“The Role of Affect in Theology and Public Life”: A Review of Joshua Hordern’s Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology (review)

In Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology, Joshua Hordern argues that the political institutions of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union face a “democratic deficit.” By this he means that there is not enough citizen participation in these countries to sustain the flourishing of democratic society in them (1). His solution to this is to call for a focus on the role of affect in political life. In this book, Hordern does not engage with contemporary theorists of affect such as Lauren Berlant and Brian Massumi, for whom affect refers to a noncognitive realm that shapes human life. Rather, Hordern draws on the theological vocabulary of Augustine, for whom affects are those emotions that orient us toward the good. Drawing on this vocabulary, Hordern suggests that political philosophy can provide the funds necessary to balance the budget of these communities’ democratic life: “A conceptual understanding of the affective dimensions of people’s engagement with their political representatives and the wider political process will constitute an important step towards renewing the sources of civic participation which maintain internally diverse political societies in reflective, deliberative, and active pursuit of not only their own common good but also that of their neighbors” (1). Much of current political theory fails to attend to the role of the passions in shaping humans’ communal life on Hordern’s account. Once political philosophers are able to account for the role of affect, they will be better able to construct a philosophically defensible account of democratic institutions, and thus also be able to point to a way out of the current “democratic deficit.”¹

Hordern’s book fits most closely into the genre of political theology.² Reflecting on humans’ political life in light of his own Christian commitments, Hordern charts a path between the communitarianism of a John Milbank or Alasdair MacIntyre and the agonistic political theory of Chantal Mouffe.³ This path, dependent upon navigating the tension between the “world” (the moral order partially known by humans) and “cosmos” (the moral order fully known and created by God), is traveled by subjects who not only want to know the good but also are simultaneously affectively drawn to it (76). Without an account of the joy that humans feel in partaking in God’s cosmic order, Hordern contends, it is impossible to defend a substantive account of political institutions and their role in engendering lives that fulfill humans’ nature as beings created in God’s image. Hordern compellingly shows the limits of liberalism and communitarianism that result from their ignoring of the role of affect in political life. I worry, however, that the theological grounding he provides does not give enough attention to the complexity of political decision-making. Before turning to this critique, however, I want to chart out how he arrives at the conclusions he does.

Against philosophers who claim affects are irrational and therefore should be excluded from political discourse, Hordern, like Martha Nussbaum, claims that affects are cognitive in nature and for this reason have bearing on the shape of political institutions and practices.⁴ In describing affects as cognitions, Hordern suggests that they contain propositions about humans’ relationships to objects in the world. To claim “I am angry” is to describe my relation to an object in the world, not to give expression to a feeling that simply washes over me.⁵ While agreeing with Nussbaum on the cognitive nature of affects, he nonetheless disagrees with her claim that compassion is the most important emotion for living in a democratic polity. For Nussbaum, Hordern notes, “Compassion is the essence of mature political relations since others with whom we share interdependence are vulnerable to suffering just as we are” (45). In her understanding, Christian theology, because it focuses on a God external to...