Res publica

Abstract

Josefson explains how Arendt’s aesthetic politics involves a radically democratic reframing of republicanism. First, he contrasts orthodox readings of Arendt, which envision an alliance between civic republicanism and a “liberal arts” education, with his reading of Arendtian education in the “republican arts.” He presents this difference by retelling the story of Earl Shorris’s Clemente Course. The res publica, in this interpretation, is whatever individuals make both public and property-like by exercising their freedom of the beautiful. Josefson, then, defends his reading by comparing it to other republicanisms: civic republicanism, Pettit and Skinner’s republicanism, and Margaret Canovan’s Arendtian republicanism. The heart of this analysis is an account of Arendt’s theory of property and her synthesis of Greek and Roman politics in “Introduction into Politics.” The chapter ends with an explanation of how the freedom of the beautiful clarifies the connection between beautiful property and empowered citizens in “The Crisis in Culture.”