The Philosophy of Fanaticism

Leo Townsend is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna and the principal investigator of a project on group speech and group silencing, funded by the Austrian Science Fund. He works on social epistemology, collective intentionality and speech theory. Ruth Rebecca Tietjen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen and works on a project on antagonistic political emotions, funded by the Austrian Science Fund. She is working on political and existential phenomena such as religious zeal, fanaticism, populism, loneliness, and melancholia. Hans Bernhard Schmid is a professor of Political and Social Philosophy at the University of Vienna. His most recent book is Evil in Joint Action: The Ethics of Hate and the Sociology of Original Sin (Routledge, 2020). Michael Staudigl works as a senior lecturer and researcher at the philosophy department, University of Vienna, and scientific associate at the Research centre for religion and transformation (RaT). Between 2003 and 2010 he was visiting fellow at IWM, Vienna. Among his most important publications is Phänomenologie der Gewalt (2015).

Chapter 1. Introduction to the Philosophy of Fanaticism

Ruth Rebecca Tietjen and Leo Townsend

Part I. The Epistemic Dimension

Chapter 2. Fanaticism: For and Against

Quassim Cassam

Chapter 3. Can Changing Our Minds Make Us Fanatic? Belief Revision and Epistemic Overconfidence

Aljoša Kravanja

Chapter 4. Fanaticism, Dogmatism, and Collective Belief

Leo Townsend

Chapter 5. The Epistemology of Fanaticism: Echo Chambers and Fanaticism

Hana Samaržija

Chapter 6. Hermeneutical Justice for Extremists?

Trystan S. Goetze and Charlie Crerar

Part II. The Affective Dimension

Chapter 7. On the Social Constitution of Fanatical Feelings

Ruth Rebecca Tietjen

Chapter 8. Affective Dynamics in Fanaticism: Positive Emotions, Indignation, Contempt, and Hatred

Hilge Landweer

Chapter 9. Group Fanaticism and Narratives of Ressentiment

Paul Katsafanas

Chapter 10. Sacralizing Hostility: Fanaticism as a Group-Based Affective Mechanism

Thomas Szanto

Chapter 11. Second-order Reactive Attitudes toward Fanaticism

Anne Reichold

Part III. The Political Dimension

Chapter 12. The fanatical view of Self and Others in martyrdom and Jihad: The European Jihadi Agent as a Modern Scapegoat

Farhad Khosrokhavar

Chapter 13. Purges, Big and Small: On Violence, Faith, and Fanaticism

Hans Bernhard Schmid

Chapter 14. The Pacification of Fanaticism? Jaspers, Unconditional Action, and Nihilism

Jason W. Alvis

Chapter 15. Fanaticism and Liberalism

Frank Chouraqui

Chapter 16. The Fanatical Underpinning of Managerial Subjectivity: a Psycho-theological Journey into some Archives

Paul Slama