Dow, J orcid.org/0000-0002-8241-6880 (2019) The Persuasive Use of Emotions. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 85. pp. 211-236. ISSN 1358-2461
Abstract
The rhetorical power of emotions came to philosophers’ attention early on in the western tradition: emotions can exert a powerful effect on what an audience comes to believe or decides to do. It is has been surprisingly neglected since, despite abundant philosophical literature on the emotions. This paper focuses on the mechanisms and propriety of emotional persuasion. Our central focus is an apparent tension between two claims. (‘PROPRIETY’) Persuasion should succeed by getting people convinced on grounds that contribute to justifying their inclination to favour what the speaker proposes; and (‘ANTI-AUSTERITY’) It is not required that persuasion’s methods be dispassionate. They seem in tension, and yet dropping either seems unattractive. In particular, dropping ‘ANTI-AUSTERITY’ could commit us to a position that tends to elevate further in public deliberation the contributions of already privileged voices, and to marginalise the less privileged. This paper highlights what we would need to believe, in order to hold these two claims together. In order for emotions to contribute to (epistemic) justification, I argue, they must be capable themselves of being epistemically justified, and of transmitting that epistemic justification to the beliefs to which they help give rise. This in turn requires that emotions have representational contents, involve the subject’s accepting those contents as true, be candidates for epistemic justification, and be such that their contents can properly feature as premises in inferences that justify the subject in believing their conclusions. Such are the striking philosophical implications of some everyday observations about the persuasive use of emotions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019, The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors. This is an an author produced version of an article that has been published in a revised form in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/royal-institute-of-philosophy-supplements). Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Emotion; Aristotle; Persuasion; Rhetoric |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 May 2018 11:07 |
Last Modified: | 29 Jan 2021 15:08 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S1358246118000760 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:131117 |