Introduction

The phenomenon of charisma has been a prominent subject of scholarly inquiry in the humanities for the past century, sparking numerous debates about its nature and forms among sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, anthropologists, and linguists. A search on Google for the keywords “politics + charisma” yields a substantial and continually expanding corpus of works, including media and online forums that claim to present scientific perspectives. An examination of these documents reveals a multitude of assessments and evaluations, which can be broadly classified into two distinct and contentious categories.