‘I am large’: Sachs, Whitman and democracy

Abstract

In the pages that follow, this article traces Sachs’s and Whitman’s respective efforts to hold the antinomies of democracy – ‘individualism’, ‘pluralism’, and ‘solidarity’ – together. However, my analysis can only be compelling if the manner in which I deploy ‘individualism’, ‘pluralism’, and ‘solidarity’ retains at least a patina of plausibility. This article employs definitions from relatively neutral, but wellestablished secondary sources, in order to avert the charge that I have defined the terms in order to ensure that my analysis appears unassailable.