The revolutionary mass mobilization that overthrew President Husni Mubarak in February 2011 poses some important questions for political philosophers as well as for students of comparative politics or the Middle East. It revives even if it does not resolve long-standing debates about the relationship of emotions to ethical and political choices as well as long-forgotten debates about the role of spontaneous mass activity in the face of modern structures of organization. It poses the question of whether we should at least supplement the idea of “identity” with that of “community membership.” A simple example suffices: for the first time since 1919 Muslim and Christian Egyptians came together in large numbers to remake the state despite a profound sense in the preceding months of growing intercommunal threat and violence. For political theories based on “identity” this suggests such plasticity or instability that it jeopardizes the very basis of the concept. A range of other theoretical approaches from recognition theory to the important work of Marsha Nussbaum on emotion in politics provides a better way to understand the Egyptian events. Egyptian intellectuals have also addressed some of these issues over the past 40 years in debates, echoed in the final weeks of the regime, about spontaneity, organization, the threat of chaos and the meaning of revolt. This paper discusses competing ideas of the role of violence, anger and mass participation in the work of Egyptian political thinkers such as the judge Tariq al-Bishri and several critics of his work over the past 30 years.