The Sentimental Citizen
Subtitle: Emotion in Democratic Politics
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
Published: August 2002
Place of publication: University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Language: eng
Format: Paperback; Hardcover
Number of pages: 171
ISBN-13: 9780271022123; 9780271022116
Subjects: Neurosciences; Political structures: democracy; Political Science; Politics / Current Events; Politics/International Relations; History & Theory - General; Political Ideologies - Democracy; Political Ideologies - Nationalism; Public Policy - Social Policy; Democracy; Emotions; Political participation; Reason; United States
Description: This book challenges the conventional wisdom that improving democratic politics requires keeping emotion out of it. Marcus advances the provocative claim that the tradition in democratic theory of treating emotion and reason as hostile opposites is misguided and leads contemporary theorists to misdiagnose the current state of American democracy. Instead of viewing the presence of emotion in politics as a failure of rationality and therefore as a failure of citizenship, Marcus argues, democratic theorists need to understand that emotions are in fact a prerequisite for the exercise of reason and thus essential for rational democratic deliberation and political judgment. Attempts to purge emotion from public life not only are destined to fail, but ultimately would rob democracies of a key source of revitalization and change.

Drawing on recent research in neuroscience, Marcus shows how emotion functions generally and what role it plays in politics. In contrast to the traditional view of emotion as a form of agitation associated with belief, neuroscience reveals it to be generated by brain systems that operate largely outside of awareness. Two of these systems, "disposition" and "surveillance," are especially important in enabling emotions to produce habits, which often serve a positive function in democratic societies. But anxiety, also a preconscious emotion, is crucial to democratic politics as well because it can inhibit or disable habits and thus clear a space for the conscious use of reason and deliberation. If we acknowledge how emotion facilitates reason and is "cooperatively entangled" with it, Marcus concludes, then we should recognize sentimental citizens as the only citizens really capable of exercising political judgment and of putting their decisions into action.
Notes: Winner of a 2003 Choice Award for an Outstanding Academic Title Winner of a 2003 AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show for Jacket Design.