The Politics of Hope: Reconsidering Political Education through Stanley Cavell's “Moral Perfectionism”

<p> In order to respond to the voices that cannot be heard in conventional party politics, this paper reconsiders political education through “Moral Perfectionism” in the American philosophy of Stanley Cavell (1926-2018). Cavell regards it as a dimension which, although usually missed within left-right political arguments, is essential for democracy. In this sense, it is presented as a new “politics.”</p><p> Moral Perfectionism, a thought of self-perfection from the sense of self-obscurity to self-intelligibility, tends to be criticized as apolitical for its individualism. Such criticisms, however, are made from left-wing political views oriented toward social reform, which falls into the arena of party politics. On the other hand, advocates for its political implications also share the same political views, as their interpretations result in social reform. To understand its politics without reducing it to social reform, this review of previous studies shows that we need to be released from aspiration for the better, as seen in Deweyan pragmatism, of which Cavell is consistently critical.</p><p> This paper proposes the “politics of hope.” Cavellian hope is not a prospect for a better future but the mood that springs up when each of us has become able to take a step forward again to go on living in this world. Without this moment of hope, there will be no lives of the demos, and democracy will never exist. Hope, as an ontological condition of democracy, embodies existentialist politics in a different dimension from social reform. Party politics has been unable to respond to problems wherein hope does not come from inside.</p><p> How, then, self-perfection awakens hope is revealed in Cavell's discussion of the film Philadelphia Story. There are three moments of “education” therein: (1) “Accepting finitude”: Releasing myself from the aspiration for a better world; (2) “Making public matters private”: We, who live in the public world, encounter things and people constituting the world in the general form that is shared by others. Regarding them, however, further questions should be open as to what/who are important to myself. In opening my eyes to the existence of this individual dimension and discovering my own voice, or self-perfection, I reassume this world, surrounded by my important things and people, as the place for myself to live in, and come to entertain hope and start walking here again; (3) “Aspiration to the human”: When acknowledging each person sharing the world as a human being who has an individual voice, I, as a fellow human being, can also find my voice.</p><p> The “politics of hope” thus solves philosophical problems about life, unlike pragmatist “problem-solving” via the politics of social reform. When the discourse of political education lacks the dimension of hope, all political discussions may be reduced to those oriented toward social reform, where we will have to continue constant social criticism until the complete problem-solution. To save us from this confusion, the above education for the “politics of hope” will teach us the possibility that problems can be solved philosophically.</p>