Political Theory and Aesthetics

Catalog description

How should we understand the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and how has this relationship been conceptualized in seminal works of modern and contemporary political theory? This seminar will explore these questions by emphasizing the contested role of aesthetics in both democratic theory and the modern history of democratic politics. We will read works by Hobbes, Rousseau, Burke, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Schiller, Whitman, Arnold, Nietzsche, Sorel, Schmitt, Ju?nger, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Arendt, Lefort, Rancie`re, and several other contemporary political theorists. (GOVT-PT)