as well as effective decision-making and successful discourse. There are, thus, good reasons to be critical of the “affective turn” in political theory and practice. Seeking to bridge the divide, the conference aims to investigate which forms of rationality can fruitfully interact with emotions in the service of what has been referred to as “public passions” (Tocqueville) or “common sympathies” (Mill) – passions suited as emotional cement for concerted social action tending to the creation of a common project, or to the elimination of the multiple forms of unnecessary human suffering. Historically the concepts of “benevolence” and “solidarity” have been posited as two different emotional horizons where reason and emotions could intersect and react positively to one another. Just as other emotional horizons, however, also benevolence and solidarity are fraught with an inherent ambivalence. Sensitive to their inherent ambiguities, the conference will explore both the positive and the negative sides of benevolence and solidarity in the political sphere. It will investigate what forms of rationality can dialogue with benevolence and solidarity, and what preconditions enable these emotions to figure as constructive political and social factors.
Program
Thursday 16th June
10.00-10.30: Coffee & welcome
10.30-11.00: . Guðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson, (Akureyri, Island): Citizenship and the emotions: The glue that holds political societies together. (digitally)
11.00-11.30: Hans Marius Hansteen, (UiB): Solidarity and the Politics of Imagination.
11.30-11.45: Coffee break
11.45-12.15: Paola de Cuzzani (UiB): The principle of solidarity between sentiment and reason: a reflection starting from L. Bourgeois' solidarism.
12.15-12.45: Alberto Giordano (UniGe, Italy): Secure the Blessing of Liberty to our Posterity”. The Founding Fathers, Rationality and Intergenerational Solidarity.
12.45-13.30: Discussion
13.30-15.00: Lunch
15.00-15.30: Anne Granberg, (UiB): On the value of distance: An Arendtian perspective on politics and social media.
15.30-16.00: Anat Biletzki, (Quinnipiac, USA): Arendt on Solidarity: Pure Rationality. (digitally)
16.00-16.15: Coffee break
16.15-16.45: Dora Elvira García González, (UNAM, Mexico):Notes for the construction of a philosophy of peace through reason and emotions: a joint proposal from Rawlsian theory and the philosophy of care. (digitally)
16.45-17.15: César Akim Erives Chaparro (Monterrey, Mexico): The role of indignation and other moral sentiments in the construction of a common (and solidary) sense of justice. (digitally)
17.15-17.45: Discussion
Friday 17th June
10.00-10.30: Ingmar Meland, (Oslo-Met): Democratic Passion, Creative Democracy, and the Rationality of a Hatred.
10.30-11.00: Jean Christophe Merle (Vechta, Germany) Begging for Benevolence. A Kantian perspective. (digitally)
11.00-11.15: Coffee break
11.15-11.45: Marie-Luisa Frick, (Innsbruck, Austria): Guarding against toxic and/or inoperative solidarity: The merit of rational reflection and its limits. (digitally)
11.45-12.15: Juliette Grange, (Tours, France): Populist Emotion versus Neoconservatisme, a new cultural war in extreme right.
12.15-13.45: Discussion
13.45-14.30: Lunch
14.30-15.00: Pascal Nouvel, (Tours, France): Making and unmaking political emotions with narratives: How to shape solidarity with words.
15.00-15.30: Carola Freiin von Villiez (UiB): The invisible hand of public reason and public affections. (digitally)
15.30-15.45: Coffee break
15.45-16.15: Fabricio Pontin, (LaSalle, Brazil): Political emotions, cognitive framing and freedom of speech: an interpretation from the standpoint of the capabilities approach. (digitally)
16.15-16.45: Tatiana Vargas Maia, (LaSalle, Brazil): The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Nationalism as a Landscape of Political Emotions in Contemporary International Relations. (digitally)
16.45-17.15: Discussion
Saturday 18th June
10.30-11.00: Filipe Campello, (UFPE Recife, Brazil): Making solidarity a transnational (and decolonized) political emotion.
11.00-11.30: Dag Erik Berg, (Molde): Gandhi’s concept of non-violence and the Mardøla struggle.
11.30-11.45: Coffee break
11.45-12.15: Franz Knappik, (UiB): Solidarity, humanism and identity: Thoughts from Fanon and Glissant.
12.15-12.45: Discussion
Hybrid format
As the second main symposium in the project “Rationality and the Emotions in political discourse” which is based in the research group “Culture, Society and Politics” at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Bergen, it will run in hybrid format to accommodate for full international participation under current conditions.
