Sensus communis, Publizität, Révolution. An Examination of Kant’s Political Antinomy through Kant’s Third Critique (original) (raw)

2014, Philosophical Paths in the Public Sphere (edited by Gaetano Chiurazzi, Davide Sisto, Søren Tinning)

So, instead of considering common sense (Publizität) and the sublime (Révolution) as two opposite, mutually exclusive elements, we have to think them together in their interdependence. Taken together both are expressions of the need for a new form of community, of a new sociality which can reconcile the contradictions brought about by the epochal crisis of modernity. This crisis opened by the era of revolutions and within the theoretical horizon of the Enlightenment does not only consist in the social disintegration of the old feudal world, but also in the irreversible loss of the universal normative legitimacy of that world (e.g. God’s providence). A need for a new synthesis and for an universal point of social cohesion therefore arises. According to the perspective expressed in this article the strategy of legitimatization for a new epochal synthesis can be found in Kant’s third Critique, in keeping with his idea of reflective judgment: i.e. the search for the universal concept of a given particular. However, common sense and the sublime are two necessary moments whose tension and dialectic reflect the dialectics of modernity.