The Rise of Polarization

Affects, Politics, and Philosophy
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-50960-0
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 150 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 381 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

This book presents a philosophical analysis of affective polarization. It rejects the two-dimensional view of affective polarization and offers a multi-dimensional approach to it. An underlying philosophical issue throughout the book is that our political views are strongly influenced by purely contingent matters.

The widespread approach to affective polarization emphasizes the role played by two key elements: political identities and feelings toward the out-group. However, this picture is incomplete. Affectively polarized societies are also characterized by the existence of two-sided narratives drawn upon politically fraught issues, and by the increased confidence in such narratives. In this book, the author examines affective polarization as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. He carefully analyses the essential features of the phenomenon and distinguishes five dimensions of it: the identity dimension, the emotional dimension, the narrative dimension, the credence dimension, and the linguistic dimension. Along the way, he addresses questions such as: How many types of polarization can be distinguished? What are the conditions for a society to count as affectively polarized? What are political narratives and political identities? What do partisans do when they say that they dislike the outgroup?

The Rise of Polarization will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in political and social philosophy, political and social psychology, political science, political epistemology, political philosophy of language, and political theory.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Almagro, Manuel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction  2. The Labyrinth of Polarization  3. The Phenomenon of Affective Polarization  4. Building our Attachments: The Narrative Dimension of Affective Polarization  5. Increasing our Attachments: The Credence Dimension of Affective Polarization  6. Voicing our Attachments: The Emotional Language Dimension of Affective Polarization  7. Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Manuel Almagro is Assistant Professor at the University of Valencia, Spain. His main areas of research are political epistemology, political philosophy of language, and xphil. His published work has appeared in Hypatia, Metaphilosophy, Synthese, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Philosophy and Social Criticism, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, among others.