The Necessity of Understanding Thumos, and The Misuse of Emotion in Modern Political Theory

Brian E. Butler

Barbara Koziak. Retrieving Political Emotion: Thumos, Aristotle, and Gender. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. x + 203 pages. Bibliography and index. $29.95.

Much contemporary liberalism runs on a theoretical privatization of emotion. Emotions are supposed to be curbed in the public sphere by government, which is seen to be largely justified by its ability to diffuse "private" passions. But, as Barbara Koziak convincingly argues, this description of politics does not correspond to easily observable facts of the public domain. In the public domain appeals to emotion are ever-present. And well they should be, despite the dominant theoretical description. Do we really want a politics devoid of proper emotion? The problem set up by this dynamic is that our theoretical description encourages us to undervalue or lament the influence of emotions in political discourse, while at the very same time obscuring the necessity of developing more sophisticated tools with which political theorists could properly describe the position of emotions in such discourse. As Koziak puts it, "Emotion in politics has no need for retrieval" because it cannot be eliminated; on the other hand, "a conception of political emotion sorely needs retrieval" (1). What is proposed in her book is a retrieval of Aristotle’s conception of thumos. Ultimately it is claimed that, "If we cannot see how expansive thumos becomes with Aristotle, and how our classical heritage, despite the fame of its rationalism, houses a significant role for emotion, we will continue to be blind to the emotional dimensions of political life and their need to be normatively theorized" (177). While I find this claim implausible, and think it is phrased so strongly because the book suffers from being engaged in two quite different aims, in trying to prove two different points, one argument offered in Retrieving Political Emotion does point to a better way to describe emotions and their connection to political discourse.

Retrieving Political Emotion is indeed a book split in its aims. On the one hand it aims at proposing a more sophisticated and cognitive description of political emotions based upon an Aristotelian framework. On the other hand, much of the book is engaged in a scholarly dispute over the proper interpretation of the meaning of the word thumos in Aristotle’s writings. While the two enterprises are somewhat intertwined, it is hard to understand why a scholarly conclusion as to what Aristotle meant by thumos could really matter in contemporary politics. This, of course, is not to argue that an Aristotelian conception of the emotions cannot help inform contemporary political theory. Many scholars have looked to Aristotle to help retrieve a theoretical description of human emotion that emphasizes the cognitive content and the rationality of proper emotional responses. Scholars have also thought that a conception of human motivation along lines found in Aristotle might put political thought on a more theoretically correct foundation. Koziak’s retrieval of Aristotelian models of emotion is an important addition to this expanding genre of political theory scholarship. But why squabble over the meaning of thumos if those on all sides of the question admit that Aristotle’s theory of the emotions provides tools for a better description of the place emotion has in political discourse? It really doesn’t matter whether Koziack is right in describing thumos as the political emotion, or possibly better put the capacity for political emotions that holds people together, or rather spiritedness, or as anger. So, for example, one wonders why it is so important to show that Martha Nussbaum argues that thumos is never clearly analyzed by Aristotle. What is clearly more important is the argument that emotion in politics should be recognized and analyzed, and that an Aristotelian framework has the potential to be helpful in this endeavor.

Luckily worries over the meaning of thumos don’t really get in the way of the overarching aim of the book—the identification and elaboration of emotion in political discourse. The main "retrieval" in the book is better seen as the realization that "the emotional is no less human and no less political than is the rational" (2). Possibly more important, the rational includes proper emotional responses. Once this is accepted, instead of suppressing emotion, encouraging and analyzing the proper type of emotion becomes an important aim of political thought. Of course this conclusion would greatly affect the types of reasons and reasoning allowed as rational in political discourse. This is especially important if there is a relationship between the dominant anti-emotional discourse and the oppression of women and other marginalized groups. Koziak argues that, "particularly since the Enlightenment, women have been depicted as excessively emotional in ways that made them unreliable in the public sphere of politics" (4). If emotion is important, of course, such arguments for marginalization because of emotional unfitness are ruled out of court. Just as importantly, adoption of an Aristotle-inspired view of emotion rules out the appeal to personal intuition associated most famously with Rousseau. On an Aristotelian account proper emotions are both natural and also a result of proper environment/education. Emotions are also seen as necessary to good moral judgment under this account (15). Further, they are inextricably related to good political judgment. As an example of the distortion brought about from the lack of a more sophisticated description of political emotion Koziak highlights the emotions that go along with the contemporary emphasis of rights talk. "Since Americans have a strong sense of personal right to do what they desire, anger is usually expressed as the frustration of individual desire. So the culture of rights diminishes the complexity of anger" (29). What is argued for is a more nuanced viewpoint from which anger can be seen as social as well. As an example of the unacknowledged presence of emotion that could be acknowledged within a more complete framework Koziak identifies "the pleasures of moralism," which are seen as being "offered" in "abundance" in contemporary American political discourse (156). And this does seem correct. The proper use of concepts such as "paradigm scenario," a "governing scenario of emotion," and "emotional repertoire," as offered in Retrieving Political Emotion, seem to be excellent places to start when updating Aristotle’s emotional/political theory for our own times.

So, is it absolutely necessary to understand Aristotle’s use of thumos in order to avoid a continuing blindness to the central significance of emotion to politics? No. So the scholarly digression as to the various meanings of thumos in Aristotle’s works seems unnecessary. On the other hand, does the investigation of the cognitive dimensions of thought, and specifically political thought, benefit from an investigation or utilization of an Aristotelian framework? Yes. Koziak effectively highlights both the ever-present use of emotion in political discourse and the current dismissal of emotion’s importance in dominant liberal theory. Further, the work describes a potential alternative that might handle the cognitive dimensions of emotion and the political use of emotion more effectively. This alternative might just put us in a position from which we could "analyze how various institutions, not only cultural production of narratives . . . but also political rhetoric and structures of political participation, inculcate emotional dispositions." It also might help us use such an understanding of emotion to aim for more effective political institutions. Retrieving Political Emotion offers an effective critique of the misuse of emotion in modern political theory.