Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Du Bois

What is beauty, and what is its political function? In what ways might it help undermine white supremacy and cultivate a more democratic political culture? Robert Gooding-Williams’ new book Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Du Bois shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois’ attempts to answer these questions during the decade surrounding the First World War and, in so doing, offers a groundbreaking account of the philosopher’s aesthetics.

In this event, Gooding-Williams will reconstruct Du Bois’ defense of the political potential of beauty to challenge oppressive systems and foster an inclusive democracy. White supremacy is a powerful force that defies rational revision, Du Bois argued, because it is rooted in the entrenched routines of its adherents. Beauty, however, has a distinctive role to play in the struggle against white supremacy. It can strengthen resolve and ward off despair by showing the oppressed that they can alter their social world, and it can unsettle and even transform the pernicious habits that perpetuate white supremacy.

Gooding-Williams will also explore Du Bois’ account of the interplay among white supremacy, Christianity, capitalism, and imperialism as well as key tensions in his work. A rich engagement with Du Bois’s philosophy of beauty, Gooding-Williams' book demonstrates the relevance of his social thought and aesthetics to present-day arguments about Black pessimism, Black optimism, and the aesthetic turn in Black studies.

About the Speaker:

Robert Gooding-Williams is Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. His area of research includes social and political philosophy, the history of African-American political thought, 19th century European philosophy, existentialism, and aesthetics. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. His last book, Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W. E. B. Dubois is to be published in June by Columbia University Press.

The Moderator:

Brandon Terry is Associate Professor of Social Science at Harvard University and the co-director of the Institute on Policing, Incarceration, and Public Safety at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. His forthcoming book The Tragic Vision of the Civil Rights Movement: Political Theory and the Historical Imagination is to be published by Harvard University Press. He is also the editor, with Tommie Shelby, of To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. It is open to the public and held on Zoom.

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.