Clarifications on emotions and passions

Recent work in neuroscience indicates that emotions are a central part of what it is to be human and that without them it is difficult to see how the mind would be a (human) mind. They contribute to the fundamental definition of how we feel, think, act, and therefore, among other things, of who we are in our own mind's eye as well as in the eyes of others.Footnote ¹⁹ Neuroscience also stresses that rather than ‘things’ that individuals consciously will to occur, emotions are feelings that happen to individuals as reactions to stimuli coming from the environment and that individuals are aware of.Footnote ²⁰ In addition, they are connected with the intrinsic biological functions of the nervous system that are rooted in an underlying mechanism that works, for the most part, unconsciously. From this perspective, one of the main goals of ‘mind science’ entails trying to understand how the human mind's operating system, which produces emotions, is made up of many levels of evolutionary history.

The most fundamental of these levels is the need for human beings to satisfy certain conditions in order to survive. At the minimum, this presupposes to obtain food and shelter, to protect oneself from bodily harm, and to procreate. Coming as a superposition to this are the accumulated levels of history (somewhat different over time and across cultures) which enter into the formation of the specific environment to which individuals emotionally respond.Footnote ²¹ In this regard, once emotions occur, they become powerful motivators of future behaviors; for instance, either to experience them again if they are pleasant, or to avoid experiencing them if they are unpleasant. Ultimately, emotional hygiene, or mental health, is by and large about balancing negative and positive feelings in order to maintain functional interactions between the self and the environment.

Against this background, much discussion has taken place about what the different emotions are. It has involved disagreements over the list of basic emotions (i.e., emotions viewed as biologically produced and fairly constant in all peopleFootnote ²²) and whether there can be differences in the way basic emotions are labeled and expressed between cultures, or even between individuals within a culture. Consequently, disparities exist among the lists of emotions, that have been published and, even if many if not most of them include some version of fear, anger, disgust, and joyFootnote ²³, it is challenging to come up with a consistent list of emotions. Moreover, where to draw the line between the basic or fundamental emotions and non-basic emotions can be difficult. Often, there is a mixing or construction of basic emotions into ‘higher order emotions’ (for instance, anticipation + fear = anxiety) that are more uniquely human.Footnote ²⁴ Furthermore, the fact that the social dimension is prone to enter into play is another source of complexity.Footnote ²⁵

Now, if emotions and passions are connected, it is because emotions give to passions their emotive content. Indeed, passions are built and developed based on emotions. This makes emotions more fundamental than passions, and passions a derivation of and a part or sub-category of emotions.Footnote ²⁶ But this is not the only difference existing between emotions and passions. There are five other defining characteristics of passions that distinguish them from emotions; and although passions are ‘only’ a derivation and sub-category of emotions, these characteristics make them especially important, particularly in a social and political context.

First, passions, rather than being principally reactions, have more of a willful character. They constitute what could be called a deliberate ‘enthusiasm’ or desire for something, or someone. Take for example the expression ‘having a passion for justice’. It conveys the idea that a person is taking seriously the ideal of justice and is trying to make it, as much as possible, part of reality. This is distinct from simply feeling or experiencing emotionally something as just or unjust.

Second, the willful character of passions carries the idea that they have an active and purposeful dimension. To be sure, certain emotions entail this characteristic as well. This is the case for revenge, geared toward harming someone who has harmed the one seeking revenge. But this is not a specific aspect of most emotions. On the other hand, it is a more or less constant feature of passions. As such, more than being a mere state of mind, or of heart, passions are animated by the desire and intention to act and achieve an objective in the outside world.

Third, the commitment to action that passions have must be understood in connection with what is desirable/valued. Passions are a type of investment and engagement. This is to the point that, at times, actors experiencing passions are as much invested and engaged in them as invested and engaged by them. In any case, the essential drive behind passions is to realize goals that are perceived of as desirable/valuable. For instance, is the fact that some values are perceived of as fundamental that can make them engines and objects of passions as well as generate passions for certain objects, people, beliefs, etc. By the same token, key values are placed in a commanding position for the production of emotions that are being felt. They can have this power when they give meaning to decisive aspects of human and social behavior and reality. This is the case when values function as ideals.

Fourth, passions can call for and introduce change. When this happens, the pursuit of change that drives passions tends not to be for the sake of change itself. It is about seeking to produce what is viewed as a more satisfactory situation. Ultimately, this more satisfactory situation is always about people finding greater comfort in how they relate to themselves, one another, and their environment. From this derives two considerations. To begin with, this shows how passions, and the change they can call for improving life, are not necessarily a mere effect of emotions. Passions can nourish and shape emotions. For example, as part of the interactive relationship and mutual influence that brings together emotions and passions, fulfilling a passion can make an individual happy, while failing to do so can create unhappiness. But, in addition, the pursuit of change that drives the emotional content of passions to generate a better fit between one's feeling and the environment does not necessarily translate into positive emotions/passions, and positive change. As we stress elsewhere, in an article on emotions and passions in the context of war, the development of emotions and passions of resentment is part of this story.Footnote ²⁷

Fifth, passions are prone to go public and wind up on public display. The process of how they are seen, if not shared with others, is indeed a significant element of the nature and dynamics of passions. As a matter of fact, the tendency of passions to have a public character, i.e., among other things, to be visible if not loud and dramatic, has led to the perception of them being particularly intense. Furthermore, at times it has led to the idea that they are more intense than regular emotions, which of course is not always the case. After all, more often than not, the deepest emotions are the ones about which people, for better or for worse, are the most private and quiet about.

Material and psychological/emotional aspects as mutually constitutive

Based on what we just said about emotions and passions, we can see that the relationship between them and material aspects is not of one kind.

Specifically, it is not as if emotions and passions always follow or echo material elements in a dependent fashion, such as is the case when a disparity of power between two actors in competition can create confidence in the stronger and a sense of insecurity in the weaker. The focus on the dependency of emotions and passions vis-à-vis material considerations may have been part of a traditional approach, in phase with the assumed primacy attributed to materiality and interests. But emotions and passions can also have an active role in shaping the material dimension. For example, emotions and passions connected with drive can bring about the improvement of an actor's material situation; on the contrary, emotions and passions associated with apathy can facilitate the degradation of one's material predicament. Hence, and this is a point that is stressed later in the article, material and psychological considerations, with the possibility, according to the environment, of being both a cause and an effect, are equally significant.

This is all the more the case since (although for reasons of analytical clarity we distinguish them here) in the reality of the social dimension of international life, material and psychological levels are not fully separated. They do not take place without one another. Rather they work hand-in-hand. The material character of the social dimension of international affairs is not material without also incorporating psychological (including emotions and passions) aspects. Conversely, the psychological character of international relations is not psychological without being material as well. Ultimately, they are not simply intertwined; they are mutually constitutive. This should not come as a surprise. Actors in international politics, as in any form of social setting, deliberate, feel, decide, and act, keeping in sight in one way or another the objective of achieving the best conditions possible for the regulation of their life.Footnote ²⁸ And it is a process that is based on the combination of the material and psychological, cognitive and emotional elements that enter into the fabric of their identity and how they relate to others and the context.

The hybrid character of the social dimension of international relations, of the identity and actions of actors, made of material and psychological aspects, is deepened by the fact that it is not in play exclusively in times of effective interactions. Far from starting and stopping with real interactions, it is more or less constantly activated or switched on, so to speak. This is the case because in social life, international as well as national, actors cannot exist or act while ignoring others. Others tend to be continuously part of the equation. From this perspective, and now perhaps more than ever, actors live under the scrutiny of others, perhaps even in the eyes of others, in a state of ‘specularity’, of what could be called ‘existential reflection’. More often than not, this makes the assessment and vision of oneself and others quasi-inseparable. Much of the material and psychological, including emotional, pressure experienced by actors in the international realm, which can be, as is seen later in the article, positive or negative, is part and parcel of this configuration.

Needs, values, emotions, and passions

In this regard, one has to begin with the idea that the existence of actors depends on a number of valued needs and their level of satisfaction. Short of having these needs taken into account and reasonably realized, the well-being of actors, if not their lives altogether, can be placed at risk. At this stage, it is useful to distinguish two types of valued needs, keeping in mind that in social reality they can be imbricated to some extent.

First, there are needs that are more valued, more fundamental than others from a basic or physical standpoint. Here, we could say, to simplify, that a need creates a value. For instance, for individual actors, it can be food and shelter. For collective actors, such as a state, it can be security. It is on the basis of these needs of actors that rights are prone to emerge, along with the sense of right and wrong. This is how the needs deemed essential for the existence of actors are particularly valued and apt to be turned into rights, and to become a benchmark for right and wrong, as well as the ground for outlining the conditions for them to be fulfilled. Today, for example, international treaties of human rights indicate which key needs must be acknowledged and protected as rights of individuals in the economic, political, social, and other sectors.Footnote ³¹ It is in this context that emotions and passions can result from whether or not the needs of actors, and especially needs turned rights, are satisfied (and to what extent), and that these emotions and passions can have a positive or a negative character.

Second, there are the needs that arise from the values, cultural, social, economic, etc., of a given environment. From this perspective, social, cultural, etc. values create needs for the actor, which it is difficult to ignore or underestimate. Indeed, while such needs may not be necessarily as primary and basic as physical needs, they are also essential in the sense that the existence of actors can to a large extent depend upon them. This is the case considering that the needs deriving from social, cultural, etc. values express and project validation, social validation. It is in relation to them that the worth of actors and their existence tend to be assessed and ranked in a social context. Not surprisingly, these social needs and values, with their fulfillment or not, with their ability to be accessed or not, cannot be understood independently from the emotions and passions, negative and positive, that come with them. In the context of the political psychology of democracy, Tocqueville has for instance shown how the culture of equality, with its values and rights, can create a variety of, and partly contradictory, positive (drive, individualism, empathy, solidarity, etc.) and negative (envyFootnote ³², jealousy, etc.) values/emotions/passions.Footnote ³³

Positive and negative emotions and passions as effects of rights

That said, let us examine emotions and passions as effects of rights, both in their negative and positive dimensions. In this regard, let us begin here with a word of clarification on the nature of the distinction between negative and positive emotions and passions.

The nature of this important distinction happens to be somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, the distinction is necessary because negative and positive emotions and passions are clearly different emotional experiences. They refer to distinct emotional content and, at times, outcomes. As such, from an analytical standpoint, distinguishing them helps to introduce a level of definitional precision. This is useful considering how challenging it is to understand emotions. On the other hand, this should not lead to having a too rigid and clear-cut conception of the distinction between negative and positive emotions and passions. In particular, the distinction does not mean that there is always an absolute separation between the negative and the positive when it comes to emotions and passions. They can be intertwined. They can blend. For instance, a negative emotion, such as frustration, is not negative without being inhabited as well by the positive feeling (made of hope and expectations) that reality should and could be different.

Now, when it comes to emotions and passions as effects of rights which are considered as positive, their positive emotional content is linked with a sense of satisfaction. This is the case because they bring about a pleasant feeling, which itself is related to the realization of a need, possibly of a need elevated to a right.

We should however add here an important point, i.e., that this should never mean that a feeling of satisfaction by definition gives a positive nature or character to an emotion and passion. After all, some people find happiness and joy in destroying others. When this happens, the happiness and joy experienced by an actor out of bringing down, if not destroying others, are themselves based on the existence, in this actor, of deep-seated negative emotions and passions, of a sense of alienation, to a point that can be pathological. This phenomenon can be an aspect of social and political change, and it has been one of the key features of the ideologies of resentment that have flourished in the twentieth century.

This brings us to negative emotions and passions (negative emotional content, geared toward more negativity) as effects of needs-rights. It can be argued that they are an experience of pain and are prone to be the outcome of the non-realization of what actors feel are their needs and rights. Take for instance the case of a country that has been acted aggressively against by another and is involved in an existential war where its fate is at stake. For this country, winning is a need and a right. So think about the exultation that comes with its successful defense, and the grief that follows its defeat. This means that the experience of actors is likely to be as follows: the greater the fulfillment of the needs-rights, the greater the positive emotional experience; and the lesser the fulfillment, the greater the negative emotional experience.

It should be noted here that since the aspirations and expectations of actors can increase with the gradual satisfaction of their needs and rights, the satisfaction of needs and rights does not necessarily bring about a positive emotional reaction or experience. For example, a level of realization of needs and rights that would have been perceived as reasonable and a source of positive emotions and passions before, can now become viewed as not enough. In these circumstances, it can generate dissatisfaction. Some of the tendencies of the individual and collective psyche and emotions and passions in the democratic culture of developed countries, related for instance to a culture of entitlement, can in part find their causes in this state of affairs.

Emotions, passions, and oneself and others’ needs and rights

Emotions and passions, positive and negative, as effects of the extent to which the needs-rights of actors are realized especially apply to how actors relate to what happens to them. This is normal considering that any kind of experience an actor goes through tends to be felt and assessed on the basis of what it signifies for its life, including its life regulation. This is all the more the case considering that this is experienced through the actor's system of perception.

But this does not mean that emotions and passions are exclusively self-centered, i.e., only about oneself. They are also social in the sense that they can extend to and be produced by what affects others, particularly how others needs and rights are either realized or left unfulfilled. In this regard, the manner in which an actor reacts emotionally to the fate of others is largely based on how it identifies with them. The emotional identification with others can be so intense that it leads to selfless acts. In life or death situations, an actor can for example sacrifice its interest, indeed its own life, to save another. But such sense of absolute empathy and solidarity is rather exceptional and, generally, a system of social values has to help individual actors in extending a hand to others. This echoes the fact that emotional identification with others has the tendency to go from thick, for those near and dear, to thin, for those far and away – to the point where it could be said that the closest, the thickest, and the furthest, the thinnest.Footnote ³⁴

On this specific issue, let us make three remarks. First, although the mere fact of being human and of sharing this humanity should be a trigger for emotional identification with other human beings, history shows that this is not to be taken for granted. The variety of cultures, races, religions, and classes, competition among nations, and claims of superiority over others can create an environment, within and among borders, where emotional identification and, on this basis, recognition is excluded. This is especially the case in the context of conflicts.Footnote ³⁵ Second, over time, values, principles, norms, and forms of associations can widen the circle of emotional identification of individual or collective actors toward one another. At the international level, the declared universality of human rights and the philosophy of community and solidarity they express among human beings, regardless of their race, religion, sex, etc., is an illustration of this state of affairs. The building of security communities and friendship among countries internationally, based for example on what Charles A. Kupchan presents as the causes of stable peace, such as institutionalized restraint, compatible social orders, and cultural commonality, is another one.Footnote ³⁶ Third, prudential considerations can encourage an actor to relate emotionally with others. Identifying with others and taking the defense of their needs and rights can be a way to prevent threats from one day striking those who had passively watched evil unfold, thinking that they would never be a target themselves.Footnote ³⁷

The value of positive and negative emotions and passions

Concerning the value of the positive and negative emotions and passions resulting from the fulfillment or not of needs and rights, the fact of the matter is that positive emotions and passions are assessed and ranked higher than negative ones. One reason for this is that, as mentioned above, positive emotional experiences are prone to be the product of the realization of actors’ needs and rights. In that sense, the emotional elation consecutive to the achievement of goals is, quite logically, better than the emotional depression or alienation that can stem from non-satisfaction. Moreover, in general, positive emotions and passions are in their own right more vital for actors and, consequently, can be considered primary compared to negative ones. We could say that even prior to being generated by the fulfillment of needs and rights, they are central to the existence of actors because they express, celebrate and engineer what is required for actors to be enjoying their being and moving forward in a constructive fashion. As such, they constitute a need at the root of all needs. After all, no actor in its right mind, so to speak, wishes to turn the continued experience of negative emotions and passions, and of feeling miserable as a whole, into a life-long condition.

Surely negative emotions and passions can have a useful role in the regulation of the existence of actors. The emotional reaction that is described as fear is caused by a sense of danger, either in the present or in the future. This danger threatens things that are valued, whether it is freedom from pain (to oneself or others) or freedom from some sort of loss. From this perspective, fear can be rational. As part of a life regulation system, it alerts an actor of the existence of a risk or danger and can prompt proper evasive action. In another genre, the feeling of depression can be viewed as a signal sent by the body that something is wrong and that the problem is in need of being addressed.

But when negative emotions and passions constitute the structuring mood, they introduce the peril for an actor of being the captive of a downward spiral. If not tackled and overcome, it is the actor's ability to attain well-being and sustainability that is in question. It can be the case in international relations when two countries are dramatically at odds. When both vividly feel a fear of one another and both let this set the stage in the darkest manner, as with the constant fear of attack, fear of extermination, fear of oppression, or fear of simply never enjoying a basic sense security, the results can be catastrophic. It can undermine the prospects for cooperation and hamper that trust on which long-term mutual security is built. In the process, preventing understanding and accommodation among actors prevails, which in turn brings about further fear and a dynamic of mutual hostility. Ultimately, the outcome can be a lower level of security (with heightened international tensions) at higher levels of destructive power (since competition drives up the destructive potential that all possess), with the real possibility of destruction all around.Footnote ³⁸ This is what President Theodore Roosevelt, benefiting from the advantage of critical distance, noted as he observed the Anglo-German rivalry in the years before World War I:

Negative emotions and passions as producers of rights

By and large, negative emotions and passions are not the first choice of actors. This is because they are linked to a painful experience. This painful experience, which can be physical and/or psychological, tends to be associated with adversity and hurt when something is not handled successfully (for instance having failed at something that is viewed as valuable). This applies to those negative emotions that are defined as primary (or basic), the list of which frequently includes fear, anger, disgust, and sadness, as well as to those negative emotions that are presented as social, like embarrassment, shame, guilt, jealousy, and envy.Footnote ⁴⁰

Although, as was alluded to earlier concerning fear, negative emotions can have a life regulation function, once they become an overwhelming aspect of an actor's identity, actions and interactions with others, they acquire a pathological and counter-productive dimension, and can become a structuring (negative) passion, the motivating factor for action of the actor. This is why actors that are committed to good governance in the various affairs of life (guided by a healthy sense of self-preservation) are eager to avoid experiencing them as much as possible, and are furthermore inclined to stay away from or contain actors for whom negativity is a ‘way of life’.

Staying away from or containing the negativity of negative passions is all the more important considering that negative passions, which have adversity and hurt not managed favorably or in an healthy way at their core, have the tendency to be even more dangerous and destructive than the negative emotions on which they build. This is the case because they mix the primary and social elements of emotions with the general characteristics of passions which we referred to earlier, i.e., the fact that passions tend to be willful, active and purposeful toward what is valued, focused on change, and inclined to have a public dimension. As such, negative passions give a dark twist to these characteristics. In the process, they are unlike simple negative emotions, in the context of which negativity is first and foremost experienced by the actor feeling the negative emotion and is more or less a mere marginal nuisance for the other actors in the surroundings. Illustrating the saying that ‘misery loves company’, negative passions have an activist agenda that has the key aim of targeting others and the environment, thereby trying to reduce them to their negativity. In this regard, an important goal of actors inhabited and motivated by negative passions is, if only to be reassured, to have the world supporting the nature and dynamics of those negative passions that define them, and forcefully working toward making it the reality of as many as possible.Footnote ⁴¹ This can labeled as a form of perverse, extremely insecure, and lethal narcissism. In national and international politics, negative passions such as racism, anti-Semitism, and ethnic nationalism, and their destructive transformational impacts, can be examples and projections of this state of affairs.

In the process, the emotional content of negative passions is driven to produce and put forward an exclusionary culture of needs and rights. It is only the needs and the rights of a chosen few actors, at the exclusion of other actors, that are celebrated and pursued. Recognition of and access to needs and rights, rather than being widened, universalized and shared as much as possible, become the expression and tool through which the gap between the group of rights-holders, who happen to be also the power-holders, and the others (non-rights-holders) is engineered and cannot be bridged. In the most extreme circumstances, what matters is not some sense of balance or accommodation between the needs and the rights of a given actor or group and those of others, but the needs and rights of this actor or group, even if this means destroying others.

Positive emotions and passions as producers of rights

In analyzing positive emotions and passions as producers of rights, let us begin with positive emotions per se. On this basis, we will then focus on positive passions and the production of rights.

Positive emotions, such as joy, happiness, etc., for primary emotions, and empathy, sympathy, compassion, generosity, gratitude, admiration, etc., for social ones,Footnote ⁴² are of high value and, as such, are widely craved for and celebrated. It is not surprising since they express and project a significant feeling of satisfaction for an actor. They are also an indispensable part of a fulfilled relationship with oneself, which to some extent presupposes a good relationship with others considering that any relationship with oneself is made of relations with those outside of oneself as well. From this perspective, a reasonably fulfilled relationship with oneself is especially critical for, when it is lacking, this tends to be the product of a past bad quality of connection with others, but is also likely to undermine further such connections.

Actors disconnected from themselves, as can be the case when they are unhappy with themselves, have indeed the tendency to experience a diminished capacity of empathy toward others. The feeling of psychological non-satisfaction that unhappiness constitutes can lead them to disregard the needs and rights of others. This is to say that when there is little or no love of and peace with oneself, love of and peace with others are hardly a possibility. For if love of and peace with oneself tend to encourage love of and peace with others, war within oneself can easily translate into war with others. This is all the more the case when an actor, in a desperate quest to find love and peace within, is obsessed with its predicament and still unable to recognize and address on its own the inner tensions at work. Then, conflict with others can become a tragic substitute and yet a false way out. This is true for individual and for collective actors. In international affairs, the imperialism of Germany and Japan from the late nineteenth century until World War II can be seen as part of this story. Germany's and Japan's sentiment of (psychological) insecurity about their identity, status, and standing as recent and modern nations, fueled by injured pride, a sense of victimhood and resentment vis-à-vis the dominance of the major Western powers of the time, pushed them to overplay their hand and embark on policies of destruction, including of self-destruction.Footnote ⁴³

This also shows that a fulfilled relation with oneself, with which positive emotions are prone to be associated, should not be all about oneself, about one's own needs and rights. For instance, an authentic love of oneself is not essentially narcissistic or egotistical. Indeed, narcissistic and egotistical love, revealing a sense of personal insecurity and, ultimately, lack of love of oneself, is an obstacle to a good and authentic relationship with others. This can be viewed in what distinguishes bad (exclusionary and discriminatory) nationalist emotions from good nationalist ones (mindful of other countries, including by trying to elevate oneself but not at the expense of others). Hence, positive emotions, while being about oneself, are not meant to be a completely self-centered and self-referential satisfaction. As a matter of fact, at their best, the nature of positive emotions, primary and social, is to factor in others. Each in their way, they imply pleasant and some sort of reconciled interactions with others. Moreover, they are conducive toward more sociability because reconciled interactions with others require taking others seriously, the satisfactory relation and experience that this creates being an invitation to further constructive connections with others.

In the process, positive emotions are designed to be an enjoyment of and a presence to oneself that are open to others and happen through being open to others. This at the same time reflects and engineers the emotional identification not only with others but with oneself as well. Indeed, with positive emotions, having a good relationship with oneself and a good relationship with others, that is finding the right balance in a given context between what is owed to oneself and what is owed to others, are one and the same thing. For example, the power of an actor to respect and admire another actor, to acknowledge without envy its ability to achieve objectives that it would like to realize but are beyond reach entails the recognition and appreciation of the other's efforts. In the end, this presupposes the acceptance of one's own limitations, of having made peace with oneself about one's own circumstances. In this regard, for an actor to feel that it was given a fair chance to succeed and that it tried its best, irrespective of the outcome, can facilitate self-acceptance. This can prevent bitterness and resentment when failure is experienced. The actor can take responsibility without blaming others or the rules of the game.

Now, what about positive passions as producers of rights? Using the characteristics of passions in general to activate and put to work positive emotions, positive passions are central to the creation and recognition of the needs and rights of actors. Their nature and dynamics are geared toward helping to identify and produce the needs and rights that are likely to bring satisfaction to actors. We should add here that positive passions do not play this active role out of nothing. In line with the action−reaction or interactive nature of emotions and passions with the environment in which they take place, as we have noted earlier in the article,Footnote ⁴⁴ this active role presupposes that headways have already been made about the imagined possible, about what it makes sense to aspire to because it is highly valued based on ideals, but based also on the evolving realities and sense of urgency and feasibility.Footnote ⁴⁵

In any case, in modern democratic culture, for instance, the political passions built around the value-ideals of universality, equality, and liberty, channeled through liberalism and socialism (regardless of the different ways in which these value-ideals are conceived of in liberalism and socialism) have certainly played this role. They have contributed to the development of an agenda and a path for primary and socially oriented positive emotions, such as hope, happiness, empathy, etc., to be realized as much as possible in the context of the opportunities and constraints of the time.Footnote ⁴⁶

To be sure, this does not mean that positive passions cannot generate problems. Their engagement in support of needs and rights of actors can incline them, for example, to be one-sided and, consequently, counterproductive. This is the case when the focus on needs and rights leads to overlooking the imperative of establishing limits for these and drawing a line by setting up duties vis-à-vis others. Short of this, peaceful social interaction and sociability run the risk of being jeopardized. In the democratic environment of today, at the national level, individualism and sense of entitlement, and, at the international level, self-righteousness of (Western) democratic regimes, can be seen as illustrations of this state of affairs.

Nevertheless, when they are part of envisioning the needs-rights of actors in a socialized fashion that factors in what is owed to all actors enjoying a sense of legitimacy,Footnote ⁴⁷ positive passions have undoubtedly a decisive constructive impact. From this perspective, the combination of the pro-active aspects of passions in general and of the positive dimension of positive passions mobilizes by orienting the imagination, emotions, and activities of actors in three manners: it orients them forward, upward, and in an embracing or inclusive way. First, positive passions push actors forward in the sense that they are directed toward future goals. Second, this forward movement is also an upward movement. Positive passions have the tendency to aim at enhancing and elevating the possibilities of life, at attempting to better match what is and what could be, or what should be, at improving the conditions of actors’ existence. As for the third aspect, the embracing or inclusive one, it comes down to the fact that positive passions, while being about the well-being of one actor, tend to pursue this well-being by trying to identify modalities through which actors can come together, ideally in an optimal fashion, despite what separates them. The contribution to the empowerment of actors that positive political passions play in favor of the central values of modern democracy, such as equality and universality of rights, is a case in point. This is how we come to allude to the role that positive emotions and passions play in the quest for justice.

Positive emotions and passions, and the question of justice

Positive emotions and passions are part and parcel of the struggles surrounding the pursuit of justice, past and present. This is the case if only because there is no quest for justice that does not claim being committed to combating human misery for rights-holders. This is a crucial objective of any sense of justice, for example by mitigating vertical (like between the powerful and the powerless) and horizontal (such as among competitive interests) disparities that put actors at odds. This makes positive emotions and passions one of the constitutive elements of the quest for justice.

Against this background, it is intriguing that the recognition of the reality of the link between positive emotions/passions and justice has often been more implicit than explicit, when it has not been disregarded altogether. Such oscillation between what is implicit and what is disregarded has frequently happened in the context of influential schools of Western philosophy that have viewed emotions and passions, including positive emotions and passions, as not to be trusted from a rational point of view. As a result, calculated, and calculating, logic and reason, understood to operate at the exclusion of emotions and passions, have tended to be the ‘weapons’ of choice for securing the possibility of giving a foundation to justice. Immanuel Kant and, closer to us, John Rawls have by and large embraced this approach. That said, despite the poor track record of some of the major Western theories of justice at giving credit to and acknowledging the place and role of positive emotions and passions in their conception of justice, and at theorizing them as such, their goal is certainly not to make actors miserable. Particularly, they run away from emotions and passions that are deeply negative, along with the morbidity they carry. In other words, in spite of their lack of explicit recognition and study of the importance of the positive emotional and passion content of concerns for justice, the values and ideals they battle for reveal that it is not so easy to exclude entirely the relevance and importance of positive emotions and passions. Hence the intellectual contradictions and the non-systematic analysis of all relevant aspects entering into the quest of justice – positive emotions and passions to begin with – that the theories of justice presenting these characteristics are prone to display.

Now, the fact that positive emotions and passions are central to the quest of justice does not imply that negative emotions are totally useless for justice. I have alluded to this earlier. When they do not have a pathological character and do not render an actor pathological, negative emotions can support concerns for justice. For example, the personal experience of sorrow in relation to loss can help to comprehend the sorrow of others and, therefore, move one from sympathy to empathy. Sorrow can be as well an effective springboard to think about the circumstances that cause sorrow and about the means to prevent it in the future. The same can be said of the experience of humiliation. Experiencing humiliation for oneself can lead to feeling empathy for others having a similar experience and prompt looking for ways to change the conditions that makes humiliation possible.Footnote ⁴⁸ All this amounts to arguing that the experience of negative emotions can lead to a desire to experience and facilitate positive emotions.

But, by and large, and as we can infer from what I just said, more than negative emotions, positive emotions, and passions tend to do the heavy lifting when it comes to justice and its pursuit, if not realization. They capitalize on what the actors’ emotional empowerment calls for and identify the modalities to achieve this through the definition and implementation of actors’ needs-rights. In this perspective, the ultimate objective is to produce a situation in which actors feel satisfied in a manner that makes them not only able to endure and enjoy themselves and each other's presence, but also grow mutually from the cohabitation and interactions with others. It is about building a ‘home-community’ in which actors can be emotionally present to themselves, others, and the environment in general.Footnote ⁴⁹

It is true that at the international level, positive emotions and passions have had the tendency to be neglected. A realist vision and the negative emotions and passions that come with it (like fear, distrust of others, and sense of insecurity) have prevailed in the conception of what international relations, in particular among state-actors, are supposed to be. This is all the more the case considering that, although meant to be dedicated to justice internationally and, consequently, to be animated by positive emotions and passions supporting needs and rights in an inclusive fashion, international law has a problematic history.Footnote ⁵⁰ Rather than putting power at the service of justice, all too often it has been prone to put justice at the service of (Western) power, endorsing in the process a biased and exclusionary organization of international order and of power relationships within it. Frequently, the enjoyment of needs-rights and of their related emotions and passions of satisfaction has been reserved to a happy few, with the rest being deprived of these same needs-rights and condemned to the negative emotions and passions that a lack of empowerment brings about.

On the other hand, since the end of World War II, international politics, while continuing to be inhabited by major inequalities, tensions, and conflicts, seems to make more room for more peaceful, balanced, and inclusive approaches. This can be seen in the importance attributed to international cooperation as well as in the fact that international law has, arguably, become more sensitive to the needs and rights of a greater variety of actors. The fact that the latter has facilitated decolonization and that, in the aftermath of the Cold War, its norms of human rights appear to be taken more seriously (regardless of how much remains to be done in this areaFootnote ⁵¹) are illustrations of this evolution. This signifies that with gradually more attention given to the needs and rights of all, positive emotions and passions, like the ones associated with trust and empathy, tend to be acted upon and shared by more actors. And yet, this is far from being an ineluctable orientation, a done deal, so to speak. Since the early 2000s, terrorism and, the so-called war on terror have indeed allowed some of the worst negative emotions and passions, such as fear, paranoia, distrust, ruthlessness toward the enemy, disregard for the ‘Other’, etc., to make a furious come-back. In the process, it is the positive culture of democratic rights and emotions and passions, including that of tolerance, that is under attack, if not in jeopardy.

Emotions, passions, and change in international politics

The dual dimension of emotions and passions, as effects and causes, vis-à-vis needs-rights and the sense of right and wrong, and the fact that emotions and passions can express and project negative or positive emotional content, is crucial for the dynamics of change at the international level, as is the case at any other level. This is one way in which I briefly address the question of emotions, passions and change in international politics. The other way refers to a question I touched upon earlier, that is to say the fact that emotions and passions are not necessarily bringing about positive change. When negative emotions and passions are the main structuring emotional force, they can engineer a turn for the worst in international as well as in national politics.

Emotions, passions and the possibility of change in international relations

We saw it earlier, emotions and passions can be produced by the satisfaction or dissatisfaction related to the extent to which reality fulfills the expectations of actors. In this regard, it is especially when emotions and passions of dissatisfaction predominate that change is in the cards. It is for instance when actors feel that their interests are not adequately respected that frustration and discontent settle in and can amount to a call for change.

The modalities of this call for change anchored in emotions and passions of dissatisfaction vary with the context, particularly with constraints and possibilities, and they are not always distinguishable in a clear-cut fashion. Still, two forms can be highlighted here.

To begin with, and paradoxically, change can be triggered by emotions and passions of dissatisfaction expressed in a passive form. Feelings of disengagement and indifference can fit this situation. Indeed, when these feelings are widespread, if the opportunity arises they can become a force to reckon with and a factor of change. In other words, if it is more probable for change to happen when it is actively pursued, it can also result in part from the disengagement, including emotional withdrawal, of actors. Think about how totalitarian states in Communist Eastern Europe, which initially envisioned a mixture of mobilization and total control of people, broke down relatively easily in the fall of 1989 (although after decades of existence). Having ultimately transformed most of its citizens into non-believers and made them cynical about the system, in times of need these states found themselves without real individual and collective support. Even its primary beneficiaries, the power-holders, had somehow stopped to believe in the regimes and the bright future that their ideology had promised. As the support of the Soviet Union was now anything but unconditional with ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’ underway in Moscow, they did not have a strong motivation to defend their interests and the socialist/communist order.

In addition, emotions and passions of dissatisfaction calling for change can have an activist character. It occurs in revolutionary situations.Footnote ⁵²

How in the late eighteenth century some societies began to be reorganized within the framework of democratic ideals is an example of this state of affairs. As people became angry and frustrated with the old order, they came to identify with and support democratic values and principles that echoed and gave traction and direction to their evolving emotional fabric and deeply held aspirations. They invested in them especially through political passions, now taking new forms, meanings, and intensity. In the process, a legitimate state started to be viewed as one that expressed and furthered the interests of its citizens, so that these would be able to achieve what was now considered a materially and emotionally satisfactory life.Footnote ⁵³

Emotions, passions and the challenge of little or negative change

One more word on the transformative power of emotions and passions. It concerns the fact that this transformative power has not always been part of a happy history.

Concerning the transformative power of positive emotions and passions, the truth is that the gap between the goals they set and the reality at hand has rarely been fully filled. For instance, today, the world is far from having the commitment to human rights advocated by positive emotions and passions of solidarity seriously implemented at the international level. The 1990s have shown that the prevention of genocide, just to take this example, continues to be a work in progress.Footnote ⁵⁴

As for the transformative power of negative emotions and passions, it has been all too effective as one of the driving forces behind some of the worst political atrocities of the modern era. The ideologies and politics of resentment that have flourished in the twentieth century, such as with Nazism, Fascism, and totalitarian communism, are cases in point. And before that, the Jacobin Terror during the French Revolution presents an unsettling and macabre example of how negative and positive emotions and passions can mix as effects and causes, and produce aberrant results.Footnote ⁵⁵

This shows how crucial it is, when trying to connect emotions and passions with needs and rights of actors as a way to account for the possibility and dynamics of change, to be aware of the various pieces of the puzzle and hold them together.