Download This PaperPassion [,] Trumps Reason: Populism and the Logic of Port-Royal
Theorein: Revista de ciencias Sociales, no. 1, vol. IV, 2019. Quito, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador
23 Pages Posted: 27 May 2020
Date Written: January 30, 2019
Abstract
The vast majority of critiques to the populist discourse – especially those uttered in the context of political elections - tend to reduce it to an appeal to, or an instrumentalization of, affects and passions. Thus, populism is usually understood as the opposite of liberal enlightened discourse and, therefore, as an attack on the liberal democracies that were constructed thereupon. In this paper, it is my contention that, beyond the simple dichotomy between a discourse based on reason and another that confronts it by appealing to the irrational, populist discourse is the practical display, in the public realm, of another type of reason – in which the foundation of ultimate certainty lies not in consensus but in the individual – which has proven to be more efficient in the political terrain than its enlightened counterpart.
Keywords: Populism, Logic, Port-Royal, Reason, Liberal Discourse, Donald Trump, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Jair Bolsonaro, Elections, Policy, Political Campaigns
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