NOTES INTRODUCTION
1. See, among others, George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, p. 39; N. K. O’Sullivan, “Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and Industrial Society”; Hanna Pitkin, “Justice: On Relating Private and Public”; Mildred Bakan, “Hannah Arendt’s Concepts of Labor and Work,” in Melvyn Hill, ed., Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, p. 59.
2. Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, p. 174.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 228.
4. See Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, and Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy. The influence of Arendt is strongly felt in both books; e.g., Barber’s focus on political action as “the ultimate political problem,” p. 121ff.
5. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, chapter 2 (hereafter cited as HC); Aristotle, The Politics, books III and VII.
6. Barber, Strong Democracy, pp. 2, 13.
7. Ibid., p. 120.
8. See Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice, and The Theory of Communicative Action; Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia; Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, part four.
9. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
10. Habermas’s most recent articulation of this position can be found in his Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, chapters 11 and 12.
11. Ibid., chapter 11.
12. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, and Theory and Practice, pp. 42, 286. Benhabib is particularly good at drawing out the indebtedness of Habermas to Arendt’s distinctions and her concept of plurality. See Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, pp. 243–245.
13. For Habermas’s initial formulation of this distinction, see “Science and Technology as Ideology,” in Toward a Rational Society, p. 96.
14. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” pp. 174–175.
15. See Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice; Charles Taylor, “Cross-Purposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate”; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue.
16. Michael Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” in Political Theory, p. 82.
17. Ibid., p. 91.
18. Ibid., p. 89.
19. Sandel, Liberalism, p. 183.
20. Arendt, HC, pp. 200–201; also “Ideology and Terror,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 474; and, finally, “On Violence,” in Crises of the Republic, pp. 142–143 (hereafter cited as CR).
21. See the analysis of legality in Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” in Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 465, and the critique of constitutionalism in Arendt, On Revolution, chapter 3 (hereafter cited as OR).
22. Sandel, Liberalism, p. 183.
23. Hannah Arendt, Preface to Between Past and Future, p. 7 (hereafter cited as BPF).
24. S. Wolin, Politics and Vision, p. v.
25. Ernst Vollrath, “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking,” p. 163.
26. Arendt, Preface, BPF, p. 14. See also “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in the same volume, p. 28, and Stan Draenos’s essay, “Thinking without a Ground: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Situation of Understanding,” in Hill, ed., 1979.
27. Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in BPF, p. 26.
28. Ibid., p. 15.
29. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, p. 261.
30. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, pp. 193, 197, 199 (hereafter cited as MDT).
31. Ibid., pp. 205–206.
32. Ibid., “Walter Benjamin,” p. 201.
33. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 41–49 (hereafter cited as BT).
34. Ibid., p. 43.
35. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, p. 40 (translation altered).
37. Ibid.
38. Arendt, MDT, pp. 201, 205.
39. Rootlessness is a persistant theme in Arendt, as Kateb points out in chapter 5 of his Hannah Arendt. See in particular Arendt, part VI of HC, and “Ideology and Terror,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which the connection between rootlessness and totalitarianism is directly made.
40. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” p. 475.
41. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 7.
42. This phrase is borrowed from Kateb.
44. This phrase is borrowed from Stephen K. White’s fine piece, “Heidegger and the Difficulties of a Postmodern Ethics and Politics,” p. 85.
45. See especially the objections raised by Arendt’s interlocutors at a conference devoted to her work in Toronto, 1972, excerpts of which are contained in Hill, ed., pp. 301–339.
46. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, pp. 178–179.
47. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Le Retrait du Politique. For a discussion of the importance of this theme to contemporary French thought, see Nancy Fraser, “The French Derrideans: Politicizing Deconstruction or Deconstructing the Political,” in Unruly Practices.
48. For the notion of “an-archic” action, of action ungrounded by first principles, see Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, Introduction and pp. 82–93. See also White’s discussion in “Heidegger and the Difficulties of a Postmodern Ethics and Politics.”
49. The “revolutionary conservative” charge is made by Pierre Bourdieu in The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger, and by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut in Heidegger and Modernity, chapter 2. It is reiterated at length by Richard Wolin in The Politics of Being: The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger, chapters 1–3. For a good discussion of the intellectual background to this interpretation, particularly Heidegger’s debt to Ernst Jünger, see Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity.
50. Schürmann and Lacoue-Labarthe have emphasized the ambition of Arendt’s project in this regard. See Reiner Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics.
1. Arendt, HC, p. 17; also p. 85.
2. Ibid.; cf. Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in BPF.
4. Ibid., pp. 4–5, 321.
5. Habermas, Bernstein, Bakan, and numerous others criticize Arendt on this score.
6. Aristotle, The Politics, I.2, p. 28.
7. Arendt, HC, p. 30; also BPF, p. 116.
8. Aristotle, Politics, I.3, p. 30.
9. Ibid., I.1, III.9; also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I.7, 1098a.
10. Aristotle, Politics, I.2, p. 28.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Aristotle, Physics, in Basic Works of Aristotle, VIII.7.
14. Aristotle, Politics, I.2, p. 29; also Ethics, VIII.8, 116a, 25.
16. Ibid., p. 30.
17. Ibid., pp. 30–31; also Arendt, BPF, pp. 116–117.
19. Ibid., p. 28; also Chapter 2, Section VI.
20. Ibid., p. 47.
21. Ibid., p. 28.
22. Ibid., p. 40.
23. Ibid., p. 6.
24. Habermas is particularly adamant on this score. See Chapter 1, Section III, of this book.
25. Aristotle, Politics, I.2, p. 28.
26. My opting for “self-containedness” will become clear when, in Chapters 2 and 3, I examine the aesthetic dimension of Arendt’s theory of action.
27. Aristotle, Ethics, 1097a.
28. Ibid., 1097b.
29. Ibid., 1094a.
30. See, for example, Aristotle, Ethics, X.6 and X.7. In Physics, Aristotle cites sense activity (e.g., seeing) as a kind of activity that contains its own end.
31. Aristotle, Ethics, 1140b.
32. Ibid., 1098a; also 1139b.
33. Ibid., 1139b.
34. Ibid., 1140b.
35. Ibid., 1140a.
36. Aristotle, Politics, I.4, p. 32; cf. VII.14, pp. 287–288, for his distinction between those activities that have moral worth and those that, while necessary, do not.
37. Aristotle, Ethics, 1099a.
38. Aristotle, Politics, III.5 and VII.9. Cf. also Arendt’s note, in Arendt, HC, p. 82.
41. Arendt, HC, pp. 305, 153–154.
42. Ibid., p. 156.
43. Ibid., p. 154.
44. Ibid., p. 305.
45. Ibid., p. 154.
46. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 46.
51. Ibid., p. 47.
52. Ibid., p. 40.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., p. 46.
57. Ibid.
58. See Bhikhu Parekh, “Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Marx,” in Hill, ed., p. 72.
60. See, most famously, the description of the self-formation of the human species through work in the 1844 Manuscripts (spelled out most specifically in the section entitled “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole”), in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 112.
61. Arendt, HC, p. 99 (note 34).
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid., p. 87.
64. Ibid., p. 98.
65. Ibid., p. 88.
66. Ibid., p. 79.
67. Ibid., p. 143.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid., pp. 143–144.
70. Aristotle, Ethics, 1140a.
72. Ibid., p. 134.
73. G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to The Philosophy of Right, p. 20.
75. Ibid., p. 143.
76. Ibid., p. 206.
77. Ibid., p. 176.
78. Aristotle, Politics, books I and III.
79. This is a basic theme in Arendt’s political theory, one made much of by Habermas and others for whom the distinction between communicative and strategic action is paramount. For its classic formulation, see Arendt, “On Violence,” in CR, p. 142ff. She cites Weber’s famous definition of the state on p. 134.
80. Cf. Arendt’s remarks on tyranny, HC, pp. 202–203.
82. Ibid., p. 249ff; also pp. 256–257.
83. Ibid., p. 60.
84. Ibid.
85. Hence Arendt’s distinction between “freedom” and “liberation.” Cf. Arendt, OR, p. 29. Also Arendt, BPF, p. 148.
86. Arendt, OR, chapter 2, section 2. See Marx’s famous formulation from volume 3 of Capital, in Marx and Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 439–441.
87. The parallel between Arendt’s analysis and Hegel’s critique of the French Revolution is striking. Both think that striving to achieve “universal” (as opposed to political) freedom accomplishes but “one work and deed,” death. Social revolution is not the essence of politics and political action, but its abstract negation: action and speech are deprived of all significance by the “most cold-blooded and meaningless death of all,” the catastrophic, undiscriminating violence of political terror. See the section entitled “Absolute Freedom and Terror,” in G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.
88. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber, p. 80–88.
92. Ibid., p. 269.
93. Ibid., p. 272.
94. Ibid., p. 237.
95. Ibid., p. 269.
96. See Arendt, HC, pp. 154–155.
97. Aristotle, Politics, I.2, pp. 28–29.
99. Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times,” in MDT, p. 24.
100. Arendt, HC, pp. 26–27. Cf. OR, p. 35.
102. Ibid., p. 207.
104. Ibid., p. 34.
105. It is not political, because it has become solely concerned with the question of the most efficient means.
106. Aristotle, Ethics, VI.9, 1142b, 30.
107. Ibid., VI.5, 1140a, 25.
108. Ibid., VI.9, 1142b, 20.
109. Ibid., VI.5, 1140b, 5.
112. Arendt, OR, pp. 31, 124, 246.
114. Ibid., p. 58.
115. Ibid., p. 7. As with her emphasis on deliberation, Arendt’s focus on plurality is, apparently, derived from Aristotle, notably his critique, in book II of The Politics, of the “Socratic” idea that “the state should be as much of a unity as possible.”
117. Ibid., p. 237.
119. Ibid., p. 53.
121. Aristotle, Ethics, IX.6. Arendt’s appeal to a friendship that “is not intimately personal but makes political demands and preserves reference to the world,” and that is born of a “community sense” and actualized in debate, rethematizes the distinctive commonality Aristotle attributed to the polis. However, as I shall argue in Chapter 3, Arendt’s appeal to the sensus communis in fact distinguishes her from Aristotle and the communitarians.
122. Arendt, OR, pp. 275, 279.
123. Ibid., p. 277.
124. Ibid., p. 274.
125. See Aristotle’s discussion of distributive justice in Aristotle, Politics, III.9 and Ethics, V.3.
126. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 15.
127. Richard Bernstein, “Judging: The Actor and the Spectator,” in Philosophical Profiles, pp. 220–232.
128. Beiner, Political Judgment; Pitkin, “Justice: On Relating Private and Public.”
129. For as good a formulation as any of this criticism, see Richard Bernstein, “Rethinking the Social and the Political,” in Philosophical Profiles, pp. 238–259.
130. Pitkin, “Justice,” p. 336. See Mary McCarthy’s comment in Hill, ed., p. 315.
131. Wellmer is quoted in Hill, ed., p. 318.
132. The motive behind this greater consistency will become apparent in Chapter 2, and it will be totally clear only in light of Heidegger’s critique of productionist metaphysics. Suffice it to note here that Arendt’s paradoxical and occasionally maddening insistence upon “self-contained” praxis is intended to break free of the domination of poiēsis within the tradition of Western philosophy and political thought. See Chapter 8 of this book.
133. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 17.
134. Ibid., p. 16; cf. Margaret Canovan, “Politics as Culture: Hannah Arendt and the Public Realm.”
135. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 17.
136. Ibid.
137. Ibid.
138. Arendt, CR, p. 142ff. Power, according to Arendt, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act, but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.” Power is therefore distinct from strength, force, violence, and authority in that it is engendered by “the living together of people,” by a community based on the principle of recognition rather than coercion or obedience. It “springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.” It is, finally, that which “keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence.” A constitution, understood as a system of power, is the institutional reification of the formal conditions of this acting together. It is the primary manifestation of the original power born of “sheer human togetherness,” the foundation of the edifice in which freedom “finds a home” and becomes a “tangible, worldly reality.”
142. Ibid., p. 255ff.
143. For Aristotle’s definition of “constitution” in this extended sense, see Politics, IV.4 and IV.11.
144. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 18.
146. Canovan, “Politics as Culture,” p. 639.
147. James Knauer, “Motives and Goal in Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Political Action,” p. 730.
148. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 19.
149. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, pp.172–173.
150. Ibid., p. 178.
151. James Knauer has mounted a powerful critique against those who would interpret Arendt’s concept of action as predicated upon a denial of purposiveness or instrumentality. In Arendt, he points out, the instrumental dimension of action is not so much denied as relegated to a secondary status: action, to be genuine, must not be essentially instrumental or strategic in character, but this does not mean it must be devoid of purposiveness. Knauer is certainly correct, at this level of generality; however, the gist of Habermas’s critique is not by any means refuted. Within Arendt’s conceptual framework, it is simply impossible to see the content of political action as socioeconomic. To be sure, all action has goals, but this acknowledgment on the part of Arendt is not tantamount to the full-scale toleration of socioeconomic content Knauer ascribes to her. Political action, as she conceives it, is not “typically about” socioeconomic issues. Habermas, like Bernstein and Pitkin, is correct to see a structural link between Arendt’s notion of a purified praxis and the rigorous distinction between the social and the political, the private and the public, the instrumental and the communicative or deliberative.
152. Bernstein, “Rethinking,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 249.
153. Martin Jay, “The Political Existentialism of Hannah Arendt,” in Permanent Exiles, p. 242.
154. As indicated above (note 151), I think Knauer’s recuparation of Arendt in this regard is too successful.
155. I shall return to this theme in Chapters 2, 3, and 6.
156. Bernstein, “Rethinking,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 249.
158. Ibid., pp. 50, 57.
159. Arendt, quoted in Hill, ed., p. 316.
160. Ibid., p. 318.
CHAPTER 2
2. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, p. 174. In “On the German-Jewish Heritage,” in Telos, p. 128, Habermas distinguishes between Arendt’s systematic renewal of the concept of praxis and a “philological” renewal of Aristotelian theory per se.
3. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” p. 173. For a reading that develops this perspective on Arendt, see Bernstein’s Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, part IV, pp. 207–223.
4. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” p. 171.
5. Cf. Introduction.
6. Schürmann, Heidegger, p. 10. Cf. Habermas’s characterization in “On the German-Jewish Heritage,” p. 128, where he labels Arendt’s project a “reconstruction of an Aristotelian concept of praxis for political theory.”
7. Arendt, BPF, p. 15; MDT, p. 204.
8. Arendt, BPF, pp. 143–171; HC, chapter 5.
9. Ibid., p. 146.
10. Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution, pp. 71–72. Yack sees this as an inexplicable anachronism on the part of Arendt: she reads the modern idea of freedom back into the classics. Like Habermas, he presumes that Arendt’s self-understanding is that of a neo-Aristotelian, albeit one who does not understand Aristotle very well (see Yack, The Problems of a Political Animal, for a repetition of this charge).
11. Aristotle, Politics, I.1, III.9, and VII.13–15. Cf. Ethics, I.9.
13. Arendt, BPF, p. 151; also HC, pp. 231, 234.
14. Arendt, HC, p. 247. Here Arendt states that the faculty of action is “ontologically rooted” in the “fact” of natality. Cf. HC, p. 9, and BPF, p. 167.
16. See Ernest Barker’s Introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s Politics, p. lxvii. The best examination of the “paradigm shift” required for “innovation” to take on a more radical connotation remains John Pocock’s, in J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment; see especially chapters II, III, and VI.
18. Ibid., p. 153.
19. See Aristotle, Ethics, II.
20. Ibid., II.4, 1105a, 30.
21. The character of the “autonomy” Arendt attributes to action is absolutely crucial for comprehending her project.
22. Aristotle, Ethics, 1098a, 15.
24. Ibid. Also 1176b.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 1094a.
28. Aristotle, Ethics, I.7.
29. Ibid., 1099b.30. See also Aristotle, Politics, III.9.
30. Aristotle, Ethics, V.1 and Politics, I.1. See Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle, p. 322.
31. Aristotle, Politics, III.12, p. 128.
32. See Aristotle’s discussions of distributive justice in Ethics, V, and Politics, III.
33. Book VII of Aristotle’s Politics, on the “ideal” polis, drives this point home.
34. W. D. Ross, for example, emphasizes this point. See his Aristotle, p. 188. It should be noted that more recent commentators (for example, David Wiggins) have questioned the degree to which a tension actually exists. See Wiggins’s essay, “Deliberation and Practical Reason,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, pp. 221–240.
35. Arendt, LM, vol. 2., p. 15.
37. Aristotle, Ethics, 1168a.
38. Ibid., my emphasis.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Arendt, LM, vol. 2. p. 62.
43. Ibid. Cf. Aristotle, Ethics, 1113a14–15, 1113b3–4.
44. Aristotle, Politics, I.2.
45. Cf. Arendt, OR, p. 35; HC, p. 52.
46. Arendt, LM, vol. 2, p. 140.
47. Hegel, quoted in Arendt, LM, vol. 1, p. 139. Cf. Arendt, OR, p. 54, where Arendt deals directly with the Hegelian paradox that “freedom is the result of necessity.”
48. G.W.F. Hegel, Reason in History, p. 24.
49. Arendt, HC, p. 195; also p. 301.
50. Aristotle, Ethics, 1177b.
51. Ibid., 1177a. See Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 21.
52. Arendt, LM, vol. 1, pp. 14–15.
53. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xx.
54. Ibid., A viii.
55. Ibid., B 476.
56. Arendt, LM, vol. 1, p. 15.
57. For Plato’s position in the story Heidegger tells about Western metaphysics, see Martin Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.
58. This is not meant to imply that Plato plays a secondary role in Arendt’s interpretation of the tradition. Like Nietzsche and Heidegger, Arendt can be described as a vehement anti-Platonist (see Chapter 3 of this book). Plato’s formulations have a decisive effect on the understanding of action within the Western tradition of political philosophy; nevertheless, it is Aristotle who, by importing the fabrication experience into the “pure” concept of action (praxis), does most to institutionalize the teleocratic conception. See “What Is Authority?” in Arendt, BPF, pp. 104–114 and 115–120.
60. Ibid.
61. Aristotle, Politics, 1328b, 35, quoted by Arendt in BPF, p. 116.
62. Aristotle, Politics, III.4. See also VII, 14: “every association of persons forming a state consists of rulers and ruled.”
66. Ibid.
67. See Aristotle, Ethics, X.9, 1180a, 1–5. Richard Mulgan has a good discussion of Aristotle’s “authoritarianism” in this regard; see his Aristotle’s Political Theory, p. 79ff.
68. Beiner’s characterization in his Political Judgment is, thus, somewhat misleading. Specific political goals may be rhetorically constituted according to the Aristotelian notion of deliberation, but not the broader ends of the community per se. These lie beyond the constitutive power of rhetorical speech.
70. See Arendt, “The Concept of History,” in BPF, p. 76. Compare this perspective to that taken by Habermas in his essay “The Classical Doctrine of Politics in Relation to Social Philosophy,” in Theory and Practice.
71. See Arendt, “What Is Authority?” in BPF, p. 119: “nothing is more questionable than the political relevance of examples drawn from the field of education.”
72. See Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 69–72.
73. See, for example, Ronald Beiner’s comments in his “Interpretive Essay,” in Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Politcal Philosophy, pp. 137–138, where he criticizes Arendt’s Kantian turn from a neo-Aristotelian perspective.
74. Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times,” in MDT, p. 30.
75. Arendt, HC, p. 206. Of course, all action has ends and motives. See Arendt, OR, p. 98: “To be sure, every deed has its motive as it has its goal and its principle.”
77. For the technical sense, see Jean-François Lyotard’s discussion in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, pp. 41–53.
80. Ibid., pp. 152–153.
81. Ibid., p. 153.
82. Ibid., p. 154. Cf. HC, p. 187.
84. Ibid.
87. Ibid., p. 205.
88. Ibid., p. 206.
89. Ibid., pp. 41, 42.
90. Ibid., p. 41.
91. Ibid., pp. 25, 197.
92. See Arendt, HC, p. 74ff. A parallel discussion, focusing on compassion, occurs in Arendt, OR (chapter 2, section 3). Here, in a discussion of Rousseau and the French Revolution, Arendt presents compassion as a specifically antipolitical virtue (pp. 86–87). The logic of her argument is similar to that employed by Machiavelli in chapters XV to IXX of The Prince, where private virtues are revealed to have disastrous consequences when practiced by the political actor.
95. See Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 32. Pitkin, Bakan, Jay, and O’Sullivan make similar points.
96. Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter VII.
97. Arendt is aware, of course, of the way a politics of appearance or opinion can be perverted into a politics of deception or image-making. See especially her essay “Truth and Politics,” in BPF. Her invocation of Machiavellian virtu is not intended to deny Machiavelli’s emphasis upon force and fraud, but rather to elucidate aspects of virtu that are lost in the usual “strategic” picture of his political theory. In another context (“What Is Authority?” in BPF, pp. 139–140), she cites Machiavelli as the “ancestor of modern revolutions,” insofar as he, like Robespierre, justified all means in terms of a “supreme end” (namely, the founding of a republic). Cf. OR, pp. 37–39.
98. Habermas, Theory and Practice, p. 50. Wolin, Pitkin, and Pocock have also pointed to this as a central aspect of Machiavelli’s “modernity.”
99. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 31.
100. Ibid., p. 33.
101. Ibid.
103. Ibid., p. 75.
104. Arendt, OR, chapter 2, section 3.
105. Ibid., pp. 86–87.
106. Ibid., pp. 97–98.
107. Ibid., p. 82.
109. See Machiavelli’s consideration of Agathocles and Oliverotto in chapter VIII of The Prince. For further remarks concerning the incompatability of glory and wickedness or baseness, see Machiavelli, The Discourses, book I, chapter X. For Machiavelli’s linkage of glory and the common good, see The Discourses, book I, chapter LVIII.
110. Machiavelli, The Prince, chapters XV to XVIII.
111. My discussion here is indebted to Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, chapter 7.
112. See Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber, pp. 117, 123.
113. Ibid., p. 129.
114. As Arendt’s analysis of the Terror, in Arendt, OR, demonstrates, she is aware of this dynamic. However, she generally refuses to view the problem in the “cost/benefit” terms implied by Machiavelli and (to a lesser degree) Weber. Exceptions to this rule are found in “On Violence,” in CR (p. 106), and in her essay on Broch (MDT, pp. 147–148). See also “Truth and Politics,” in BPF, p. 245, where her position is closer to Machiavelli’s notion of a specifically political ethic, and Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 50–51.
115. Arendt, “On Violence,” in CR, p. 106.
116. Ibid.
117. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 39.
118. To some degree, Arendt anticipates these objections to her “theatrical” conception of politics, appealing to “principles” as nonfoundational referents for action. According to Arendt, principles “are the legitimate guides to action,” saving “the act of beginning from its own arbitrariness.” Insofar as an action manifests a principle, that is, insofar as the appearance of action is inseparable from the appearance of a principle in the world, action ceases to be the sheer display of virtuosity and becomes something else: a meaningful, depersonalized, “objective” phenomenon. Arendt, BPF, p. 152. See also p. 243, where she speaks of “such political principles as freedom, justice, honor, and courage, all of which may inspire, and then become manifest in, human action.”
119. See Seyla Benhabib, “Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Hannah Arendt’s Thought,” in Situating the Self, and Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles.
120. J. Glenn Gray, “The Abyss of Freedom—and Hannah Arendt,” in The Recovery of the Public World.
121. James Miller, “The Pathos of Novelty: Hannah Arendt’s Image of Freedom in the Modern World,” in Hill, ed.
122. Ibid., p. 192.
123. Cf. Benhabib’s characterization of Arendt as a “reluctant” modernist, in her forthcoming book of the same name.
124. Judith Shklar, “Rethinking the Past,” p. 90.
125. Ibid.
126. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 19.
128. Ibid., p. 151.
129. Arendt, BPF, p. 155. See Chapter 4.
130. Ibid., pp. 157, 165.
131. Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 21–24, 27–30.
132. Ibid., p. 19.
133. Ibid., p. 75; also Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” in BPF, p. 223. It is interesting that Beiner, like the Habermasians, tends to make just such a reduction. See his “Interpretive Essay,” Arendt, in Kant Lectures, p. 112.
134. Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 61.
135. Ibid., pp. 20, 27.
136. Patrick Riley, “Hannah Arendt on Kant, Truth and Politics.”
137. Ibid., p. 384.
138. See Arendt, “Crisis in Culture,” BPF, p. 219
140. See “What Is Authority?” in Arendt, BPF, and Chapters 3 and 4 in this book.
142. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction, note to §29.
143. Plato, “Gorgias,” in Collected Dialogues, p. 482. See Arendt, BPF, p. 220.
144. Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 37.
145. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 114.
146. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, pp. 89–90.
147. Kant, Groundwork, p. 98.
148. See Kant, Political Writings, pp. 73–79.
149. Ibid., p. 125.
150. Ibid., pp. 55–59 (“What Is Enlightenment?”); also Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 38–41.
151. Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 15–16.
152. Kant, Groundwork, p. 61.
153. Kant, Political Writings, p. 41.
154. Ibid., p. 42.
155. Ibid., p. 88. See Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 50, 59.
157. Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 52.
159. Ibid.
160. Ibid., p. 79. See also p. 243.
161. Arendt, CR, pp. 128–130. Compare Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations.
163. See Hegel, Reason in History, p. 47.
164. Arendt, OR, pp. 54, 62–63; also CR, p. 132.
166. Hence Arendt’s repeated citation of Cato’s preference for “defeated causes.”
167. Arendt, BPF, pp. 220–221.
168. Seyla Benhabib, “Moral Foundations,” in Situating the Self, p. 132.
169. Ibid., pp. 121, 140.
170. Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 15.
171. Benhabib, “Moral Foundations,” in Situating the Self, p. 136.
172. Ibid., pp. 124, 139.
173. Ibid., pp. 141, 139.
174. Ibid., p. 121.
175. In this regard, I disagree with Benhabib’s formulation in Critique, Norm, and Utopia, pp. 244–245.
176. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt on the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, p. 172 (my emphasis).
177. Ibid.
178. See Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, pp. 117–129, and Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia.
179. Arendt, MDT, p. 27. Cf. Habermas, “On the German-Jewish Heritage,” p. 128, where he refers to the “unifying power of intersubjectivity.” For Habermas, as for Rousseau, validity ultimately resides in generalizability, a fact that comes through quite clearly in his Legitimation Crisis.
180. See Thomas McCarthy’s discussion in his Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, pp. 307–317.
181. See Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, pp. 60–67.
182. Richard Rorty, “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,” in Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity.
183. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, p. 184.
184. Ibid., p. 185.
186. Habermas, “Hannah Arendt,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles, p. 184.
187. See Habermas, “German-Jewish Heritage,” p. 129. Cf. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 108.
188. Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 38–39. I should note her hostility to “show trials” of any sort, to “political theater” as normally construed. See Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 3–12.
189. Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 37.
190. Arendt, CR, pp. 58–59. Cf. Gregory Vlastos, “Socrates on Political Obedience and Disobedience.”
191. See Rousseau, Social Contract, book III, chapter XV, and Arendt, OR, chapter 6.
192. See Rousseau, Social Contract, book I, chapters I, V, and VIII. Cf. Canovan, “Arendt, Rousseau, and Human Plurality in Politics, pp. 287–289.
193. Arendt’s reading here clashes with those, like Maurizio Viroli’s, that emphasize Rousseau’s indebtedness to civic republicanism. See Viroli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Well-Ordered Society.
195. Rousseau, Social Contract, book I, chapter VI. See Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 17, p. 227, for the contrasting view of the mechanics of the pact of association/creation of a sovereign power.
196. Rousseau, Social Contract, book I, chapter VI.
197. Ibid., book II, chapter III.
198. Ibid., book IV, chapter II.
199. Ibid., p. 114.
201. Ibid., pp. 78–79.
202. See Canovan, “Arendt, Rousseau, and Human Plurality,” p. 201. Also Rousseau, Social Contract, p. 118, for Rousseau’s account of voting on legislation.
205. Miller, “The Pathos of Novelty,” in Hill, ed., p. 191.
206. Ibid., p. 192.
207. See Arendt’s reading of the Declaration of Independence, in OR, pp. 165–178.
208. Miller, “The Pathos of Novelty,” in Hill, ed., p. 198.
209. Ibid., pp. 190–191.
210. Ibid., p. 194. See also, on p. 202, Miller’s remarks, which reinforce his hostility to the “individualism” of social contract theory.
211. See Beiner, “The Moral Vocabulary of Liberalism.”
212. Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times,” in MDT.
213. Ibid., p. 16.
214. Ibid, p. 27.
CHAPTER 3
1. Beiner, “Interpretive Essay,” in Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 104.
2. This is a controversial claim, which would not readily win the assent of many Arendt scholars, who instead see a vast difference between the judgment exercised in deliberation and the redemptive, meaning-creative judgment of the spectator removed in time or place. For a summary of the issues involved, see Beiner’s “Intepretive Essay,” in Arendt, Kant Lectures, and Bernstein, “Judging—the Actor and the Spectator,” in Philosophical Profiles.
4. Ibid., pp. 175, 182.
5. Arendt, LM, vol. 2, p. 200.
7. Ibid. See also LM, vol. 2, p. 200, for the distinction Arendt draws between philosophical and political freedom, following Montesquieu.
8. Ibid., p. 153.
12. Ibid., p. 190.
13. Ibid. Arendt continues by stating that “To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the same coin.”
14. With regard to this point, see Arendt, “What Is Freedom?” in BPF, p. 164. Cf. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 55, where she discusses the “non-autonomous” character of action viewed from the contemplative standpoint.
16. Ibid., p. 222.
17. Ibid., p. 234.
18. Ibid., p. 235.
19. Ibid., p. 220.
20. Ibid., p. 222.
21. Ibid., p. 225. See also Arendt, “What Is Authority?” in BPF, pp. 107–115, and Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 59–60.
23. Ibid., p. 229. Also p. 225.
24. Ibid., section 26.
26. Ibid., p. 135.
27. Arendt, HC, p. 57. Also p. 199.
28. Ibid., pp. 184–186.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
33. Ibid., p. 184.
34. Ibid.
35. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, chapter 1.
37. Ibid., p. 198.
38. Ibid., pp. 197–198.
39. Ibid., pp. 198–199.
40. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, I, 13.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. This formulation is from Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la Philosophie.
44. Cf. Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche, chapter 6.
45. Arendt, Human Condition, chapter 4.
46. Ibid. Nietzsche cites the “rude fetishism” of language as the source of the belief in the self as substance/subject, as a unity detached from and prior to its actions, effects and thoughts. See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 38.
47. Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in BPF; Nietzsche, The Will To Power, part I, “European Nihilism.”
48. Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp. 137–139. Cf. also Nietzsche, Genealogy, I, 10.
49. Nietzsche, Genealogy, III, 18.
50. Nietzsche, Genealogy I, 13.
51. Ibid., III, 13. Nehamas calls this inducement of shame “the central purpose of slave morality.” See Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, p. 126.
52. As Nietzsche says in The Birth of Tragedy, “understanding kills action.”
53. Nietzsche, Genealogy, II, 16.
54. Ibid., I, 12.
55. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 199.
57. Ibid., p. 43.
58. See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 225.
60. Ibid., p. 175.
61. Ibid., p. 176.
62. Ibid., p. 176 (my emphasis).
63. Ibid., p. 178.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., pp. 178–179.
66. Ibid., p. 179.
67. See, for example, Pitkin, “Justice,” in Political Theory; Jay, “The Political Existentialism of Hannah Arendt,” in Permanent Exiles; and O’Sullivan, “Hellenic Nostalgia.”
68. For a good description of the expressivist conception, see Charles Taylor, Hegel, pp. 16–50.
69. See, Chapter 2, Section III.
70. Thus, the “worldlessness” of the animal laborans is also a literal selflessness. See, in this regard, Arendt’s discussion of the split Rousseauian “authentic self” in OR, pp. 96–98. Also Kateb, Hannah Arendt, pp. 8–13.
71. See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, sections 490 and 488, for his conception of the subject as multiplicity (also Beyond Good and Evil, section 12). Honig argues that Arendt shares Nietzsche’s “political” conception of the self, citing a passage from LM in which Arendt affirms “the obvious plurality of men’s faculties and abilities” against the “implicit monism” of the tradition (see “Arendt, Identity and Difference,” p. 485). Unfortunately, the same claim could be made about Plato’s model of the soul or Kant’s conception of the faculties. I think Honig positively valorizes the “fragmented” or multiple self in a way Arendt would find dubious, despite her assertion of our inner plurality. See Arendt’s discussion in “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” in Social Research. An excellent discussion of Nietzsche’s “political metaphor for the self” is contained in Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature, pp. 177–186.
72. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 86.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid., p. 88.
78. Nietzsche, Gay Science, section 290.
79. Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 186.
81. Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 186. This is, of course, only one side of the matter, at least in the case of Nietzsche, who emphasized his own lack of audience and his reliance upon self-given standards.
83. Ibid., p. 179.
84. Ibid., pp. 184–185.
85. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Preface, I.
87. Ibid., pp. 52–53; Arendt, MDT, pp. 4–11.
89. Ibid., p. 182.
90. Ibid., pp. 134, 137. See also Chapter 1, Section II, in this book.
91. Ibid., pp. 182–183.
92. Ibid., p. 51.
93. Ibid., p. 154.
94. Ibid.
99. Ibid., p. 154.
100. Arendt, HC, p. 199; MDT, p. 4.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid.
105. Arendt, OR, pp. 268–269; MDT, pp. 26–27; “Philosophy and Politics,” pp. 80–81; BPF, pp. 241–242.
106. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 80.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid., pp. 73–80; BPF, pp. 239–247. For a summary of Arendt’s analysis of philosophy’s “degradation of the realm of human affairs,” see her Lecture on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 21–27. Arendt is at her most Nietzschean in these pages. The theme of philosophy’s resentment of the human condition comes across quite clearly.
111. Ibid., p. 241.
112. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” pp. 90–91; BPF, pp. 107–115.
113. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 74.
116. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 81.
117. Arendt, BPF, pp. 233–234; MDT, pp. 26–27.
119. Ibid., pp. 252–259.
120. Ibid., pp. 246–247.
121. Ibid., p. 247.
122. Arendt, “On Violence,” in CR, p. 140.
123. See Arendt, CR, p. 139. Also BPF, pp. 162–163.
124. Nietzsche, Genealogy, I, 13; also Twilight of the Idols, p. 38. See also Nehamas, Nietzsche, p. 121.
125. Nietzsche, Genealogy, III, 23.
126. Jean-François Lyotard, Just Gaming, pp. 23–25. Cf. Arendt, “What Is Authority?” in BPF, p. 115.
127. Deleuze, Nietzsche, pp. 19–34.
128. Nietzsche, Genealogy, III, 12.
129. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pp. 3–4.
130. Michel Haar, “Nietzsche and Metaphysical Language,” in The New Nietzsche, p. 14.
131. Alphonso Lingis, “The Will to Power,” in The New Nietzsche, p. 38. Cf. Arendt’s discussion of Kant’s prejudice in favor of the thing in itself in her Life of the Mind, I, p. 24.
132. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 125.
133. Tracy Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration, p. 77.
134. See Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age” and “What Is Authority?” in BPF.
135. Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, p. 29; Arendt, OR, p. 281. See also Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 23.
137. Arendt, “Philosophy and Politics,” p. 82.
138. For Habermas, Nietzsche’s appeal to taste judgment is tantamount to sheer irrationalism. See Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 127.
139. See Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 10; Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, pp. 93–108, 131–133; Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche et la Philosophie, pp. 84–95.
140. Nietzsche, Genealogy, II, 3.
141. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Concept of Enlightenment,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
142. In foreward to Peter Sloterdijk, Thinker on Stage, p. x.
143. This is Dews’s formulation. See Peter Dews, Logics of Disintegration, p. 160.
144. Nietzsche, Genealogy, II, 2. Also, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 188.
145. Ibid. Cf. Deleuze, Nietzsche, p. 157.
146. Nietzsche, Twilight, p. 92. See also Nietzsche’s famous description of Goethe, pp. 102–103.
147. Nietzsche, Genealogy, II, 12.
148. Ibid.
149. Ibid.
150. Nehamas emphasizes this aspect in his Nietzsche: Life as Literature.
151. Cf. Richard Rorty’s notion of the “strong textualist” in Consequences of Pragmatism, pp. 151–154.
152. Nietzsche, Twilight, p. 40: “We have abolished the true world: what world is left? the apparent world perhaps? … But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world!”
154. Ibid., p. 219.
155. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 24.
157. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 15.
158. Ibid. pp. 42, 43.
159. Nietzsche, Twilight, pp. 71, 72.
161. Ibid.
162. Ibid.
163. Ibid.
165. Ibid.
166. Ibid. p. 222.
167. Cf. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, chapter 1.
168. Arendt, HC, chapter 1. See also Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 55–59.
170. Ibid. Cf. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 43.
171. Kant, Critique, p. 136.
173. Nietzsche, Genealogy, III, 12. Cf. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 43.
174. Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy and History,” in The Foucault Reader; also Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play,” in Writing and Difference, pp. 278–295.
175. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 136.
176. Nietzsche, Genealogy, III, 11; also “On Truth and Lie,” in Philosophy and Truth, p. 79. See also Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 65–72.
177. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber, pp. 152–153.
178. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, p. 26; also Just Gaming, p. 58.
179. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 151.
180. Kant, Critique of Judgment, section 20.
181. Ibid., p. 74. Cf. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, pp. 63–64.
182. Kant, Critique of Judgment, section 40.
184. Ibid. Cf. Beiner, “Interpretive Essay,” in Kant Lectures, p. 119: “In matters of ‘taste’ I never judge only for myself, for the act of judging always implies a commitment to communicate my judgment.”
186. Ibid., p. 222.
187. Ibid., p. 221.
188. Ibid., p. 222.
189. Ibid.
190. Ibid. Cf. Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 72.
191. Arendt, BPF, pp. 221–222.
192. Lyotard, Just Gaming, p. 16; see, however, p. 14, where Lyotard denies the possibility of a sensus communis in what he calls “modernity,” tying taste judgments to both the premodern and the universal.
193. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, p. 110.
195. Ibid., p. 227.
196. Ibid., p. 218. In this regard, see Beiner’s statements regarding the ontological significance of judgment in Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 151, 155.
197. Arendt, BPF, pp. 216–218.
198. Ibid., pp. 153–154. Cf. Nietzsche, Genealogy II, 17.
199. Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics, p. 66.
201. I shall return to this theme in Chapters 7 and 8, with particular reference to Heidegger.
202. See Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in BPF. Cf. Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research, p. 25: “a reversed Plato is still Plato.”
CHAPTER 4
3. See Jacques Taminiaux’s “Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?”
5. Martin Jay, “Political Existentialism of Hannah Arendt,” in Permanent Exiles; Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity; Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being.
6. Leo Strauss, “An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism,” in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism.
7. Leo Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?” in What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies, pp. 26–27.
8. Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 240–242.
9. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 6.
10. Arendt, BPF, pp. 97, 104–105, 141.
11. Ibid., pp. 104–115.
12. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, Rejouer le Politique, p. 14.
13. Richard Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” and “Postmodern Bourgeois Liberalism,” both in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth.
16. Ibid., p. 148.
17. Ibid., pp. 162–165; see also Chapter 2 of this book.
18. Arendt, BPF, pp. 160–161; LM II, pp. 198–199.
20. Arendt, LM, II, pp. 29, 205; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 478.
22. Ibid., p. 207.
23. Ibid., p. 198.
24. Ibid., p. 216.
25. Arendt, LM, II, pp. 31, 135–141, 195; BPF, p. 167.
26. I borrow this formulation from Taminiaux’s “Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?”
27. Martin Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, p. 9 (translation altered).
28. Frederick Dallmayr, “Ontology of Freedom: Heidegger and Political Philosophy,” pp. 220–224.
29. Heidegger, Basic Writings, p. 128.
30. See Chapters 2 and 3, and the discussions in Schürmann (1987) and White (1990).
31. Arendt, BPF, pp. 152, 151. It is important, in this context, to distinguish between the early and middle Heidegger’s “ontological” approach to freedom and what Arendt refers to as the later Heidegger’s “will not to will.” See Chapter 7.
32. For a discussion of the views of Being and Time as “unpolitical” or “antipolitical,” see Chapter 7.
33. Hannah Arendt, “What Is Existenz Philosophy?”
34. Hannah Arendt, “Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophy,” in Essays in Understanding, p. 432.
35. Ibid., p. 443, and LM II, p. 200.
36. Arendt, Essays in Understanding, p. 432.
37. Heidegger, Being and Time, §12, p. 78; Sein und Zeit (hereafter cited as SZ), p. 53.
38. Heidegger, Being and Time, §44.
39. Heidegger, Being and Time, §13, pp. 90, 67; SZ, pp. 62, 43. See also L. P. Hinchman and S. K. Hinchman, “In Heideggers’s Shadow,” p. 190.
40. Ibid., §14, p. 92; SZ, p. 64.
41. Ibid., §15, p. 97; SZ, p. 62.
42. Ibid., §15, p. 99; SZ, p. 69.
43. Ibid., §15, p. 98; SZ, p. 69.
44. This has become a widely accepted generality of interpretive social science. See Charles Taylor’s essay, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” in his Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2.
45. Karsten Harries, “Fundamental Ontology and the Search for Man’s Place,” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy.
46. Heidegger, BT, §16, p. 103; SZ, p. 73.
47. Heidegger, BT, §16, p. 105.
48. Ibid., §25, p. 150; SZ, p. 114.
49. Heidegger, BT, §25, p. 150. Habermas emphasizes this point, seeing it as an expression of Heidegger’s residual subjectivism. See Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, chapter VI, and Chapter 7 in this book.
50. Heidegger, BT, §25, p. 152; SZ, p. 116.
51. Ibid., §25, p. 155; SZ, p. 118. See also BT, p. 156, where Heidegger characterizes Being-alone as a deficient mode of Being-with.
53. See Arendt, “Rejoinder to Eric Voegelin’s Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism,” pp. 68–76. Hinchman correctly gauges the extent of Voegelin’s failure to comprehend what Arendt is up to. See “In the Shadow of Heidegger: The Phenomenological Humanism of Hannah Arendt,” pp. 184–185. See also Arendt, OT, pp. 458–459.
55. Heidegger, BT, §28, p. 170; SZ, p. 132.
56. Heidegger, BT, §28, p. 170.
57. Ibid. Also Harries, “Fundamental Ontology and the Search for Man’s Place,” p. 68, and Arendt’s preface to BPF.
58. Heidegger, BT, §28, p. 171; SZ, p. 132.
59. Ibid., §43, p. 245; SZ, p. 201.
60. Ibid., §28, p. 171; SZ, p. 133.
61. Ibid., §43, p. 255; SZ, p. 212. See also BT, pp. 269, 272 (“Being [not entities] is something which ‘there is’ only in so far as truth is. And truth is only in so far and as long as Dasein is”).
62. See R. Wolin, The Politics of Being (hereafter cited as POB), p. 149.
63. My reading here takes its cue from R. Rorty’s. See his Essays on Heidegger and Others.
64. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 263; SZ, p. 220.
65. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 263.
66. Ibid., pp. 260–261; SZ, pp. 218–219. Thus, for example, one can hardly expect the laws of Newtonian physics to be available on the basis of a Greek understanding of Being. Heidegger wants us to stop thinking of Newton’s laws as somehow correctly describing or corresponding to Nature “as it is in itself,” prior to all description. From a Heideggerian standpoint, these laws figure as a new description, as a vocabulary that reconstitutes the object realm we denote by “Nature” in a way more amenable to the pragmatic concerns of the modern Western project. The domination of Nature stands at the center of this project as formulated by Bacon, and Kant only drew the logical conclusion when, confronted by the success of Newtonian science as measured by the Baconian criteria of utility and power, he made man the “lawgiver to Nature.” Heidegger’s polemic against the correspondence theory of truth—and the idea of man as a being equipped with special faculties that allow him to get in touch with a Truth untainted by the constitutive concerns of human beings—can be seen as merely completing Kant’s “Copernican revolution”: truth is not something “found,” but “made,” a point that has become a cliché of postempiricist philosophy of science.
67. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in Basic Writings, p. 132.
68. Ibid.
69. Again, the conflation of the Just and the True is a Platonic inheritance we have yet to entirely shake off.
70. Heidegger, BT, §31, p. 183; SZ, p. 143.
71. Ibid., pp. 184–185; SZ, p. 145.
72. Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” in Basic Writings, pp. 105–106.
73. Heidegger, BT, §31, p. 183; SZ, p. 143.
74. Ibid., p. 185; SZ, p. 145.
75. Dallmayr, “Ontology of Freedom,” p. 216. Cf. Arendt’s remarks on the derivative character of freedom of the will in Arendt, “What Is Freedom?” in BPF.
76. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in Basic Writings, p. 128.
77. Heidegger BT, §44, p. 264; SZ, p. 221. See also §29, p. 174 (SZ, p. 135).
78. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 264.
79. See, for example, W. R. Newell’s essay, “Heidegger: Some Political Implications of His Early Thought.”
80. Heidegger, BT, §7, p. 63; SZ, p. 38.
83. Arendt, HC, p. 9 (my emphasis).
84. Heidegger, BT, p. 210; SZ, p. 167.
85. Ibid., §38, p. 222; SZ, p. 177.
86. Ibid., §38, p. 220; SZ, p. 176.
87. There is an apparent shift in Heidegger’s later work on this point.
88. Heidegger, BT, §38, p. 224; SZ, p. 179.
89. Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in BW, p. 121.
90. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, chapters II and IX.
91. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 264; SZ, p. 222.
92. This formulation is borrowed from Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 117.
93. See this chapter, Section V.
94. Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 122.
95. Heidegger, quoted in Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 124.
96. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 265; SZ, p. 222.
97. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 265.
98. The best overview of the evolution of Heidegger’s thought on the relation between Being and man is in Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition.
99. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought. See especially pp. 46–47, 60–63.
100. See R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; also Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense,” in Philosophy and Truth, and J. S. Mill, On Liberty.
101. See K. Harries, “Heidegger as a Political Thinker,” p. 309; R. Wolin, The Politics of Being, pp. 37–39; Leo Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy.
102. Heidegger, BT, §40, p. 232; SZ, p. 188.
103. Heidegger, BT, §40, pp. 232–233.
104. Karsten Harries, “Fundamental Ontology and the Search for Man’s Place,” pp. 77.
105. Heidegger, BT, §57, p. 319.
106. Ibid., §58; see Arendt’s critique of the notion of “guilt” in Arendt, LM.
107. Heidegger, BT, §58, p. 330. See also Harries, “Heidegger as a Political Thinker,” p. 308.
108. Heidegger, BT, §58, p. 330.
109. Ibid., pp. 330–331.
110. Harries, “Heidegger as a Political Thinker,” p. 308.
111. Heidegger, BT, §60, p. 344; SZ, p. 298.
112. Ibid., §60, p. 345; SZ, p. 298.
113. Heidegger, BT, §60, p. 345.
114. Strauss, “Philosophy as a Rigorous Science,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, p. 30.
115. R. Wolin, Politics of Being, pp. 38–39.
116. Ibid.
117. Wolin is aware of the “inadvisability” of his reading in light of Heidegger’s questioning of the will and critique of philosophical subjectivism. He forestalls objections by claiming that the early Heidegger’s relation to philosophical subjectivism is “aporetic,” a characterization that allows him to pursue his depiction of Heidegger’s BT as “Nietzschean” in its reliance upon a value-creating subjectivity.
118. This issue is discussed in Section I of ch. 5.
119. Heidegger, BT, §44, p. 365. Cf. Mill, On Liberty, ch. 2.
120. This, according to Arendt, is precisely what Heidegger did with his rereading of Greek philosophy in the twenties. See her description in “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” in Heidegger and Modern Philosophy.
121. Heidegger, BT, §38, p. 224. In this regard, authenticity or resoluteness can be seen as deepening the effect Kant was after when he asked us to ponder the possibility of our maxims for action becoming “natural” or universal laws. The thrust of this “thought experiment,” I take it, is to place our everyday rules of guidance in a radically different light, forcing us to own up to their ethical (or unethical) import by stressing our vocation as moral legislators. As “making one’s own,” authenticity/resoluteness likewise demands that we take the familiar and everyday with renewed seriousness; not as something “they” do, but that we do and bear responsibility for. This dimension, of course, was emphasized by Sartre, albeit to laughable extremes. See his L’Existentialism est un humanisme.
122. Arendt, LM, I, p. 15 (notwithstanding what Arendt views as the conflation of meaning and truth built into Heidegger’s account).
123. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 124.
125. Ibid., pp. 115, 118.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid., p. 84. Compare Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in BW, p. 203.
128. Arendt, HC, pp. 134–135 and “Crisis in Culture,” in BPF, pp. 209–210.
130. Ibid., pp. 143, 153.
131. Ibid., p. 154.
132. Ibid.
133. Ibid., p. 155.
134. Ibid., pp. 156–158.
135. Ibid., p. 157.
136. Ibid., p. 41.
137. See Chapter 3, and Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology.
140. Ibid., p. 197.
141. Ibid., p. 168.
142. Ibid., §23.
144. See Chapter 2 and Arendt, OR. For an Arendt-inspired genealogy and critique of the politics of authenticity, see Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man.
145. Needless to say, this transposition opens Arendt up to a deconstructive reading parallel to that Derrida gives of Heidegger in Of Grammatology and elsewhere. This is, perhaps, a worthwhile task; yet, in my view, it is a far too obvious strategy. Insofar as Arendt’s text proceeds by making sharp distinctions, it begs to be deconstructed; yet the more we undo her various “binary oppositions,” the more likely we are to miss her primary point, which is that ubiquitous functionalization dissolves everything into process, making it all but impossible to preserve the essential articulations of our lifeworld. For Arendt, the boundaries have always already been blurred beyond recognition.
148. Arendt, HC, pp. 186, 35–36.
149. See Arendt, “On Violence,” in CR, and “Concern for Politics,” in Essays in Understanding.
150. See Chapter 7 for a discussion of this point.
151. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 62–63, 152; “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 43, 48–49, 61–63.
152. See Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, pp. 133–135. Both elements are clearly evident in a passage taken from Heidegger’s 1942 seminar, Parmenides:
What is the polis? The word itself directs us toward the answer, provided we commit ourselves to acquiring an essential understanding of the Greek experience of Being and truth. Polis is the polos, the pivot, the place around which gravitates, in its specific manner, everything that for the Greeks is disclosed amidst beings. As this location, the pivot lets beings appear in their Being subject to the totality of their involvement. The pivot neither makes nor creates beings in their Being, but as the pivot, it is the site of the unconcealedness of beings as whole. The polis is the essence of a location, so we speak of the regional location of the historical dwelling of Greek humanity. Because the polis, in one way or another, always lets the totality of beings come forth in the unconcealedness of their involvement, it is essentially related to the Being of beings. Between polis and Being, a relation of the same origin rules.
153. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 116.
154. Ibid., pp. 117–127.
155. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 183. This passage is cited by both Taminiaux and Bernasconi.
156. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 126.
CHAPTER 5
1. Heidegger, QCT, p. 61. See also pp. 65 and 69.
2. Arendt, LM, I, p. 10. See also Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” pp.10–11. Arendt here adds the necessary but obvious clarification that it is not a question of God’s death in a literal sense—a clearly absurd notion. Arendt’s personal faith in God is an irrelevant issue, although she did believe.
3. Sheldon Wolin, “Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political”; Pitkin, “Justice: On Relating Private and Public.”
5. There is, of course, some question as to whether “rank order” in Nietzsche can be so easily (and simply) interpreted. Wolin, for one, does not doubt it. See R. Wolin, The Politics of Being, chapter 2.
6. R. Wolin, Politics of Being, pp. 123–130.
8. See Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” in BW.
10. Heidegger, BW, pp. 119–220.
11. Ibid., p. 132.
12. Ibid., p. 134.
13. Ibid. p. 135.
14. See Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in BW, p. 239.
15. Arendt, HC, p. 71 (my emphasis).
16. Ibid., pp. 62–63.
17. Ibid., p. 64. There is a resonance here with Heidegger’s interpretation of physis in the “Anaximander Fragment” as a “lingering awhile in presence.” Nevertheless, Arendt sees Heidegger’s interpretation as the symptom of a deeply unworldly, unpolitical yearning. See my discussion in Chapter 7.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 45.
23. Ibid., p. 46. One does not get much more Heideggerian; see Chapter 6 of this book.
28. Ibid., p. 135.
29. Ibid., p. 232.
30. Ibid., pp. 48–49.
31. Ibid., p. 272.
33. Ibid., pp. 168–169.
34. Nowhere has the acceleration of this fate become more apparent than the recent revolutions in Eastern Europe, whose newly born public spheres shone brightly for the briefest of moments before being overtaken by “household concerns” and the problems of moving from a command to a market economy.
35. Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, chapter 7.
36. See Chapter 3 and Chapter 5, Section V.
37. See, for example, Schürmann’s definition of postmodern politics in Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 18.
39. One can, however, read Nietzsche as an “institutional” theorist, as does B. Honig, in Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics.
40. See Chapter 3; and Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” in BPF. The interpretation of Nietzsche as “invertor” comes from Heidegger. See Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word: God is Dead,” in QCT.
41. Again, this phrase is Heidegger’s. See Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking.
43. Ibid., pp. 37, 45.
44. Ibid., p. 36.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 100.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 14.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., pp. 100–101.
56. Ibid., p. 101.
57. Arendt, LM, I, pp. 19–39; HC, p. 50; OR, p. 98.
60. Ibid., p. 104.
61. Ibid., p. 106.
62. Ibid., p. 109.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 107–108.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., p. 62; see Chapter 6.
67. Ibid., pp. 62, 152.
68. See, in this regard, Heidegger’s slighting remarks concerning Thucydides in comparison to Plato and Aristotle in the Introduction to BT.
69. Arendt, “What Is Authority?” in BPF, note 16.
70. Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 242, 252.
71. R. Wolin, POB, p. 191 (note 3).
72. See Chapter 7, and R. Wolin, POB, pp. 35–40.
73. See, in this regard, Richard Rorty’s comments on Habermas in “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,” in R. Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity.
74. See Villa, “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere.”
75. Jay, Permanent Exiles, p. 243.
76. Arendt, OR, pp. 76–81, 94–98.
77. Ibid., p. 229.
78. Jay, Permanent Exiles, pp. 249, 251–252.
80. Arendt “On Violence,” in CR.
83. See Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” in Philosophical-Political Profiles.
84. See Jaspers’s revealing remark in Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, Correspondence 1926–1969, p. 284.
86. Ibid., pp. 94–95.
87. Ibid., p. 93.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Ibid.
92. Needless to say, Arendt’s opposition to authority in the political sphere does not rule out her favoring it in other fields, e.g., education. See Arendt, “The Crisis in Education,” in BPF.
93. Arendt, BPF, p. 92 (hence Jaspers’s comment).
94. Ibid., p. 95.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., p. 91.
97. Ibid., p. 141.
98. Ibid., p. 93.
99. Ibid., p. 97.
100. Ibid., p. 115.
101. Ibid., p. 104.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., p. 106.
105. Ibid., p. 105.
106. Ibid., p. 107.
107. Ibid. See Arendt, Kant Lectures, pp. 33–46.
108. Plato, Republic, books VI and VII.
109. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 1.
111. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in BW, p. 194.
112. Schürmann, Heidegger, pp. 1, 4, 82–83.
114. The phrase is from Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, Rejouer le Politique.
116. Ibid.; Plato, Republic, book X.
117. Arendt, BPF, pp. 127, 132.
118. Ibid., pp. 124–125.
119. Ibid., p. 124.
120. Arendt, LM, I, p. 11 (my emphasis); see also p. 212.
121. See Nietzsche, Will to Power, part I, “European Nihilism”; Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word,” in QCT, and vol. IV of his Nietzsche.
122. Hill, ed., Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, pp. 313–314.
123. Ibid.
124. Ibid., p. 314. See also Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research, pp. 26–27.
125. Arendt, “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” in The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age, pp. 231–232.
126. Arendt, BPF, p. 210. Also Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” Partisan Review, pp. 383, 379.
127. See Nietzsche’s remarks on the “ascetic priest,” in Genealogy of Morals, essay III.
129. Schürmann, Heidegger, pp. 5, 86–89. See also Heidegger, QCT, p. 65, and R. Rorty’s discussion in Essays on Heidegger and Others, p. 20.
131. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” p. 379.
132. Ibid., p. 383.
133. Nietzsche, Will to Power.
134. Arendt, “Understanding and Politics,” p. 384.
135. Ibid., p. 388.
136. Ibid., p. 391.
137. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 257, 267.
138. Ibid., pp. 252–258 (Menthon, p. 257).
139. Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research, p. 7.
140. Ibid., p. 9.
141. Beiner, “Interpretive Essay,” in Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 96.
142. In a recent article Martin Jay is much more sympathetic to Arendt’s peculiar attempt to link the aesthetic and the political. See Jay, “The ‘Aesthetic Ideology’ as Ideology; or, What Does It Mean to Aestheticize Politics?”
143. Beiner, in Arendt, Kant Lectures, p. 112.
144. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, p. 296.
145. See Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy Rejouer le Politique; also Fraser, “French Derrideans,” in Unruly Practices.
146. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 90.
147. Heidegger, Nietzsche, IV, pp. 214–215, 224–225; also “Metaphysics as a History of Being,” in End of Philosophy, pp. 1–46.
148. See Arendt’s discussion in LM, II, chapter 15.
150. Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in QCT; also Nietzsche, IV.
151. Heidegger, IM, p. 14, and Chapter 5, Section III, of this book.
152. Heidegger, IM, pp. 184–185.
153. See Chapter 8 of this book.
154. Heidegger, IM, pp. 193, 202.
155. Heidegger, End of Philosophy, p. 4.
156. Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 121.
158. Heidegger, End of Philosophy, pp. 90–94.
159. Heidegger, “End of Philosophy and the Task for Thinking,” in BW, p. 374.
160. Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, pp. 100–117.
161. Ibid.; see also Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology.
162. See, for example, Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 28–33; On Time and Being, pp. 46–47; and Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity, chapter 11.
163. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 119.
164. Heidegger, End of Philosophy, p. 9.
165. Heidegger, IM, pp. 193–194.
166. Heidegger, “Age of the World-Picture,” in QCT.
167. Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word,” in QCT.
168. See Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, pp. 269–270.
169. Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in QCT.
170. See Chapters 7 and 8.
CHAPTER 6
2. Ibid., p. 6.
3. Ibid., p. 157.
4. Ibid., p. 204.
5. Arendt, MDT, p. 13; Heidegger, BW, p. 219. Also Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 248.
7. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 54.
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 100; Arendt, HC, p. 3.
11. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 128.
12. Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in QCT, p. 27.
13. Ibid.
15. Ibid., p. 46.
16. Ibid., p. 322.
17. See Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, forthcoming.
18. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 183.
20. For example, that of Habermas.
22. Arendt, “Rejoinder to Eric Voegelin,” pp. 68–76.
23. Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, p. 86.
24. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, pp. 84, 107. Also Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 99.
25. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 126.
26. Ibid., p. 128; also Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 96.
27. Heidegger of course follows in Hegel’s footsteps here. See G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. III. Heidegger’s characterization occurs in vol. IV of Nietzsche, p. 100. See also Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 82.
28. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 149. Compare Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 97.
29. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 149.
30. Ibid; also Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 97.
31. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 83.
32. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. IV, p. 114.
33. Ibid., p. 116. Cf. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 89.
34. See Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 88.
35. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 127.
36. Ibid., p. 133.
37. Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, §38.
38. Heidegger, What Is a Thing? p. 181.
39. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 88.
40. Heidegger, What Is a Thing? p. 121.
41. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 84.
42. Ibid., pp. 83–84.
43. Ibid.
44. See Heidegger, “Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?” in The New Nietzsche. Heidegger’s reading has been questioned, most prominently, by Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault.
45. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 115.
46. Heidegger, “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 100; cf. p. 107.
47. See Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth”; also “The Word of Nietzsche,” in QCT, p. 84.
48. For a account of the former, see Taylor, Hegel, part I. Cf. Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity, p. xiii.
49. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, pp. 116–117.
50. Ibid., p. 128.
51. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 117.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., p. 118.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., p. 127.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., p. 128. See Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, and Manfred Riedel, “Nature and Freedom in Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right.’”
60. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 128.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., pp. 128–129.
65. Ibid., Appendix 5.
66. Ibid., pp. 129–130.
67. Ibid., p. 130.
68. Ibid., p. 131.
69. Ibid., p. 132.
70. Ibid., pp. 129, 130. Also Appendix 6.
71. Ibid., p. 132.
72. Ibid., pp. 130–131.
73. Ibid., p. 132.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., p. 129.
76. Ibid., pp. 129–130.
77. Ibid., p. 116. Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, part 1.
78. Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 134.
79. Ibid., pp. 134–135.
80. See Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Conformatation with Modernity, chapter 10.
81. Heidegger, “What Are Poets For?” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 116.
82. The text was originally delivered as a lecture in 1949.
84. Ibid., p. 27.
85. Ibid., p. 28.
86. See, again, “What Are Poets For?” in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 116.
88. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 172.
90. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 104.
91. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 116.
92. See Karl Löwith, Max Weber and Karl Marx.
93. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 110.
94. See, for example, Arendt’s statement in HC, p. 252.
95. Arendt, HC, pp. 55, 59, 60.
96. Ibid., p. 257.
97. Ibid., p. 55.
98. Ibid., p. 58.
99. Ibid. See also Arendt, MDT, preface.
102. Ibid., p. 248.
103. Ibid., pp. 248–262.
104. Ibid., p. 250.
105. Ibid., p. 251.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid., pp. 254–255.
108. Ibid., p. 256.
109. Ibid.
110. See Arendt, “The Crisis in Culture,” in BPF.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid., p. 264.
115. Ibid.
116. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 152. See also Arendt, HC, pp. 268–269.
118. Arendt, HC, pp. 70–71, 284. Also Arendt, “What Is Freedom?” in BPF.
119. Arendt, HC, pp. 70–71, 283–284.
120. Heidegger, “Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, p. 132; Arendt, HC, p. 3.
122. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B xiii.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid., pp. 267–268.
126. Ibid., p. 275.
127. Ibid., pp. 268–271.
128. Ibid., p. 277.
129. Ibid., p. 279.
130. Ibid.
131. Ibid., p. 280.
132. Ibid., p. 282. Cf. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. I, pp. 46–49.
133. Ibid.
134. Ibid., p. 293.
135. See, for example, Arendt, BPF, p. 96.
137. Hans Blumenberg disagrees. See his analysis in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, part 1.
139. Ibid., p. 286.
140. Ibid., p. 287.
141. Ibid.
142. Ibid., p. 288.
143. Ibid., p. 290.
144. Ibid.
145. Ibid., pp. 290–291.
146. Ibid., p. 294.
147. Ibid., p. 295.
148. Ibid., pp. 296–297 (emphasis mine).
150. Ibid., p. 299.
151. Ibid., pp. 305–306.
152. Ibid., p. 306.
153. Arendt, “On Violence,” in CR, p. 106.
155. Ibid.
156. Ibid.
157. Ibid., p. 155.
158. Thus, for example, Arendt concentrates on the continuity between Protagoras’ position and that of the moderns, in contrast to Heidegger, who emphasizes the difference. See Arendt, HC, pp. 157–158, and Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture,” in QCT, Appendix 8 (pp. 143–147).
160. Ibid.
161. Ibid., p. 145.
162. Ibid. See chapter 1 of this book.
163. Ibid., p. 146.
164. Ibid., p. 147.
165. Ibid., p. 4.
166. Ibid., p. 132.
167. Ibid., p. 150.
168. Ibid., p. 151.
169. Ibid.
171. Ibid., p. 137.
172. Arendt, HC, p. 322. The Heidegger reference ought not to obscure the equally strong Nietzsche allusion (Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals).
174. Ibid., p. 246 [emphasis mine].
175. Ibid., p. 230; cf. also p. 10.
177. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 158.
178. Ibid.
179. Ibid.
180. Arendt, LM, vol. II, pp. 157–158.
181. Judith Shklar, After Utopia.
182. See Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 178.
183. For an overview of these criticisms, see Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere.
187. See Sheldon Wolin, “Fugitive Democracy.”
188. See Villa, “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere.” Cf. Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault.
189. Lyotard, Just Gaming, p. 82. See Chapters 3 and 4 of this book.
190. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, “Ouverture,” in Rejouer le Politique.
191. Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism.
192. The former is J. Isaac’s position, in Arendt, Camus and Modern Rebellion; the latter is B. Honig’s, in Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics.
CHAPTER 7
1. Arendt, LM, vol. II, pp. 172–194.
2. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 224. See Harries, “Heidegger as a Political Thinker,” p. 310; and Newell, “Heidegger: Some Political Implications of His Early Thought,” p. 778.
3. See, for example, Ferry and Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity, pp. 38–39; for a more sympathetic treatment, see Dallmayr, “Ontology of Freedom: Heidegger and Political Philosophy.”
4. See Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 124.
5. Ibid., p. 165.
6. Ibid., p. 220.
7. Ibid., §35 and p. 221.
8. Ibid., pp. 220, 221.
9. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 150.
10. Ibid., p. 142.
11. Ibid., p. 149.
12. Ibid., p. 151.
13. Ibid., p. 149.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., p. 180.
17. Ibid., p. 157.
18. Habermas, Political-Philosophical Profiles, p. 75.
19. R. Wolin, The Politics of Being, pp. 45, 49.
22. See K. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” and W. R. Newell, “Heidegger: Some Political Implications of His Early Thought.”
24. I am thinking, for example, of the work of Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord.
26. Heidegger, BT, pp. 222, 223; §40.
27. Ibid., pp. 233–234.
28. Ibid., p. 436.
29. Newell, “Heidegger,” p. 779. See also Heidegger, BT, p. 384. There is a resonance here with Machiavelli’s prescription, in the Discourses, for jolting a declining community back to its founding principles. See Machiavelli, Discourses, book III, chapter 1.
30. K. Harries “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 308.
31. Ibid., p. 313; Habermas, PDM, p. 141.
32. This characterization comes from Kateb, Hannah Arendt, p. 15.
33. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 130. Cf. also Dominique Janicaud, “Heidegger’s Politics,” p. 832.
34. Lyotard, Just Gaming, pp. 20–22.
35. See Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber.
36. Newell, “Heidegger,” p. 781.
37. Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (Rectoral Address), in Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, pp. 5–13.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., p. 443.
41. Ibid., p. 438. My treatment here owes a substantial debt to K. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 311, and W. R. Newell, “Heidegger: Some Political Implications of His Early Thought,” p. 781. See Heidegger, IM, pp. 38–39, for a highly charged rendition of what it means for the German people to recapture or repeat [wieder-holen] the beginnings of their “spiritual existence.”
42. Heidegger, BT, pp. 436, 437. Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (Rectoral Address), pp. 6, 8–9; K. Harries emphasizes the interpretive quality of authority.
43. Heidegger, BT, p. 436; Rectoral Address, p. 6; K. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 313.
44. Heidegger, BT, p. 437; Newell, “Heidegger: Some Political Implications of His Early Thought,” p. 781.
45. Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University” (Rectoral Address), p. 10.
46. Heidegger, BT, pp. 435–436; Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 313.
47. See, in this regard, Heidegger’s description of the “battle” between leaders and followers in the Rectoral Address, p. 12.
48. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” pp. 318, 319, 320.
49. Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” p. 9. Habermas views this intuition as grounded in Heidegger’s loyalty to Husserl’s phenomenological method. See Habermas, PDM, p. 138.
50. K. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 316.
52. Heidegger, OWA, p. 77; cf. also R. Wolin POB, p. 102.
53. I adopt the phrase “radical poiēsis” from Werner Marx. Heidegger’s “Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, gives brief but helpful characterizations of the tradition’s entrapment in productionist categories (pp. 29–30, 32), while his “Question Concerning Technology,” in QCT, is the source of the essential Heideggerian distinction between poiēsis as production and poiēsis as “bringing forth.”
54. The phrase “ontological vocation” is borrowed from R. Wolin, POB, p. 100.
55. Heidegger, OWA, in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 72.
56. Ibid., p. 73.
57. Ibid., p. 71.
58. Ibid., p. 44.
59. Ibid., p. 42.
60. Ibid., p. 44.
62. Heidegger, OWA, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 44.
63. Ibid., p. 46.
64. Ibid., p. 49.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., p. 62.
67. Ibid., p. 60.
68. Ibid., pp. 60, 58.
69. Ibid., p. 62.
70. Ibid.
72. Ibid., p. 62.
73. Ibid; cf. also OWA, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 63.
74. Heidegger, OWA, pp. 77–78.
75. Ibid., p. 78.
76. Ibid., p. 77; also Heidegger, IM, p. 157.
77. W. Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition, p. 151.
78. See Chapter 1 on Arendt’s agreement with Aristotle as to the violence of making.
79. Heidegger, IM, p. 157. R. Wolin makes a great deal of this in POB, pp. 124–126.
81. Ibid., pp. 152–153.
82. K. Harries, “Heidegger as Political Thinker,” p. 318.
83. See R. Wolin, POB, pp. 114–115. Wolin’s criticisms here remind one of the criticisms liberals used to make of Hegel’s political theory. In both cases, a lot hinges upon the word “state” and its deployment, and one has to be fairly specific about the connotations. The model for Heidegger’s “state” is the polis, and in order to effectively criticize this conception one has to do more than point to the “world-opening” function of the political space in Heidegger. Claiming that any attribution of ontological significance to the political realm leads, inevitably, to “statism” is highly dubious, as Arendt’s work points out.
84. Heidegger, OWA, in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 75.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in BW, p. 233.
88. Heidegger, OWA, in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 71.
89. Ibid., p. 54.
91. Heidegger, OWA, in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 73.
92. Ibid. There is an important irony here in that Habermas reproduces this dichotomy in his critique of Heidegger. See Habermas, PDM, chapters 6 and 10. R. Wolin similarly dichotomizes ontology and interaction, in rhetoric intended to make the attribution of any disclosive dimension to politics appear latently totalitarian. See R. Wolin, POB, p. 117.
94. With respect to doxa in Heidegger, see the very important discussion in Heidegger, IM, p. 103ff. The continuities and discontinuities with Arendt here are fascinating. See Chapter 5 of this book.
95. This, of course, is not Habermas’s point: the primary thrust of his critique is that the Heideggerian dichotomy between poetic and communicative or political speech in the usual sense is well founded, and that Heidegger’s attempts to frame a conception of the political in poetic terms only underlines the untenable nature of a political theory with ontological stakes. For an account of the way Habermas deploys the opposition between “action coordinating” and “world-disclosive” language, see S. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, chapter 2.
96. See Chapter 6 of this book.
97. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 86.
98. For the characterization of Western metaphysics as a “power trip” ending in pragmatism/technology, see Richard Rorty, “Heidegger, Contingency and Pragmatism,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others, p. 31.
100. Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in BW, p. 216.
101. Heidegger, “Nietzsche’s Word,” in The Question Concerning Technology, pp. 69, 100, 107.
102. Heidegger, LH, in BW, p. 219.
103. Ibid., p. 218.
104. Ibid., p. 199.
105. Ibid., pp. 221, 210.
106. Ibid., p. 210.
107. See, in this regard, Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, pp. 47–50, 60. See also Heidegger, “Poetically man dwells …,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, pp. 215–216.
108. Heidegger, LH, in BW, p. 239.
109. Ibid.
110. See R. Rorty, “Heidegger, Contingency and Pragmatism,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others.
111. Heidegger, LH, in BW, pp. 198, 197.
112. Ibid., p. 199, 197.
113. I am drawing here on R. Rorty, “Heidegger, Contingency and Pragmatism,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others, p. 46, and T. Strong, Friedrich Nietzsche.
114. Heidegger, LH, in BW, p. 239 and 193.
115. Ibid., p. 194.
116. Ibid.
117. Heidegger, LH, in BW, p. 239.
118. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 208.
119. See Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, pp. 139–143, for a summary of some of Heidegger’s main points in the Marburg course.
120. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 207.
121. Ibid., pp. 206, 208.
122. Ibid., pp. 208, 219. For a similar critique, see R. Rorty’s essay, “Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others, p. 70.
123. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” pp. 152–153. See also R. Wolin, POB, p. 149.
124. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” p. 140.
126. Ibid., p. 154.
127. Ibid. R. Wolin’s critique ends by insisting that “any plausible conception of practical reason” and action presupposes “an understanding of human beings … as autonomously acting subjects” (POB, pp. 152–153). See also Ferry and Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity, pp. 104–110.
128. A similar strategy has been followed by Janicaud in response to Farias. See Janicaud, “Heidegger’s Politics: Determinable or Not?”
129. See, for example, Arendt, LM, I, pp. 13, 180–92, 200–201.
130. Thinking’s withdrawal from the world, it should be noted, is of a different order than the withdrawal of judgment. See Arendt, LM, I, pp. 92–94. I should also note, in this regard, that it is misleading to say that Arendt criticized “from beginning to end” Heidegger’s “isolation from the world of human affairs.” This claim, made by L. P. and S. K. Hinchman in their otherwise illuminating essay, “In Heidegger’s Shadow: Hannah Arendt’s Phenomenological Humanism,” ignores the fact that, for Arendt, the activity of thinking is necessarily solitary, withdrawn, and “isolated.” This isolation may lead to tragic misjudgments, as in the case of Heidegger, but Arendt is clear that the greatness of Heidegger’s thought is, in fact, partially a function of its splendid isolation.
131. Arendt, “Martin Heidegger at Eighty,” p. 300.
132. Arendt, LM, I, p. 71; “Heidegger at Eighty,” p. 297.
133. Arendt, “Heidegger at Eighty,” p. 300.
134. Ibid., pp. 301–302.
135. Ibid., p. 303.
136. Ibid.
137. Ibid.
138. Arendt, LM, II, pp. 188–192.
139. Ibid., pp. 185, 187.
140. Arendt, “Heidegger at Eighty,” p. 301.
141. Arendt, “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” p. 50.
142. Ibid., p. 51.
143. Ibid., p. 50.
144. Ibid., pp. 55–56.
145. See Arendt’s discussion of the Rousseauian Self in OR, pp. 97–109.
146. Arendt, “Concern with Politics in Recent European Philosophical Thought,” in Essays in Understanding.
147. Heidegger quoted by Arendt, in “Concern with Politics.” See Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, p. 303.
148. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, p. 303.
149. Ibid.
150. See Schürmann, Heidegger On Being and Acting; Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction between Praxis and Poiēsis in Heidegger.”
151. Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, p. 303.
152. Ibid.
153. Ibid.
154. Ibid., p. 304.
156. Ibid.
157. Ibid., p. 179.
158. Ibid., p. 180.
159. Ibid., p. 181.
160. Ibid., p. 183.
161. Heidegger quoted in Arendt, LM II, p. 183.
163. Ibid.
164. Ibid.
165. Ibid., p. 185.
166. Ibid.
167. Ibid.
168. Ibid., p. 187.
169. Ibid.
170. Ibid.
171. Ibid.
172. Arendt, “Heidegger at Eighty,” p. 298.
173. See Rorty’s similar critique, “Heidegger, Kundera, Dickens,” p. 70.
174. Arendt, “Heidegger at Eighty,” pp. 299, 303.
175. Arendt, LM, II, pp. 188–189.
176. Ibid., p. 188.
178. Ibid. See also Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, p. 13.
179. Ibid.
180. Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, p. 37.
182. Ibid.
183. Ibid. Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, p. 26.
184. “Das Sein entzieht sich indem es sich in das Seiende entbirgt.”
186. Ibid.
187. Ibid.
188. Ibid. Heidegger, “Anaximander Fragment,” Early Greek Thinking, p. 50.
189. Ibid., pp. 191–192.
190. Ibid., p. 192.
191. Ibid.
192. Ibid.
193. Ibid., p. 194.
194. Ibid., p. 193. The obvious contrast is Arendt’s own preoccupation with the category of natality.
195. Ibid., p. 194.
CHAPTER 8
1. Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, pp. 129–32.
2. Janicaud, “Heidegger’s Politics.”
3. See Robert Bernasconi, “Habermas and Arendt on the Philosopher’s ‘Error’: Tracking the Diabolical in Heidegger.”
4. Arendt, “Martin Heidegger at Eighty.”
5. S. White, Political Theory and Postmodernism, p. 33.
6. Ibid., p. 37. Cf. Taminiaux, “Heidegger and Praxis,” in The Heidegger Case.
7. F. Dallmayr, Margins of Political Discourse, p. 62.
8. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, p. 135.
9. See Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins of Philosophy.
10. Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics, p. 18.
12. See Chapter 4 and Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 130. See also Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis.”
13. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 206.
14. Heidegger, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” in The End of Philosophy, p. 81. In this regard, R. Wolin speaks of Heidegger’s “campaign against practical reason,” in POB, p. 147. The sense in which he is correct is that Heidegger puts in question the traditional deductive relationship between first and practical philosophy. See Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, pp. 4–7.
15. Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 219.
16. See Chapters 2 and 3 of this book. Cf. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, pp. 82–84; also White, Postmodernism and Political Theory, p. 48.
17. See Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 83.
19. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, pp. 5–7, 11, 83. Cf. Arendt, “Tradition and the Modern Age,” and “What Is Authority?” in BPF.
21. See Habermas, “Technology and Science as Ideology,” in Toward a Rational Society; and Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, especially “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy” and “Hermeneutics as a Practical and Theoretical Task.”
22. See John Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics, pp. 63–65.
24. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, “Ouverture,” in Rejouer le Politique, pp. 11–28.
25. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 83. Cf. pp. 101–105 and Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis,” pp. 116–117.
26. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 131ff; Bernstein, “Heidegger on Humanism,” in Philosophical Profiles, p. 214.
27. Lyotard, Heidegger and “the jews,” p. 76.
28. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 5.
29. In this regard, see Arendt’s discussion of the coercive force of logic in “Ideology and Terror,” in Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 468–474.
30. See Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, pp. 90–91.
31. Like Foucault, Arendt also “brackets” the problematic of legitimacy. See Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices, chapter 1.
32. See my article, “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere.”
33. Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics, p. 70.
34. See G. Shulman, “Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes.”
35. See P. Laslett’s Introduction in Locke, Two Treatises of Government.
36. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. 2–15.
37. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 70.
38. Nancy, The Inoperative Community, p. 3.
39. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, pp. 70, 75.
40. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” in OT, pp. 465–466; see also pp. 139–143.
41. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 18.
42. Cf. Christopher Norris, “Complicity and Resistance: Heidegger, de Man, and Lacoue-Labarthe,” p. 132.
43. K. Harries, “Heidegger as a Political Thinker,” p. 327.
44. Ibid.
45. Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis,” p. 113. Taminiaux makes a similiar point in “Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?” pp. 123–124.
46. Ibid.
47. Arendt, HC, chapters 3 and 4.
48. D. Schmidt, The Ubiquity of the Finite.
49. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 77.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid., p. 53.
52. Ibid., p. 55.
53. Ibid., p. 57.
54. Ibid.
56. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 54.
57. Ibid., pp. 56, 79–82, 92–95.
58. Ibid., p. 66.
59. Ibid., p. 77.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., p. 94.
62. Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics. As Lacoue-Labarthe puts it: “The awakening of the power of myth—the auto-poetic act—becomes a necessity once the inconsistency of the abstract universals of reason have been revealed and the beliefs of modern humanity (Christianity and the belief in humanity itself), which were at bottom only bloodless myths, have collapsed.”
63. Ibid., p. 77.
66. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, p. 129.
67. See Heidegger, On Time and Being, p. 24.
69. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 86.
71. Arendt, “What Is Authority?”, in BPF, p. 91.
72. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” in OT, p. 464.
73. Ibid., p. 462.
74. Ibid. This view of the “essence” of totalitarianism directly contradicts the Straussian thesis that totalitarianism is a form of tyranny, best understood by reference to classical sources. See Leo Strauss, On Tyranny.
75. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” in OT, p. 464.
76. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 437.
77. Arendt, “Ideology and Terror,” in OT, pp. 465–466.
78. Ibid., pp. 462, 465.
79. Quoted in Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 130. See also Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, pp. 33–34.
80. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 34. Cf. Arendt’s characterization in Essays in Understanding, pp. 13–14.
81. Lacoue-Labarthe, HAP, p. 37.
82. Ibid., p. 35.
83. Ibid., pp. 70, 94–95.
84. Ibid., p. 49.
85. Ibid., pp. 46, 48.
86. Ibid., p. 49.
87. Ibid., p. 48.
88. Ibid.
89. See Arendt’s note to “What Is Authority?” in BPF, p. 291 (note 16).
90. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting; also “Political Thinking in Heidegger,” p. 198.
91. Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 18.
92. Ibid., p. 4.
93. Schürmann, “Political Thinking,” p. 201ff.
94. Richard Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity, chapter 4: “Heidegger’s Silence? Ethos and Technology.”
95. Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 131.
96. Heidegger, QCT, pp. 27, 38.
97. Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 131.
98. Taminiaux, “Heidegger and Praxis,” in The Heidegger Case, pp. 188–207; Bernstein, New Constellation, pp. 122–125.
99. Bernstein, New Constellation, pp. 134–135.
100. See my article “Postmodernism and the Public Sphere.”
101. See Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in BW; also “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” and “… Poetically Man Dwells,” in Poetry, Language, Thought.
102. Heidegger, QCT, pp. 14–15.
103. Ibid., pp. 30, 31.
104. Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 109.
106. Ibid., p. 24.
107. Ibid., p. 38.
108. Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 117.
109. Ibid., p. 122.
110. See Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis,” p. 122.
111. Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” in Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, and Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis.”
112. Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis,” p. 122; also pp. 129–30; Taminiaux, “Heidegger and Praxis,” p. 206; Taminiaux, “Reappropriation,” pp. 134–135; and Taminiaux, “Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?” p. 113.
113. Taminiaux, “Arendt, disciple de Heidegger?” p. 113.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid, p. 111.
116. I am not sure that Schürmann would necessarily disagree with this.
117. Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction Between Praxis and Poiēsis,” p. 129.
118. See Chapter 2; also Bernasconi, “The Fate of the Distinction,” pp. 116–117; Schürmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting, p. 84.
119. See Taminiaux, “Heidegger and Praxis,” pp. 200–201. In this regard, I think Taminiaux is guilty of exaggerating the extent of Aristotle’s anti-Platonism.
121. See, in this regard, Heidegger, The Question of Being, and Derrida’s essays in Writing and Difference.
122. See W. Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition.
123. It is important to avoid overstating this linearity, as R. Wolin does. For a contrasting view, see Bernasconi, The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being (New York: Humanities Press, 1990), chapter 1.
124. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations. I deal with this similarity at greater length in an unpublished essay, “Tradition and Remembrance in Political Theory.”
125. Arendt, LM, I, “Postscriptum,” p. 216. Also Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, p. 5.
126. Bernstein, New Constellation, p. 106.
127. See K. Löwith, Max Weber and Karl Marx.
129. See for example, the essays in James W. Bernauer, ed., Amor Mundi, and Patricia Bowen-Moore, Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy of Natality.
130. See, for example, Ferry and Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity, and R. Wolin, The Politics of Being.
132. Arendt, Totalitarianism, p. 158.
133. Heidegger, “Only a God Can Save Us,” Heidegger interview with Der Spiegel.
134. Ferry and Renaut, Heidegger and Modernity, pp. 94–108; R. Wolin, Politics of Being, pp. 152–154.
135. Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?” in The Foucault Reader, pp. 42–44.