Fear, Fanaticism, and Fragile Identities
Tietjen,Ruth Rebecca
Tietjen,Ruth Rebecca
Abstract
In this article, I provide a philosophical analysis of the nature and role of perceived identity threats in the genesis and maintenance of fanaticism. First, I offer a preliminary definition of fanaticism as the social identity-defining devotion to a sacred value that demands universal recognition and is complemented by a hostile antagonism toward people who dissent from one’s group’s values. The fanatic’s hostility toward dissent thereby takes the threefold form of outgroup hostility, ingroup hostility, and self-hostility. Second, I provide a detailed analysis of the fears of fanaticism, arguing that each of the three aforementioned forms of hostile antagonism corresponds to one form of fear or anxiety: the fanatic’s fear of the outgroup, renegade members of the ingroup, and problematic aspects of themselves. In each of these three forms of fear, the fanatic experiences both their sacred values and their individual and social identity as being threatened. Finally, I turn to a fourth form of fear or anxiety connected to fanaticism, namely the fanatic’s anxiety of and flight from the existential condition of uncertainty itself, which, at least in some cases, ground the fanatic’s fearfulness.
Description
Funding Information: This article was conceived and written within the research project “Antagonistic Political Emotions,” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P-32392-G. Work on this article was made possible by contributing, as an associate member, to Rik Peels’ project EXTREME (Extreme Beliefs: The Epistemology and Ethics of Fundamentalism), which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Grant Agreement No. 851613) and from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Research Colloquium of the Center for Subjectivity Research (University of Copenhagen), the research colloquium of the ERC-Funded Project “Extreme Beliefs: The Epistemology and Ethics of Fundamentalism” (VU Amsterdam), the 8th Conference of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE), and the Research Colloquium of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen. I thank my colleagues for their helpful and inspiring questions and suggestions. Especially, I am indebted to Paul Katsafanas, Charlie Kurth, Lucy Osler, Mikko Salmela, Thomas Szanto, and two anonymous reviewers for their enormously valuable feedback. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).
Date
2023-06
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Keywords
Anxiety, Fanaticism, Fear, Fraternity-terror, Politics, Self, Sacred values, Social identity, Uncertainty
Citation
Tietjen, R R 2023, 'Fear, Fanaticism, and Fragile Identities', The Journal of Ethics, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 211-230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-023-09418-9
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess