Sorel: Ethics and Politics of violence: Irrationalism and Mass Politics

Abstract

In the context of the philosophical theories that during the last century began the critique of western rationality (irrationalism, vitalism and intuitionism) the article proposes an analysis of the main concepts of the work of Georges Sorel. In a constant set of parallels and similarities with the thought of Nietzsche and Bergson, the author attempts to summarize Sorel’s distinctive vision: the unpredictability of human actions resulting in the inability to sustain a political theory on a philosophy of history that claims inexorable and rational laws about progress of humanity. If this is coupled with the irrational element brought to the exercise of politic by the incorporation of masses, the result is a sharp criticism of rationality criteria supported by the liberal order and the foundations of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and the economy. Sorel claims that all this is, in turn, torn by the idea of ​​violence as a key driver of mobilizing the masses; and the proposal of the emergence of a new moral theory based on pre-Hellenic heroic values.