Abstract

A conception of fear as a negative emotion in politics is unsatisfactory. There are threats to democracy that should probably be feared. This paper defends the claim that a more nuanced normative assessment requires distinguishing between fears that are anti-political and those that are properly political. I propose two criteria to discern the sense in which certain fears may be appropriate in political life. Likewise, I argue that an analysis of fear in politics requires acknowledging our non-ideal selves (specifically, our cognitive and social biases) to better understand the dangers and potentialities present in the collective mobilization of fear in the public realm.