Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

Politics, Justice, Action

Dean Mathiowetz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317801917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin has made key contributions to the field of political philosophy, pushing forward and clarifying the ways that political theorists think about action as the exercise of political freedom. In so doing, she has offered insightful studies of the problems of modern politics that theorists are called to address, and has addressed them herself in a range of theoretical genres.. This collection of her works approaches each of these dimensions of Pitkin's contributions in turn:

The Modern Condition and the Impetus to Theorize: Pitkin has offered sustained reflection on what aspects of modern political life prompt the impulse to theorize politics. Highlighting the pitfalls that modern life and philosophy also present for that enterprise, she suggests an agenda for political theorizing that engages the dilemmas of modernity in ways that grasp the importance of paradox as a portal of insight into the modern condition, and eschews attempts at easy resolution.

Moral Philosophy, Judgment, Justice: Pitkin has turned at several points in her career to the concept of justice as one that particularly brings together questions of agency and responsibility, the insights of moral philosophy, and judgment. Drawing upon a variety of methodological resources and theoretical inspirations, her work engages ordinary language philosophy, pedagogical practice, and textual study, to yield a complex and subtle set of observations, all of which open moral philosophy and matters of judgment to questions of action and responsibility in the exercise of political freedom.

Action: Political agency and its obstacles are a key theme in Pitkin's work and a main area of her theoretical innovation. She has examined the appeal of autonomy as a picture of political agency, explored the ways that the institutional arrangements of modern liberal societies attempt to link of individual and political agency and offered a picture of political freedom as maintaining the tension between individual "parts" and collective "wholes, " Finally, Pitkin has meditated on the political and social conditions that most impede our ability to grasp agency as a practice of political freedom, and gestured to paths that may lead forward.

Part I

Politics

1

Action and membership (1984)

As a political theorist, Machiavelli is difficult, contradictory, and in many respects unattractive: a misogynist, frequently militaristic and authoritarian, uncomplimentary about human nature. What nevertheless makes him worth taking seriously is that his works contain an understanding of politics, autonomy, and the human condition, which is profoundly right in ways that really matter. That understanding consists of a set of syntheses holding in tension seemingly incompatible truths along several dimensions. It is therefore difficult to articulate and to sustain, and Machiavelli does not always sustain it. But the understanding is there, and even when he loses the syntheses he is a better teacher than many a more consistent theorist, because he refuses to abandon for very long any of the aspects of the truth he sees. Thus he manages to be both political and realistic even while articulating a theoretical vision of human achievement.

In this chapter, therefore, I frequently refer to the ideas of a thinker called “Machiavelli at his best” and offer an account of how and why the historical Machiavelli diverged from those ideas. In the process, this chapter also makes some suggestions about the relevance of those ideas for our time. For all these reasons, this chapter is more speculative and personal, less grounded in evidence, than the rest of this book (Pitkin 1999 [1984]: 285–306).

At his best, Machiavelli formulates an understanding of human autonomy that is activist without megalomania, insisting on our capacity and responsibility for choice and action, while nevertheless recognizing the real limits imposed by our historical situation. He understands the open-ended, risky quality of human interaction, which denies to politics the sort of control available in dealing with inanimate objects. Yet he insists that the risks are worth taking and are indeed the only way of securing what we most value. He also formulates an understanding of autonomy that is highly political. He assumes neither the solidarity postulated by organic theorists nor the atomistic, unrelated individuals postulated by social contract theorists. Instead, he focuses on the way in which citizens in political interaction continually recreate community out of multiplicity. He formulates an understanding of autonomy, finally, that is neither cynical nor hortatory, but realistic: tough-minded about political necessities and human weaknesses without being reductionist about our goals and potentialities. Justice, civility, and virtue are as real, in that understanding, as greed and envy, or as bread and air (though of course people often say “justice” when they are in fact speaking of mere interest or expediency).

Although he rarely cites Aristotle and probably had only contempt for the Thomistic Aristotelianism he is likely to have encountered, Machiavelli’s best understanding of politics is importantly reminiscent of Aristotle’s teaching that man is a political animal, meaning not that people are always found in a polis, but rather that, first, politics is an activity in which no other species engages, and, second, engaging in it is necessary to the full realization of our potential as humans.¹ For Machiavelli as for Aristotle, this means that we are neither beasts nor gods, neither mere products of natural forces nor beings with unlimited power. We are capable of free agency, but always within the bounds of necessity. We are the products but also the makers of culture, law, and history. We develop our humanness only in the company of others, yet our sociability is never automatic but rather requires effort and care. Finally, for Machiavelli as for Aristotle, our political nature is a function of our unique capacity for judgment. The human being is the polis animal because it is the logos animal, capable of speaking, reasoning, distinguishing right from wrong, and thus of freely chosen action.

In terms of Machiavelli’s conflicting images of manhood, the right understanding of human autonomy he offers is closest to the image of the fraternal Citizen. Yet it transcends the misogynist vision and manages to combine the commitment to republican, participatory politics with the fox’s deflation of hypocritical and empty ideals, as well as the appreciation of authority, tradition, and generativity associated with the Founder image.

This best, synthetic Machiavelli holds in tension apparently incompatible truths along at least three interrelated dimensions of what it means to be human, political, and autonomous; dimensions so fundamental to these topics that any political theory must address them, if not expressly, then by implication. Autonomy is problematic for creatures such as ourselves in relation to the past, in relation to our contemporaries, and in relation to nature, both around and within us. It is problematic in relation to the past because we are the creatures of history. Our present situation and our very selves are shaped by the past. What can freedom mean for such a creature? Call that the dimension of action. Our autonomy is problematic in relation to our contemporaries because harmony among us is not automatic, as among the insects. We are distinct individuals with often conflicting needs and desires, yet we are also products and shapers of shared societies. Call that the dimension of membership. Our autonomy is problematic in relation to nature because we are both rooted in the natural and capable of transcending it, because we have bodies that need food and shelter and are mortal, and psyches, minds, or spirits that render us capable of distinguishing and choosing right from wrong, good from evil, just from unjust. But what is the relationship between natural need or drive and standards of judgment, and what is the basis of those standards—convention, nature, or some transcendent source? Call this the dimension of judgment. A right understanding of autonomy requires synthesis along all of these dimensions, and that is what Machiavelli at his best has to offer.

Yet Machiavelli often loses the synthetic tension along one or another dimension and falls into that endless circling among incompatible alternatives which Hegel associated with “bad infinity” (Hegel 1969 [1812–1816]: vol. 1, 152–6, esp. 155). And the psychological and familial themes he employs, though they partly support, ultimately tend to undermine, those syntheses. To be sure, those syntheses are problematic and unstable also because each of the dimensions involves fundamental philosophical problems built into the very structure of our conceptual system, perhaps of our human nature. The dimension of action involves the problem philosophers sometimes call the “freedom of the will”; the dimension of membership, that of “universals and particulars”; the dimension of judgment, the problem of “value relativism” or “is” and “ought.” These are surely among the most formidable, difficult problems ever taken up by philosophers. And Machiavelli was no philosopher; he was not interested in resolving such problems nor particularly self-conscious about them. This is both a strength and a weakness. Precisely because he is not a philosopher, Machiavelli never leaves political reality for very long; but by the same token, he is also not fully aware of the conceptual or philosophical difficulties that complicate his theorizing.

The syntheses are problematic not only philosophically, however, but also politically. Machiavelli demanded of himself that his theorizing be relevant to the political realities of his time. Politically, the dimension of action requires that theory guides us about “what is to be done,” and helps us to delineate here and now those things that we must accept as “given” from those that are open to change by our intervention. The dimension of membership requires, politically, that theory speaks to power and plurality, that it not merely articulates abstract truths but makes them relevant to an audience that has—or could generate—the power actually to do what the theory suggests must be done. And the dimension of judgment requires, politically, that justice and right be tied, if not to expedience, then at least to possibility; what is truly impossible cannot be politically right. The political realities of Machiavelli’s situation, as was remarked at the outset, were extraordinarily troubled and intractable. The real difficulties facing Florence, and particularly Florentine republicanism, were just about overwhelming, seeming to defy even the best understanding that political theory might devise. In demanding of himself that his theory address those realities, Machiavelli was sometimes forced into utopian fantasies and enraged distortions—the very kinds of theorizing he rightly condemned in others.

But even when allowance has been made for the philosophical difficulties of the subject matter and the political difficulties of his situation, it nevertheless remains true that Machiavelli’s best synthetic understanding is frequently further undermined by the personal and familial themes he himself invokes. The very metaphors and images he employs to convey his insights repeatedly distort or destroy those insights. Whether this is because of his own psychic needs and conflicts, or because of his effort to address the psychic vulnerabilities of his audience, must remain ultimately undecided. What matters is to understand the connections between political and psychological considerations in the texts.

***

Mankind is the species that makes itself, not just biologically as every species perpetuates its kind, but culturally, through history. Human beings are born less completely developed toward adulthood than any other creature. Thus their development is shaped more by the particular circumstances into which they are born; and those circumstances are less purely natural, more cultural and social than those of any other species. Using our capacity for language and abstract thought, and our opposed thumbs and ability to make tools, we produce a material and nonmaterial culture that forms the environment in which the next generations of humans grow up. Thus to be human is to be the product of a particular society and culture, which is the product of past history. Yet to be human is also to have a share in making history, transmitting, preserving, and altering culture, shaping society. It is we who enact the forces that shape us. As Hobbes said, man is both the “matter” and the “artificer” of “commonwealth,” of community and civilization (Hobbes 1962 [1651]: 19 [1]).

Those facts pose a mystery, or rather, whole clusters of mysteries: philosophical, political, psychological. How can a product of causal forces also be a free agent capable of action, creativity, responsibility—to be praised and blamed for its choices and deeds? What does it mean to say that this person did that, is responsible for it, could have done otherwise? On what basis do we make such judgments? Every action has antecedents and every person a past, so is an action really different from an event, a person from an object? What will count as initiating something new rather than just continuing preexisting processes? Do these distinctions mark something objectively real in the world, or are they merely conceptual conventions that we impose arbitrarily and, in the end, inconsistently? These are among the questions with which social and ethical philosophers must deal.

But the political theorist is not merely, or not exactly, a philosopher. Philosophy investigates those aspects of the human condition that could not be otherwise and that are so basic we are ordinarily not even aware of them. But politics concerns matters that might well be other than they are; it concerns the question “what shall we do?” Insofar as it directs itself toward matters that cannot be changed, it is misguided and will fail. Politics is the art of the possible. To theorize about politics, then, is not exactly like philosophizing about the human condition or the nature of being. Political theory does teach us about fundamental necessities, not merely those that are given to all humans in all ages but also those that are merely inescapable for us, here and now; but it does so with reference to, and in order to distinguish them from, those other matters that are subject to our choice and power, with regard to which we might successfully act. Thus the political theorist is concerned not merely with the philosophical problem of whether humans can ever break the causal chain of history to make a new beginning, but even more with the political problem of how and where and with whom we might take action, given our present circumstances. He delineates, one might say, “what has to be accepted as given” from “what is to be done.”

But this delineation is not really as simple as the drawing of a line between unchanging regions. For the political world is composed of human activities and relationships and habits, all of which are anchored in human thought. Change people’s understandings of themselves and their political world, and they will change their conduct, and thereby that world. The political theorist is thus always a teacher as much as an observer or contemplator, and to the extent that his teaching succeeds, his subject matter will alter. So the distinguishing of necessities from possibilities is less like the drawing of a line than like a Gestalt switch: a reconceptualization of familiar details so that realities we feel we have always known suddenly become visible for the first time, familiar things suddenly take on a new aspect.

We live our ordinary lives in the particular and the concrete, largely unaware of our remote connections to people we never see, the long-range and large-scale consequences for others of what we do, for us of what they do. On the whole, we know how to use the resources at hand for the immediate tasks we face, how to do what we must daily do. But the factual particulars among which we live can be organized and interpreted by many different theoretical schemas. That is why, as Machiavelli says, “the people” may be deceived “in judging things in general,” but they “are not so deceived” about “particular,” “specific things,” “things individually known” (Discourses 1: 47; Machiavelli 1965: 291–3). It is not so much that we do not see the forest for the trees, as that more than one theoretical forest is compatible with the many trees among which we live. The political theorist, one might say, invites us to a new organizing schema for making sense of our concrete reality. If we accept the invitation, our familiar world will seem changed, and as a result we shall live differently in it. Yet whether we accept the new schema will depend on whether it makes sense of what we already know, makes meaningful what was before confused, chaotic, or intractable.

Obviously this will depend both on the truth of a theorist’s vision and on his power as a teacher. Nothing is harder than to get people really to see what has always been before their eyes, particularly since such a changed vision will have implications for action (which may make uncomfortable demands on them) and interest (which may make it offensive to those who now hold privilege and power). Thus the political theorist faces a special problem of communication: in order to be understood, he must speak in terms familiar to his audience, from within a conceptual framework and an understanding of the world that they share. Yet he wants not to convey new information to them, but rather to change the terms, the conceptual framework through which they presently organize their information. It may seem an impossible task; and political theorizing accordingly has its dangers, from ridicule to martyrdom. Yet sometimes it does happen that people...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Hanna Fenichel Pitkin and the dilemmas of political thinking
• PART I: Politics
• PART II: Judgment
• PART III: Action
• Index