Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Must we put passions aside when we deliberate about justice Can we do so The dominant views of deliberation rightly emphasize the importance of impartiality as a cornerstone of fair decision making, but they wrongly assume that impartiality means being disengaged and passionless. In Civil Passions, Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality. Drawing on resources ranging from Hume's theory of moral sentiment to recent findings in neuroscience, Civil Passions breaks new ground by providing a systematic account of how passions can generate an impartial standpoint that yields binding and compelling conclusions in politics. Krause shows that the path to genuinely impartial justice in the public sphere--and ultimately to social change and political reform--runs through moral sentiment properly construed. This new account of affective but impartial judgment calls for a politics of liberal rights and democratic contestation, and it requires us to reconceive the meaning of public reason, the nature of sound deliberation, and the authority of law. By illuminating how impartiality feels, Civil Passions offers not only a truer account of how we deliberate about justice, but one that promises to engage citizens more effectively in acting for justice.

Reviews

Winner of the 2010 Spitz Prize for the Best Book on Liberal or Democratic Theory, International Conference for the Study of Political Thought Winner of the 2009 Alexander L. George Book Award of the International Society of Political Psychology "Krause's Civil Passions is an ambitious work of political theory that attempts to bridge the age-old divide between reason and emotion in theories of moral and political judgment... This is a well-written, cogently argued, provocative, and important contribution to recent scholarship on democratic deliberation, theories of justice, and the proper role of affect within the political realm."--Choice "Sharon Krause offers a significant reinterpretation of the relations among reason, emotion, morality, and politics. Civil Passions will become a major reference point for philosophers, political theorists, and legal theorists working on a broad range of issues, including moral psychology, metaethics, deliberative democracy, and legitimacy."--Matthew D. Mendham, Journal of the Review of Politics "As scholars of deliberation move this research agenda forward, they can be grateful to Krause ... for bringing to the fore just how multidimensional deliberative democracy really is."--Jurg Steiner, Perspectives on Politics "Civil Passions is a well-written contribution to this debate and will be of interest both to political theorists and to moral philosophers."--Liz Sutherland, Political Studies Review

Author Bio

Sharon R. Krause is associate professor of political science at Brown University. She is the author of "Liberalism with Honor".