Politics and the Lust for Domination
"In the preface to The City of God, Augustine places the libido dominandi—the lust for domination—at the center of human existence. Residing in the hearts of all individuals, he writes, it explains collective phenomena such as imperialism, and is the purest manifestation of the self that cares only for itself—not for others, not for God. This self craves total control and recognizes no limits. It seeks to subject everything to its will, not just other human beings but also what counts as true or good.
The desire to dominate is unleashed by a sense of impunity, restrained by the fear of punishment, restricted by countervailing power. But it is purged, Augustine contends, only by the love of God. The inevitable result of our refusal to serve God is the desire to be God.
Not everyone can accept Augustine’s insistence that we must reorient our souls toward a God whose existence many doubt and others reject outright. But it is possible to decouple Augustine’s anthropology from his theology, as many great thinkers have done, including Thomas Hobbes and Friedrich Nietzsche.
I will do so as well, because Augustine’s account of domination helps us understand aspects of politics that are invisible or unintelligible without it. The lust for domination is the desire for total power over an individual or a collectivity. Control through fear is not enough, because it leaves intact the possibility of invisible inward resistance, as in the German protest song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (“Thought Is Free”). The desire to dominate extends beyond bodies and actions to include the intellect and will. By the end of George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith “loved Big Brother” and accepted that 2 + 2 equaled 5."
Galston, William A.. Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech (p. 93). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.
What Process Philosophy Can Learn from Augustine
One of the many lessons that process philosophers can learn from St. Augustine (354–430 AD) concerns a dimension of the inner life of human beings that lies at the heart of contemporary political and religious life: namely, the lust for domination.
Process philosophers often speak of two kinds of power--persuasive and coercive—lifting up the former and critiquing the latter. In their more utopian moments, they yearn for a world in which persuasive power prevails in human affairs and coercive power (along with the threat of it) is minimized. What they sometimes fail to take fully into account, however, is that there dwells within many human psyches—and perhaps within all—a desire to dominate, to be in complete control.
Augustine names this impulse libido dominandi—the lust for domination. It is, at root, a desire to coerce.
The political theorist William Galston, in Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech, argues that in our time more than a few demagogues are motivated by this desire to an intense degree. They appeal to emotions of anger, humiliation, resentment, and fear in their publics in order to acquire a form of complete control. In short, they mobilize anger and fear in service to their lust for domination.
To this we might add that some among them appeal to God—and to Christianity—as a means toward this end. Religion itself is mobilized in the service of domination. The domination they seek is not only control of outward behavior but also of inward belief and inner life. This is one reason religion, with its appeal to deeply held convictions, can be so potent—and so dangerous—when pressed into the service of power.
Augustine believed that healthy religion—indeed, genuine Christianity—offers a way of purging or at least mollifying this impulse. It does so by reordering the lust for domination, redirecting it toward the service of God rather than the control of others.
It is at this point that process philosophy may have something distinctive to say. It helps us think of God in deeply loving terms, such that serving God and serving Love—understood not merely as an idea but as an energy permeating the cosmos, centered in a divine life—are coincident. If, by contrast, we imagine even God as possessing a lust for domination, then our own impulses to dominate can appear as mirrors of the divine will. Under such conditions, demagogic tendencies may be experienced as obedience rather than temptation.
But this process-philosophical insight can have real moral power only if we first acknowledge how strong the desire to dominate is in the human psyche—and if we recognize that even as we critique demagogues, we ourselves participate in this impulse to some degree. It, too, requires purging.
We would also do well to remain aware that our own efforts to mobilize others in service to God, understood as love, may themselves contain a subtle lust for domination. We, too, may want the whole world to believe as we believe. Such awareness can chasten any impulse to imagine ourselves as “pure” and others—especially demagogues—as simply “impure.”
At some level, and by degree, we all partake of what Galston calls the darker passions. This is not to excuse demagoguery, but to see demagogues not simply as evil but also as broken—like the rest of us. Augustine’s recognition of the lust for domination in all people is one of his enduring gifts.
The lust for domination is not the whole story, of course. We also harbor desires for connection, belonging, freedom, and peace. We possess capacities for empathy and understanding that can temper the urge to control. But perhaps this tempering occurs most reliably, as Augustine would remind us, when the heart’s desire is centered on something more than the goods of this world—something more than the self, something.
more than power.
An ultimate beauty.
A harmony of harmonies.
What process philosophers name God.
Honor, Distinction, and Power:
The Satisfaction of Domination
Complete domination—of other people or of the natural world—is impossible. Yet domination admits of degrees, and even momentary experiences of intense control can be deeply satisfying. Domination offers a heightened intensity of experience, and intensity is something toward which all sentient beings, including human beings, aim. In fact, the satisfaction derived from domination can be more compelling than the desire for harmony, mutuality, or equality.
William Galston puts the point succinctly:
William Galston puts the point succinctly:
“Some people are not satisfied with equal liberty. Because they think themselves superior to others, they crave honor, distinction, and power and are willing to upset the established order to get them, even at the risk of their lives.”
Understood in this way, domination functions much like a drug: it delivers a powerful, immediate rush. One might say it is the methamphetamine of the dominators—producing an intoxicating sense of control and superiority, even as it corrodes relationships, institutions, and the conditions of shared life. Gaston emphasizes that liberals must understand the intoxicating effects of domination, and thus avoid the illusion that human beings are guided by rational self-interest alone. They - we - are guided by emotional self-interest as well, and the demagogues may well march to the beat of an intoxicating feeling that runs counter to pro-social values such as respect and care, but is nevertheless tremendously powerful. What is needed, he argues, are leaders who will recognize this power and appeal to satisfying pro-social emotions in a way that is as persuasive, perhaps more persuasive, than honor, prestige, and power,
A Still More Excellent Way?
Understood as an intoxicant, domination functions much like a drug: it delivers a powerful and immediate rush that needs ever-increasing quantities to produce the desired effect. One might say it is the methamphetamine of the dominators—producing an intoxicating sense of control and superiority, even as it corrodes relationships, institutions, and the very conditions of shared life.
Galston emphasizes that liberals must reckon honestly with the intoxicating effects of domination and thus abandon the illusion that human beings are guided by rational self-interest alone. They—we—are also guided by emotional self-interest. Demagogues, in particular, may march to the beat of an intoxicating feeling that runs counter to pro-social values such as respect, care, and mutual recognition, but is nonetheless tremendously powerful.
What is needed, Galston argues, are leaders who recognize this power and who can appeal to satisfying pro-social emotions in ways that are at least as persuasive—perhaps more persuasive—than honor, prestige, and power. Political life cannot be purified of passion; it can only be reoriented.
I believe this was precisely the appeal of the historical Jesus and of other spiritual sages. They did not merely warn people about the dangers of misplaced desire. They also set before them—through persuasive rhetoric and embodied practice—an alternative source of intensity and fulfillment. They invited people into what the Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians, famously calls “a still more excellent way”: the way of love.
Here is the well-known passage on love:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
Galston emphasizes that liberals must reckon honestly with the intoxicating effects of domination and thus abandon the illusion that human beings are guided by rational self-interest alone. They—we—are also guided by emotional self-interest. Demagogues, in particular, may march to the beat of an intoxicating feeling that runs counter to pro-social values such as respect, care, and mutual recognition, but is nonetheless tremendously powerful.
What is needed, Galston argues, are leaders who recognize this power and who can appeal to satisfying pro-social emotions in ways that are at least as persuasive—perhaps more persuasive—than honor, prestige, and power. Political life cannot be purified of passion; it can only be reoriented.
I believe this was precisely the appeal of the historical Jesus and of other spiritual sages. They did not merely warn people about the dangers of misplaced desire. They also set before them—through persuasive rhetoric and embodied practice—an alternative source of intensity and fulfillment. They invited people into what the Apostle Paul, in First Corinthians, famously calls “a still more excellent way”: the way of love.
Here is the well-known passage on love:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
The Future of Liberal Democracy
We live in a time when demagogues mobilize anger and fear in the service of domination, threating the demise of a fragile mode of government called liberal democracy. Liberal democracy is not the same as liberalism, and it is not the same as neoliberalism. It is a mode of government emphasizing
Often it is accompanied and supported by a free press, independent judiciary, and independendent media.
This is the central argument advanced by William Galston in Anger, Fear, and Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech. Galston contends that advocates of liberal democracy have been hindered by two persistent illusions that prevent them from fully grasping the danger. One is the belief that liberal democracy represents an inevitable endpoint of human history, rather than a contingent and fragile political achievement. The other is the assumption that human beings are, at their core, rational agents oriented toward enlightened self-interest, with anger, fear, and other passions playing only a secondary role in political life.
Against these illusions, Galston insists that the passions are not peripheral to politics but central to it. He focuses in particular on three forces that repeatedly shape political life. The first is anger, which often takes the form of resentment, humiliation, and hatred, especially under conditions of perceived loss or injury. The second is what he calls “fear and its family,” a range of emotions that narrow moral imagination, heighten threat perception, and render individuals and communities especially vulnerable to manipulation. These dark passions can be experienced not only individually but collectively. Entire nations, for example, can come to feel humiliated by how they have been treated by others and may come to desire revenge. The third force is what Augustine famously called the libido dominandi—the desire to dominate others. This impulse, Galston argues, is present to some degree in all human beings but unevenly distributed, with some individuals and movements far more strongly motivated by domination than others. When anger and fear are deliberately mobilized and fused with this drive to dominate, they become powerful instruments of political control.
In the introduction, Galston further argues that liberal democracy is anything but natural; indeed, it goes against the grain of many deeply rooted human tendencies. It requires citizens to coexist with difference at close range, even though a more natural impulse is to want the social and cultural space around us to reflect who we are and what we value. Likewise, it is natural to assume that the views of the majority should prevail. Liberal democracy deliberately limits this impulse by placing constraints on majority rule and by protecting minorities whose beliefs, identities, or ways of life do not align with those of the majority.
A recognition of the enduring role of the passions also subverts some of the hopes that have long animated advocates of liberal democracy—most notably, hopes for the permanent moral improvement of humankind. If the darker passions—anger, resentment, humiliation, fear, and the desire to dominate—are not historical residues destined to fade away but relatively permanent features of human life, perhaps inherited from our distant evolutionary past where they served functions of survival, then the prospect of any lasting moral transformation must be viewed with skepticism. Political progress, on this account, is always provisional. Liberal democracy cannot assume that these passions will be overcome once and for all; it must instead reckon with their persistence and continually devise ways to contain, redirect, and restrain them.
Central to Galston’s analysis is the role of political speech in either soothing or mobilizing these darker passions. Political language is never emotionally neutral. It can acknowledge fear without inflaming it, name grievances without hardening them into resentment, and give voice to anger in ways that seek redress rather than domination. But it can also do the opposite. When political speech frames difference as threat, loss as humiliation, or compromise as betrayal, it activates fear and anger in their most corrosive forms. In such cases, rhetoric does not merely reflect existing passions; it amplifies and organizes them, directing them toward enemies and placing them in the service of domination. For this reason, Galston cautions against the liberal tendency to rely solely on accomplishments—on what has been done—in the hope that policies or outcomes will speak for themselves. Deeds alone rarely transform political life. Without persuasive rhetoric capable of engaging the passions constructively, even genuine achievements can fail to secure allegiance or inspire democratic commitment.
- Limited majority rule – Democratic majorities govern, but their power is deliberately constrained.
- Protection of individual rights – Fundamental rights are secured against infringement by popular majorities.
- Zones of personal privacy – Certain spheres of life are insulated from political control or coercion.
- Constitutional constraints – Governance is shaped by constitutional frameworks, both written and unwritten.
- Rule of law – Political power is exercised through stable, general, and publicly known legal rules rather than arbitrary will.
- Minority protection – Groups and individuals outside the majority are safeguarded against exclusion or domination.
Often it is accompanied and supported by a free press, independent judiciary, and independendent media.
This is the central argument advanced by William Galston in Anger, Fear, and Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech. Galston contends that advocates of liberal democracy have been hindered by two persistent illusions that prevent them from fully grasping the danger. One is the belief that liberal democracy represents an inevitable endpoint of human history, rather than a contingent and fragile political achievement. The other is the assumption that human beings are, at their core, rational agents oriented toward enlightened self-interest, with anger, fear, and other passions playing only a secondary role in political life.
Against these illusions, Galston insists that the passions are not peripheral to politics but central to it. He focuses in particular on three forces that repeatedly shape political life. The first is anger, which often takes the form of resentment, humiliation, and hatred, especially under conditions of perceived loss or injury. The second is what he calls “fear and its family,” a range of emotions that narrow moral imagination, heighten threat perception, and render individuals and communities especially vulnerable to manipulation. These dark passions can be experienced not only individually but collectively. Entire nations, for example, can come to feel humiliated by how they have been treated by others and may come to desire revenge. The third force is what Augustine famously called the libido dominandi—the desire to dominate others. This impulse, Galston argues, is present to some degree in all human beings but unevenly distributed, with some individuals and movements far more strongly motivated by domination than others. When anger and fear are deliberately mobilized and fused with this drive to dominate, they become powerful instruments of political control.
In the introduction, Galston further argues that liberal democracy is anything but natural; indeed, it goes against the grain of many deeply rooted human tendencies. It requires citizens to coexist with difference at close range, even though a more natural impulse is to want the social and cultural space around us to reflect who we are and what we value. Likewise, it is natural to assume that the views of the majority should prevail. Liberal democracy deliberately limits this impulse by placing constraints on majority rule and by protecting minorities whose beliefs, identities, or ways of life do not align with those of the majority.
A recognition of the enduring role of the passions also subverts some of the hopes that have long animated advocates of liberal democracy—most notably, hopes for the permanent moral improvement of humankind. If the darker passions—anger, resentment, humiliation, fear, and the desire to dominate—are not historical residues destined to fade away but relatively permanent features of human life, perhaps inherited from our distant evolutionary past where they served functions of survival, then the prospect of any lasting moral transformation must be viewed with skepticism. Political progress, on this account, is always provisional. Liberal democracy cannot assume that these passions will be overcome once and for all; it must instead reckon with their persistence and continually devise ways to contain, redirect, and restrain them.
Central to Galston’s analysis is the role of political speech in either soothing or mobilizing these darker passions. Political language is never emotionally neutral. It can acknowledge fear without inflaming it, name grievances without hardening them into resentment, and give voice to anger in ways that seek redress rather than domination. But it can also do the opposite. When political speech frames difference as threat, loss as humiliation, or compromise as betrayal, it activates fear and anger in their most corrosive forms. In such cases, rhetoric does not merely reflect existing passions; it amplifies and organizes them, directing them toward enemies and placing them in the service of domination. For this reason, Galston cautions against the liberal tendency to rely solely on accomplishments—on what has been done—in the hope that policies or outcomes will speak for themselves. Deeds alone rarely transform political life. Without persuasive rhetoric capable of engaging the passions constructively, even genuine achievements can fail to secure allegiance or inspire democratic commitment.
Interview with William Galston
on Anger, Fear, and Domination
Liberalism orients itself around the idea of self-interest tempered by reason, with the addition of civically useful emotions such as patriotism, self-sacrifice, and empathy. But the politics dominating much of the world shows that these ideals are not enough. William A. Galston argues that the defense of liberal democracy requires understanding the dark forces whose impact on political life liberal democratic institutions seek to mute: the emotions of fear, humiliation, anger, resentment, and hatred, and the drive to dominate. In hard or threatening times, it is these dark passions that most reliably persuade people and move them to action—whether voting or violence.
Throughout the democratic world, these institutional defenses are now being tested by a new generation of demagogues. With a keen awareness of the stakes, Galston explains why countering this dangerous development requires not only more responsive public policies but persuasive rhetoric and a realistic conception of political psychology—one that is free of the illusion that reason or affirmative sentiments such as empathy, solidarity, and love can reliably dominate public affairs.
Throughout the democratic world, these institutional defenses are now being tested by a new generation of demagogues. With a keen awareness of the stakes, Galston explains why countering this dangerous development requires not only more responsive public policies but persuasive rhetoric and a realistic conception of political psychology—one that is free of the illusion that reason or affirmative sentiments such as empathy, solidarity, and love can reliably dominate public affairs.
William A. Galston holds the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, where he serves as a senior fellow. His books include Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy. He lives in Bethesda, MD.
Demagogue (Etymology and Meaning)
The word demagogue comes from ancient Greek. It is formed from two roots:
Taken together, δῆμαγωγός (dēmagōgós) literally means “leader of the people.”
The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes two principal meanings:
This dual meaning reflects the term’s historical development: what begins as democratic leadership can, under certain conditions, slide into manipulation and domination through emotional appeal rather than reasoned judgment.
- δῆμος (dēmos) — “the people,” especially the common people or the citizen body
- ἀγωγός (agōgós) — “leader” or “guide,” from ἄγειν (agein), meaning “to lead,” “drive,” or “conduct”
Taken together, δῆμαγωγός (dēmagōgós) literally means “leader of the people.”
The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes two principal meanings:
- Historical / neutral sense: In ancient times, a leader of the people; a popular leader or orator who espoused the cause of the people against other parties or elites within the state.
- Pejorative sense: A leader of a popular faction or of the mob; a political agitator who appeals to the passions and prejudices of the people in order to gain power or advance personal interests—an unprincipled or factious popular orator.
This dual meaning reflects the term’s historical development: what begins as democratic leadership can, under certain conditions, slide into manipulation and domination through emotional appeal rather than reasoned judgment.