Wonder—through Aesthetics and Environmentalism to Politics

Abstrakt

The paper offers a contribution to the political account of wonder. The rationale for addressing this problem is provided by Hannah Arendt’s observations on the paradoxical relationship between wonder and politics—wonder appears here as both essential and indispensable to politics as the realm of opinions (doxai). This quandary corresponds to two common-sense uses of the term “wonder”—as an emotion and as an act of judging. It is argued that the political interpretation of wonder should link these two poles. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum’s account of wonder and its reformulation developed by Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, the paper offers such a synthesis by emphasising the environmental and aesthetic dimensions of the concept.