The Tactical Uses of Passion: An Essay on Power, Reason, and Reality

The display of passion is an essential and widely used tool of rhetoric in Western culture, passion is opposed to reason , and reason gives us access to reality, in the exercise of government, politicians must transcend reality and address the nonreasoning side of human nature - feelings and sentiments. F. G. Bailey offers an inquiry into the complex interplay between emotions and intellect by examining the political use of rhetoric in small groups. Bailey first asks how displays of passion - anger, grief, hilarity - are interpreted and how they are used to exert power over people. The inquiry moves from primitive debates in which emotions are displayed involuntarily to the most sophisticated levels of debate where passion is employed deliberately and artfully, in the concluding part of the book, he uses the narratives of several arguments - parliamentary debates in India, a squabble in California city council, and the (fictional) meeting of a government committee in London - to infer some tunes for winning of losing arguments by the use passionate appeal. The paradox that emerges is that though reason is upheld as the superior mode of debate, it must ultimately be trumpred by emotion, It is from this paradox that the underlying theme of the book is drawn the capacity of reason to help us understand and therefore manage the world around us is limited indeed. The Tactical Uses of Passion will be invaluable to anthropologists, political scientists, students of public administration and of rhetoric, and anyone interested in the psychology of politics.