The Rise of Polarization

Shortlisted for the 2025 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy

This book presents a philosophical analysis of affective polarization. It rejects the two-dimensional view of affective polarization and offers a multi-dimensional approach to it. An underlying philosophical issue throughout the book is that our political views are strongly influenced by purely contingent matters.

The widespread approach to affective polarization emphasizes the role played by two key elements: political identities and feelings toward the out-group. However, this picture is incomplete. Affectively polarized societies are also characterized by the existence of two-sided narratives drawn upon politically fraught issues, and by the increased confidence in such narratives. In this book, the author examines affective polarization as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. He carefully analyses the essential features of the phenomenon and distinguishes five dimensions of it: the identity dimension, the emotional dimension, the narrative dimension, the credence dimension, and the linguistic dimension. Along the way, he addresses questions such as: How many types of polarization can be distinguished? What are the conditions for a society to count as affectively polarized? What are political narratives and political identities? What do partisans do when they say that they dislike the outgroup?

The Rise of Polarization will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in political and social philosophy, political and social psychology, political science, political epistemology, political philosophy of language, and political theory.