ABSTRACT
We now enjoy our most complete comprehension of a chair in general-and of the Jena Chair in particular. The path to comprehending a riot would thus seem to have been cleared of considerable debris. Many of the same lines of inquiry will guide our approach to deciphering a riot. And yet a riot is not a chair. It is, in fact, a quite unrelated category of thing. Thus, in parallel fashion with our meditations on the nature of a chair (a physical object), we must return to the beginning and tease out our experiences with a riot (a social phenomenon) from the point of our initial encounter. Importantly, in doing so, we remain cognizant of all that has preceded in our consideration of a chair. How then do those insights gleaned from our comprehension of the Jena Chair as a self-positing ontological whole advance, distort, or derail our deliberations into the nature of a riot and its freedom from external determination? Do lessons learned regarding the autonomous determination of an inanimate physical object apply with equal vigor to a social phenomenon featuring self-expressive human beings? With respect to our notion of freedom more generally, the question remains simply this: Is it external conditions that determine the limits of a riot in general (and the New York City Draft Riots in particular) or is it a riot that determines the limits of the external conditions?
