What do you think?
Rate this book
The Political Brain: The Emergence of Neuropolitics
We have politics on our mind―or, rather, we have politics in different parts of our brains. In this path-breaking study, Matt Qvortrup takes the reader on a whistle stop tour through the fascinating, and sometimes frightening, world of neuropolitics; the discipline that combines neuroscience and politics, and is even being used to win elections. Putting the 'science' back into political science, The Political Brain shows how fMRI-scans can identify differences between Liberals and Conservatives, can predict our behaviour with sometimes greater accuracy than surveys, and can explain the biology of uprisings, revolutions, and wars. Not merely a study of empirical evidence, the book shows how the philosophical theories of, among others, Plato, Aristotle, and Spinoza can be supported by brain scans. Along the way, it also provides an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge of the organ that shapes our politics. The book shows that if we rely on evolutionary primitive parts of the midbrain―those engaged when we succumb to polarised politics―we stand in danger of squandering the gains we made through the last eight million years.
120 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2024
1 person is currently reading
20 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
Read
December 31, 2025(…) we become more empathetic when we are exposed to others who are unlike ourselves.
Maybe this is nothing new; indeed, René Descartes was on to the same thing when he wrote that "it is well to know something about the manners of different peoples, in order to form a sounder judgement of our own, and not to think everything contrary to our own ways absurd and irrational, as people usually do when they have never seen anything else." What the philosopher knew from experience is something that we can now more or less directly see in MRI scans. (…) keep this in mind when we analyze political phenomena that relate to one side of politics, such as uprisings by far-right groups. These groups, whether in Germany in the 1930s or in America in January 2021, are often driven by the politics of "us and them,"
Democratic politics in ancient Greece was the art of listening to advice and learning from others— the art of bouleusis. The aim was not to win the argument but to solve problems; it was not about ultimate "ends but about means," (…) Whereas political discussions in modern times (…) are characterized by point- scoring and being right, in this day and age, we are obsessed with winning the argument. 🏅
Maybe this is nothing new; indeed, René Descartes was on to the same thing when he wrote that "it is well to know something about the manners of different peoples, in order to form a sounder judgement of our own, and not to think everything contrary to our own ways absurd and irrational, as people usually do when they have never seen anything else." What the philosopher knew from experience is something that we can now more or less directly see in MRI scans. (…) keep this in mind when we analyze political phenomena that relate to one side of politics, such as uprisings by far-right groups. These groups, whether in Germany in the 1930s or in America in January 2021, are often driven by the politics of "us and them,"
Democratic politics in ancient Greece was the art of listening to advice and learning from others— the art of bouleusis. The aim was not to win the argument but to solve problems; it was not about ultimate "ends but about means," (…) Whereas political discussions in modern times (…) are characterized by point- scoring and being right, in this day and age, we are obsessed with winning the argument. 🏅
Displaying 1 of 1 review