Nicholas Poole
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My research lies at the intersection of democratic theory, political aesthetics, and the conditions under which persons can appear and be heard as free and equal in public life. My doctoral dissertation, completed at York University, reconstructed Hannah Arendt's theory of political judgment through her appeal to examples as the appropriate form of normative orientation in pluralistic societies. I am currently preparing a book manuscript, ‘Exemplary Freedom: A Theory of Judgment,’ that extends these arguments in conversation with ongoing debates in political, moral, and legal theory, and in companionship with projects of justice in Canada and beyond.
I hold a PhD from the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought at York University. My research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University.
I am based in Victoria, BC, Traditional Territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋən Peoples.
In every era and every culture, there are exemplary persons and events that show us the scope of human capability. We internalize exemplars over the course of our lives, whether by exposure to the cultural artifacts that represent them, or by directly witnessing and reflecting upon the exceptional actions of those around us. It is clear, however, that in democratic societies perceptions of exemplary value rely on little more than our own judgments. We do not today have an unambiguously authoritative pantheon of heroes, sages, and saints available to us as models for our norms and principles, and the politics of pluralism everywhere demonstrates that even those persons and events that do enjoy some measure of normative authority are by no means immune to deep public contestation. Recent challenges to monuments across Canada and around the world have not only demonstrated in vivid fashion how important it is for publicly memorialized figures to reflect the values of citizens, but they have also raised difficult questions about what it means to live with exemplars in contexts of democratic contestation. Evidently, we are still living in what Friedrich Nietzsche called the ‘twilight of idols’. But whether this twilight dims to a prelapsarian longing for lost traditions or a cynical disavowal of the pasts we invariably inherit will depend on our ability to reconcile the inevitability of the exemplary in our lives with the fact that we share the world with others whose standpoints differ from our own. It will depend, in other words, on embracing a democratic politics of the exemplary.
My research addresses a host of questions that appear when we place exemplarity at the heart of democratic practice. How, for instance, can our inclinations toward imitation, which often practically link us to the norms of our communities, be adjusted to situations where sources of admiration are diverse and authoritative exemplars are publicly challenged? What responsibilities do these practices place upon us, and how can our relation to exemplars promote, not hinder, our capacity to act by our own lights and speak in our own voices? On what grounds can our choices of exemplars affirm the world as a space between free and equal persons? And how might autonomous persons with different exemplars, or different understandings of the same exemplar, possibly arrive at shared visions for how the world should look?
Published Works
Article: ‘Politics Without Measure? Reading Exemplarity in The Human Condition.’
Article: ‘The Company We Choose to Keep: Towards an Exemplarist Theory of Political Heautonomy.’
Interview & Activity Sheet: ‘How do Role Models Shape Moral Frameworks in Democratic Society?’
Open Access Article: ‘Political Normativity: Exemplarity, Plurality, Judgment’
Works in Progress
Book: Exemplary Freedom: A Theory of Judgment
Article: ‘Justified and Vindicated? A Case for Heautonomy in Political Ethics’
Article: ‘The Modern Equivalent of the Soul: Searching for the Heart of Judgment with Jennifer Nedelsky