Art and Republicanism :: Government Republican Essays

Art and Republicanism addict Republicanism is contrasted with liberalism with special reference to the notions of nominal head, absence and archetype. The contrast is much conspicuous in the Platonic tradition of republicanism than it is in the Aristotelian tradition, the former being more likely to degenerate into some form of totalitarianism. Examples thitherof are disposed in accordance with the distinction between a strong and a soft iconoclasm, as it is found both in Antiquity and in Eastern and Western Europes quest for absolute presence oras in avantgarde artistic creation of modernityfor absolute self-presence of the break away of art. Having left such political and artistic utopias behind it, the pendulum is now baseball swing back in the direction of representation, but no longer in the illusionist sense which has dominated Western art form the renascence to the beginning of our century. Tied to the question of iconoclasm is the debate about the end of art inaugura ted by Hegel in the general introduction to his Aesthetics and resumed in our days. there are two traditions of republicanism, one preponderantly Platonic and the other predominantly Aristotelian. Both have several characteristics in common which set them polish off apart from the tradition of liberalism, such as the paramount concern for ethical motive in politics, or the priority of politics over economics, or the misgiving of growth and riches as well as the preference for indigence over luxury, proximity over distance andmost important from the catamenia of view of artsdirect presence over mere representation and immediacy over mediation. Still, surely the overarching characteristic is that of giving the common respectable of the res publica absolute priority over private interests with consequences such as the rejecting of factions andin the last analysiseven of political parties.But there are also differences. The most important of these is that in the Platonic as opposed to the Aristotelian tradition the issue of self-government of all citizens is, to pose it mildly, not prominent. If only for this reason, the danger of sliding into totalitarianism is greater in the Platonic than in the Aristotelian tradition of republicanism. Nevertheless, one could, on the whole, rank that totalitarianism is the sexual perversion of republicanism in the same sense that anarchy is the perversion of liberalism. To realize this, one need only bear in forefront that, republicanism being fundamentally suspicious of political parties as potential factions, it more naturally leads to one-party rule than liberalism does. In addition, the