Does Politics Have Anything in Common with Aesthetics?

Posing questions about the relations between the political and the aesthetic, the author discerns two archetypal and opposing meanings of politics and aesthetics. He associates each them with either Classical or Romantic political discourse. The former is rooted in Plato: it emphasises cognitive truth about the social world; the aesthetisation of politics signifies an abandoning of aisthesis. The Romantic discourse is represented by ideas that fulfil regulative functions with respect to reality: these are representations of social reality, i.e. propositions about how to order it. In these terms, politics is a struggle or a game about stabilisation; it involves a notion of replaceability, i.e. of perpetually shifting relations between signs and referents. Aesthetics provides such politics with the means that make it possible for it to be rescued qua art (i.e as doing that which is possible, rather than merely that which is necessary); politics can thus be stopped from sinking into ideology, which permanently threatens the Classical discourse. This article discusses the means and the stakes of aesthetic concepts of politics.