The Hidden Philosophy of Hannah Arendt

Margaret Betz Hull

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135787721
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Regional Studies

The central argument of this book is that Hannah Arendt's deserved place in the history of Western philosophy has been overlooked, and recognition of her contribution is long overdue. In part a result of Arendt's own insistence on calling herself a 'political thinker' throughout her career, this is also due to a common tendency in philosophy to denigrate the political. This book explores the indisputable philosophical dimensions of her work. In particular, it examines Arendt's theoretical commitment to recognizing humanity as a plurality, which avoids the common mistake in Western philosophy of theoretically overemphasizing the self in isolation. Arendt's own personal dealings with aspects of her identity, namely her Jewishness and her womanhood, work to inform us of this position against solipsism.

1

POLITICAL ACTION AND “THE OLD SUSPICIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS”

Essentially, philosophy from Plato to Hegel was “not of this world” …

(Arendt 1954a)

Occidental philosophy never had a pure concept of politics and could never have such a concept because it always spoke of Man and never dealt with human plurality.

(Arendt 1958)

How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.

(Henry David Thoreau)

Hannah Arendt’s biographer Elisabeth Young-Bruehl tells us in her book For the Love of the World, “rejecting the philosophical tradition of contemptus mundi, Arendt wanted to call her book [what we know as The Human Condition] Amor Mundi, love of the world” (1982: 324). Arendt’s The Human Condition does display just that – a love for the world of human affairs which, in her opinion, rendered her an atavism within contemporary times. Arendt’s Prologue to the Human Condition warily surveys the technological advancements of 1957 in which “an earth-bound object made by man was launched into the universe.” The spontaneous reaction of many following this event was an expression of joy, since this space travel represented the first “step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth.” As someone with a self-described amor mundi, Arendt regarded this reaction as seriously troublesome and sadly characteristic of modern times.

This world that Arendt so loved includes certain basic human activities, culminating in what she believed is humanity’s highest achievement – the capacity for political action. Thus, political action is “of the world,” or, more exactly, what might spontaneously spring forth when in the company of others. Through political action we develop who we are and acquire meaning and purpose to our lives. However, it is Arendt’s contention that the Western philosophical tradition, beginning most notably with Plato, disrupted and destroyed the glory political action enjoyed in the ancient Greek city-state. Ever since then, she believed philosophy has displayed tremendous hostility to ta ton anthropon pragmata (the affairs of men) and the traditional Greek hierarchal placement of political action as the pinnacle of human endeavors.

The root of this common hostile disposition, according to Arendt, is based in the “philosopher’s deep-rooted suspicion of politics in general and action in particular” (1958: 301). Political action was forever to suffer this blow by philosophy, she argues, and it has never regained a recognized position in Western culture as a significantly essential component of a uniquely human life.¹ Yet action need not die a quiet death, for, as Young-Bruehl notes, “Arendt was constantly thinking about what the relation between philosophy and politics should and could be in the modern world” (1982: 294).

This chapter examines Arendt’s understanding of the relationship between political action and philosophy, the character of distinctly traditional political philosophy, and what she believes the Western tradition has lost as a result. When viewing this dichotomy between the political and the philosophical from the perspective of political action, which we are not in the habit of doing, Arendt hopes to reveal a fresh appreciation for the bios politikos.

One might be skeptical of whether Arendt’s proposed dichotomy of the political and philosophical, exemplified in the opening quotes, is actually as severely oppositional as she regards it to be. Is it true that the philosophical tradition has relegated all human affairs, and specifically the political, to a secondary status? What of political philosophy, which plays a prominent role in the theories of important philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and so on? Was it too hasty for Arendt to describe herself as a “political thinker,” denoting an opposition between this and “the philosopher”?²

Arendt’s initial turn to political concerns away from a philosophy scholar’s life might have been mostly coincidental. While finishing her dissertation on St Augustine’s concept of love at Heidelberg in 1933, this promising philosopher began to realize she would never see a scholarly career come to fruition in Germany because she was Jewish. A woman who had never before shown a great deal of interest in political matters later offered an interviewer as explanation regarding her reaction to the burning of the Reichstag in 1933, “This was an immediate shock for me, and from that moment on I felt responsible. That is, I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander” (1994a: 4–5).³ This woman who claimed that her upbringing was devoid of any serious Jewish identity or study also said in this same interview:

I realized what I then expressed time and time again in the sentence: If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man.

(1994a: 11–12)⁴

Therefore, one might say the current political happenings of the time imposed themselves on Arendt’s lofty philosophical world; as Young-Bruehl (1996) comments, “history demanded that of her.”⁵

Although proof of her amor mundi lies dormant in Arendt’s dissertation thesis,⁶ it was Nazi Germany that strongly confirmed Arendt’s fundamental commitment to the worldly dealings of the political. It is here that her political life, both in written form and practical form, began, leaving behind what Young-Bruehl calls “the apolitical intellectuality of her university circles” (1982: 113). It is in reference to this period that Arendt commented:

I lived in the intellectual milieu, but I also knew other people. And among intellectuals, Gleichschaltung [political coordination] was the rule, so to speak. But not among others. And I never forgot that. I left Germany dominated by the idea — of course somewhat exaggerated: Never again! I shall never again get involved in any kind of intellectual business. I want nothing to do with that lot.

(1994a: 11)

After completing her doctorate, Arendt began writing a book on Rahel Varnhagen, a German Jewish salonnière of the early nineteenth century. This work represented the next stage in Arendt’s career, one more step towards an academic position in Germany. But, in 1933, Arendt found herself in the position of having no choice but to flee Germany because of the frightening ascent of Hitler’s anti-Semitic Nazism,⁷ so she was denied such a career. As someone enmeshed in the German intellectual world, Arendt witnessed first hand the general apathetic passivity of German scholars when faced with Nazism. Some, Arendt was horrified to realize, went so far as to willingly benefit from such political developments.⁸ As Arendt wrote to Jaspers in 1946, “The key point here isn’t that our professors did not become heroes. It is their humorlessness, their obsequiousness, their fear of missing the boat” (Arendt and Jaspers 1992: 50). These experiences had a profound impact on Arendt, not only personally but also professionally.

Martin Heidegger, Arendt’s close friend and teacher, exemplified this type of German intellectual: Heidegger was appointed rector of Freiburg University in the spring of 1933, at which time he delivered a pro-Nazi rectorial address.⁹ In the same year, a letter circulated through the university system, signed by Rector Heidegger, forbidding Jews to enter the university premises. Karl Jaspers, fellow philosopher and friend, was excluded from university management and eventually lost his chair in 1937 for the simple reason that his wife, Gertrude, was a Jew. Likewise, Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s mentor and friend, received the same letter because he was a Christian who had converted from Judaism. Arendt later attributed the reception of this letter, and the accompanying signature of “Heidegger,” as that which “almost killed” Husserl. She added, “I cannot but regard Heidegger as a potential murderer.” (Ettinger 1995: 66). Although Arendt later recanted this damning valuation, it is clear that witnessing a great philosophical mind uncritically comply with Nazi ideology was too much for Arendt to bear.¹⁰ It is significantly noteworthy that Arendt saw her teacher Jaspers as the exception to this rule among German academics. Arendt says in Eichmann in Jerusalem, “… there were individuals in Germany who from the very beginning of the regime and without ever wavering were opposed to Hitler …. Very few people were known publicly, as were the aforementioned Reck-Malleczewen or the philosopher Karl Jaspers” (1963a: 103–4). Arendt’s perception that Jaspers positively distinguished himself during this time of political turmoil proves crucial to the philosophical perspective that she herself adopted, as we will see in Chapter 3.

At least superficially, Arendt’s construction of this rigid opposition in her mind between the “political thinker” and the “philosopher” was born of her life experience in which professional philosophers, indeed most intellectuals, chose to ignore, deny, or trivialize the significance of world-altering political matters. It manifested itself to the point that most intellectuals ceased to be even remotely politically involved, choosing instead to remain “nothing but” scholars. As Liliane Weissberg says in her Introduction to Arendt’s Rahel Varnhagen:

Philosophy … can claim political neutrality, and the philosopher can endeavor to speak in the name of humanity. Political science calls on a person to take a position, and for Arendt, who treats philosophy as an occupation of her past, it marks her as an acting and active person …

(1997: 25)

It is for this reason that for most of her career Arendt continued to confirm that, “I do not belong to the circle of philosophers.” So important was this issue to Arendt that she once described her book, Between Past and Future – her work that deals most thoroughly with the troubled relation of politics and philosophy – as the “best of her books.”

Although this may explain her initial disposition towards the political over the philosophical, Arendt felt she had found ample proof of this opposition within philosophical works themselves.¹¹ Young-Bruehl summarizes Arendt’s opinion of the traditional relation between philosophy and the political as such:

Arendt believed that Western philosophers, from the trial and death of Socrates through the nineteenth century, had been more concerned with how philosophy could be carried on with the least disturbance from the political realm. There is no great thinker in the tradition who did not concern himself with politics, of course, but this concern did not reflect a conviction where politics is a domain where genuine philosophical questions arise. The political domain was one that ought to be regulated according to precepts that arise elsewhere and are accessible to a ‘higher’ sort of wisdom than practical wisdom

(1982: 322).

This antagonism may only be completely understood against the backdrop of the “pre-philosophical Greeks,” as Arendt refers to them, who did not similarly envision the political as having such a lowly status when compared to the contemplative life;¹² in fact, political action was recognized by ancient Greek civilization as the pinnacle of human existence.¹³

Yet, Arendt argues, Western philosophy was forever to destroy political action’s reputation and respectability.¹⁴ Arendt notes that even her beloved Socrates welcomed death, motivating her to comment that, in general, “The true philosopher does not accept the conditions under which life has been given to man” (1982: 22). Arendt also cites the legendary story of Heraclitus, who reportedly pointed to the skies when asked the location of his “true home.” Pythagoras, likewise, had disdain for political action, championing the spectator of human affairs over the actor within human affairs. Arendt quotes him as saying, “Life … is like a festival; just as some come to the festival to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best people come as spectators[theatai], so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame [doxa] or gain, the philosophers for truth” (1982: 55, emphasis added). She concludes that the general consensus in philosophy has been that, “withdrawal into a sect is the second-best cure for being alive at all and having to live among men” (1982: 23).

Although already present in subtle form, Arendt purports that the greatest animosity towards the political began with Plato, pointing to “the growing apoliticism of the philosophers after Socrates’ death” (1954a: 72).¹⁵ Arendt contends that this purposeful aversion from political activity by major Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle was due to their fear and disgust in how the Greek polis symbolically treated philosophy in the trial and death of Socrates. Plato experienced first hand what the masses were capable of politically. Aristotle, too, experienced political threat, which prompted him to defend his exile from Athens upon the death of Alexander the Great with the words, “lest the Athenians sin twice against philosophy.” Seeing what the political world is like, without the rigorous control of philosophy, Arendt believed Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy began a tradition of the characterization and legitimization of political action as solely and paternally dictated by philosophy. Bernstein says on the matter:

Arendt argues that ever since Plato (especially as a result of Plato’s reaction to Socrates’ trial), philosophers – with very few exceptions – explicitly or implicitly sought to impose their alien standards of truth upon the human realm of politics in which there is an irreducible conflict of opinions. The tradition of so-called political philosophy, when unmasked, is a tradition that really sought to refashion politics in the rationalistic image of philosophy.

(1996: 3)

Considering that the Greek experience of political action now only vaguely exists as a past memory in Western culture, Arendt characterizes philosophy’s treatment of the political as nothing but reprehensible. She surmises that the tradition of political thought “began when Plato discovered that it’s somehow inherent in the philosophical experience to turn away from the common world of affairs; it ended when nothing was left of this experience but the opposition of thinking and acting …” (1954a: 25).

Arendt contends that the superiority granted to contemplation over any sort of action is not Christian in origin, as commonly believed, but firmly begins in Plato’s political philosophy and his “tyranny of truth.” She offers as proof Plato’s “utopian reorganization of the polis,” identifying it as having “no aim other than to make possible the philosopher’s way of life” (1958: 14). In The Republic, Plato delineates a political blueprint that gains its stability as well as its raison d’être from the “philosopher kings” who paternally rule over the masses. The implication is that the masses are not capable of political action among themselves, but instead are the recipients of political rule and thus not active participants in the political. Arendt comments:

Plato clearly wrote The Republic to justify the notion that philosophers should become kings, not because they would enjoy politics, but because, first, this would mean that they would not be ruled by people worse than they were themselves and, second, it would bring about in the commonwealth that complete quiet, that absolute peace, that certainly constitutes the best condition for the life of the philosopher.

(1982: 21)

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is a prime example of Arendt’s contention; here, the philosopher must leave the cave, must leave the company of others, in order to reach what is “superior.” Plato’s cave represents the ordinary life within the world and his philosopher is advised to escape from this realm in order to fulfill the highest of abilities – contemplation – in solitude, returning only to inform the unenlightened masses of their ignorance. Arendt criticizes Plato for reducing humanity’s living together in a common world to “darkness, confusion and deception which, those aspiring to true being, must turn away from and abandon if they want to discover the clear skies of eternal ideas” (1954a: 17). Arendt found it “puzzling” why Plato chose to depict the inhabitants of the cave as “frozen, chained before a screen, without any possibility for doing anything or communicating with one another” (1990: 96). It was the uncontainable chatter and bustle of human interaction and activity that Plato wished to escape through the “quietude” of the philosopher’s existence. It is through examples like Plato’s cave that Arendt believed a dichotomy ensued between “seeing the truth in solitude and remoteness and being caught in the relationships and relativities of human affairs,” which became “authoritative” for political philosophy in general (1954a: 115). Plato’s new political paradigm was so destructive of political action because it was in direct opposition to the common Greek and Roman understanding that, “politically speaking … to die is the same as ‘to cease to be among men’.” What the Greeks and Romans had once attributed to a worthwhile human life – the lack of which was seen as the equivalence of death – was now seriously demoted by Plato’s highly influential philosophy.

Arendt argues that philosophy, enveloped in and legitimated by the contemplative life of solitude, opposes the political in another fundamental way. As she explains, philosophy demands isolation to occur and, therefore, conflicts with political action, which always must take place “in the company of men.” The political involves the human condition of plurality and, since the philosophical truth concerns the individual in his/her singularity, according to Arendt, “it is unpolitical by nature.” Furthermor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Political action and “the old suspicions of philosophers”
• 2 Arendt’s philosophy: the primacy of plurality and interaction
• 3 Professional philosophy versus philosophy as philanthropia: Arendt’s influences
• 4 The Arendtian person: Hannah Arendt as Jew, Hannah Arendt as woman
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index