Feeling Seen

Abstract

Reading this set of responses to my work left me feeling profoundly awed and humbled, ready to settle into a deep silence. I am awed to have been seen and understood so well. The acts of recognition performed by these five scholars are remarkable. Recall that I am someone whose intellectual life has been shaped in almost all dimensions by lessons from Ralph Ellison’s treatment of invisibility. For me, to feel visible in this way is a liberation, an affirmation that we human beings are in fact capable of seeing the other, that condition of “being at home in the world, which is called love, and which we term democracy.” But then to be seen, in the full, is also to feel exposed and therefore necessarily humbled, even chastened, with regard to the gap between aspiration and performance. Careful what you wish for! Still, to meet such extraordinary, generous acts of recognition without response would be rough ingratitude, and a violation of political and philosophical friendship. A response is called for. Themost important point is this: every scholar here has seenme accurately. To a person they have understood my aspirations. To a person, each author pinpointed problems and tensions in my work that have in fact motivated my most recent effort, Justice by Means of Democracy. Ryan Balot has traced some of the deepest intellectual challenges in my work: can there be freedom without politics? My answer to that, contra Balot, is no, and I finally tackle that question fully in the new book, a book that these respondents