Dandyism and Fascism (interview question #20)
Dr Simon Ussher has started emailing me interview questions about my recent books on aesthetics (see here). Over coming weeks I’ll post my responses to his questions.
Let me pose a critical question and invite a response. It seems that your entire worldview is founded upon a form of ‘aestheticism’ that at least risks being interpreted as mere Dandyism. There is also a risk that your ‘aestheticisation of politics’ just opens the door to fascism, which was a concern of theorists like Walter Benjamin. How would you respond to such critical interpretations of your aesthetic philosophy?
Yes, I take those criticisms very seriously, and in fact, I address them directly in several essays. The concerns are entirely legitimate because the language of aesthetics has often been associated with elitism, decadence, political irresponsibility, or authoritarian spectacle. So if one is going to defend an aesthetic philosophy today, one has to proceed carefully and critically.
Let me begin with the charge of Dandyism. Historically, aestheticism has sometimes been interpreted as a retreat from ethical and political engagement into private refinement, style, and cultivated detachment – ‘art for art’s sake’ understood as a form of aristocratic withdrawal from the suffering of the world. Certain strands of late 19th-century aestheticism certainly lent themselves to that interpretation.
But that is emphatically not the form of aestheticism I defend. As will be clear by now, my conception of aesthetics is not based on luxury consumption, elite taste, or detached self-indulgence. In fact, it is almost the opposite. The aesthetic orientation I defend is inseparable from ecological limits, material sufficiency, democratic participation, and solidarity. As we’ve discussed, the archetype of my philosophy is not the idle dandy drifting through salons but the ‘poet-farmer’ – someone grounded in the material realities of life, contributing to community and subsistence while cultivating creativity and beauty within modest ecological conditions.
Again, this is why William Morris matters so much to me. Morris already recognised the danger of reducing aesthetics to elite consumption. His response was to democratise art by integrating beauty into everyday labour and ordinary life. I inherit that project directly. When I speak of an ‘aesthetics of existence’, I am not talking about curating luxurious lifestyles for privileged individuals. I am talking about reclaiming creativity, craft, meaning, and aesthetic participation as universal human capacities.
There is also an important distinction between aestheticisation in the fascist sense and what I would call the democratisation of aesthetics. Walter Benjamin’s critique remains important here. Fascism aestheticised politics by transforming mass politics into spectacle – mythic pageantry, choreographed rallies, heroic imagery, militarised symbolism, ecstatic collective identity. But crucially, fascism left underlying property relations and structures of domination intact. It gave the masses an aesthetic experience of participation while preserving exploitation and hierarchy. Fascism reveals the terrible danger of aesthetics detached from ethics, democracy, and critical reflection. Beauty and myth can absolutely become instruments of domination.
However, I would also say that Benjamin’s warning does not invalidate aesthetics as such. The question is not whether aesthetics will shape politics – it always does – but how. As Jacque Rancière has put it: ‘Politics is aesthetic in principle.’ Every political order mobilises symbols, narratives, myths, architecture, rituals, media, and forms of sensibility. Liberal consumer capitalism also aestheticises everyday life through advertising, branding, spectacle, digital imagery, and aspirational consumer identities. The difference is that its aestheticisation often appears normalised and invisible. So the real question becomes: What kind of aesthetic culture cultivates freedom rather than domination?
This is where Schiller and Marcuse return as decisive for me. The aesthetic philosophy I defend is explicitly anti-authoritarian because it understands genuine aesthetic development as the cultivation of free, reflective, imaginative, and non-dominated human beings. Beauty, in Schiller’s sense, educates desire beyond barbarism and coercion. Marcuse similarly sees authentic art as preserving the possibility of negation and critique against oppressive systems.
Fascist aesthetics, by contrast, suppresses ambiguity, plurality, vulnerability, and freedom. It subordinates individuals to mythic unity, obedience, violence, and power. It instrumentalises beauty for domination. My project moves in the opposite direction entirely: toward decentralisation, ecological humility, voluntary simplicity, democratic participation, and the flourishing of diverse forms of life within biophysical limits.
Indeed, one could argue that fascism emerges partly from the frustration of aesthetic and existential needs within alienated societies. Consumer capitalism often leaves people spiritually empty, disconnected, and hungry for meaning, belonging, ritual, transcendence, and beauty. Fascist and popularist movements exploit those unmet longings by redirecting them into nationalism, militarism, mythic identity, and authoritarian spectacle. Perhaps this is what we are seeing today in some Western nations.
That is one reason I think aesthetic questions are too important to abandon. If emancipatory politics ignores the aesthetic dimension of life altogether, reactionary movements will continue to occupy that terrain. Human beings are not motivated by material interests alone. We are moved by symbols, narratives, emotions, rituals, myths, and experiences of beauty and transcendence. Any transformative politics that neglects this dimension remains incomplete.
This also explains why I reject purely technocratic environmentalism. Ecological civilisation cannot be built through austerity, managerial control, and moralistic sacrifice. As I have explained, it requires compelling visions of beauty, meaning, creativity, and flourishing within limits. Otherwise ecological politics risks appearing as nothing more than deprivation administered bureaucratically.
Another important point is that my conception of aesthetics remains tragic and self-critical. I do not present beauty as innocent, pure, or politically neutral. Beauty can seduce, manipulate, deceive, distract, and dominate. Art can liberate, but it can also become propaganda, decadence, or commodity spectacle. That ambiguity is intrinsic to aesthetics itself, which is why aesthetic education matters so much. The goal is not passive enchantment but critical sensibility – the cultivation of people capable of perceiving beauty without surrendering autonomy or ethical judgement.
So yes, the dangers you raise are real. Aesthetic philosophy always risks decadence, escapism, irrationalism, or authoritarian spectacle if detached from ethics and democratic, participatory politics. But I would argue that the answer is not to abandon aesthetics. The answer is to radicalise and democratise aesthetics – to reconnect beauty with justice, freedom, ecology, and the flourishing of ordinary life.
In the end, I think the struggle over aesthetics is unavoidable because every civilisation expresses itself aesthetically. The question is whether our aesthetic order deepens domination and ecological destruction, or whether it helps cultivate freer, more beautiful, and more sustainable forms of human existence. In a world increasingly overshadowed by ecological and existential crisis, living with dignity does not depend upon certainty of success. One can still rebel against injustice, cultivate beauty, and affirm life – even beneath darkening skies.
