Description
A number of accounts in contemporary philosophy as well as everyday political discourse assumes that democratic activism and protest should be motivated by “democratic hopes”, that is, hopes for a more just society that are held on the basis of reasons that are accessible to all citizens. Such democratic hopes, it is argued, are preferable to more negative emotions such as anger or resentment, because these other emotions lead us away from engaging with and including our political opponents as potential cooperators.I argue that a careful analysis of different types of political hopes does not support this blanket rejection of anger and resentment. Rather, under conditions of structural inequality and oppression, certain kinds of inclusive hopes can be ideologically misleading, since they only make sense on the basis of a conceptualization of political action as a cooperative enterprise which is misleading under such circumstances. Therefore, under such conditions, anger and resentment may not only empirically be better suited to help people overcome collective action problems, they also may reflect a more accurate assessment of the reasons for political action that emerge from social relationships. However, this rejection of a native prescription of democratic hope does not amount to a pessimist blanket rejection of hope as has been advocated by some contemporary critical theorists. Political action motivated by anger and resentment is only justified if it is not motivated by a backward-looking desire for punishment, but by the desire to see justice realized, even if that desire is one that currently cannot be shared with all members of one’s society. Therefore, democratic protest, even if it is not directly governed by inclusive democratic hopes, must at least be governed by the indirect hope for a situation in which such democratic hopes can be rationally entertained.
| Periode | 11-mei-2024 |
|---|---|
| Evenementstitel | Colloquium Philosophy and the Social Sciences |
| Evenementstype | Conference |
| Locatie | Prague, Czech RepublicToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | International |