1 Hannah Arendt and the Philosophical Repression of Politics Andrew Schaap For: Jean-Philippe Deranty & Alison Ross (eds) Jacques Rancière in the Contemporary Scene: The Philosophy of Radical Equality. London: Continuum. Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt both disavow political philosophy even as they place the conflict between philosophy and politics at the centre of their philosophical analyses. In response to a roundtable on his „Ten Theses on Politics‟ in 2001, Rancière declared: I am not a political philosopher. My interest in political philosophy is not an interest in questions of [the] foundation of politics. Investigating political philosophy for me, was investigating precisely...what political philosophy looked at and pointed at as the problem or obstacle...for a political philosophy, because I got the idea that what [it] found in [the] way of foundation might well be politics itself... (Rancière 2003b, para 10). These remarks echo a similar declaration made by Hannah Arendt in an interview with Günter Gaus for German television in 1964. Following Gaus‟s introduction of her as a philosopher, Arendt protested that she does not belong to the circle of philosophers. If she has a profession at all it is political theory: The expression „political philosophy‟, which I avoid, is extremely burdened by tradition. When I talk about these things...I always mention that there is a vital tension between philosophy and politics...There is a kind of enmity against all politics in most philosophers...I want to look at politics...with eyes unclouded by philosophy. (Arendt 1994, 2) Arendt and Rancière followed parallel intellectual trajectories, „turning away‟ from philosophy in response to the shock of an historical event and the disillusionment with a former teacher. Hannah Arendt attended Martin Heidegger‟s lectures at the University of Marburg in the 1920s, which formed the basis of Being and Time. Arendt, a German-Jew who had a brief affair with Heidegger while studying at Marburg, was appalled by his support for the Nazi regime as Rector of Freiburg University in the early 1930s. In 1946, she wrote bitterly that Heidegger‟s „enthusiasm for the Third Reich was matched only by his glaring ignorance of what he was talking about‟ (Arendt 1994, 202). She recognized in Heidegger‟s characterization of „das Man‟ the philosopher‟s characteristic disdain for public life and, in his support for the Nazis, the philosopher‟s tendency to prefer the order of tyranny over the contingency of politics (Arendt 1994, 432-433). Subsequently, she was preoccupied by the problem of how „such profundity in philosophy could coexist with such stupidity or perversity in politics‟ (Canovan 1992, 255). In exile from Germany, Arendt undertook the extensive historical research that resulted in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Only once she had settled in America did she turn her attention directly to political philosophy in The Human Condition (1958).
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Hannah Arendt and the Philosophical Repression of Politics
Andrew Schaap
For: Jean-Philippe Deranty & Alison Ross (eds) Jacques Rancière in the Contemporary Scene: The
Philosophy of Radical Equality. London: Continuum.
Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt both disavow political philosophy even as they place the
conflict between philosophy and politics at the centre of their philosophical analyses. In response
to a roundtable on his „Ten Theses on Politics‟ in 2001, Rancière declared:
I am not a political philosopher. My interest in political philosophy is not an interest
in questions of [the] foundation of politics. Investigating political philosophy for me,
was investigating precisely...what political philosophy looked at and pointed at as the
problem or obstacle...for a political philosophy, because I got the idea that what [it]
found in [the] way of foundation might well be politics itself... (Rancière 2003b, para
10).
These remarks echo a similar declaration made by Hannah Arendt in an interview with Günter
Gaus for German television in 1964. Following Gaus‟s introduction of her as a philosopher,
Arendt protested that she does not belong to the circle of philosophers. If she has a profession
at all it is political theory:
The expression „political philosophy‟, which I avoid, is extremely burdened by
tradition. When I talk about these things...I always mention that there is a vital
tension between philosophy and politics...There is a kind of enmity against all politics
in most philosophers...I want to look at politics...with eyes unclouded by philosophy.
(Arendt 1994, 2)
Arendt and Rancière followed parallel intellectual trajectories, „turning away‟ from philosophy in
response to the shock of an historical event and the disillusionment with a former teacher.
Hannah Arendt attended Martin Heidegger‟s lectures at the University of Marburg in the 1920s,
which formed the basis of Being and Time. Arendt, a German-Jew who had a brief affair with
Heidegger while studying at Marburg, was appalled by his support for the Nazi regime as Rector
of Freiburg University in the early 1930s. In 1946, she wrote bitterly that Heidegger‟s
„enthusiasm for the Third Reich was matched only by his glaring ignorance of what he was
talking about‟ (Arendt 1994, 202). She recognized in Heidegger‟s characterization of „das Man‟
the philosopher‟s characteristic disdain for public life and, in his support for the Nazis, the
philosopher‟s tendency to prefer the order of tyranny over the contingency of politics (Arendt
1994, 432-433). Subsequently, she was preoccupied by the problem of how „such profundity in
philosophy could coexist with such stupidity or perversity in politics‟ (Canovan 1992, 255). In
exile from Germany, Arendt undertook the extensive historical research that resulted in The
Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Only once she had settled in America did she turn her attention
directly to political philosophy in The Human Condition (1958).
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Rancière constributed to Louis Althusser‟s reading group on Marx‟s Capital at the École Normale
Supèrieure in Paris in the 1960s. Rancière became disillusioned with Althusser due to his
opposition to the student protests of May 1968 and his insistence on the privileged role of the
Party intellectual. In 1972 Rancière wrote: „Althusser needs the opposition between the
„simplicity‟ of nature and the „complexity‟ of history: if production is the affair of the workers,
history is too complex for them and must be left to the specialists: the Party and Theory‟ (cited
in May 2008, 78). In Rancière‟s view, Althusser reproduces a symbolic hierarchy that empties the
words and actions of political agents (such as the „working class‟) of any intrinsic worth due to
the division he insists on between manual and intellectual labour (see Deranty 2010, 4).
Henceforth, Rancière became preoccupied with the problem of the transmission of
emancipatory experience, seeking to avoid philosophy‟s impulse to either fetishize concepts, on the
one hand, or to fetishize praxis, on the other (Badiou 2009). Turning away from philosophy,
Rancière engaged in archival research that resulted in the publication of two anthologies and The
Nights of Labour (1981). Only later in his career did he begin to write about political philosophy,
leading to the publication of Disagreement (1995).
Rancière and Arendt are both praxis theorists who want to escape political philosophy‟s
reduction of political issues to questions of government. For each of them, Plato seems to stand
in for their former teacher, exemplifying the philosopher‟s antipathy toward politics. Both look
beyond the canon of political philosophy to find a more authentic mode of political thought,
sometimes highlighting apparently marginal figures as exemplary political actors. For instance,
while Arendt valorises Gotthold Lessing for his passionate openness to the world and love of it,
Rancière celebrates Joseph Jacotot as the ignorant schoolmaster who presupposes an equality of
intelligence between teacher and student. Arendt and Rancière both understand politics as
aesthetic in nature, concerning the sensible world of appearances. They are both preoccupied
with „events‟ or exceptional moments of political action through which social worlds are
disclosed to the senses. Given these affinities, sympathetic readers of Arendt might be surprised
by Rancière‟s claim that Arendt‟s political thought, in fact, represses politics in a way paradigmatic
of the tradition she sought to escape from. On the contrary, it might appear that rather than
offering a rival view of politics, Rancière actually amends and extends an Arendtian conception
of politics (e.g. Ingram 2006; 2008).
I want to caution against such an interpretation. It is true that Arendt is an important influence
on Rancière, despite his polemic against her. Yet, as Rancière (2003a, xxviii) observes in a
different context, „the power of a mode of thinking has to do above all with its capacity to be
displaced.‟ Arendt‟s understanding of praxis seems to resonate within Rancière‟s work. However,
those apparently Arendtian notions that Rancière make use of are fundamentally transformed
when transposed within his broader thematization of dissensus. To develop this argument I first
examine Arendt‟s own account of the tension between philosophy and politics in order to
understand the phenomenological basis of the political theory that she sought to develop. I then
consider how persuasive Rancière‟s characterization of Arendt as an „archipolitical‟ thinker is. In
the final section, I discuss some key passages in Disagreement in which Rancière alludes to Arendt.
These passages highlight how those Arendtian concepts that do seem to find their way into
Rancière‟s thought are transformed when displaced from her ontology.
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The meaning of appearances
„Every political philosophy‟, Arendt (2005, 27) tells us, „faces the alternative of interpreting
political experience with categories which owe their origin to the realm of human affairs, or, on
the contrary, of claiming priority for philosophic experience and judging all politics in its light‟.
Arendt believed traditional philosophy failed to recognize the specificity of politics because it
followed the second path, privileging the life of contemplation over that of action. Bikhu Parekh
(1981, ch.1) highlights four aspects of Arendt‟s critique of traditional political philosophy. First,
philosophy fails to appreciate the dignity of politics. Rather than recognizing action and
appearances as intrinsically meaningful, it construes politics as a means to a higher end. Second,
philosophy fails to appreciate the autonomy of politics. Rather than recognize that political life
raises distinct ontological and epistemological issues, it treats political problems as matters of
morality or law. Third, traditional philosophy neglects the fundamental character and structure of
political experience due to its preoccupation with formal features of political life. Formal analysis
of concepts makes philosophy inarticulate about political phenomena since it becomes self-
contained and divorced from experience. Fourth, traditional philosophy fails to appreciate action
as the proper object of political philosophy because it treats politics as a matter of ruling.
Philosophy‟s preoccupation with questions concerning the legitimacy of government means that
it fails to appreciate how human beings actualize their freedom by participating in public life.
Overall, then, traditional philosophy tends to „derive the political side of life from the necessity
which compels the human animal to live together with others…and it tends to conclude with a
theory about the conditions that would best suit the needs of the unfortunate human condition
of plurality and best enable the philosopher, at least, to live undisturbed by it‟ (Arendt 1994,
429).
Against this tradition Arendt sought to understand politics on its own terms. In her view,
philosophy is properly concerned with hermeneutic questions, which originate from existential
perplexity, the human need to make sense of experience. Such questions cannot be answered on
the basis of knowledge about facts since they entail judgments of worth. Moreover, answers to
interpretive questions cannot be judged true or false but only more or less plausible according to
the insightfulness of the interpretation they offer (Parekh 1981, 61-62). Thus, rather than explain
political appearances in terms of a deeper truth that they reveal, she sought to understand the
meaning inherent within appearances themselves. Despite her disillusionment with Heidegger‟s
own political errors, Arendt appropriates Heidegger‟s concept of world in order to understand
plurality as the fundamental ontological condition that structures all political experience (Arendt
1994, 443).
Arendt‟s insistence on the autonomy of the political as a domain of human experience, distinct
from the economic, is crucial to her attempt to develop an authentic mode of political thought.
In order to develop a phenomenology of politics, she must assume that those distinctions we
make between different kinds of experience (aesthetic, moral, political, economic, etc.) are not
simply a matter of convention but reflect objective structures that are part of a universal human
condition (Parekh 1981, 69). To this end, Arendt accords a certain privilege to the political
thought of the Greeks who, she claims, were more articulate about political experience than the
moderns (Arendt 1994, 430). For her, concepts should be understood ontologically as
distillations of experience, a way of assigning meaning and significance to human affairs. Since
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the political concepts we have inherited originate in the Greek polis, where they were first
articulated without the burden of tradition, returning to the Greeks allows for the recuperation
of the fundamental structure of political experience (see Parekh 1981, 72-75). She derives from
Greek political thought an image of the polity as a space of appearance (Hinchmann &
Hinchmann 1984, 196f.). She contrasts this image of an authentic politics, oriented to being-in-
common, to the nihilistic, isolating and, indeed, anti-political politics of modernity that made
possible the Nazi death camps (see Dietz 2000).
But although the language of the Greeks offers an unparalleled insight into political experience,
she blames the political philosophies they developed for the displacement and misunderstanding
of what she takes to be the proper object of political thought: action. In Arendt‟s view, the
fundamental tension between politics and philosophy arises due to the different nature of the
experiences of the vita activa (active life) and the vita contemplativa (life of the mind). Since action is
only possible in the company of others, politics is concerned with „men‟ in their plurality as zoon
politikon. It is concerned with winning immortality by appearing before others within the polity
and it entails doxadzein, forming an opinion about how the world appears from one‟s particular
perspective within it. In contrast, since thinking always takes place in solitude, traditional
philosophy is concerned with „Man‟ in his singularity as animale rationale. It seeks to discover
universal truths and it begins from the experience of thaumadzein, speechless wonder at what is
from the perspective of transcendent reason. According to Arendt, the philosopher is an „expert
in wondering‟ and „in speechless wonder he puts himself outside the political realm where it is
precisely speech that makes man a political being‟ (Arendt 2005, 35).
In describing the emergence of this tension between philosophy and politics, Arendt presents a
„kind of myth of a philosophical Fall‟, as Margaret Canovan (1992 258) puts it. In the early Greek
polis, action and thought were united in logos. Arendt describes approvingly how Socrates
thought that the philosopher‟s role was to help citizens reveal the truthfulness in their own
opinions (doxa) rather than to educate them with those truths philosophy had already discovered.
For Socrates, doxa was „neither subjective illusion nor arbitrary distortion, but…that to which
truth…adhered‟ (Arendt 2005, 19). Doxa was the formulation of dokai moi, „of what appears to
me‟ (Arendt 2005, 14). Socrates assumed that the world opens up differently to each citizen and
that the commonness (koinon) of the world resides in the fact that „the same world opens up to
everyone‟ (Arendt 2005, 14). The achievement of philosophical dialogue was the constitution of
a common world. In talking about the world that lay between them, the world would become
more common to those engaged in philosophical dialogue. In this context, to assert ones opinion
also meant to show oneself, to appear within the world, „to be seen and heard by others‟ and
hence it was a condition of being recognized by others as „fully human‟ (Arendt 2005, 14).
Following the trial and death of Socrates, Arendt argues, an „abyss opened up between thought
and action‟ (Arendt 2005, 6). This event „made Plato despair of polis life‟ and led him to reject
rhetoric, the political art of persuasion, in favour of the „tyranny of truth‟ (Arendt 2005, 11-12).
Consequently, Plato elevated the vita contemplativa over the vita activa. In contrast to the eternal
truths that philosophy sought to discover through reason, the world of politics appeared as
contingent, arbitrary, meaningless and potentially dangerous to those who sought the truth.
Against the irresponsible opinions of the Athenians, Plato opposed the Ideas. According to
Arendt, Plato was the first philosopher to „use the ideas for political purposes, that is, to
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introduce absolute standards into the realm of human affairs, where, without such transcending