Political Emotions: Towards a Decent Public Sphere

How might political emotions contribute to the creation of a decent public sphere? Our societies are characterized by difference and contestation. Cultivating political emotions can appear counterproductive to stability and peace. But there is an increasing recognition that emotions can be harnessed to empower community cohesion and social justice - and new ideas about how our political emotions can foster a decent public sphere and overcome intolerance are urgently needed. In Political Emotions: Towards a Decent Public Sphere, leading theorists consider the limits and prospects of cultivating our emotions that support social justice. All examine this topic from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives breaking new ground and yielding new understandings. Issues explored include adaptive preferences, capabilities, civil religion, compassion, conscience, dignity, feminism, imagination, multicultural citizenship, perfectionism, political liberalism, public sentiments, sympathy and much more in a wide-ranging exploration of key themes in contemporary political philosophy - and Martha C. Nussbaum’s significant contributions to it in particular - that should be of interest to anyone working in these broad areas.

Thom Brooks is Dean of Durham Law School and Professor of Law and Government. His books include The Global Justice Reader (2008), Punishment (2021, 2d), Hegel’s Political Philosophy (2013), Becoming British (2016), The Trust Factor (2021) and Rawls’s Political Liberalism (co-edited with Martha Nussbaum, 2015). Brooks advises the UK’s Labour Party and writes columns for the Daily Telegraph and Independent.