The sources and limits of political enthusiasm
Political affect has historically been viewed as a fundamental impairment to the functioning of democracy. Indeed, democratic politics is often seen as particularly susceptible to dangerous provocation through inflamed sentiments. Yet still, a continuing worry for contemporary democracies is the problem of developing and maintaining political allegiances that encourage civic engagement without those allegiances becoming the basis for political exclusion or the infringement of human rights. My dissertation investigates democratic allegiances through the lens of political enthusiasm. I argue that political enthusiasm - the feeling, as Kant puts it, that accompanies "the idea of the good," commingling inspiration and conviction - is a necessary feature in the functioning of salutary allegiances to an open political system. Due to its historical association with religious and political fanaticism, enthusiasm remains a relatively unexplored analytic concept within democratic theory. Many view the use of political emotions generally - and enthusiasm in particular - as perilous to democracy, preferring instead to encourage the rationalization of interests because of its predictability. Such concern for emotions that motivate political closure seems salient, especially in the context of new and developing democracies, where allegiance formations have proved vulnerable to hyper-nationalism. But, as my dissertation shows, not all political emotions need motivate closure. I elaborate an analytic and behavioral distinction between enthusiasm (which, I argue, leads to open allegiances) and fanaticism (which results in closure). I illustrate this distinction through a reappraisal of historical developments in late 18th century German thought, where enthusiasm is discussed alternatively as Schwärmerei and Enthusiasmus. Through analysis of the works of diverse German thinkers - from Wieland and Kant, to the "popular philosophy" movement (including Mendelssohn, Gentz, and Garve), and romantics such as Fichte and Novalis, amongst others - I present a developing portrait of this dual conceptualization of enthusiasm. My analysis discloses these historical efforts to disentangle enthusiasm from fanaticism, ultimately illustrating how contemporary failure to distinguish between the two leaves a void in understating affective motivations in democratic politics. I use the concept of enthusiasm to develop a new framework by which to evaluate successful patterns of democratic allegiances
