The Non-Sovereign Self, Responsibility, and Otherness

Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Stanley Cavell on Moral Philosophy and Political Agency

Rosine Kelz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137508966
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137508973
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Filosofia etica e morale

Drawing on Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler and Stanley Cavell, this book addresses contemporary theoretical and political debates in a broader comparative perspective and rearticulates the relationship between ethics and politics by highlighting those who are currently excluded from our notions of political community.

1

Introduction

Recent debates about cultural, economic, and political globalisation have popularised the notion of non-sovereignty. A growing understanding of social interconnections in all areas of life has allowed for the insight that non-sovereignty, even though it is often perceived as threatening, is a condition political communities and singular individuals cannot overcome. In this context, non-sovereign concepts of the self stress the ways in which thinking, language, and ultimately one’s very survival depend on social relationships. The relational nature of human existence has been emphasised by many of the major directions of western thought such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, post-structuralism, and post-analytic philosophy. Together with the critique of humanism in the last half of the 20th century, this has led to the reformulation of philosophical anthropologies, where the psychic and bodily aspects of human existence are accentuated. While non-sovereign accounts of human social life have become widely accepted, there is an ongoing debate about definitions and roles of key terms such as ‘finitude’, ‘relationality’, or ‘difference’ and the consequences they have for political thought. In particular, the relationship between moral responsibility for others and political action and judgement remains disputed. This book therefore investigates how the non-sovereign self can be understood, and how this concept can influence notions of political association and responsibility for others. I argue that, if formulated in a specific way, a non-sovereign notion of the self can help us to develop conceptions of political agency and connectivity that are closely intertwined with an ethics of responsibility towards those ‘others’ who are currently under-represented in our political communities.

This argument is based on the philosophical anthropologies – or notions of the self – formulated by Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, and Stanley Cavell. While their writings have been highly influential, they have so far not been considered in a comparative manner. Reading them together and against each other, I seek to establish the importance of non-sovereignty for our political and moral thinking. Their approaches highlight a productive tension between assertions regarding the ‘communal’ character of subject formation and the uniqueness or separateness of each human existence. While many notions of relationality imply that we cannot define our ethical and political positions independently from the formative influence of society, an emancipatory and critical stance towards our social environment makes it necessary to distance ourselves from our communities, to rely on our unique selves and develop independent judgements. The notion of non-sovereignty this book proposes therefore not only retains the possibility for critique but defines a critical stance towards any formulation of community as the precondition for emancipatory political action and a moral relationship to others.

Each of the three authors this book concentrates on makes a distinctive contribution to the notion of the non-sovereign self. Hannah Arendt’s work provides a unique understanding of political action that highlights the singularity and non-sovereignty of political agents. Moreover, she enables us to redefine the notion of freedom as decoupled from sovereignty. Judith Butler explores the depth of the vulnerability and opaqueness of the self and the connection between our embodied existence and our lives in language. Stanley Cavell stresses that the stance we take towards our political communities and our understanding of moral subjectivity are interconnected. He allows us to understand that ethics, rather than being merely a concern with the self, relies on acknowledging the difference of another person. Furthermore, he argues that even though our knowledge about ourselves and others is limited, moral relationships still depend on autonomous choices.

As my usage of the term ‘philosophical anthropology’ implies, this work rests on the assumption that our political convictions and moral values are based on broader ontological notions. Asserting ontological grounds that direct ethical and political judgements, however, has become controversial. Previously the nature of our common existence could be explained and justified by reference to a belief in an omnipotent God or the cognitive powers of the rational human subject. At least from the 19th century onwards, however, critical voices against the idea of an ‘ultimate foundation’ have become abundant. Any ontological project, it has been argued, is not only historically contingent but it also often functions as a justification for the form of society and government it is connected with. As post-structuralist critiques of modern ontological and epistemological projects have pointed out, there is a close interrelation between our underlying ‘foundational’ beliefs about ‘what is’, our conceptions of knowledge, and the societal and political frameworks within which these notions are coined. The situatedness of language and discourses of knowledge imply that there is no access to a completely neutral ‘meta-language’ that would allow us to objectively describe social realities. As Richard Rorty puts it, while the world is certainly out there, the truth about it is not.¹ What counts as knowledge is situated in terms of fundamental beliefs about existence, and, in turn, these convictions are affected by what we consider to be authentic knowledge. In other words, what we believe there is to know might, to a certain extent, limit what we can know. Alexandros Kiopkioulis sums up this notion: ‘[O]ntology in the guise of fully fledged narratives about nature and humanity is not “antecedent” to values, politics and epistemic assumptions’. Therefore, ‘[f]undamental beliefs about the defining features of being can be imbued and inflected by evaluations that incline agents to isolate, to stress and to variously construe different elements of the real’.²

To assert that ontological notions are neither universal nor neutral, however, does not mean they can be light-heartedly discarded. Moreover, the relationship between knowledge, ontology, and experience is not static. If, within an accepted epistemological framework, we find out that we were wrong about ‘what is out there’, this new knowledge might make it necessary to amend our belief systems and rethink how we should act as political and moral agents. Accepting that we can neither completely do away with foundations to ground our moral and political thinking nor claim that these foundations are universal and neutral, this book builds upon recent debates about ‘weak ontologies’ and ‘postfoundationalism’. These two related theoretical approaches are in turn indebted to the ‘French’ or ‘Continental’ reception of Heidegger. While I do not wish to argue that Arendt, Butler, or Cavell adopt their notions of ontology and selfhood exclusively or directly from Heidegger, their thoughts are in important respects related to Heideggerian notions or can be reconceptualised in these terms. To provide a conceptual framework for my reading of these three authors, the remainder of this chapter will therefore provide a short overview of Heideggerian concepts relevant to the notions of non-sovereignty discussed in this book. We then turn to consider the concepts of ‘weak ontology’ and ‘postfoundationalism’ in more detail and highlight how this work builds on the similarities and differences between these two approaches. By doing so I will offer a brief introduction to the notion of ‘the political’, which has played a central role in current debates in political theory and attests to the continuing relevance of Arendt’s thought. This chapter concludes with an outline of the following chapters.

A ‘Heideggerian’ critique of the subject, Dasein, and the question of foundations

It would go beyond the scope of this Introduction to consider Martin Heidegger’s complex thought in the detail it merits. In this section, I thus limit myself to a short recapitulation of core terms in the Continental reception of Heidegger’s understanding of the human, which have inspired recent endeavours in formulating ‘weak ontological’ positions. Starting with an outline of Heideggerian terminology makes sense considering that Heidegger, or in the case of Butler his ‘French’ reception, is a shared point of reference for the thinkers this book concentrates on. Turning to Heidegger’s concept of the human as Dasein (being-there) thus helps to establish a general outline of the notion of the self I further discuss in Chapters 2 and 3.³

One of the important contributions to 20th century thought Heidegger made is his critique of the modern subject, where he establishes human existence as situated and finite. The Heideggerian intervention in modern philosophy hinges on the argument that being (Sein) can only be grasped through an existential analysis of human being or Dasein. In turn, the concept of Dasein develops from his critique of the modern subject. While accepting that any ontological understanding starts from the particular position of Dasein, the notion of Dasein rejects the foundational ontological and epistemological role of the subject. In other words, the Heideggerian critique of the subject, as Continental political thinkers have interpreted it, is not directed against the idea that the particular perspective of human beings is the starting point for what humans can know about the world, but against the assumption of an ultimate ground or absolute knowledge as such. The western philosophical tradition, it is asserted, has always depended on the notion of an ultimum subjectum which serves as the metaphysical source of knowledge. Modern philosophy did not overcome metaphysics, but only shifted the location of the ultimate ground from an external source to the human being itself.⁴ The universal human subject thus appears as a ‘quasi-transcendental’ notion. Raising the human into a transcendental position, however, misrepresents the relationship between human beings and the external world, because it artificially divides humans from their environment. The separate or sovereign subject would then have to establish a relationship to the external world. This is primarily a relationship of knowing, and moreover one that is bound to a specific understanding of what knowledge and rationality are. Thus, the subject’s relationship to the world becomes fixed. It opposes the world, which is understood as the objective realm.⁵ Therefore, the idea of the subject allows modern philosophy to define itself as a theory of knowledge, where the subject accesses the objective world in a theoretical or contemplative way, or to state it in Husserlian terms, via certain ‘objectifying acts’. Defining the human primarily as consciousness, as the solipsist thinking self, however, the notion of the modern subject provides an impoverished understanding of (human) existence. Heidegger argues that this subject–object dualism constitutive of modern epistemology understands both the subject and the world as entities that are vorhanden, ‘present-at-hand’, or objectively present to theoretical regard. While this is not necessarily a ‘wrong’ way of viewing the world, it is a deficient one. By dividing the human from the world, the interconnection between human beings and their environments is obscured.

Criticising this notion, the Heideggerian position asserts that human existence is embedded in and conditioned by its environment. Humans are thus unable to step out of the world in order to perceive it ‘objectively’. Heidegger introduces the term Dasein to express the embedded nature of human existence. Ontological reflection therefore becomes inextricably entangled with distinctive characteristics of human being, such as mortality and ‘mood’ (Stimmung).⁶ Moreover, to understand human existence in terms of Dasein brings to the fore a way of being that is concerned about its own being. Such a figuration of the human as always already situated within the world and concerned with its own existence implies the self’s responsibility for the world. As François Raffoul states, ‘[t]he very concept of Dasein means, to be a responsibility of being’. As an ‘archi-ethical’ notion, Dasein ‘designates that entity for whom being is at issue. Being is given in such a way that I have to take it over and be responsible for it. This determination of Dasein from the outset determines it as an originary responsibility.’⁷ As Heidegger sums up his understanding of Dasein in the 1924 lecture, ‘Der Begriff der Zeit’:

Dasein is that entity which is characterized as Being-in-the-world. Human life is not some subject that has to perform some trick in order to enter the world … As this Being-in-the-world Dasein is, together with this, Being-with-one-another [Mit-einander-sein], being with others: having the same world there [da] with others, encountering one another, being with one another in the manner of Being-for-one-another [Für-einander-sein].⁸

Here Heidegger makes clear that human beings can only be understood in their connection to their environment and those they share the world with. Moreover, as Dasein, one is responsible for those others one encounters. While Heidegger has been criticised for not following up on his notion of being-with-others [Mitsein], my work argues that the importance of coexistence is highlighted in Arendt’s, Butler’s, and Cavell’s notions of the self.⁹

One reason why Heidegger might fail to consider the importance of ‘being-with’ sufficiently is his concern with, and definition of, authenticity. In some passages, it appears as if being-with-others in one’s daily life is an inauthentic form of existence. To phrase it differently, by interacting with others on a daily basis in their families, work places, on the street, and so forth, humans forget to ask the important philosophical question of Being, and thus forget to be perplexed by Being as such. In their inauthentic everyday existence, humans are with and for others before they are with and for themselves. However, these inauthentic modes of existence are irreducible.¹⁰ Human beings cannot always live authentic lives. Inauthenticity is, as it were, necessary for one’s everyday functioning in the world. Authenticity is an event, breaking the ongoing continuum of inauthenticity. Therefore, one’s normal, everyday state is one of inauthenticity, of living as part of das Man (the they) and only in extraordinary moments one reaches states of authenticity.¹¹ As we will see, a critical rendering of this notion can be detected in Arendt’s differentiation between the social and the political.

To appreciate how the philosophical anthropologies this book advances differ from a Heideggerian position, it helps to consider what the event or experience of authenticity would involve for Heidegger. In his early writings, this experience appears to be closely connected to the awareness of one’s own mortality. Death here serves as the ultimate expression of human finitude. Human existence can only be grasped in its relationship to death, where non-being demarcates a limit to the capacity for understanding. Therefore, all knowledge is defined against a horizon of the essentially unknowable. In Heideggerian terms, authenticity can be understood as a glimpse, as awe in the face of the unknowable, and as the understanding that all existence is utterly contingent or non-necessary. In Sein und Zeit, these rare, authentic modes of existing are described in various forms. One is the Grund-stimmung (ground or basic mood) of anxiety. In the state of anxiety, entities withdraw and Dasein becomes uncanny. This individualises Dasein and discloses it as a quasi-Cartesian solus ipse, a solipsistic self alone.¹² Similarly, Dasein is singled out in its ‘being-towards-death’ and in the call of conscience that addresses the particular Dasein as guilty or indebted (schuldig). Finally, in the ending passages of Sein und Zeit, Heidegger gives an account of the constancy of selfhood as the individualised Dasein that is decidedly open or resolute in the face of death.

This singularised relationship towards death further removes Heidegger from considering the importance of being-with-others. Authenticity expressed as the stance towards death thus appears to be in tension with his critique of the modern subject. By turning towards the notion of one’s singular experience of one’s own mortality, he moves away from his former insight that existence is shared with others and that the relationship to others and the world has ontological importance. As Derrida notes, and we will return to this argument in slightly different form in our discussion of Butler, death can never be ‘for oneself’ in the terms Heidegger imagines. Instead, one primarily encounters death as the death of another. This is expressed more simply as follows: while the self is unable to experience its own non-being, it will probably witness the death of others, and these experiences of loss define its understanding of mortality. Importantly, Derrida and Butler agree, the experience of the other’s mortality establishes the self’s moral relationship to the other. Thus, ‘[t]he recognition of the limit of death is always through another and is, therefore at the same time the recognition of the other’.¹³ For Derrida thus Heidegger’s concept of solipsistic ‘being-towards-death’ cancels out one’s moral relationship to others. Therefore, ‘the “impossibility” of death for the ego confirms that the experience of finitude is one of radical passivity. That the “I” can...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Arendt on the Acting, Thinking and Moral Self
• 3. The Situated and Embodied Self: Butler and Cavell on Subjectivity, Language, and Finitude
• 4. Otherness and an Ethics of Responsibility
• 5. Responsibility beyond the Human?
• 6. Re-Imagining the Political
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index