Civil Passions Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation [Paperback]

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. InCivil 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 Passionsbreaks 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 Passionsoffers not only a truer account of how we deliberate about justice, but one that promises to engage citizens more effectively in acting for justice.

"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"Sharon R. Krauseis associate professor of political science at Brown University. She is the author ofLiberalism with Honor. Krause'sCivil Passionsis 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-wl“Œ