ABSTRACT
Expressive rationality seeks good reasons for individual action that refer to someone's enthusiasm, desires, feelings of sympathy and opposite emotions like fear, dislike or anger as motives. This chapter explores expressive rationality in the context of two public debates on questions with subjective relevance for the involved stakeholders. The first debate is about exhibiting a sculpture designed by McCarthy called 'Santa Claus'. The second debate is about institutionalizing a veil ban in the UK, which mainly aims at prohibiting the niqab, a face veil that covers all of the face except for the eyes. The chapter introduces these two debates with a short case history and exposition of all the arguments. It illustrates underlying quotes from the newspapers, a cross-case analysis follows, which further clarifies the concept of expressive rationality. The chapter concludes with a discussion, relating the findings from the argumentation analysis to current scholarly discussions on expressive rationality.
