Aesthetic freedom and democratic ethical life: A Hegelian account of the relationship between aesthetics and democratic politics

Abstract

This paper presents a novel Hegelian view of the relationship between aesthetics and democratic politics. My account avoids the drawbacks associated with approaches, such as Rancière's, that reconceive all of the political in aesthetic terms or, like Rockhill's, reduce the aesthetic to art. Instead, I maintain that the aesthetic is best understood as a distinct recognition relationship of individual freedom. My argument proceeds by highlighting shortcomings of Honneth's account of democratic Sittlichkeit and then addressing these impasses by integrating aesthetic freedom into the picture. The first two steps of my argument concern the fact that the form of life outlined by Honneth aspires to be a form of free life, yet his account of democratic Sittlichkeit gives rise to two dimensions of unfreedom. The first problem of unfreedom pertains to the scope of freedom. The relationships of freedom incorporated into Honneth's account fail to turn given social roles into the subject matter of a sufficiently unrestricted practice of freedom. The second problem of freedom concerns conformism. In a final step, I complete my argument that Honneth's account is unsatisfactory and incomplete by showing that aesthetic freedom is socially valid and thus ought to form part of our accounts of democratic ethical life.

Para além da legalidade: Direito e antilegalismo na teoria crítica recente

“…Com efeito, esse projeto parece cunhado de modo ao mesmo tempo pretensioso e redutor, pois procura abranger todas as dimensões de realização da liberdade e, simultaneamente, acomodá-las a um programa teórico preliminarmente limitado a três esferas de cooperação reflexiva. Essa pretensão tem sido atacada por deixar de abranger outras esferas de ação incapazes de ser recobertas pela tríade "relações pessoais", "mercado" e "formação democrática da vontade" -como, por exemplo, a "dimensão estética" ou a "esfera pública global" (Schaub, 2018;Jansen, 2013) -e negligenciar formas de funcionamento das esferas consideradas que não poderiam ser esgotadas pela moldura conceitual oferecida -nesse sentido, Timo Jütten e Bert van den Brink, entre outros, objetam convincentemente que o mercado e as relações pessoais não podem ser inteiramente caracterizadas como formas de cooperação reflexiva (Jütten, 2015;Brink, 2013).…”