If aesthetics are a starting point to ethical citizenship, it is worth remembering that starting points do not necessarily lead to their destinations and that the path from aesthetic perception to democratic sensibility is not always a straight one. Even when links between aesthetics and justice seem secure and predictable, subjects whose emotions and instincts are quickened by beauty often fail to arrive at their moral destinations, their ethical baggage misplaced and their capacity for civic obedience lost along the way. When aesthetics are charged with bearing the burden of representing...

If aesthetics are a starting point to ethical citizenship, it is worth remembering that starting points do not necessarily lead to their destinations and that the path from aesthetic perception to democratic sensibility is not always a straight one. Even when links between aesthetics and justice seem secure and predictable, subjects whose emotions and instincts are quickened by beauty often fail to arrive at their moral destinations, their ethical baggage misplaced and their capacity for civic obedience lost along the way. When aesthetics are charged with bearing the burden of representing and cultivating the mass, the people, the proletariat, or any of the various collectivities implied by the looseness of democracy, art and beauty seem that much more rickety, that is, contingent.