Conversations

Abstract

Arendt’s aesthetic politics invites the question: But what about reason? In this chapter, Josefson presents his reading of Arendt as a new model of public reason, and he defends that model against alternatives influenced by more orthodox readings. The chapter begins by considering why students are so reluctant to participate in discussions. Josefson suggests that their voices are more likely suppressed rather than emboldened by the dominant discourses of public reason: political liberalism, deliberative democracy, and agonistic democracy. Josefson explains how each primes students’ fear of being wrong, being judged or having their identities imperiled, and he claims that Arendt’s aesthetic politics frees people to regard themselves, their fellow citizens and their world as beautiful and worthy of love. The chapter ends with an example of Hannah Arendt’s public reason in action: the discursive practice of the Public Conversations Project, which stages “structured dialogue” around conflictual issues.