SMU: PLSC-4370 - The Republican Hero (Midterm)

SMU: PLSC-4370 - The Republican Hero (Midterm)

Republicanism

• For John Adams, it’s the “Hardest word in english”.

• It’s a theory of Justice that demands three things.

• Just Balance: Something is just if it is balanced. The proper equilibrium between competing claims, rights, or interests — ensuring no party receives more or less than what is due according to justice.

• Just Condition: A thing doing what it was intended to do. (Writing with a pen). Humans do not have just condition naturally. THE GOOD LIFE. We must transcend away from the state of nature according to aristotle.

• Just Agency: Just agents living a life conducent to just condition. Living a life of virtue. Virtue meaning living in engagement with a simultaneous obligation to self (live a human life) society (the republic is a collectivist ideology which seeks to uplift everyone) and God (an obligation to do what is objectively good)

• Two theories of republican balance (aristotle and plato).

Aristotelian Balance

• Basic balance. A perfect equilibrium. Two sides of of a scale balancing.

• Balance achieved through the mean — virtue lies between two extremes (excess and deficiency). Justice is giving each person what they deserve proportionally, based on merit. Balance is dynamic and context-dependent.

Platonic Balance

• Architectonic balance = Balance of Architecture. Every puzzle piece in its place.

• Balance achieved through proper hierarchy — each part of the soul (reason, spirit, appetite) and each class of society performs its proper function without overstepping. Justice is this harmonious order, not a mean between extremes.

• Pyramidal structure:

  • Top — Reason (Philosopher-Kings): wisdom, rule

  • Middle — Recognition (Auxiliaries/Warriors): courage, enforce order

  • Base — Aquisition (Producers): desire, material production

The Platonic Soul

• Justice will be achieved through the balance of three elements:

• Reason (The Man) - at the top. Reason is the ultimate goal. Everything else is a leaky jar.

• Recognition (thymos)- other people to see and acknowledge your effort/dignity. Warriors seek glory the way a falling tree wants people to hear it fall.

• Acquisition: Your soul desires earthly things, but it can cause you to become greedy and beastly. Also leaky jar here. You can never fill it.

Architecture

Plato:

Man controlling the beast of acquisition and the lion of recognition and ruling over them with reason, thus achieving balance.

• This gives rise to the philosopher king, the top of his pyramid, Plato’s republic will achieve balance.

Homer

• Homer’s foundation for Epic Heroes.

• Honor is esteem is bestowed by others, and those who with honor should rule. It gives people social status.

• Plato hates this naturally, these men are Lions.

Moral Objectivism

• Obligation to God.

• Things are objectively right or correct.

• They are right across time and space.

Magnanimous Heros

• Great and Good (Greatly Good) (Plato’s Philosopher King).

• Plato: The Magnanimous hero is necessary to prevent something like Rome. Philosophers are necessary.

• Defines the republic as an analogy to the platonic soul. Architectonic and hierarchical.

• Qualifications:

  • Perfected in her virtues. She who is good and lives the Good Life.

  • She exceeds her peers in the good life.

  • Source of exhortation (an earnest, urgent, or passionate communication intended to encourage, advise, or warn someone toward a specific action or behavior to others).

• Philosopher King: The law giver. Perfected in all virtues, unification of virtues. The one behind the Many. The leader of the ignorant masses. TEACH people to be habitually good.

• Virtuous actions in themselves cannot be categorically good. This is what is with Homer.

• Knowledge of the relevant virtue: You cannot be courageous if you don’t KNOW courage, virtue comes from KNOWLEDGE.

• The Sophists: People who are fake philosophers. No idea what they are talking about. Not virtuous.

Romantic Heroes.

• Not good, not great, now what?

• They are transcendent and estimable in their authenticity. This transcendence is not universal like “The Good Life”. It varies from person to person.

• Obligations: Authenticity through the natures.

  • Self: Contemplate the self, try to know the self

  • Society: Also through authenticity. Human Nature. That which is good and in accordance to other humans. Estimable in that they also have the willingness to help others.

  • God: God created ambient nature, and we can look to nature to learn how to act morally.

  • The Sublime.

• Authenticity. Not “The Good Life ©”. Or one that is objectively good, but one that is authentic.

• Aesthetics: Known with the heart and Sentiment.

• For romantics it is Affect+Cognition. Not simply reason alone.

Platonic Criticisms of Romantics

• Perception can lead us away from knowing the true form of something. What we perceive is not always reality.

• We mustn’t get distracted by our perceptions and feelings, we must know things through the mind and cognition. We know justice through KNOWING not observing.

Perfection

• Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics.

• Being perfected in one’s virtues. Perfecting living in your second nature.

• Your perfect when your virtue is habitual, then you have transitioned to living your second nature.

Last Men

• Nietzsche: But originated with Hegel.

• The end of history - No slaves or masters. This is liberal democracy.

• The Last men think they are happy. They say, “We have invented happiness”. They are insipid human beings. He says that Plato and Aristotle want to create men like this.

The Order of Grace.

• Life after death, the destiny of your soul. The cosmic order.

• Understanding cosmic principles became the order of grace (Christian). Ancient philosophers also tried to live up to the higher cosmic.

The order of Nature

• Life on earth, it is the source of morality for Romantics.

• It can be experienced, perceived.

Humanism

• The idea that human beings can create a meaningful fulfilment on earth.

• Fulfilment can be found in the order of nature, so too can just condition.

• It sets itself up against christianity. There is a focus on the “worldly over the cosmic”.

Deism

• The belief that God created the universe but does not intervene in it afterward — reason, not revelation, is the path to understanding God and morality.

Transcendentalism

• R.W. Emerson.

• We come to know knowledge through moral intuition and individual inner experience rather than empirical senses or institutional religion.

• We know what is right because it is as if god speaks to us through your over-soul (intuition - knowing things without being taught).

Heroic Attributes

• Capacity - Someone must be capable of being a Hero.

• Vulnerability - Morality/Finite. The ability to sacrifice.

• Estimability. To distinguish heroes from villains.

• Incarnation. - Heroes are the incarnation of abstract values.

• Recognition. - Heroes must have an audience to ratify their heroism.

Estimability

• Heroic Attribute. The quality of being worthy of esteem — deserving of respect and admiration from others based on one's genuine virtue, character, and accomplishments.

From Class: Helps distinguish from villains

• Three attributes:

• Character: More conducive to heroes than those without character. Honesty.

• Motivation: Heroes are more heroic if they are motivated by selflessness. Problem - only the person committing the act knows the true motivation. You need an audience for the selfless act to be deemed “heroic”. Altruism is tough to measure.

• Deed(s): Unambiguous. Regardless of your motive, you still did (or did not) do commit a heroic act. Social utility.

• Not merely being liked or popular — estimability is grounded in actual virtue

• Others recognize and honor you because you have genuinely earned that recognition

• Distinct from fame or reputation — estimability reflects true merit, not public perception alone

• Republican relevance: In republican heroic tradition, the estimable person:

  • Lives virtuously whether or not they are being observed

  • Earns the natural admiration of fellow citizens

  • Serves as a model for civic virtue

Notable Aspects of Heroic Attributes

• They are not all equally discriminatory. The most important is capacity. Heroic capacity are the talents and skills that make one extraordinary.

• Heroes are extraordinary. They transcend the ordinary.

• Acquisition: They acquire these extraordinary capabilities differently

  • Genetics, supernatural intervention, mostly it’s latent and cultivated. (Discipline>Talent).

Capacity

• Heroic Attribute.

• Types: Tangible vs. Intangible.

• Physical - manifested in extraordinary accomplishment. The performance of such is a tangible skill that exceeds the ability of others ordinary abilities. This difference is relative. Basically greatness = derivation from the mean. Extraordinary physical capacity.

• Metaphysical - Goodness - Metaphysical capacity which is extraordinary. It is absolute not relative the way greatness is. You achieve it or you don’t. You transcend the ordinary life, first nature, feeding and fornicating, to the good life.

Heroic Currencies

• Greatness - Physical capacity which is extraordinary.

• Goodness - Metaphysical capacity which is extraordinary. It is absolute not relative the way greatness is. You achieve it or you don’t. You transcend the ordinary life, first nature, feeding and fornicating, to the good life.

• The transcendence to the good life is to the just condition and vice versa.

Vulnerability

• Heroic Attribute.

• A crux, something that grounds them, a flaw, an element of humanity. A flaw we can relate to.

• Sherlock Holmes’s cocain problem.

• Achilles heel.

• It can also be a quest or something to overcome.

• It can also be ostracism or exile. Exclusion is a common form of vulnerability.

• The ability to die.

Incarnation

• Heroic Attribute

• The embodiment of estimable (abstract) values. It informs a sense of social solidarity which is requisite to nation building. It creates a sense of us-ness. They speak to the values a group wants to emphasize. Like Captain America.

Heroes in Society

• Social vision: What kind of society we should strive to achieve. This is something heroes can convey and represent. MLK Jr. for example.

• Emulation: Heroes set an example for how people SHOULD behave, and people (do) emulate those heroic traits.

• Recognition: A hero is one who is recognized as a hero. There needs to be an audience to ratify and recognize the hero.

Recognition

• Heroic Attribute.

• Aspects:

• Breadth: A hero’s notoriety or fame in a given time. You can have a large breadth (large size of audience) but not a long career (depth - people remember you).

• Depth: Posterity/longevity of your fame. (Homeric warriors and their glory/legacy). Immortality through remembrance.

What do Heroes do politically.

• Three things… (most likely non-exhaustive)

• Redeeming: Divine pilot - one who steers the world away from corruption and toward a likeness of god. Redeemer of a corrupted society. Whatever that be.

• Defenders: Protecting a given society against “the enemy”.

• Leaders.

Quick Alignment Chart

• Two Axis: Aforementioned heroic currencies - Goodness and Greatness.

• Good + Great = Magnanimous (Plato’s philosopher king). Exceeding

• Good + Not Great = Common Hero

• Great + Not Good = Epic Hero

• Not Good + Not Great = Romantic

Epic Heroes

• “Lions.” - Plato.

• Great (exceeding in physical capacity and capability), but not Good (Exceeding in metaphysical capability, virtues, what have you plato and your denouncement of everything natural). Anyway.

• The traditional, archaic archetype for “hero”. They are extraordinary in the physical sense over ordinary humans. They differ in KIND AND DEGREE:

• Kind = They transcend the natural limit of meagre human beings. There is a Super-natural capacity, trait, ability. Superman being bulletproof.

• Degree = Natural ability which is exceptional. (Athletes).

• They easily turn into tyrants/timocrats.

• For Plato, they are Lions bullying their way through society and into the realm of success. They work against the Republic.

• Imperfect hero in an imperfect environment who is insearch of an imperfect objective (immortality through glory, battle, overcoming).

• Selfish Motivation = Honor (immediate material gratification - money, land). Glory (remembrance of your name in association with accomplishing a feat)

• Cautionary tale. Rome.

Magnanimous Heroes

• Greatly Good. Philosopher king of the world, the one perfected in her virtues (Active and Contemplative) to a degree of habituation.

• They are compassionate and care about the wellness of society and the welfare of others (intersubjectivity) as it affects their own.

• Two types of virtue: Active (When you act well, a good person, perfected in your last principles). Contemplative (When you understand Universals).

First and Last Principles

• First Principles - The way things are. The universals that dictate the universe. The Principles that make something up.

• Last Principles: Govern action. You Choose to do the right thing. You act in accordance to the virtuous mean, Not excessive nor, deficient in any principles.
  
  
  

• First Principles (Arche/Prima Principia)

• The foundational, self-evident truths from which all reasoning and knowledge are derived — they cannot be proven from anything prior, they are the starting point of inquiry.

• Key ideas:

• Known through intuition or reason, not derived from prior argument

• Everything else is built upon them

• Examples: laws of logic, self-evident moral truths, natural law axioms

Aristotle: First principles are grasped by nous (intellectual intuition) — the mind directly apprehending basic truths before demonstration begins.

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• Last Principles (Telos/Final Ends)

• The ultimate ends or goals toward which all action and reasoning are directed — the final purpose that gives everything before it meaning and orientation.

Key ideas:

• Where reasoning and action are aimed toward

• The highest good or final cause

• Examples: eudaimonia (happiness/flourishing) for Aristotle, the Form of the Good for Plato

Problems with Mag. and Epic Heroes?

• Humans are fallible.

• There is potential for tyranny. Alternative motivation can arise.

Republican Justice (Quick Review)

• Just Balance: A perfect equilibrium between two “things”. Aristotelian.

• Just Condition: A thing doing what it’s supposed to do. For us humans, this is living the good, virtuous life. Active, doing virtue, and contemplative virtue, knowing virtue.

• Just Agency: Being a good Agent. Fulfilling your obligations to self, society, and God. Living the good life. (Reason governing earthly passions).

Common Heroes

• Good but not great.

• The Good is not accessed externally (god/law giver), rather the goodness is endogenous, innate, we have the power of just agency inside of us. This goes against Aristotle who says that The Good must be taught, but the common hero says its intuitive to know the good.

• A transcendent life is an objectively good life.

• Not everyone is a hero, but those that have the courage to do so. Most people do not have the bravery to be good, and most people conform.

Friedrich Nietzsche

• Critic of Modernity. We don’t have morals anymore, we only care about ourselves, production and reproduction, and materialism.

• The “Good” is not a transcendent life, he argues. We, the last men (the herd men) that are stuck in the good life, that have invented happiness can do naught but blink.

• We CAN be great we just don’t want to be! We are content with this human condition.

• True transcendence comes from FREEDOM not goodness.

• I will. The spirit of the dragon slayer.

The Overman

Nietzsche's Overman (Übermensch)

A being who transcends conventional morality and creates their own values through sheer will and self-overcoming.

Key ideas:

• Rejects herd morality (Christian/democratic values of meekness, equality, pity)

• Embraces suffering and struggle as necessary for greatness

• Does not seek external validation — self-legislating and self-defining

• The goal of humanity — what mankind should strive to become

• Embodies the Will to Power fully realized

Simply put: The Overman does not follow values handed to him — he creates them himself, embraces life completely, and rises above the mediocrity of the Last Man.

Charles Taylor

• Marginalizing the order of Grace. Spirituality is missing in society.

• Mourns the lack of the Magnanimous hero. “We privileged the natural over the order of grace”. This is a christian perspective.

• We affirm the the ordinary life of Production and reproduction. God is the transcendent.

• Last men: we are living a material ordinary life which is not worth living.

• Modern men: “Man is sufficient”. Now God is merely being used as a tool to help us. “What can god do to help me?”. In marginalizing God, we have affirmed the ordinary life.

• If there are no principles worth dying for, then what’s the point in living at all?"

• Contrast and dig at romanticism.

• Nature has led us to the ordinary, natural life, can’t you see??

Boorstein

• Another critic of romantics.

• You all are just running from your problems by retreating into yourselves.

• The last men want experience without INVESTMENT.

• Now we have synthetic good. Bares resemblance. It’s cheez whiz.

• Synthetic Heroes: Modern celebrities - they don’t aspire to be good or authentic, but by being fabulous. Through lifestyle and appeal to the masses (rich and famous). FAKE HUMAN BEINGS.

Institutional dimension of Republicanism

• Republics were a mixed form of government. Democracy and Aristocracy balanced. Just balance.

Solon

• Law giver of Athens, the first statesman to realize peace was a collective interest.

• Put himself between the interests of the aristoi and the people to gain the common peace.

• Transferred virtue from the realm of the elite to the province of the state.

• Solution to Aristotle’s cycle of regimes

• Republic! Balance of democracy and aristocracy.

Epic Hero Goodness?

• They need some kind of estimable (metaphysical) quality to be called a hero in the republican sense. Thus:

• Three aspects:

• Coincidence of goodness and greatness.

• Cult of chivalry, the medieval knight.

• Goodness of Cause: The motivation for the quest or fight may be good.

• Heroic Dualism: Common mechanism. Initial magnanimous hero, secondary hero (who is great, but not good). Initial hero helps secondary hero to become more metaphysically good.

Cisero

• Example why Rome failed. Assumption.

• He was a Consul and Fancied himself a philosopher.

• He wrote “On Duties” a letter to his son lamenting that the pitfalls of rome shouldn’t be happening because the leaders were allegedly good AND great but they weren’t acting that way.

• This is the (Platonic) Unification of Virtues RIGHT SON??? People who are good should be great because Plato says that Goodness and Greatness are intertwined.

• Governing process: Like a wall - Justice is the mortar that keeps all the bricks together.

• Unjust men govern through fear and repression instead of respect and LEGITIMACY.

Unification of Virtues

• Plato: You know one you know them all. They are all interdependent. Justice is not a separate virtue alongside the others — it is the proper ordering of all three soul parts

  • When each part performs its function correctly, all virtues naturally follow

  • You cannot truly have one virtue without having all — they are interdependent

  • A truly wise person is also necessarily just, courageous, and temperate

  • Simply put: The virtues are one unified whole — justice is the harmonious condition from which all other virtues flow. A fragmented soul cannot possess any virtue genuinely.

• Aristotle: Aristotle treats virtues as distinct habits requiring separate cultivation. Practice.

• Solon: Republic - Balancing Democracy and Aristocracy.

• Cisero

  • Virtue is grounded in justice

Issues with Rome

• Roman conception of Heroism: Goodness and Greatness.

• What we see now is injustice (unnatural condition) and unjust rulers can persist through the consent of the governed. This is why it is important that the state teaches its citizens how to be just.

• Lack of Virtue spreads like a plague. Ambient moral Drift, unjust leaders forish under moral laxity. Roman society was morally lax and Cisero saw this as this as a cultural problem but it was most likely an institutional problem.

• Rome fell because it placed too much emphasis on the epic hero. They assumed they would govern in the interest of the people.

• Rome flirted with lions off the leash. Plato said, “I told you so”.

Clientalism

• Roman institutional problem.

• Institutional quid pro quo.

• Loyalty to the ruler. Generals often had their own personal military.

• A formal social system of reciprocal obligation between the powerful (patron) and the less powerful (client).

• Simply:

• The patron provides protection, legal aid, money, and favors

• The client provides loyalty, votes, labor, and public support

• Both are bound by honor and duty (fides) to fulfill their obligations

Key feature: It was not considered corrupt — it was a legitimate, expected social institution that structured Roman society from top to bottom, creating vertical networks of obligation and loyalty throughout the republic.

Problems With Magnanimity

• Appointing a philosopher King could descend into a hereditary position.

• People do not want to be taken out of their cave of comfort. They want to do what they want, not what is good for them.

• Oh yeah, he is mythological. Aristotle is like “I respect you Plato, but have you ever met any person ever?”

Aristotle’s Theory of Magnanimity

• Reading: Howland. Great Souled Man.

  • It differs with respect to balance, understanding of human purpose.

  • And unification of virtue.

• For Aristotle, the Human purpose is tied to living a Eudaimon life, fulfilling on THIS plain EARTH. Often translated as "happiness" but more accurately flourishing or living well and doing well — the highest human good and ultimate end of human life.

• Eudaimon Life:

• In class: Self sufficient - One does not seek greater achievement. Non-contingent. An end. A representation of humanity’s ultimate purpose. All other ends are means to this end. Achieved through the Aristotelian Unification of Virtues.

  Key ideas:

  • Not a feeling or emotion — it is an activity (energeia)

  • Achieved through living virtuously in accordance with reason

  • Requires a complete life — not a single moment but sustained excellence over time

  • Needs external goods too (health, friendship, moderate wealth) — virtue alone is insufficient

Aristotelian Unification of Virtue

• Life of active virtue (actions) and contemplative virtues (knowing).

• Must be taught. Goodness is valitional, by choice.

• Goodness>Greatness for Aristotle. A good citizen creates a good republic, laws, and citizen. Better citizens make better republic, big on active virtues.

• Eudaimon Life: BALANCE of active and contemplative virtue

Great Souled Man

• Aristotle’s Magnanimous hero.

• His adoration is an awkward fit at best, at worst he disrupts the balance of the republic.

• Problematic: He knows and recognizes his worth, not vain, but it’s not bragging if it’s true. Expects honor only from worthy individuals.

• The Great souled Man MUST govern even if he doesn’t want to as he cannot follow inferior men.

• He is excellent in all the virtues but also cautious about him. He must lead and be unconstrained. More of a King than a republican. They must either be banished or made king as he won’t live under the law.

• Is the Magnanimous hero merely an asymptotic heuristic? Aristotle thinks so. No one can reach the required degree.

Antigone

• Sophocles

• Demonstrates the issues that occur when you adhere to closely with the laws of Men (Creon) and what happens when you adhere to closely to the laws of God(s) (Antigone). Both are out of balance and there is a lack of Magnanimity.

Romantics and Religion

• Spiritual aspect, but they hate organized religion.

Specifics of Romantics

• Moral nonconformists. Society must be redeemed.

• Sense of justice is excited by the sense.

• The sublime is the catalyst for moral agency. SHOCKS you into feeling.

Romantic Obligation to Self

• Mastery, comprehension of the self.

• Affect moves the will: Reason obeys the heart.

• They are wholly self reflective.

• Fidelity to your affective core, feeling.

Romantic obligation to Society

• Defiant as a means of purifying society. Everyone join me! Byronic hero tradition, blasphemy of laws refers to the hero's defiant rejection of conventional moral, social, and divine laws as illegitimate constraints on individual will and freedom.

• The Romantic is heroic in her liberating of humanity from the shackles of oppressive magnanimity. She is the trailblazer that allows the common hero homesteader to follow.

Romantic Obligation to God*

• No theory of an order of grace for Romantics.

• Nature is the sublime work of god. Who exposes “himself” through nature as an alternative to revelation. Nature provokes the sublime, Art is a way of expressing and reaching the sublime. The final planetary music for mortal ears. There is a cosmic force out there and you access it through planetary music (poetry).

• Nature is a source of an affective spirituality.

• Nature is the source of art.

• Nature speaks to something greater than man, It is terrifying, inspiring, accessible through the senses.

• IMBIBED THROUGH THE SENSES PROCESSED BY THE IMAGINATION AND REGULATED BY THE CONSCIOUSNESS.

• In fact, the enemy is the biblical God.

• Romantics despise the mad men who have made men mad. The biblical god’s alleged moral confederates.

• Nature is the means to liberate.

• Nature is a way to discover virtue.

Potential Problems for Romantics

• Purely focusing on yourself (personal nature) is not admirable, sense of belonging and community is key for Just agency.

Art

• HUGE ESSAY TOPIC POINT!

• Nature is muse (artistic inspiration).

• Art is expression of romantic authenticity.

• Art is the ultimate presentation of ego, sociability, and spirituality. THIS IS SELF SOCIETY AND GOD!

• Artists create aesthetic comunion to share with others. Art creates a sense of us-ness. It creates a common culture.

• Society: Multiculturalism is predicated on these values. Born of affect.

• Art creates the appeal to join a community without legal/religious pressures.

What makes Romantics Great?

• Heroism in the acceptance of yourself.

• The courage to trust their own authenticity.

• Transcendent of hypocrisy and conformity and tyranny.

• Byron.

Romantic Redemption

• Shocking themes in romanticism: Social taboos (incest, what have you).

• Revelation He draws a clear analogy to Christianity:

  • Christianity: the worst sinner can still be redeemed through God’s forgiveness/grace.

  • Romanticism: the worst person can still be “redeemed,” but the redeemer is the self.

• Positive Liberty: Romantic redemption = self-mastery:

  • You accept what you did (or who you are); you do not let guilt, shame, or others’ judgment define you.

  • That doesn’t mean the act was good; it means you refuse to be enslaved by it.

5) Depravity as an attack on society’s constraints

• Romantic taboo material is also used to highlight the bigger perversity:

  • Society uses law, religion, and convention to keep you obedient; “sheep”; “last men.”

  • “Don’t think that; don’t say that; don’t do that” becomes a system of control.

• The professor’s punchline:

  • Focus less on the taboo act; focus more on what it reveals about freedom versus social constraint.

Apotheosis

• Romanticism often pushes a theme of human apotheosis: humans are “godlike” in their freedom.

Why the Romantic Hero is a Republican Hero

• Self: Self reflection, knowing the self, contemplating the self. Find your life that you’re meant to live. Not universal.

• Society: You the romantic must conform to how humans act naturally. Shelly’s Interchange of sympathies. There is no use being a dragon hoarding all your gold. The internal reflection has to be a MEANS to something greater.

• God: Through perception. We cannot believe in god’s word unless it is reinforced by what our senses perceive.

• The architect of Nature.

• Not the biblical god, but nature. Romantics obey the laws of god but through observing them in nature not scripture or revelation. For Romantics, you can only know through revelation.

• God is not to blame, it is the tyrannical interpreters and institutions.

• In Rousseau’s Emile: Vicar says, “What can revelation tell me that I can’t figure out for myself?”

• Art takes the place of religion.

Ambient Nature

• God has given us clues for how to behave through the scripture that is accessible through nature and other’s interpretation of nature which is ART.

• Shelly: Nature provided ques for the sublime, moral agency, devine in it’s own right. But not a substitute for social order.

• Volksgeist: the spirit of a people. Grounded in affect.