Phenomenology of Plurality

Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity

Sophie Loidolt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351804028
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Winner of the 2018 Edward Goodwin Ballard Book Prize awarded by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology

This book develops a unique phenomenology of plurality by introducing Hannah Arendt's work into current debates taking place in the phenomenological tradition. Loidolt offers a systematic treatment of plurality that unites the fields of phenomenology, political theory, social ontology, and Arendt studies to offer new perspectives on key concepts such as intersubjectivity, selfhood, personhood, sociality, community, and conceptions of the "we." Phenomenology of Plurality is an in-depth, phenomenological analysis of Arendt that represents a viable third way between the "modernist" and "postmodernist" camps in Arendt scholarship. It also introduces a number of political and ethical insights that can be drawn from a phenomenology of plurality. This book will appeal to scholars interested in the topics of plurality and intersubjectivity within phenomenology, existentialism, political philosophy, ethics, and feminist philosophy.

Part I
Transforming Phenomenology

Plurality and the Political

1
The Emergence of Plurality

The first chapter of this book is dedicated to the task of elaborating a systematic point of departure in Arendt’s work for developing a phenomenology of plurality. Arendt’s ideas on plurality evolved to a significant extent through a critical discussion of phenomenological issues. Although this discussion spans her philosophical life, starting with her dissertation on Augustine in 1929 and ending with her most phenomenological book, The Life of the Mind, in 1978, it reaches a critical turning peak in the decade after World War II. During this time, Arendt’s dealings with phenomenology are intimately intertwined with topics from Existenz philosophy. This unites her with other figures from “second-generation phenomenology,” such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas, and Patočka. All of these phenomenologists developed their own approaches by critically engaging with Husserl and Heidegger, and by addressing fundamental concerns of human existence. For Arendt, this fundamental concern is human existence in the plural.

In the following, I aim to show that reflecting on plural existence is philosophically bound up with an inquiry into the constitution of reality (1.1). I also claim that for Arendt it first emerged in the form of this problem, which testifies to the philosophical profundity with which she approached the question of plurality. This approach helps her to develop her prolific criticism of classic phenomenology, Existenz philosophy, and existentialism. We will see how the seemingly theoretical inquiry into what makes reality real becomes existentially relevant and how reality becomes politicized by conceiving of it as a constitution only possible through plurality. This will lead us, in the second subchapter, to sketching out the paradigms of Arendt’s “new political philosophy” (CP 445), which aims at rethinking the pluralistic with-world (1.2). What becomes visible here is the tendency of Arendt to move to a phenomenological articulation of existential issues. This will set the course for the following investigations of this book, which will provide a systematical layout of how to extract a phenomenology of plurality from Arendt’s approach.

In order to distill my illustration of the emergence of plurality, I will focus on a close reading of two short texts in this chapter: “What is Existenz philosophy?” (EX) and “Concern with politics in recent European philosophical thought” (CP). EX (1946) marks Arendt’s return to philosophy after the war and CP (1994d), a lecture Arendt gave in 1954, indicates her explicit turn to what she calls “political theory,” taken as a methodically detailed enterprise. Both texts demonstrate Arendt’s intense questioning into a theoretical background. It becomes even clearer than in her main works why she rejects one approach in favor of another and how this modifies her whole methodical framework. Moreover, her appreciation as well as her critique of Existenz philosophy and classic phenomenology can be considered clearly pronounced in this material. In both essays, important phenomenological and existentialist authors are covered, including Husserl, Heidegger, Jaspers, Camus, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. Understanding the way in which Arendt addresses and assesses these authors helps in appreciating how she situates her own project and how it is embedded within the phenomenological debate.

In the secondary literature, Arendt’s roots in Existenz philosophy have been discussed much more intensely and controversially¹ than her ties to the phenomenological tradition. In one of the most balanced assessments, Benhabib (2003: 47–61) rightfully characterizes Arendt’s “discovery of human plurality as a fundamental existential condition” and as “Arendt’s real answer to the Existenz philosophy in which she was schooled” (Ben-habib 2003: 50). Yet, in contrast to Benhabib (2003: 50), who proclaims Arendt’s “eventual rejection of Existenz Philosophy,” I would rather speak of her continuing transformation of Existenz Philosophy toward a political phenomenology. Arendt’s “answer to Existenz Philosophy” gains its argumentative strength precisely by claiming that certain existential approaches are built on the wrong foundation, namely, the (isolated) self. By arguing that the initial point of existential reflection must be plural “Being-with” instead of the self, and natality instead of mortality, Arendt does not reject the existential approach as such. Instead, she demands a new existential philosophy that is sensitive to a political phenomenology of the with-world. This new existential-phenomenological approach entails a normative backing that is articulated in terms of responsibility and care for the world. This is also the view of Sandra and Lewis Hinchman (1994, 2006), who emphasize Arendt’s indebtedness to Jaspers in transforming Heidegger’s approach from a self-centered existential philosophy towards a theoretical framework that is essentially affirmative of human plurality and the world.² The overall aim of this first chapter is to spell out how this leads Arendt from a detailed critique of classic phenomenology and existentialism to the core-phenomenon of actualizing plurality in a space of appearances from which a phenomenology of plurality can be developed.

Arendt’s Critique of Existenz Philosophy and Classic Phenomenology ³

As one of the most powerful philosophical indications of the emergence of plurality, the question of reality worried Arendt from the very beginning. This has hardly been considered in the literature thus far, let alone the fact that this can be taken as an indicator of her desire to take plurality seriously with respect to the most fundamentally philosophical of problems. The constellation of questions as to what constitutes reality, what it consists of, what makes it “real,” is indeed also one of the controversial elementary issues in the phenomenological tradition—and one of Existenz philosophy’s strongest objections to a philosophy of consciousness.

If, in this regard, EX can be considered as a certain philosophical breakthrough for Arendt that is consolidated in CP and HC, its roots and preparatory work must be located much earlier. One can find traces of it as early as 1929, in Arendt’s dissertation on Augustine Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin (Love and Saint Augustine). This book already demonstrates a manifest philosophical desire to “belong to the world.” Ronald Beiner (1996: 269), who advocates this view, regards it as a challenge to the “standard view” claiming that “Arendt arrived at her fundamental preoccupations as a political philosopher under the pressure of the traumatizing events of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe”:

[T]hat within that book she focuses particularly on the tension between the otherworldly demands of Christian love and the thisworldliness of social life, gives us good reason to consider tracing the fundamental structure of her philosophical concerns back to an earlier phase of her thought, prior to the politicizing trauma of Hitler and the Holocaust… In that sense, what the Augustine book may indicate is that Arendt was a political philosopher before she knew that she was one.

(Beiner 1996: 270)

Indeed, Arendt addresses some key themes of her political philosophy already in her dissertation: above all, the theme of belonging to the world in contrast to being estranged from it (or craving for this estrangement through the love of God, like a good Christian does); furthermore, the existential logic of being born, coming into the world, as opposed to the logic of mortality. While the former affirms my worldly being, the latter urges me to transcend the world, which I will have to leave again anyway. This denigrates the reality of the intersubjectively shared world without ever providing a satisfying surrogate. In her close examination of Augustine’s concept of love, Arendt diagnoses a fatal structure that will reappear, in different forms, also in her later analyses: The creature that lovingly turns to its creator concentrates only on its isolated origin and end in God. Thereby, it denies its second or double origin: that it is not only creatura but also de mundo, in the historical line of Adam and among men. The result of this is world-alienation, meaning a loss of worldly reality and a separation from others. The perspective on fellow men is now not derived from the worldly web of relationships (de mundo) but is taken according to God’s perspective (sicut Deus), i.e. only with respect to their being created. Within this perspective—and this is Arendt’s main point of critique—it becomes incomprehensible how there can be relationships at all. What does “loving your neighbor” mean for a creature that has completely removed itself from all worldly bonds? Arendt’s fairly critical assessment of Augustine thus results in a plea for the worldly origin of men as the only resort that can warrant a “grounding in experience” (Arendt 2006a: 76) of human relationships, understood as vita socialis and civitas terrena. She portrays the togetherness/“Miteinandersein” (Arendt 2006a: 78) of men as a reciprocal dependence which is characterized by unconditioned trust in the other and in the “future being together” (Arendt 2006a: 78). Very much in contrast to Augustine’s intentions, she argues that in the de-mundo-esse of human beings lies the possibility “to explicitly make the world their home” (Arendt 2006a: 44). Beiner (1996: 281) sums up: “For Augustine, we are more ‘at home’ in the world than we ought to be; for Arendt, we are more estranged from the world than we ought to be.”

At the time of writing the book on Augustine, Arendt could not of course know that the National Socialist regime would establish murderously concrete institutions of “world-estrangement.” The essay “What Is Existenz Philosophy?”⁴ written shortly after the war, speaks with different language. Although, aside from one footnote, Arendt does not mention the past political horrors and events,⁵ the text immediately shows us what philosophical consequences she has drawn from them. Arendt presents an interrelated development of German history of thought and takes a strong philosophical position within it; she does this by rejecting Heidegger and siding with Jaspers. However, her “philosophical comeback” hardly indicates that Arendt was interested in returning to a detached philosophical discourse. Quite on the contrary, it was clear to her how much philosophical thought was in need of being transformed in the name of action and plurality. To echo Beiner: Now Arendt knew that she was and had to be a political philosopher.

As is often the case with Arendt’s texts—and is particularly evident in this case⁶—scholars will not be satisfied with her harsh and sometimes imprecise verdicts on Husserl, Heidegger, etc., which leave a lot of room for strong counter-argumentation. I would therefore like to suggest that Arendt’s article should be taken, not as it was probably intended, as an introduction to the different positions of Existenz philosophy for an American audience—taken as such, scholarly critique would apply to many of Arendt’s theses—but rather, as an elucidation of her own intentions. If one takes her critical remarks as the ground for what will become a full-fledged philosophical answer in HC, then the crucial issues that shape Arendt’s thought begin to come to light. This will also allow us to appreciate her profound understanding of the passionate philosophical struggle with modernity and its irreversible impact on thought.

The first issue that has to be mentioned in this context, and before we can get into Arendt’s discussion of phenomenological and existential positions, is the role that she attributes to Kant. For Arendt, it is Kant who is the “real” but “secret king” of modern philosophy, and it is Kant who has given existential philosophy all its points of departure and despair. As I indicated in the introduction to this book, certain Kantian questions remain guidelines for Arendt by which she transforms and challenges existential philosophy and phenomenology, and they remain relevant for her own further development of thought. With respect to Existenz philosophy, three Kantian challenges can be identified:

• (1) By showing the very limits of reason’s theoretical grasp, Kant had shattered the ancient philosophical unity of thought and Being: that all there is can be thought, that all Being is accessible, understandable, and explainable by reason. While Hegel was the last one trying to reconcile reality and thought, Existenz philosophy was born out of the shock that was the real consequence of Kant’s philosophy: that now a pure, naked, and inaccessible “Thatness” (Dass-Sein) of all Being suddenly gaped wide open. Arendt renders the existentialists’ initial insight, which is also her own, as follows: Thought fails to grasp this naked and empty reality of things, just as much as it fails to explain the arbitrariness of events. Essentia and existentia fall apart, since the nature of a thing cannot account for its reality, and, in the worst case, “has nothing to do with their reality” (EX 168). Therefore, thinkers like Kierkegaard renounce understanding individual human existence by means of universal concepts and generalizable guidelines and aspire to live the “exception” from the universal—a practice instead of a theoretical answer, albeit often a practice undertaken in despair. Because the shock of the pure “that it is” cannot replace the lost faith in concepts, the world becomes an uncanny place and alienation the basic mode of being-in-the-world. This is why the question of reality becomes the leading and decisive question for Arendt. Since it reveals the existential situation and reaction of thought after Kant, Arendt takes a close look at how it is confronted by the authors she discusses.
• (2) The aim of Kant’s destruction of the ancient concept of Being was to establish the autonomy and dignity of man (EX 170). However, according to Arendt, this central Kantian thought was immediately lost again in the approaches of existential philosophy: “Just as it was decisive for the historical development of the nineteenth century that nothing disappeared as quickly as did the new revolutionary concept of the citoyen, so it was decisive for the development of the post-Kantian philosophy that nothing disappeared as quickly as did this new concept of man that had just barely begun to emerge” (EX 170). Arendt therefore explicitly wants to revive the concepts of man, humanity, and freedom in existential philosophy. As much as this testifies to the importance of Kantian thought for her approach and must be taken seriously when confronting normative questions, just as much does it seem to be an outright inconsistency: How can one demand an “idea of man” or humanity (EX 178)—and later in the text even speak of an “essence of man” (EX 181)—if all faith in concepts/ideas/essences is lost? This predicament also reflects Arendt’s unique and peculiar combination of Kantian elements with e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Permissions
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Transforming Phenomenology: Plurality and the Political
• PART II Actualizing Plurality: The We, the Other, and the Self in Political Intersubjectivity
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index