ABSTRACT
For democracy truly to be an aesthetic form of life, it is not enough that its universalism provide individuality with access to worlds of difference to which it can form an aesthetic relation as the poet through poetry forms an aesthetic relationship to the world. As an aesthetic form of life democracy must do more than draw near together the differences that can call from diffusion individuality’s limitless meanings and give them shape. Before democracy’s togetherness of differences can become aesthetically meaningful, individuality must become receptive to the world according to an ethic of appearances and creative from the aesthetic point of view of the artist (the creator) whose aesthetic forms incorporate a sensibility to the violence in creativity. Democracy must be productive of an aesthetic individuality so that individuality can begin to form its relations to the world aesthetically. Our question then becomes, can aesthetic individuality be the achievement of democratic society? Surely Whitman believes it can be, though he offers two different answers to our question.
