Abstract
First, I develop an account of the nature of moods and the relation of mood to emotion and temperament. This account stresses that social and individual moods are marked by four features: They are transactional - neither wholly subjective nor objective; in experience they shade into and blur back and forth with feeling and temperament; they are ambient and atmospheric, a habit of living ·in the world more expansive than a habit of mind; and, whether conscious or not, moods have causes that, if known, may be manipulated to advance both personal and political ends. Second, I focus on a particular mood that, following the novelist John Barth, I term "weatherlessness." I then distinguish weatherlessness from both learned helplessness and manufactured consent. Third, I conclude by showing ways in which weatherlessness is fatal to democracy, to government of, by, and for the people. Here I suggest ways in which weatherlessness can be a tool used by authoritarian regimes, including those that disguise themselves as democracies.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.28.06
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Stuhr, John J.
(2019)
"Weatherlessness: Affect, Mood, Temperament, the Death of the Will, and Politics,"
disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 28, Article 10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.28.06
Available at:
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol28/iss1/10
