Art Metropole

#04840

Christoph Menke: Aesthetics of Equality

Price

$12.00

Date

2011

Publisher

Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH & Co. KG

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

ISBN

978-3-7757-2859-1

Size

4.9 × 10.5 × 0.5 cm

Length

32 

Number 010 in the series: Documenta 13: 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken (100 Notes – 100 Thoughts)

In his essay, Christoph Menke (*1958), Professor of Philosophy at the Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, focuses on the question of how and where there is equality between human beings. The author examines different notions throughout the history of philosophy, as well as varying political concepts, such as the contrarian interpretations of fascism and communism, and the differing reflections on the connection between equality and reason by Aristotle and Descartes. Responding to our current debate about the question of equality, Menke proposes a continuation through an “aesthetics of equality,” which radicalizes enlightenment’s assumption according to which all people have the same ability to reason. Here, equality consists of a force, an agency to imagine, given to all people—the equality of the possibility for an exercised and exercising formation of reason, which is not a given but a socially acquired capacity.