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Soc (2012) 49:299301DOI 10.1007/s12115-012-9546-8
BOOK REVIEW
Raymond Geuss, Politics and the Imagination
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. 198 pp. $24.95. ISBN: 978-1400832132
Lorraine Krall
Published online: 7 March 2012# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Talking about politics and imagination together might, at first blush, seem to signal a version of utopianism. Raymond Geusss Politics and the Imagination is quite the opposite: Geuss rails against utopian thought in favor of a politics of action and concrete engagement, albeit a concrete engagement that draws on imagination. This includes both imagining ones self in anothers position, as well as mining works of art for their political insights.
Raymond Geusss Politics and the Imagination considers what political work imagination can doboth in freeing us from our own prejudices and in aiding us in sympathizing with others. The collection of twelve essays varies immensely, ranging from reflections on particular aspects of art and specific worksDon Quixote, music, Paul Celans poetryto reflections on contemporary political matters, such as Bush and Blair on Iraq, to a description of conversations with Richard Rorty.
Geusss passionate and wide-ranging approach to the relationship between politics and imagination is an insightful critique of narrow ideas of reason that ignore imaginations benefits. In addition, Geuss reveals the dangers of clinging to comprehensive systems, rather than more flexibly dealing with changing contexts. While Geuss draws attention back to the role of imagination, which has been shamefully eschewed from politics, the picture he provides remains problematic. He focuses on imaginations innovative potential and downplays its ability to explain social roles and cultivate customs. He also ignores imaginations potential dark side,
praising instead the possibilities of existential imagination. Thus Geuss can be contrasted with other conceptions of imagination, including that of T.S. Eliot, who would locate imaginations innovation within the context of an ordered tradition actively engaged with moral concerns.
Guesss essays advance two central arguments. First, he contends that imagination is important to all forms of politics, repeatedly critiquing political theories that advocate reason as autonomous and exclude imagination; Kant and Rawls are both implicated.
Second, Guess argues for critical distance: the distance I am able to put between myself and my social world with its associated beliefs, intellectual habits, and attitudes is a crucial variable in determining...