Philosophy, Translation and the Anxieties of Inclusion

Our age is characterized by diverse political emotions, sometimes overt and sometimes hidden. They involve such diverse aspects of human life as religious and ethnic tensions, homelessness and immigrancy, and divisions of identity. Anxieties of inclusion can be felt by those seeking to enter a society, by those inside concerned, say, about immigration, and by those inside but at the margins and perhaps resistant to the pressures of normalisation. As prominent traits of contemporary societies, such anxieties do not necessarily manifest or express themselves straightforwardly: they are suppressed or covered over or simply left unvoiced. The political questions that are raised are inseparable from existential and psychological ones. Faced with the ‘quiet desperation’ of the mass of people, and with the need for the acknowledgement of such negative emotions as fear, doubt and anger, our political life calls for the cultivation of a new political sensibility. In response to this task, this paper will explore new ways of cultivating political emotions and political citizens—in such a manner as to question the idea of inclusion. Both those who include and those who would be included must learn from and be affected by what is strange and unknown. To take up this educational task, this paper will introduce Stanley Cavell's idea of philosophy as translation. In its endeavour to re‐place philosophy, this provides a lens through which to re‐think political education. Political education then becomes, as I shall try to show, a kind of linguistic education for human transformation.