("In a Public Voice - Aesthetics and Politics in Rawls and Cavell")
Agora, 1-2/2008, s. 84-102
I shall propose the following: The aesthetic judgement, as laid out by Kant, provides a regulative idea of public reason in a liberal democracy. Thus using Kantian aesthetics in political philosophy is a move usually associated with Hannah Arendt. Yet I shall now argue that the later thought of John Rawls brings us into the same region, even though his conception of public reason will be modified in order to allow for such a development (whether that will amount to a modification beyond recognition is a question I will have to avoid). This modification (or transformation) is at each step influenced by Stanley Cavell, but it is not intended as a representation of his thought. It is, rather, an articulation of my response to Rawls, though conditioned by some of Cavell’s typical themes, starting with his interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic judgement.
Agora, 1-2/2008, s. 84-102
I shall propose the following: The aesthetic judgement, as laid out by Kant, provides a regulative idea of public reason in a liberal democracy. Thus using Kantian aesthetics in political philosophy is a move usually associated with Hannah Arendt. Yet I shall now argue that the later thought of John Rawls brings us into the same region, even though his conception of public reason will be modified in order to allow for such a development (whether that will amount to a modification beyond recognition is a question I will have to avoid). This modification (or transformation) is at each step influenced by Stanley Cavell, but it is not intended as a representation of his thought. It is, rather, an articulation of my response to Rawls, though conditioned by some of Cavell’s typical themes, starting with his interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic judgement.