an email to professor Stephen White [with some explanatory bracketing for here]:
Hi, Professor White,
My Constellations [journal issue contents] email today listed your essay [““The Aesthetics of Democratic Power“]. I recall your name from my Habermasian days. I hope you get lots of positive response. Sorry I can’t be too substantive yet in terms of your full discussion, having seen your article just a short while ago.
Searching ’value’ in your essay, I think there’s lots of promise in relating aesthetic sensibility to authentic vs. inauthentic versions of appealing to moral-political values of democratic imagination. “...valuable insight...valuable resonance...“: I’m very attached to nesting political thought in value theory and identification with values in one’s life which carry motivation into political engagements.
We who don’t experience oppression in our own lives should want to appreciate the oppression of others as a matter of feeling shared humanity. These days, for example, the chaos in Ukraine (let alone Sudan, now called genocide) should enliven our demand that “America“ not withdraw from its soft power at a global scale. So, therefore, political power that we support must represent our shared humanity effectively. It’s a matter of feeling for the other. Indeed, we should need to “imagine the spirit of freedom and dignity that might have been expressed...“ by those who still can’t, yet may.
So, “the value of a democratic imaginary [at best] includes both an enthusing as well as a sobering“ feeling for our shared humanity, that “side of sublimity“ which is embodied by one’s self-identity.
In that kind of sense, “the value of aesthetic representations“ may be more than “one valuable source among many“ inasmuch as the choice of values may deserve to prevail over other values. And that may have an aesthetic character because the best values have such a life-orienting appeal for what we do.
I regard some values as having highly appealing aesthetic character because they evince the heartfulness of being persons, exemplary and admirable. Thus, aesthetic character is a result of the appeal of those deservedly prevailing values, such as “paying forward“ for the sake of our heirs, for the sake of humanity's future, the ordinary appeal of “something greater than myself.“ To “cultivate the ethos of subliminity“ follows from cultivating the poiesis of our shared humanity. (I see easy commensurability between Habermas and Heidegger.)
So, I agree, heartily, that “the embrace of an aesthetic-affective sensibility may play an admirable“—virtuous?—“and positive“—generative?—“...role in democratic life.“
I so agree that “an admirable democratic imaginary is one where an aesthetic sensibility“—or self-identical feeling—“of political life works in mutual congruence with the basic normative ideals of democracy.“ But I prefer to speak of motivating appeal rather than “animating force,“ analogously as I prefer to think of Habermas’s project as advancing the appeal of better arguments rather than the force of better arguments. (More educational excellence is the remedy to MAGA alienation from deliberative preference.)
The “capacious“ness of that belonging (that “sobriety“) lives, for me, in continuities of neighborhood, community, region, and nation in and for one’s sense of being a friend, citizen, and validator (voter) of election to power, rather than looking for or rallying political movements—though that has its value!
I've been glad to see the weekend protests around the U.S. against our bozo master of ceremonies, but what’s most remarkable is the degree to which litigation, that arm of Constitutionality, is constraining our homegrown autocratic moment. No wonder Habermas is so attached to “constitutional patriotism.“
I’m glad that your essay causes me to look to see what is your most recent book. (Sorry to say I have none.) So, I see in your essay ending echoes of your important balance between agonistic and deliberative processes. I think that “this dimension of“ embodied scale of valuing is the “dimension of the sublime“ most relevant to political life.
I pursue “our efforts to better attend to“ our potential for belonging in and with the scale of our humanity, from our living potential for making good family, good neighborhood, etc. to holding sacred America’s potential for excellence (the saga of American Exceptionalism made pragmatic).
That combats right-wing populism, in one’s locality where voting can matter, along with giving time to community activity. (Heidegger’s Being and Time can be tenably regarded as a study in growing to give time to care.)
“The memory of those who...have suffered...“ is best served by love for the future of our children and their heirs who may avoid suffering because we are “good ancestors,“ investing democratically, as well as personally, in their futures.
I'’m sure you agree that “the enhancement of democracy“ is a long and difficult challenge for our futures, more than a story of suffering to be remembered.
By the way, I'm glad to see notice of your book on a weak ontology. I anticipate that your sense of ontology, like all talk of ontology, can be just as well served by an approach to conceptuality. To my mind, conceptions of lived cohering may fruitfully (purposefully) bind together our belongings of personal, interpersonal, cultural, social, and political life through real engagements.
In any case, I’m really glad to be aware of your recent books. So, I wonder how you see Habermas’s work fitting in with your engaging approach to democratic values.
Thanks for reading.
Best wishes for your writing,
Gary
Berkeley
Soon after I sent that discussion, I sort of regretted it because my entitled tone (it seemed to me—as if this stranger’s opinion should matter to him)—without having first read his article entirely—was inconsiderate.
In fact, I was so interested in his article, I wrote immediately, relative to a theme which is highly important to me; and my genuine engagement with his related contexts was an occasion for serious appreciations, albeit indicating how differently I’ll be thinking when I read his entire essay.
That’s analogous with there being thought evinced in silent reading, which I articulated and shared by limiting myself to selected contexts.
That improvisation was very useful for me. Lots of themes were evinced, thanks to White’s evocative contexts. My time given is, to me, a compliment.
Some hours later, I made a copy of my email and pulled out every theme for follow-up. 66 themes. Then I grouped them by each’s closest relevance to one of six proximal modes of one’s life: personal, interpersonal, cultural, conceptual, social, or political. Many themes easily belong to two adjacent modes of life. But the point of this is that my improvisation was very useful for some later explicating of that 6-mode continuum.
What’s a good (better, best) way of understanding political life relative to social life? social to political, cultural to social, etc.
Of course the realities of one’s personal life and interpersonal life are likely distant from what’s overtly political, usually (and non-professionally).
So much can be said about living relative to such a continuum of value domains.
