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Abstract
This dissertation engages a question basic to modern politics: how might we contain modes of political engagement that veer towards fanaticism? I address this problem historically by exploring a range of eighteenth-century responses to the problem of "enthusiasm," a toxic mix of religious passion and inflamed imagination then commonly associated with fanaticism. In contrast to earlier scholarship presenting enthusiasm as the `anti-self' of Enlightenment, a pathology curable only through the stewardship of reason over the imagination, I recover a range of more nuanced treatments aimed at mitigating the worst effects of enthusiasm while attending to the social and psychological complexities underlying it. My investigation begins with the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's attempt to wean himself away from enthusiasm and contain it in others using a combination of Stoic pedagogy, ridicule and law. Next, I critically examine David Hume's attempt in his History of England to educate his readers about the valuable role played by enthusiasm in guaranteeing English liberties while and at the same time stoking their contempt for the enthusiasts of their own time. Finally, I look to Edmund Burke's deeply conflicted theorization of enthusiasm before scrutinizing his controversial claim that a dogmatic atheism could impel a person towards fanaticism just as easily as religious zealotry. The dissertation concludes by sounding a note of skepticism towards calls by political theorists for late modern citizens to self-cultivate enthusiasm as a means of revivifying contemporary democratic life. Behind such projects, I argue, lurks an unstated normalizing agenda inimical to the goals of democratic politics.
