Conceptualizing Extreme Beliefs and Behaviors: Definitions and Relations

Concepts like extremism and radicalization are highly contested. Their definitions matter, because they influence how we study extremism and radicalization and, in the long run, how these are perceived in the public debate. Rather than adding more definitions, this book explores the underlying challenging conceptual issues in defining, interpreting, and operationalizing notions such as extremism, radicalization, fanaticism, and terrorism. It explores four crucial questions. First, how should each of these extreme phenomena be defined, and what are the desiderata in seeking definitions of each of them? Second, how should the project of defining and conceptualizing these phenomena be undertaken: in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, or family resemblances, or common understandings in the public debate, or something else? Third, what is the role of normativity in defining these extreme phenomena, that is, the proper place of normative or even pejorative concepts and the normative framework of the researcher? Fourth and finally, how do the phenomena of extremism, fanaticism, fundamentalism, terrorism, and conspiracism relate to one another and to things such as apocalypticism, nationalism, cults, charisma, and state terror? Written by global, multidisciplinary experts, this text lays the conceptual groundwork that the other volumes in the Extreme Belief and Behavior Series will build on.

Rik Peels is a university research chair in analytic and interdisciplinary philosophy of religion at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and a Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research interests are the ethics of belief, ignorance, scientism, fundamentalism, and extremism. He currently leads the ERC-funded project Extreme Beliefs: The Epistemology and Ethics of Fundamentalism (www.extremebeliefs.com). He is a member of the Adapt Academy, which studies how societies adapt to crises.

John Horgan is Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University’s Department of Psychology, where he directs the Violent Extremism Research Group (VERG). His research examines terrorist psychology. His books include The Psychology of Terrorism, Divided We Stand: The Strategy and Psychology of Ireland’s Dissident Terrorists, Walking Away from Terrorism, and Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right.