Democracy: A Fragile Way of Life

Speaker: Professor Till Van Rahden, (Montreal)

• Everyone welcome

Concerns over the future viability of democracy pervade scholarly and public controversies. Today, the social sciences dominate the domain of democratic theory. In contrast, the humanities have contributed comparatively little to our understanding of democracy’s fragile and contingent nature in the past and in the present. Against this background, this paper aims to strengthen the role of the humanities in scholarly exchanges over the meaning, the fragility and the contingency of democracy as a way of life. It therefore invites conversations about the democratic content of aesthetic forms, styles, and manners. Drawing on anecdotal episodes of postwar Germans search for democracy, the talk invites conversations about the democratic content of aesthetic forms, styles, and manners.