The Missing Logic of Action: Emotion

Indianapolis, IN

The question of why an individual acts the way he does has been debated for years within political theory and is also a cornerstone to international relations theory. When looking at the reasoning behind an individual's actions, Markus Kornprobst proposes a resonance circuit in which he examines four logics of action: "consequences, appropriateness, argumentation, and practice."Kornprobst argues that the four abovementioned facets of judgment are all linked and too boxy to explain what is happening with judgment; he argues that a force, creativity, is what explains the unexplainable- human nature and reactions that can't be contained within small boxes because to do that is to diminish what the essence of human judgment; I however find this is not the case. There is a missing link to this group of reasons behind an individual's actions: emotion. In order to fill in the hole in Kornprobst's argument, and those who have argued these reasons before him including March and Olsen, Risse, and Bourdieu specifically, I will argue that the "logic of emotion" should be added to the resonance circuit as well as other documentation covering logics of action. This article will focus on the works of Zhu and Thagard, and Solomon among others. This article aims to bring light to the missing piece of the resonance circuit and fill the whole by arguing the need for the "logic of emotion" to be included in the discussion of logics of action.