Artful Gods: Aesthetics and Politics in the Age of Technology

This paper is an investigation into the common claim that modern politics is imagery. My approach is both phenomenological and historical, meaning that I first establish what conditions had to pertain in order for modern society to exist as such, and that I then illustrate how those conditions come to be realized via the actions of the past. I conclude that public authority no longer rests in the hands of the governmental, economic, or ecclesiastical spheres, but it is rather something that emerges from a crux between the arts and sciences; the spirit of the digital age is neither labourer nor consumer, but that of the aesthete.