Germaine de Staël on Passions, Politics, and Fanaticism

Over a period of two decades, Germaine de Staël tackles the philosophical dimensions of political fanaticism and our responses to it. Yet, discussions of enlightenment approaches to fanaticism typically ignore her contribution and focus, instead, on Voltaire and other eighteenth-century figures. Staël’s discussion of fanaticism has also been overlooked within scholarship on her work. This chapter seeks to highlight Staël’s contribution to the philosophical discussion of fanaticism. While accepting the basic enlightenment phenomenology of fanaticism (its dangers and its challenges), Staël launches her analysis from within her larger moral psychology. She sees fanaticism as part of a web of passions with which we are all familiar and suggests, from within this framework, a set of productive responses. Staël’s model is philosophically robust, politically relevant, and deserves renewed attention in contemporary discussions of fanaticism

Fanaticism · Passions · Political science · Politics · Theology · French Literature and Criticism · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

• A disgrace to humanity

  Kristin Gjesdal•British Journal for the History…•2026

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