Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism 1032379626, 9781032379623

Citation preview

“The centrality of Husserl within contemporary philosophy has long been recognized. What we have lacked is a sustained reflection on the way it intersects with political theory. By thinking through the meaning of Husserl’s notion of a ‘life-​world’ Michael Hickman has illuminated the connection with the lived experience of political community. This is a brilliant and original contribution that offers a fresh perspective on the deepest conflicts that politics confronts, as well as its prospects for bridging them. Hickman returns Husserl to the crisis from which his own reflection set forth.” David Walsh, Professor of Politics, the Catholic University of America “Michael Hickman makes a compelling argument for the primacy of what Aristotle calls ‘ethos’ for contemporary questions of political legitimacy –​ a fascinating application of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl to the most hotly debated issues of moral diversity or pluralism being discussed within contemporary political theory.” Ryan R. Holston, Professor and Jonathan M. Daniels ’61 Chair, Virginia Military Institute “Through a careful study of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy, Michael F. Hickman offers an original argument that the life-​world for Husserl is coterminous with the political community. Engaging with figures such as Kant, Rawls, Aristotle, and Aquinas along the way, Hickman gives a careful and creative analysis of the mode of givenness of political phenomena, overcomes the overly abstract understanding of politics in liberal political theory, and gives a penetrating account of the nature of political reflection with the idea of the ‘political quasi-​epochē.’ A landmark work in the phenomenology of the political.” Philip J. Harold, Dean of Constantin College and Professor of Politics, University of Dallas “Searching for resources to address the crisis of liberalism, Michael Hickman looks back to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology as a way to recover a humane polity. According to Hickman, we have lost a common world akin to Aristotle’s complete and self-​ sufficient political community and where we can perceive one another as people rather than objects. Finding faults with both ideal liberal theory and political realism, Hickman offers a new way to account for political identity and legitimacy that can bolster and steady liberal democracies. Innovative and thoughtful, Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism provides a fresh theoretical approach to the problems of liberalism and how they could be resolved.” Lee Trepanier, Chair and Professor of Political Science, Samford University

Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism

Drawing on Husserl’s concepts of communalization and intersubjectivity, this book aspires to an orientation in which human beings are understood in the context of their full-​blooded, concrete existence –​the life-​world. Michael F. Hickman offers a fresh return to the raw experience of politics through the contemporary realist idea of radical disagreement as the “circumstances of politics.” He surpasses realist limitations through the acknowledgment of the constitution of the world as an achievement of the intersubjective community, while crucially asserting that the political horizon is distinguishable from, but coterminous with, the life-​world itself. Through the use of hypotheticals, an unprecedented phenomenological account of political experience is offered, in which three major themes of political subjectivity are explored: belonging and possession, authority, and foreignness and political others. Finally, a multi-​phase analysis of legitimacy is conducted which, taking into account universal human rights and concretely identifiable expressions of acceptance, is nonetheless rooted in a source –​the life-​world –​that reaches beyond any mere collectivity of ego-​acts. Utilizing an expanded philosophical universe, Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism offers a path forward from the ideological stalemates in which liberal theory seems hopelessly locked. It will appeal to scholars involved in the study of political theory and philosophy, international relations, intercultural studies, human rights, and phenomenology. Michael F. Hickman teaches political philosophy at the University of Mary in North Dakota. He is a lawyer and member of the Bar of South Carolina. Contact: [email protected]

Routledge Innovations in Political Theory

Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings From the Ancient Greeks to Modern Times Edited by Bernat Torres and Josep Monserrat Liberal Progressivism Politics and Class in the Age of Neoliberalism and Climate Change Gordon Hak Love and Politics Persistent Human Desires as a Foundation for Liberation Jeffery L. Nicholas Utilitarianism in the Early American Republic James E. Crimmins Confucian Sentimental Representation A New Approach to Confucian Democracy Kwon Kyung Rok The Ideology of Political Reactionaries Richard Shorten On the Politics of Kinship Hannes Charen Religious Pluralism and Political Stability Obligations in Agreement David Golemboski Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism The Legitimacy of the Life-​World Michael F. Hickman

Husserlian Phenomenology and Contemporary Political Realism The Legitimacy of the Life-​World Michael F. Hickman

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Michael F. Hickman The right of Michael F. Hickman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​37962-​3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​42144-​5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​36134-​3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9781003361343 Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

Contents

Preface

xi

1 Introduction

1

2 Two Guideposts: Innate Political Orientation v. Endemic Disagreement

6

3 Locating the Political

11

4 Ideal and Realist Legitimacy

27

5 The Phenomenological Contribution

45

6 The Life-​World Is Political

62

7 Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions: Transition to Political Subjectivity

74

8 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity I: Belonging and Possession

82

9 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity II: Authority

92

10 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity III: Political Others and Foreignness

104

viii Contents

11 Political Intentionality: The Essence of Political Experience

136

12 The Legitimacy of the Life-​World

145

Conclusion

168

Index

184

The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks; They are all fire, and every one doth shine, But there’s but one in all doth hold his place. –​Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 1 For those who say in a general way that virtue is a good condition of the soul or acting correctly or something of this sort deceive themselves. –​ Aristotle, Politics I 13 1260a25–​7

Preface

Political order and the political dimension of human life can be apprehended neither logically nor empirically, although they are part of objective reality. Logic, insofar as it is occupied with formal validity in reasoning, is incapable of accessing the material essences and eidetic structure of experience proper to the political. Similarly, the naturalism inherent in an empirical approach (for example, in “political science”) misses the political by restricting the inquiry to quantifiable facts or to the derivation of inductive, merely probable laws. Phenomenology is able to respond to this situation. Emmanuel Levinas, in his book on Husserl’s theory of intuition, speaks of an “essential necessity…which is independent of logic and of any deduction, and which has its foundation in ‘the specific essence of the contents [of objects], on their peculiar nature.’ ”1 Such necessity can be investigated because it is available to direct ideation, or intuition. For Husserl, moreover, all experiences “have essences, a necessary structure, and as such…are governed by eidetic laws.”2 Now, since the political is not an object of perception per se, it seems that a phenomenologically informed political philosophy must necessarily begin from political experience, taking the form of “an eidetic, descriptive science of consciousness,” and finding its fulfilment in an ontological science of the regional essence of the political.3 Given the centrality of experience in such an inquiry, it will be no surprise to the reader to learn that this book was written while living and traveling abroad. Although the hypotheticals I use almost exclusively take place in America, the substance of the insights drawn from them arise largely from my experience as a foreigner in a foreign land. Being a foreigner stimulated for me knowledge of what it is to be part of a political community. Levinas says that phenomenological reflection is an “ideative reflection” which uses “the concrete perceived state of consciousness toward which it is directed as 1 Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 109–​10. Quoting Husserl’s Logical Investigations II. 2 Ibid., 140. 3 Ibid., 114–​5.

xii Preface an example in order to return to its essence.”4 Entering a different “world” through travel gave me an abundance of “examples” that stimulated and facilitated the insights at the heart of this book. It would seem obvious that serious and careful thinking about intersubjectivity would be critical for political philosophy. As it stands, however, there is a brute disconnect between the dominant forms of political theorizing and any serious engagement with the reality of the intersubjective achievement of objectivity. On the one hand, there is the denial of intersubjectivity characteristic of liberalism, which insists, at least for purposes of political analysis, on thinking only the abstract individual. On the other hand, there is the abuse of intersubjectivity, which, understood in an oversimplified or erroneous way, is wielded as an ideological weapon to dissolve all assertions of objective order among human beings, thus clearing the way for the absolute supremacy of the will. In this work I draw on Husserl’s account of transcendental intersubjectivity as a starting point to ameliorate this situation. I attempt to lay out the main theoretical outlines of an eidetic, a priori science of politics that avoids both of the above pitfalls concerning intersubjectivity. Levinas remarks that “philosophy is concerned with knowing which is the particular mode of being transcendent, of being given to consciousness, which is proper to each region of objects.”5 My endeavor is to establish an eidetic, a priori science of what I will dare to call the political region of being. As will be seen, the goal is not to establish a “foundation” for politics to be implemented as a moral program for humanity, but rather to arrive at a knowledge of the political “material a priori” present in every political community, elucidating its essential and ontological character. To go back to the beginning. To make a new start. Such is always the task of philosophy. Many respected and admired individuals have contributed in myriad ways to the writing of this book. I would like to recognize and give thanks to those whose influence was most directly felt, especially David Walsh, Leo Paul De Alvarez, Claes Ryn, Dennis Coyle, and Tim Furlan. I am grateful to my students for many beneficial and rewarding hours in the classroom, for discussions with colleagues Chris Collins, Ivan Jankovic, Daniel Sportiello, and Hannah Venable, and for the sabbatical that freed me from teaching duties long enough to think deeply and to write. I would like to thank my parents and my parents-​in-​law for their love and support. Above all, I want to express my deepest love and gratitude for my amazing wife, Natalie, and our beloved children: Margaret, Georgia, Forrest, Edward, Thomas, Rachel, Hilaire, Edith, and Athanasius.

4 Ibid., 141. 5 Ibid., 94.

1 Introduction

As the crisis of liberalism, long and exquisitely observed by intellectuals, penetrates into everyday consciousness, the future shape of common human life remains unclear. It is as if, below the superficial din of day-​to-​ day events, a kind of psychospiritual logjam exists, roiling and churning waters that find no channel –​or perhaps too many channels –​into which to flow. No theory of action, vision of happiness, or hierarchy of values –​ nay, not even a utopian future order –​is able to prevail as the dominant crystallization of meaning. Manifold policies, arguments, and ideologies are advanced, threatened, and cajoled, yet none seems to stick. There is only the private, the meeting of individual needs, and the personal quest for security or identity. Yet is this state of affairs likely to endure? What happens over time in such conditions? What resulting contrary forces or dynamics may be invoked that will descend, settle, or be unleashed sooner or later? The indefinitely “unborn” future persists, it would seem, not because of the absence or incoherence of ideas, but largely because the conditions for the manifestation of consensus do not exist. Significantly, various forms of technology, which were supposed to create a vast field for an ever wider and more intimate “real-​time” unity, on the contrary seem to facilitate disintegration, creating factionalism of every kind, from the most trivial to the deadliest and most perverse. What seems to be lacking, above all, is a “world” in which a coherent vision of life and shared meaning can carry the day. Ideal liberal theory, the reigning paradigm of political philosophy in the most humane, wealthy, and technologically advanced countries throughout world, is characterized above all by the idea that, despite the presence of a great variety of visions of the good life, all reasonable people can at least agree on certain basic universal political principles. On the basis of this consensus, it is claimed, it becomes possible to resolve conflicts through the legal management of individual rights, resulting in a flourishing, pluralistic society. However, if the implementation and application of these “universal principles” depends on the diverse conceptions of the good (they were supposed to render irrelevant) to such an extent as to generate conflicting DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-1

2 Introduction demands in terms of practical embodiment and action, then the supposed consensus will have been revealed as merely contingent or illusory. It is possible, at least in the West, that the relative early success of ideal liberal theory benefitted, due to an unacknowledged contingency, from a certain subsisting, (adequately) coherent unified milieu of meaning and sense. Although employed (as ever) by partisans in political discourse in the pursuit of competing ends, a sufficiently common vision had prevailed such that the conceptualizations behind ideas like rights, life, liberty, equality, justice, tolerance, privacy, free speech, censorship, religious liberty, marriage, man, and woman were workably similar. Yet, arguably, such coherence was itself the function of a more or less widespread agreement about the existence of God, the ends and purposes of government, and the basic structure of society, as well as about certain norms and sensibilities regarding what is appropriate behavior in various social contexts. Obviously, not everyone conformed to such standards –​there have certainly been identifiable, sometimes assertive, sub-​groups characterized by markedly different viewpoints. The place of such groups, however, was nonetheless comprehensible within the whole. Without in any way considering the goodness or desirability of the general coherence of which I speak, I want simply to make the point that enough coherence existed to maintain the plausibility and workability of the prior consensus regarding universal political principles assumed by ideal liberal theory. Despite acrid debate, sometimes violent conflict, and with a somewhat limited number of viewpoints enjoying public expression, a certain basic shared meaning nonetheless persisted. It would appear that consensus has considerably faded and perhaps no longer exists in any decisive manner. Moreover, in recent years, a kind of cynicism has emerged bearing a strange resemblance to the mindset of populations living under regimes with state-​controlled propaganda machines where it is common knowledge that the so-​called public discourse is for the most part only ideological blather. Perhaps surprisingly, apathy and scepticism have arisen in the context of mostly (though perhaps less and less) protected free speech and a veritable explosion of different viewpoints (for example, through the internet). One result of such apathy and incoherence is that even highly educated and ethically conscientious individuals, despite having political “views” and interests, often live without any serious rationalization of political life. From a perspective of political philosophy, such developments point to a need to radically rethink whether a consensus on universal political principles should prevail as the commonly asserted basis of legitimate government. To be sure, as insisted upon by contemporary political realists in the line of Bernard Williams,1 a certain amount of disorder among human 1 See especially In the Beginning Was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Other important figures of contemporary realist persuasion include Raymond

Introduction  3 beings is both normal and may even be a sign of political health. Because of its inevitability, such a state of affairs should be accepted as normal. For example, Matt Sleat describes what he calls “the circumstances of politics,” which refers to the idea that human beings will always strongly disagree about what is morally right and the best way of life.2 This means that politics always “takes place against the background of deep and permanent disagreement.”3 Despite the failure to achieve a common world, a degree of security and material prosperity can still persist and even advance. In the presence of a sufficiently coercive government, psychology and medicine, philosophies of conduct, spirituality and religion can be enlisted to address the needs of individual souls. All may socialize as they wish. “Freedom” is achieved and –​arguably –​no response to the situation described above involving a special effort of analysis on the part of political philosophy is called for. For my part, I do not say that our present day is unique or any more or less troubled than other times in history. My thesis is that dealing with our current situation requires theoretical resources not possessed by the reigning political philosophies of our time, including the realist school –​ though I do believe contemporary realism has an especially important role to play. According to this school, the primary task of politics is to create a secure and orderly “framework” of common life, through the establishment of “the terms on which we are to co-​exist,” and moreover to provide an effective means of decision-​making for the future, under the inevitable conditions of disagreement.4 Although this way of understanding the matter does not seem to me to be fully correct, it describes well a unique and fundamental function of politics that is uniformly overlooked by typical modern liberal thought, yet which is absolutely necessary as a foundation for any responsible political philosophy. As we will see, the question ultimately to be posed to the realists concerns how this framework is established and maintained. More precisely Guess (Philosophy and Real Politics, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), John Gray (Enlightenment’s Wake, London: Routledge Press, 1995), Chantal Mouffe (On the Political, London: Routledge Press, 2005), David McCabe (Modus Vivendi Liberalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Matthew Sleat (Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). Realism, of course, is a very loose term and pertains to many thinkers who may contradict one another in important ways and who might even object to the term itself. There is certainly no definite doctrine defining the school of thought in an “official” manner. At the same time, realists could be said to share a certain set of common theoretical assumptions (for instance, about human nature) and moreover interact with the work of certain historically prominent thinkers; for example, Thucydides, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Weber, and Schmitt. Importantly, it should be observed that realists can be both liberal and non-​liberal. The contemporary realists identified above are all committed to a broadly liberal outlook. Carl Schmitt, by contrast, is perhaps the most prominent non-​liberal realist, in addition to classic figures like Machiavelli and Hobbes. 2 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 66. 3 Ibid, 13. 4 Ibid, 47.

4 Introduction still, of what does the framework consist? Here political realism appears at a loss, and in such a way as to prevent it from truly (that is, realistically) appreciating the nature of the current political challenge. Specifically, it remains at the level of a conception of politics whereby an abstractly posited multitude of individuals are engaged in various behavioral dichotomies: dialogue versus violence, or consensus versus disagreement. While the ideal liberal consensus view is unworkable because it is unrealistic, in realist thought, by contrast, the “political” tends to be reduced to conflict and disagreement. What is needed is insight into the political relationship itself. In moving forward in the wake of the liberal crisis, I believe Edmund Husserl’s understanding of intersubjectivity and the life-​world can provide theoretical resources crucial for sounding the true depth of our current situation. In this work, I strive to explore the manner in which the necessary framework for politics described by the realists relates to, and is indeed in some sense identical with, the life-​world as elucidated by Husserl. In my view, we are not in our time dealing with a simple lack of consensus, understood, for example, in terms of a divergence of the opinions or interests of individuals, but rather we are faced with the loss of a world in a Husserlian sense. If indeed there is a close relationship between the life-​world and a necessary political framework, then the need for a political philosophy that understands and includes these dimensions is evident. On the level of thought, the great underminers of the coherency of the world have been the theoretical constructions of modern science, economics, and liberalism itself. Now, in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl analyzed the way in which an idealized and mathematicized science –​in the absence of a necessary contextualization provided by philosophy –​profoundly distorts the real world of experience.5 Although he did not specifically trace the political effects of this distortion, nor identify the world-​dissolving effects of economic theory or liberal ideology, I believe there is an inherently similar dynamic at work in all of these areas, and therefore that a phenomenological treatment of them will be beneficial. The systematic incorporation of a significant degree of disagreement (as insisted upon by the realists) into a vision of politics based solidly on the necessity of an intersubjective constitution of a common life-​world in fact comports well with Husserl’s position that communalization and objectivity are achievements which, as such, can always degenerate. A philosophy able to address the question of political coherence is particularly valuable at a time when liberalism is often rendered ineffectual as the result of conflict born of mutual incomprehension, and at times is even explicitly challenged by non-​liberal ways of life and thinking. Sleat writes: 5 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970).

Introduction  5 It is only recently that we have become more sensitive to the fact of radical political disagreement and conflict, the presence of often not insignificant minorities who endorse non-​or anti-​ liberal political ideals, within liberal states. Correspondingly, whereas much recent contemporary liberal political theory has hitherto taken place against the assumed social backdrop of peace, stability, and widespread consensus around liberal values, increased awareness of dissent from liberalism within liberal societies has cast significant doubt on the validity of these assumptions. It is in this political context that a burgeoning interest in realist political theory has arisen.6 The connection between the loss of a common “world” and the radical disagreement spoken of by Sleat should be easy to see. With its vision of the latter, realist theory is well equipped to provide a starting point for a renewal of political philosophy. As we will see, however, an adequate theory of politics must find its completion by establishing the central political significance of the intersubjectively constituted life-​world. As a final note, in addition to phenomenology and contemporary political realism, I will draw from certain classical authors, particularly Aristotle and Aquinas, who, in their own way, were both fundamentally realist and yet highly sensitive to the importance of communalization.

6 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 1.

2 Two Guideposts Innate Political Orientation v. Endemic Disagreement

Before beginning the inquiry properly speaking, it will be helpful to make a few preliminary remarks. Allow me to orient the investigation by insisting on two things that, while not contradictory, will nonetheless require some explanation with regard to the manner in which they can both be true. These points parallel what I have suggested are the main contributions to political philosophy from Husserl’s phenomenology and contemporary realism, respectively. With regard to this first guidepost, I propose a strong resonance and congruence between Husserl’s idea of the intersubjectively constituted life-​world and Aristotle’s claim that the political community is “prior” to the individual.1 Put somewhat differently, Aristotle’s assertion that man is a “political animal” means that all men necessarily experience the life-​world as possessing an essentially political structure.2 To prevent misunderstanding, it should be said up front that by an “essentially political structure” (the meaning and justification of “political” will need to be established) I do not mean a particular constitution. In this respect, it is helpful to observe with Dermot Moran that Husserl distinguishes between two different paths for an investigation of the life-​world. First, there is the empirical task of documenting the specific “styles” and “habitualities” of historical, concretely existing life-​worlds.3 On the other hand, there is the quite distinct task of identifying “the essential form of any life-​world whatsoever.”4 My task is akin to the latter. Aristotelian methodology shows the need for political philosophy to draw from an empirical survey of constitutions. Yet, political philosophy becomes philosophical only when it explores the manner in which there is a political dimension in “any life-​world whatsoever.” Much work will need

1 Aristotle, Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1253a20. 2 Aristotle, Politics, 1253a2. 3 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2012), 211. 4 Ibid.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-2

Two Guideposts  7 to be done before anything definite can be said in this regard. However, in order to get an idea of the approach I intend to pursue, consider a simple hypothetical: A man, having been completely unconscious, and with no memory of his prior life, “comes to” in an unfamiliar place. There is no one in sight. Now, a Husserlian understanding of consciousness holds that even a man alone will have others “with him” in important ways, even if only insofar as they involve essential potentialities inherent in the structure of his consciousness. It seems to me that, in a similar manner, there are essential potentialities concerning authority that must also be assumed to inhere with respect to these possible “others.” This man, as a man, will have a fundamental “expectation” as to what his status is in this regard. For example, is he on private property? Is this his country or is he a foreigner? Perhaps he is in an unsettled or deserted, anarchic wilderness, completely lacking in authority? If not, who is in charge? What is the form of government? Is there an established rule of law? If so, does he have any rights under the law? These questions impose themselves unavoidably, because they are, as it were, essential possibilities of human experience and existence. That certain potentialities intrinsically accompany any concrete (that is, living) human being points to the identification of an essential dimension of experience: in this case, the political. Yet if the political is a necessary part of human experience, then it must have necessary and essential correlations in the life-​world and the specific acts of human consciousness by which such experience is constituted. The goal of a phenomenologically oriented political philosophy, then, will not primarily be to trace out the various kinds of regimes or constitutions, or to establish a theory of law or right and so forth. Rather, it will be to ask how it is both possible and unavoidable that any human being’s orientation in the world will be informed by such considerations. Furthermore, it will inquire into the precise nature of the experience of this dimension –​a task involving the clarification and illumination of what I call political subjectivity. The second “guidepost” upon which I want to insist, and which may seem to be in tension with the a priori political nature of man just described, is to assert along with the realists that the “circumstances of politics” are (or include, as I would modify the assertion) radical disagreement. According to Sleat, realists are sceptical about the ability of human beings to identify and meaningfully share universal values and political principles, emphasizing rather the delicacy of the achievement of political order and need for force as a necessary element of governance.5 For his part, Bernard Williams writes: 5 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 13.

8  Two Guideposts It is important to remember the elementary truth that even in settled circumstances the political order does rest on the legitimated direction of violence; and also that even in settled states, the nature of the legitimation, and exactly what it will legitimate, is constantly, if not violently, contested.6 Given the need for violence and the inevitability of the contestation of legitimacy, the “first political question” becomes “the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation.”7 Crucially, since such a solution to this question “is required all the time,” its character is “affected by historical circumstances: it is not a matter of arriving at a solution to the first question at the level of state-​of-​nature theory and then going on to the rest of the agenda.”8 For the present inquiry, it is important to keep in view the fragility, historical contingency, and ongoing nature of any solution to the first political question. Let me propose that the tension between the two guideposts I have set forth can be resolved by observing that the a priori status of the political association exists on the level of intelligibility and in no way entails that political order establishes itself automatically.9 Now, realists are unable to make this resolution since they recognize only the tendency toward disorder (arising from disagreement) and not the intelligibility of order, for example as seen in Aristotle’s idea of organically developing, interlocking communities. This can be seen in the typical realist assertion that if disagreement did not exist then politics would not be necessary.10 In short, they do not recognize the establishment of political order as the positive fulfilment of a natural (that is, teleological) human capacity, but rather as a practical arrangement among individuals. Accordingly, to the extent that they acknowledge a “normative” dimension of politics, it typically remains at the level of a vague “equal respect for persons,” for example, as taken up from Kant.11 My own view is that, in holding political order to be a mere practical remedy, realists do not, ironically, acknowledge the full “circumstances of politics.” The realist rejection of political intelligibility is intimately related, philosophically speaking, to the failure to identify the aspect of political order most requiring analysis today: the constitution of a common world. For it is not just “agreement” (among a certain portion of the population combined with the necessary presence of coercion) that is fragile and threatened by endemic conflict. Such a conception of the political order fails to reckon with the extent to which the functioning of reason itself

6 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 62. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Hence, in Aristotle a necessary role for “the Legislator” does not contradict the asserted naturalness of the polis. 10 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 46. 11 See for example Charles Larmore, What is Political Philosophy? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

Two Guideposts  9 presupposes an intersubjective community formed from an “agreement” of a different kind. Decidedly, this deeper agreement can be established through neither persuasive dialogue nor mere force. The realists, who in an admirable way squarely face the problem of radical disagreement, may not be realistic enough in their understanding of man, missing the political subjectivity which is part of the intersubjective achievement of the objective world itself. For it is not only a practical (in terms of interests) and discursive agreement between individuals that is fragile and subject to the destructive forces of contention and dissent, but rather a sufficiently common life-​world (which underlies and makes agreement –​or disagreement, for that matter –​possible in the first place!). This more profound “agreement,” which I intend to investigate in this work, must figure into any thinking about a solution to the first political question of the establishment of a framework for politics –​a problem which, indeed, as realists point out, must be solved all the time. These claims raise many questions that must be sorted out and addressed. In another preliminary observation, I want to highlight the long-​term orientation of the discussion toward the great theme of legitimacy. The problem of legitimacy follows necessarily from the continual need to establish a “structure of institutions and practices that provides the basis for persons to live together under a common political authority.”12 According to Sleat, this question is at the very center of realist political thought.13 It arises, as Williams points out, in that “everywhere, universally, at least this much is true, that might is not per se right: the mere power to coerce does not in itself provide a legitimation.”14 Now, according to ideal liberal theory, a legitimate framework for politics must be based upon an agreement concerning universal political principles. However, as Sleat explains, “because the nature of the political framework is itself a matter of perpetual and persistent disagreement between persons, the universal consent or endorsement of that framework cannot be a condition of its legitimacy.”15 Thus, the ideal liberal requirement of consensus and consent means that legitimacy will always be non-​existent or illusory in actual fact, at least for a certain number of people. Another example of realist philosophical probity is that, in striving for an analysis of legitimacy which presupposes radical disagreement –​even about the framework –​realists are able to envision a world in which “liberalism is but one form of political framework, or more specifically one family of different political frameworks, that people support and which has the potential to provide a response to the political question.”16 In this regard, realism resembles the thought of ancient authors like Plato and Aristotle, who recognized a variety of potentially 12 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 47. 13 Ibid., 48. 14 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 69. 15 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 49. 16 Ibid., 48.

10  Two Guideposts legitimate regimes. By contrast, ideal liberal theory is constrained to take the dogmatic and rather obtuse view that all non-​liberal regimes lack legitimacy. In this work I want to directly relate the problem of legitimacy to the existence of a sufficiently common life-​world. Finally, in choosing the hypotheticals used in this book I have mostly assumed the framework of the nation state. I fully realize that this is a historical contingency which may be considered questionable. Certainly, one could wonder whether “the United States,” for example, forms at this time an “intersubjective community” in any real sense. Be that as it may, since it is the framework that still informs most people’s conscious thinking (for example, one says to oneself, “I am an American”), I have chosen to retain this framework. If, in thinking through these hypotheticals, one becomes aware of a dissonance between the actuality of “my country” and “the world,” then my discourse will have had the merit of opening for the reader a new path of discovery and reflection. In any case, despite the choice to retain the focal point of the nation state, the analysis contained in this work aims to be universal. In doing so, it may either better inform the self-​understanding of people in “living” national communities or perhaps contribute to the discernment of the lineaments of newly emerging political associations.

3 Locating the Political

If we are to evoke the political dimension of the life-​world, it will be helpful to begin to define with more precision what is meant by “political.” Sleat remarks that for typical ideal liberal theory, “political activity and political relationships [take place] within and with reference to a set of principles that are universally endorsed by those subject to them, or can be represented as such.”1 Ideal liberalism claims to anticipate moral and religious disagreement, while proposing that they can nonetheless “live together as free and equal by assuming the possibility of universal agreement (even if only hypothetical) on the political principles that regulate their shared association.”2 Examples of shared “political principles” might be “equality,” “freedom,” “justice,” or the “rule of law.” Importantly, as the result of the reduction or abstraction of politics to that which concerns such “political principles,” many of the most fundamental dimensions of life (for instance, manners, culture, religion, family) come to be seen as irrelevant or at least beyond the purview of the political order (that is, non-​political). An important consequence of this view is that there is no “political realm,” and therefore no possibility of doing politics, until an agreed-​upon set of universal political principles is in place.3 The ideal liberal approach is expressed in Rawls’ book Political Liberalism, wherein the defining characteristic of “the political” is its complete detachment from things that matter most to people in their actual lives. Thus, a “political conception of justice” is one that is “freestanding and expounded apart from, or without reference to” any “personal,” “familial” or “associational” values or beliefs.4 Likewise, a “political conception of the person” refers to one’s “public, or institutional, identity” as part of a “democratic society of free and equal citizens,” as contrasted with “their noninstitutional or moral identity.”5

1 2 3 4 5

Matt Sleat, Liberal Realism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) 21. Ibid., 39. Ibid. (emphasis in the original). John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 10–​2. Ibid., 30.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-3

12  Locating the Political Generally speaking, Rawls considers what people most deeply believe in and care about to be part of a person’s “comprehensive doctrine.”6 This would include, for example, “conceptions of what is of value in human life,” as well as ideals concerning “personal character,” “friendship,” and “familial and associational relationships.”7 All of this must be sharply distinguished from the realm of political values. Thus, for Rawls, we always assume that citizens have two views, a comprehensive and a political view; and that their overall view can be divided into two parts, suitably related. We hope that by doing this we can in working political practice ground the constitutional essentials and basic institutions of justice solely in those political values, with these values understood as the basis of public reason and justification.8 In Rawls’ approach, then, citizens functionally live a kind of dual existence in which they are assumed to “affirm a comprehensive doctrine to which the political conception they accept is in some way related.”9 Now, our present interest is not to explore what Rawls considers to be the “political values” (for example, reasonableness, reciprocity, equality, fairness, and the like) but to notice that, for him, they form a “special domain –​the political.”10 Contemporary realists, even those with strong liberal commitments, criticize this view as misguided, primarily because they believe that disagreement among humans always extends to the substance of such political values. Accordingly, they reject the plausibility of a vision of politics that at once accepts (and even facilitates, through the commitment to autonomy) deep differences regarding beliefs and conceptions of the good life and at the same time expects a consensus among such a radically pluralistic population regarding what is reasonable, good, normal, and constituting of respect.11 Now, in comparing ideal liberalism and realism, it is easy to focus on the degree to which idealists may be considered naïve about human nature. Rawls’ idea, for example, that individuals will “adjust and reconcile” their “comprehensive doctrines” with what is demanded by political values seems highly optimistic.12 For in practice this means that any elements of one’s comprehensive vision that cannot be “adjusted” must simply “give way in public life,” since the political values are themselves the measure of what is reasonable and/​or a proper basis for justification.13 It seems difficult to believe that flesh-​and-​blood human beings would be inclined or 6 Ibid., 13. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 140. 9 Ibid., 12. 10 Ibid., 140. 11 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 76. 12 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 31. 13 Ibid., 10.

Locating the Political  13 even capable of sustaining such an arrangement in real life. Similarly, one might find it baffling that Rawls does not recognize that his conceptions of “political justice” and the “political conception of the person” are themselves contestable “comprehensive doctrines” –​that people may not, indeed, accept these values as simply true in the face of their deepest, contrary convictions. To focus exclusively on such considerations, however, would be to miss the most profound dimension of the problem, which involves the nature of the political in itself. For consider that, rather than rooting politics in consensus, realists define the political realm as essentially one of disagreement, including disagreement about the basic framework for achieving and maintaining a common life. To this effect, Williams writes that “the idea of the political is to an important degree focused on the idea of political disagreement.”14 For him, “it is basically true…that political difference is of the essence of politics.”15 Yet if disagreement is part of the very essence of politics, then in an important sense liberal theory is not properly political at all, since it aims to do away with fundamental disagreement by making fundamental consensus the gateway to the political realm. From the realist perspective, then, ideal liberalism attempts a depoliticization of decision-​ making by the conversion (in theory) –​via the all-​important, agreed-​upon universal political principles –​of all political disagreement into questions resolvable within the competency of a legal/​constitutional system. Now if, in fact, no political principles at all –​even those pertaining to the framework –​can be understood to be permanently fixed among human beings, it stands to reason that, with regard to its purest and most profound meaning, the political will not be located first and foremost in any argumentation, text, or discourse, but rather must obtain in the concrete relations of the members of a community. Neither a legislative debate, nor a campaign for office, nor any kind of legal struggle, no matter how intense or acrimonious, would be truly “political” insofar as they all assume a full commitment to an already established political order. These become expressions of the political, properly speaking, only when they are connected to disputes of a more fundamental order. I submit, then, that it is not “disagreement” per se in which the political is located. Rather, the crucial factor is that the political penetrates to what could be said to be the fundamental, concrete conditions of order/​disorder among a given set of human beings. This view of the political is echoed in Carl Schmitt’s identification of “friend and enemy” as the “specific political distinction.”16 In his account, the concrete, relation-​oriented, non-​discursive character of the political is 14 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) 77. 15 Ibid., 78. 16 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 26.

14  Locating the Political seen most starkly in his contention that “human life derives its specifically political tension” from the possibility of war, and that war is “the most extreme political means.”17 War begins when discourse ends. The theoretical place given in political philosophy to concrete relations, which is afforded by the inclusion of potential or actual physical violence as a necessary part of the political, is seen more generally in the idea, held by liberal realists as well as non-​liberal realists like Schmitt, that coercion is a necessary (if not sufficient) element in establishing and maintaining any political framework.18 As we will see, while I am largely in agreement in this respect, I believe it is an overly narrow conception to make coercion the sole or privileged locus of concrete relations. The idea that the political emerges in the concrete potentialities of peace and conflict parallels the fundamental realist principle that any political philosophy will fail to apprehend its proper subject matter if takes a theory of ethics as its starting point. For the fact that we disagree (and will continue to disagree) about what the ethical good is means that the question addressed to us as a political community –​“What should we do?” –​cannot be answered simply in those terms.19 Concerned with the need to act now in terms of the common order, political philosophy cannot begin by asking what way people should or ought to act, but rather what are “the real motives upon which people do act.”20 In sum, “Politics cannot be simply ‘applied morality,’ the mapping of the good or the morally desirable onto the political.”21 It would be a mistake, however, to construe the distinction between ethics and politics as meaning that the political has no inherent moral dimension. Sleat explicitly rejects the identification of legitimacy and domination,22 with Williams asserting “one thing can be taken as an axiom, that might does not imply right, that power itself does not justify.”23 In contemporary realism, the specifically “normative” –​yet not “ethical” –​ dimension of the political has been set forth most articulately and persuasively in Williams’ requirement of a “basic legitimation demand” (or BLD). As we will see in the next chapter, the BLD requires that “the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject.”24 The idea is that if and when an alleged “state” exercises coercion over subjects, in order to be legitimate it must offer reasons for the exercise of the coercion. Doing so, of course, necessarily involves a kind of argumentation in which there is the assertion of some “right,” or, in Aristotle’s formulation, a “claim to rule.” For Williams, although the setting forth of some justification is 17 Ibid., 35. 18 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 61. 19 Ibid., 66. 20 Ibid., 65. 21 Ibid., 66. 22 Ibid., 113. 23 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 5. 24 Ibid., 4.

Locating the Political  15 required, in response to the BLD, for the use of coercive force (actual or threatened) by the would-​be legitimate state, there is no particular account of human relations discoverable by political philosophy that justifies coercion. Thus, contemporary realism identifies a moral dimension proper to politics emerging within the situation in which reasons are given by one group of people to another to justify actual or threatened coercive force. It is insisted that this “moral dimension” does not represent, in Williams’ words, “a morality prior to politics,” although the BLD (and subsequent justification offered by the would-​be state) is nonetheless “inherent in there being such a thing as politics.”25 Now, it is interesting to note Aristotle’s agreement with contemporary realism in terms of a rejection of politics as merely “applied ethics.” This is seen first of all in Aristotle’s understanding that the substance of ethical virtue is not uniformly distributed to individual human beings, but rather depends significantly on one’s function within the regime. Consider in this regard a discussion in the Politics (almost uniformly ignored by his liberal commentators) in which he asserts that “those who say in a general way that virtue is a good condition of the soul or acting correctly or something of this sort deceive themselves.”26 Rather, Aristotle counsels to “enumerate the virtues, like Gorgias,” based on the context of one’s life.27 He concludes that “it is evident that there is a virtue of character that belongs to all these [stations of life] mentioned, and that the moderation of a woman and a man are not the same, nor their courage or justice.”28 Accordingly, the statesman should look not to the ethical perfection of the abstract individual, but rather “one should look at the virtue of the part in relation to the virtue of the whole.”29 In short, if the intelligibility of the virtue of any individual depends upon the natural order of the regime, it is impossible to derive the order of the regime on the basis of an inquiry into right and wrong for the individual (that is, ethics). Furthermore, consider that Aristotle’s Politics may be regarded largely as an analysis of the various scenarios in which different “claims to rule” might play out in practice.30 Virtue, good birth, wealth, and simply being a part of “the many” all entail a valid right to political influence. Crucially, no particular system, constitution, or ideal structure can be deduced from these various claims to rule, since any given community will have its own unique particularities and configurations. Rather, it is the function of prudent political action to manage and give place to them all.

25 Ibid., 5. 26 Aristotle, Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), I 13 1260a25–​7. 27 1260a27–​28. Gorgias is mentioned by Aristotle in reference to a relevant passage in Plato’s Meno. 28 1260a20–​2. 29 1260b14–​5. 30 See for example Aristotle, Politics, Book III, Chapters 10 and 11.

16  Locating the Political Finally, the mere fact that Aristotle identifies numerous legitimate regimes that are fundamentally different in structure (monarchy, aristocracy, and polity) excludes the possibility of a theoretically derived, ideally pre-​established political order. Aristotle does identify in theory an ideal “best regime” –​a monarchy headed by the supremely virtuous individual –​ yet he rejects this as a dependable possibility, opting instead for what he calls the “best possible” (mixed) regime.31 All of these aspects of Aristotle’s thought comport with the rejection of political philosophy conceived as the extension or implementation of ethical knowledge. They point to a “zone” of activity (and therefore philosophical analysis) which surpasses or precedes individual ethics and moreover implies a certain amount of arbitrariness or reasonable difference about modes of life. Such political variety and diversity indicate that, on the deepest level, the problem of order among human beings must be resolved on a concrete, relational, existential level, with discourse being one element within that situation. Contemporary realism, then, offers an illuminative and convincing critique of the pervasive liberal theory, as well as an approach to political philosophy from within modern political discourse that, happily, is not dogmatically sealed off from non-​liberal or pre-​liberal thought. However, insofar as it uncritically employs the basic conceptual apparatus of the early modern and Enlightenment eras concerning human beings, society, and the state, it lacks the philosophical tools with which it could fully mine the ground it gains. In their commitment to set forth their philosophy, finally, in terms acceptable to current standards regarding what can be deemed “liberal” (which, being “contemporary,” most of its adherents do), contemporary realists move beyond “disagreement” only through a combination of discourse (narrowly conceived as the giving of justificatory arguments) and coercion (one is tempted to say the pen and the sword). From the perspective of the Aristotelian view of man as naturally political, as well as the Husserlian understanding of intersubjectivity and communalization, such an account is deeply misleading with regard to how human communities (including political communities) are actually constituted and maintained. It stands to reason that those theories of legitimacy conceived on such a basis will be similarly limited. Contemporary realists like Sleat tend to frame the political situation as arising from the exigent need to make practical decisions in the face of a number of individuals who disagree about what to do. Extended generally to the shape of life in common, this situation constitutes “the political question.”32 Such statements, though appropriately expressing the necessity of beginning political philosophy in the absence of any presupposed agreement on political principles (and hence pointing ultimately to concrete relationships among humans), reflect a theoretical stance incapable of 31 Aristotle, IV 11 1294a25–​30. 32 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 46–​7.

Locating the Political  17 accessing the political order per se. As a result, contemporary realism tends to be reduced to a quest for the proper recipe or methodology for achieving legitimacy (for example, what has to be done, who has to agree, and so forth). Williams displays this theoretical disposition when explaining that the political principally involves disagreement about a certain “field of application,” namely “what should be done under political authority, in particular through the deployment of state power.”33 In countering the criticism that realism fails to grasp political order in itself, an appeal might be made to a distinction made by Jeremy Waldron (and adopted by Sleat), that there are two separate “tasks” for political philosophy. On the one hand, there is the inquiry into justice, which expressly involves questions about political right and the common good. On the other hand, one can theorize about politics, which is rather the systematic inquiry into how to proceed in the face of deep disagreement about questions of justice.34 While acknowledging the validity of both, Sleat nonetheless asserts the existence of a “logical space” between any “substantive conception of justice” and the task of “the theorization of politics itself.”35 Now, this division of theoretical tasks would appear to pose an alternative: either you pursue the question justice, or you inquire into politics (that is, how to “proceed politically”).36 In response to my criticism that contemporary realism does not grasp the political in itself, it will be said that I am confusing these two separate tasks, expecting an analysis of politics to provide an analysis of justice (that is, the political per se). Yet the dichotomy made seems to rest upon the highly questionable premise that all justice concerns justice between individuals. I maintain, on an Aristotelian basis of the naturalness of the political community, that it does not. We will return to this question later. For the moment, however, consider only that the implication that follows from this division, that the political philosopher, insofar as he is a political philosopher, does not inquire into justice, seems inherently problematic! It is ironic to note, in this regard, a certain convergence of the ideal liberal and contemporary realist accounts. For, in thinking about the best way to “proceed politically” in the face of substantive disagreement, some goal and some desirable manner of relating must be functionally understood (as would seem to be implied in the very idea of a “task” of political philosophy). And in pursuing such goals, contemporary realists would no doubt insist on being rational and fair minded (that is, just). Yet, with what political principles would they navigate their inquiry and justify their conclusions? In this way, a convergence seems to emerge between 33 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 77. 34 Sleat, Real Liberalism, 8. The citation from Jeremy Waldron is from Law and Disagreement, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 35 Ibid., 9. 36 Ibid., 8–​9.

18  Locating the Political the thought of the contemporary realists and that of the ideal liberals. For, based on a deeper philosophical kinship, it would seem they are both constrained to employ an identifiable, highly specific, “substantive” vision of justice, man, and society (in other words, equality, freedom, and so forth). Indeed, what else is available to them? The mistake of the realists is to believe that maintaining a low opinion of the possibilities for de facto perfection is the same thing as refraining from taking a position regarding a “conception of justice.” The plausibility of the realists’ claim to refrain from any substantive conception of justice, implied in the theoretical dichotomy between inquiries into justice and politics, can be superficially maintained only due to the high degree of abstraction they employ in their analyses and extremely minimal assertions made with regard to anticipated political accomplishments. In terms of the essential understanding of political order, however, the contemporary realist and ideal liberal accounts are functionally identical. As suggested, this common vision arises from the reliance on the same, deeper philosophical account of man, society, and state. The seemingly uncritical acceptance of this view by contemporary realists paradoxically ties them to the ideal liberals, resulting ultimately in a failure to bring their considerable insights to philosophical fruition. Specifically, I would point out that, although they correctly criticize ideal liberals for overly narrowing (to the point of disappearance) the zone of the political by locating it within consensus, asserting instead the essentially political nature of discord and disagreement, they too, in their turn, miss the political. To explain why, I will need to briefly sketch the essential components of the common philosophical understanding of the realist and ideal liberals. As we will see in more detail in the next chapter, Kant’s practical philosophy can be taken as a fair representation of the common theoretical ground occupied by the two camps. Consider that in ideal liberalism the concept of the “original position” is introduced by Rawls in order to discern “the most appropriate principles for realizing liberty and equality once society is viewed as a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens.”37 For its part, a “fair system of cooperation” is one whose terms are “agreed to by those engaged in it, that is, by free and equal citizens who are born into the society in which they lead their lives.”38 Now, in order to arrive at fair terms, a hypothetical negotiation is posited, employing the famous device of the “veil of ignorance,” whereby the negotiating parties are considered strictly as abstracted from all “contingencies of the social world.”39 The purported result is a vision of justice free of unequal “bargaining advantages,” as well as “threats of force,” “coercion,” “deception,” and “fraud.”40 37 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 22. 38 Ibid., 23. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

Locating the Political  19 A realist critique of this project is not difficult to formulate. Consider that, in terms of the dichotomy of “tasks” discussed above, such a hypothetical negotiation –​undertaken by the theorist, to be sure, and not by any party engaged in actual bargaining –​no doubt belongs to the inquiry into justice (that is, rights and so forth, as opposed to the political inquiry) since, in Rawls’ phrase, its goal is the specification of “the most appropriate principles for realizing liberty and equality.” As for the problem of “how to proceed politically,” however, such an inquiry will be of little help. This is because not only will the results of the hypothetical negotiation be contested (that is, the “principles for realizing liberty and equality” discerned), so will the reasonableness and validity of employing such a process in the first place. In fact, Rawls does not appear concerned with justifying the use of the original position and the veil of ignorance themselves. We notice in this regard, for example, that he simply presupposes the desirability of conceiving of society as a “fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens,” apparently without justification. He admits, for example, that “the original position models a basic feature of both Kant’s moral constructivism and of political constructivism.”41 One might ask why, in particular, Kant’s account becomes the very standard of reasonableness, evidently to such an extent that its adoption means refraining from taking up a position and merely being neutral and objective. According to Rawls, The fact that we affirm a particular religious, philosophical, or moral comprehensive doctrine with its associated conception of the good is not a reason for us to propose, or to expect others to accept, a conception of justice that favors those of that persuasion.42 Yet, in giving Kant the place of privilege, is this not precisely what he is doing? Now, the root of the contemporary realist critique is the identification of the practical failure of ideal liberalism. This is seen, for example, in Sleat’s admonishment concerning the need to recognize non-​ideal “motivations” and take into account “political ambitions” when doing political philosophy.43 Perhaps the central realist assertion is that these non-​ideal motivations are so widespread and deeply-​rooted that they preclude any expectation that a dependable consensus on political principles can ever be reached. With the dissipation of such a zone of consensus –​which, as we have seen, for ideal liberals constitutes the political –​contemporary realists simply (re)identify the zone of the political, as it were, with the interminable state of disagreement which they call the “circumstances of politics.” In a sense, then, they “save” the political by relocating it in what exists in 41 Ibid., 25. 42 Ibid., 24. 43 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 7.

20  Locating the Political a truly dependable manner: the conflictual life alongside those with whom we disagree. Through the turn to the real, contemporary realism has made important steps in the direction of an apprehension of the political. Bernard Williams, for example, approaches the political in his discussion of the “construction” of freedom as a “political value.”44 In it, he eschews the endeavor to arrive at a universal definition of freedom, because “the various conceptions or understandings of freedom…involve a complex historical deposit, and we will not begin to understand them unless we grasp something of that deposit, of what the idea of freedom, in these various connections, has become.”45 More than this, he acknowledges the correlation between a political community’s concept of freedom and its “institutions and practices,” proposing that we mold our conception of freedom as needed in order to “shape” the latter as desired.46 Such statements go far in the direction of the Aristotelean view that the substance of virtue can only be apprehended in terms of the functioning of the polis as a whole.47 It is important to notice that Williams is not expressing a thoroughgoing “relativistic” account, as if freedom is simply what the community decides it is. Although he does not expressly assert an intelligible natural political order, he nonetheless holds that the disputes that have circled around the various definitions and concepts of liberty do not represent a set of verbal misunderstandings. They have been disagreements about something. There is even a sense in which they have been disagreements about some one thing. There must be a core, or a primitive conception, perhaps some universal or widely spread human experience, to which these various conceptions relate.48 Sleat likewise illuminates the path to the political in a discussion of the coherence of the liberal principle that consent to governmental authority is justified only if it is not the product of coercion.49 He points out in this regard the difficulty in specifying precisely what it means for consent to have been “produced” by coercion, given that the dispositions and thoughts which lead individuals to accept a justification of the exercise of coercive force may themselves depend on certain prior “coercive” measures such as education and acculturation.50 For Sleat, such theoretical ambiguity 44 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 75–​96. 45 Ibid., 75. 46 Ibid. 47 E.g., “…the same necessarily holds concerning the virtues of character: all must share in them, but not in the same way, but to each in relation to his own function.” Aristotle, Politics, I 13 1260a14–​6. 48 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 78 (emphasis in original). 49 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 119–​120. 50 Ibid., 120.

Locating the Political  21 present in the application of even the most basic liberal principles points to a relativism within the very heart of liberal theory. He concludes that “the beliefs that lie at the base of forms of legitimation are part of, rather than independent from, the wider social world in which they exist.”51 In sum, the presence of social and historical factors making “some form of relativism unavoidable” means that political philosophy must respond to the motives and dispositions of really and actually existing individuals, in their concrete historical circumstances, and given the particular social and political institutions available to them.52 In the largest sense, then, we may say that realism, in the turn to political experience and the recognition of the autonomy of the political, opens within the discourse of liberalism a doorway to pass beyond the constraints of modern liberalism itself. In this regard, their acknowledgement of the theoretical legitimacy of non-​liberal regimes is noteworthy, and points at once to the depth of their critique of ideal liberalism as well as to their intellectual seriousness. Indeed, contemporary realists are quick to criticize the hypocrisy and potentially dangerous dogmatism of ideal liberal theory.53 The ideological exclusion of non-​liberals from politics seems incompatible with the vaunted liberal principle of giving voice to all points of view within civic conversation. By dogmatically identifying its own account with reasonableness per se, ideal liberalism is blind to its own partisan status and belies its own “fundamental normative commitment,” which is that “liberal politics is a non-​oppressive form of co-​existence in which each and every person is able to recognize the terms of the shared association as representing their own will, rather than the coercive imposition of another.”54 Now, although realists locate the political in a fundamentally different way than ideal liberals like Rawls, the conceptual structure of their account remains the same, creating a kind of theoretical fault line impeding further progress. On the one hand, the realist rejection of a consensus-​based account of politics marks a willingness to move into a more descriptive register: they observe the problematic human characteristics leading to the failure to attain a dependable consensus. However, such openness to observation sits at odds with the uncritically imported, Kantian-​type conceptual framework retained from the ideal liberals with whom they have broken. They would look at concrete political societies and draw 51 Ibid., 156. 52 Ibid. 53 To be sure, Sleat does see non-​liberal “political radicalism” as a potential threat requiring repression through coercive measures. (See his treatment of the problem of “active enemies” and his recommendation of “moderate hegemony of liberal realism” in Liberal Realism, 152–​74.) The point of the criticisms expressed in these citations is not the resort to coercion per se, which is a necessary element in any regime, but rather the failure of liberals to recognize and make theoretical accommodation for the conflictual nature of their own political stance. 54 Ibid., 78.

22  Locating the Political theoretical conclusions (which, if actually carried out, would involve them in the apprehension of “material essences”). At the same time, as we will have occasion to see in the next chapter, they retain the Kantian philosophical framework (which is to say, “the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation”), with its attempt to establish human practical life upon purely formal principles (of reason, respect for persons, and so on). In their uncritical adherence to Kant, contemporary realists, like the ideal liberals, succumb to the illusion that adopting “the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” is to refrain from a “distinct political program.”55 Consequently, despite the endeavor to proceed empirically, when pressed for a positive contribution the result is inevitably ideal liberalism, only with much lower expectations. The distinction between politics and ethics made by contemporary realism is arrived at through the perception of the need to abandon the consensus approach to politics. I propose, however, that by rejecting the idea of locating the political within the zone of agreement, they do not thereby find the political by simply opening it up to what was previously excluded (that is, disagreement). In this work, I intend to identify and elucidate the “being” of the political, which, as a dimension of the life-world, is open to discovery and investigation. This will require, however, the abandonment of the Kantian rationalist, individualist framework, and the employment of a philosophical approach capable of investigating the communal, political nature of man. In place of the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation,” I shall posit, simply, “the political community,” meaning it in a specific, technical sense that will be explored. Importantly, in turning to the political, we will not, in fact, as feared by ideal and realist liberals alike, be arguing for a “political ideology with a recognizably distinct set of recommendations for the political design of a society’s institutional structure, practices, or values.”56 Now, we have seen that Aristotle, like the contemporary realists, does not identify the political with an applied individual ethics. However, rather than arriving at the autonomy of the political through a rejection of an ideal consensus, he locates it in the intelligible structure proper to the political community itself, insofar as it is a natural, intelligible entity. Specifically, the order of the polis is discerned in its various interlocking, teleologically ordered communities –​man and woman, the family, the village –​which themselves find their completion in the intelligibility of the political whole itself. Each of these communities has a structure proper to it which is not reducible to, or derivable from, “lower” communities or individual ethical perfection. On the contrary, as we have had occasion to observe, Aristotle held that “one should look at the virtue of the part in relation to the virtue of the whole.” Hence the distinction between ethics and politics.

55 Ibid., 9. 56 Ibid.

Locating the Political  23 It is critical to emphasize that the idea of an intelligible “structure” of the political community –​a “natural We,” as it were –​must be approached with great delicacy. In particular, it should not be taken in an overly static sense. The simple fact that different constitutional regimes (for instance, monarchy, aristocracy, polity, and various combinations of these) would all, necessarily, possess this same natural “structure” should give us pause in this regard. Now, to give a full account of the manner in which the intelligibility of the political community, while in some manner belonging to it per se, does not entail a particular political ideology or program regarding the community’s institutions, practices, and values would take us too far from our present purpose. For the intelligibility upon which I intend to focus concerns the order of experience rather than that of nature. At the same time, given the congruence of my account with that of Aristotle, a few relevant observations will be appropriate, in particular with regard to the distinction between “art” and “prudence.” Because for Aristotle politics is above all the science of human flourishing, it is inherently normative (to use the modern term) in a broad sense. On the other hand, given the intrinsic indeterminacy and variety –​indeed, the fundamentally “pluralistic” nature –​of the political association, in addition to the reality that men are free beings, the achievement of normative excellence falls properly under the domain of prudence rather than art. This means, as Charles N.R. McCoy explains, that the “operables” involved in politics, whose sphere is “doing,” cannot be conceived in the same way as the operables of art and logic, whose sphere is “making.”57 He continues: The “art” of politics does not proceed in most certain and determinate ways; the means to its end are infinitely variable and hence require the greatest deliberation. Therefore, granted…that there are fixed ends in the nature of man as well as in the natural associations that guarantee the ends of human life, the task of the statesman is infinitely complicated by the contingency and obscurity of the means for attaining the end –​for these are found in the concrete circumstances, contingent and variable, of a community. An awareness of this fact is the first step in the “art” of politics.58 One sees that what we have called the structure of the political association corresponds, in McCoy’s terms, to the “natural associations that guarantee the ends of the nature of human life.” Now, the intelligibility of the overall structure of these “natural associations” –​which is to say, the complete and self-​sufficient community itself –​is limited in determinative ways (but not completely!) inasmuch as this intelligibility is derived only in the course of 57 Charles N.R. McCoy, The Structure of Political Thought: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: McGraw-​Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963), 32–​4. 58 Ibid., 34.

24  Locating the Political the active apprehension of more or less successfully functioning political orders (real or hypothetical) engaged in “guaranteeing the ends of human life.” Thus, to cite the words Leo Strauss in speaking of Aristotle, “The sphere ruled by prudence is closed since the principles of prudence –​the ends in light of which prudence guides man –​are known independently of theoretical science.”59 The autonomy of the political in the Aristotelian account –​and the reason why an intelligible structure of the political association does not amount to an ideology or political program –​arises from the fact that the ends of human life can be actualized by a variety of different forms of the “natural association” of the political community. If it is objected that even such pluralistically “fixed” ends for the political community are still too determinate (that is, that they amount to a political program), we can only reiterate our previous observation that the framework of the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” employed by Rawls and the contemporary realists encompasses its own set of “fixed ends” and conception of justice, even if its fixed end is the destruction of the political through the dogmatic denial of the intelligibility of the political per se. That such an account of politics operates at a high degree of theoretical abstraction does not make the conclusions derived from it, and implemented in actual life, any less determinate. In describing the natural autonomy of the political order in Aristotle, I have attempted to show, by drawing a contrast, how contemporary realists, while opening the door to the political (through a turn to the concrete relationships and the distinction between politics and ethics), are nonetheless philosophically impeded from walking through it. Yet, Aristotle’s account itself, while indispensable, is nonetheless limited. For while he does indeed locate the political in an impressive way, his larger philosophy does not permit him to pursue an entirely different avenue of possible philosophical inquiry. In Husserlian terms, one could say that Aristotle apprehends the polis “within the world,” as it were (that is, from a “naïve” viewpoint) but does not give an account of its “inner” structure. In what follows I will attempt to show that both Aristotle and contemporary realism find their completion in a theory of politics that is both open to the intelligibility of the structure of the political community and, above all, grounded in the subjectivities of the members of the political community. The indispensable kernel at the center of the achievement of this goal will be the clarification and elucidation of political subjectivity. It is an endeavor that I do not know to have been systematically pursued. Even Eric Voegelin, who sought “the nature of representation as the form by which a political society gains existence for action in history” and explored the “symbols by which political societies interpret themselves as representatives of a transcendent truth,” did not, it seems to me, turn his analysis toward an illumination of the specific (inter)subjective acts involved in political 59 Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), 25.

Locating the Political  25 experience.60 In describing Husserl’s analysis of intersubjectivity, Dan Zahavi articulates the approach I want to employ in political philosophy. He states: “Intersubjectivity cannot be treated as a transcendental problem from an external, third-​person perspective, but only through an ‘interrogation of myself.’ ”61 This methodological principle highlights a crucial aspect of the phenomenological approach: the need to begin from individual personal experience. It is for this reason that I will employ hypotheticals. Such an approach makes it possible to exclude at the outset two possible erroneous interpretations of the idea of an intersubjectively constituted political association. The first mistake is to understand it as a kind of “collective consciousness.”62 This view is problematic in that one does not “stand outside” of an intersubjective community in order to analyze it (that is, as a “collectivity”). To do so would be to fall into the confusion of attempting to investigate consciousness as a worldly object, for example in the same manner as Aristotle investigates the intelligible structure of natural associations. Conversely, it is necessary to exclude the equally erroneous solipsistic viewpoint, whereby one’s own subjectivity becomes the whole of reality, including the community of which one is supposedly a part! In contrast to both of these philosophical dead ends, I will maintain with Zahavi that the correct view is that the “constitutive performance of transcendental intersubjectivity…is executed by the individual subject –​yet has the peculiarity of necessarily presupposing an experience of others, a relation to the other.”63 I have said that Aristotle, despite having explicated the natural structure of the political community, did not pursue an inquiry into political subjectivity. Yet, the two aspects of the political are necessarily related. In closing this chapter, I want to call attention to certain statements from the Politics that indicate the route to be taken for a phenomenology of the political. Consider for example that, according to Aristotle, “man is much more a political animal than any kind of bee or any kind of herd animal.”64 The reason he gives is that “man alone among the animals has speech,” which serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and hence also the just and the unjust. For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other animals that he alone has a perception of the good and bad and just and unjust…and community in these things is what makes a household and a city.65

60 Eric Voegelin, The Eric Voegelin Reader: Politics, History, Consciousness (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2017), 36. 61 Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-​ Pragmatic Critique (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 18. Citing Husserl. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. (emphasis in the original). 64 Aristotle, Politics, I 2 1253a8–​9. 65 Ibid., 10–​9.

26  Locating the Political Now, in these statements there is first the idea that the difference between men and animals with regard to the political is one of degree: men are more political than other animals, but non-​human animals are evidently “political” in some sense as well. I want to suggest that this aspect of continuity with animals concerns the existence of a common intelligible “life structure” possessed by men, bees, and herd animals. At the same time, however, one sees an affirmation of the uniqueness of man, which lies in his possession of speech, as opposed to mere “voice,” which merely “indicates the painful or pleasant.”66 We may assume that the difference between speech and voice is primarily the rationality of the former. The point I would like to make, however, is that Aristotle’s perspective is objective in both cases. His observations concern, on the one hand, the discernment of certain patterns of action and relationship (a common “political” life). On the other hand, there are certain capacities and activities (speech). By the same token, when Aristotle, opens the Politics with the statement that “every city is some sort of community…constituted for the sake of some good,” he is, as it were, standing on the outside and looking in.67 Now, leaving perfectly intact the Aristotelian account of the nature of man and the political community, I propose that phenomenology offers an orientation providing access (through an “interrogation of myself,” to use Zahavi’s phrase) to an entirely new domain of investigation of the political, which I intend to pursue in this work. An elucidation of political (inter)subjectivity and the corresponding constitution, by the political community, of an intrinsically political dimension of the life-​world, is especially crucial for attaining a clear idea of the political in our time. This is because, even though some degree of political structure must subsist in the world –​inasmuch as we are human –​the impact of technological innovation and the proliferation of anti-​political ideology have caused the “polis” to be more and more distorted and/​or repressed, to the danger and detriment of a properly human consciousness (and therefore life). The patterns of human action and thought through which the world is constituted are easily altered today and hence more difficult to identify and maintain. The need to see and comprehend this dynamic means that an analysis of political subjectivity is imperative. I concur with Sleat that contemporary liberal theory suffers from an “explanatory insufficiency” which “leaves it unable to understand actual political practice,” as well as with his estimation that what is needed is “a more accurate description of politics,” leading to a “political understanding” that can “provide the basis for our thinking about a variety of different political problems.”68 A new beginning in political philosophy is needed. 66 Ibid., 10–​1. 67 Ibid., 1 1252a1–​2. 68 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 6–​7. Sleat adopts the phrase “explanatory insufficiency” from Glen Newey, After Politics–​The Rejection of Politics in Contemporary Liberal Philosophy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).

4 Ideal and Realist Legitimacy

In the last chapter I proposed that contemporary realists, although correctly distinguishing politics from ethics, fail to locate the political due to the particular theoretical conception of man, society, and state from which they begin. This is the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation,” as contrasted with what I call the “political community.” In this chapter, I will explore the impact of the former on the theory of legitimacy. As we have seen, ideal liberals like Rawls simply adopt the Kantian framework in a dogmatic manner. For their part, contemporary realists recognize that all possible “frameworks” for politics will be contested in practice. Importantly, in acknowledging a certain context dependence regarding all ideas about the political good (for example, “freedom”), realists give theoretical place to a certain arbitrariness (or “relativity,” in Sleat’s words) in all solutions to the political “problem.” Although I recognize such “relativity” insofar as it results from the reality that the unity of the good does not translate into a single best way of life, I will criticize the resort to the arbitrariness of force insofar as it purports to express a necessary lacuna within the intelligibility of the political itself. The contemporary realists’ perception of an arbitrariness in the choice among substantive conceptions of justice leads them to the distinction between ethics and politics. This is indeed correct, in that human flourishing is variable in a way that human virtue is not. Subsequent to this distinction, in the search for a “normative” basis proper to politics, they do not attempt to comprehend this variability within a deeper or broader political intelligibility. Rather, they proceed to theorize uncritically from the individualist, generic “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation.” Naturally, such an attempt to justify the political from an a-​ political starting point is the source of impenetrable theoretical difficulties. Consider, for example, in the following passage from contemporary realist Charles Larmore, the extent to which adhering to the Kantian idea of “respect” requires logical gymnastics in order to justify coercion of non-​liberals: It is true that reasonable people who stand opposed to the very notion of a liberal society will still be obliged, by force if necessary, to comply DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-4

28  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy with its rules even though they may see no reason to endorse their basis…But this…is not so much to fail to respect them as it is to compel them to act in accord with the rules of a political community that they have a role in shaping as well, inasmuch as these rules must be ones that they could see reason to endorse if, the rest of their beliefs remaining unchanged, they accepted the idea of respect. They are thereby given a qualified kind of respect.1 Now, I doubt that the distinctly sophistical turn taken in this passage will convince anyone not already committed to the conclusions of the argument (that is, anyone other than a liberal). For of course, the operative principle that the dispositive element in determining order should be the “respect” of being able to “shape” the rules of the political community is itself a function of the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” –​a conception of society the choice of which the coerced individuals (and other likeminded non-​ liberals) evidently had no part in “shaping”! As a realist, Larmore recognizes the need to coerce. As a liberal, he nonetheless attempts to justify the coercion in Kantian terms of respect. The result is that the reasonable non-​liberal is “respected” against his will and his reason. With the goal of clarifying and eventually moving beyond such conundrums, I will begin this chapter with an overview of the theoretical situation regarding legitimacy from the point of view of both ideal liberal and contemporary realist approaches. Next, I will attempt to show, in a manner similar to the discussion of the location of the political in the last chapter, that the same philosophical presuppositions employed by both camps impact the assessment of the normative justification of the political order in theoretically identifiable ways. I conclude that, once again, despite significant gains made through their critique of ideal liberalism, these presuppositions impede realists from arriving at an adequate account of legitimacy.

Rawls’ Overlapping Consensus John Locke wrote: Men being, as has been said, by Nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this Estate, and subjected to the Political Power of another, without his own Consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his Natural Liberty, and puts on the bonds of Civil Society is by agreeing with other Men to joyn and unite into a Community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure Enjoyment of their Properties, and a greater Security against any that are not of it.2 1 Charles Larmore, What is Political Philosophy? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 163–​4. 2 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 95–​6.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  29 With this, the essential elements of the Enlightenment philosophical framework were in place –​and with them the prospect of finally liberating man from political oppression. Yet problems remained. With regard to the primitive estate, or state of nature, in which all are “free, equal and independent,” there was the difficulty of its fictionality: in fact, practically no one ever divests himself of his natural liberty through an actual agreement with other men. Rather, men are born into political society. Locke’s attempt to address the problem through the notion of tacit consent was decidedly inconclusive. To begin with, how could one be truly said to choose to remain in a civil society unless real, viable opportunities for leaving were available?3 A still more serious objection to Locke’s conception, however, pertained to the problem of continuing consent. Specifically, the Lockean idea of agreeing in advance to submit to the majority in all succeeding decisions was seen as morally insufficient. In On the Social Contract, Rousseau articulated the fundamental political problem in these more exacting terms: How to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with all the common force, and by means of which each, uniting with all, nonetheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before.4 Rousseau’s attempt at an answer, relying as it did on the quasi-​mystical concept of the “General Will,” failed to settle the matter. However, with the arrival of Kant’s idea of an ethics grounded in pure reason, a solution seemed to be at hand. Based on Kant’s practical philosophy, rationality and reasonableness would themselves provide the ultimate objective measure of equal justice for human beings. Not only had the means of resolving the problem of continuing consent been discovered, but it could be done in a manner free from the prejudice and obscurity of all historical and social contingency. Drawing on this profound Kantian development, Rawls would give the “liberal principle of legitimacy” perhaps its definitive formulation, stating: Our exercise of political power is proper and hence justifiable only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to them as reasonable and rational.5 Now, we recall that, for Rawls, every person is assumed to have two views, one “comprehensive” and one “political,” with the former pertaining to 3 See, for example, Robert Talisse, Engaging Political Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: Routledge Press, 2016), 81–​2. 4 Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, The Major Political Writings of Jean-​Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 172. 5 John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 217.

30  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy one’s personal philosophy and beliefs, and the latter pertaining to one’s political values.6 In his mature work, Rawls abandons the prospect of a consensus on a specific set of political principles and ideals, admitting that no “reasonable comprehensive doctrine [can] secure the basis of social unity, nor can it provide the content of public reason on fundamental political questions.”7 Yet, he continues to posit agreement as the basis of the political association, envisioning a “reasonable pluralism” and “overlapping consensus.”8 Despite a certain degree of disagreement or variety with respect to political principles, then, Rawls nonetheless posits a commonality sufficient to provide for a “unified and stable… well-​ordered society.”9 It will be asked what precisely makes a comprehensive doctrine “reasonable”? To which Rawls responds any comprehensive doctrine that can “endorse the political conception.”10 Now, this “political conception” is none other than the Kantian “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation.” In this way, a merely presupposed doctrine concerning the nature of man and civil society becomes the final, exclusive measure for all questions regarding order and justice among men. It is simply asserted that the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” (that is, a political conception) defines a “just basic structure” for society and “just institutions.”11 The conclusion drawn is that a reasonable, comprehensive view of life is one compatible with this structure. By beginning with a hypothetical collection of individuals, each with a certain set of ideas, as opposed to concrete, embodied groups, each endeavoring to live their view of the good life, Rawls is able to formulate the political problem in terms of finding non-​conflicting “principles” and “doctrines.” Such an approach allows him to posit a domain of common life that appears generously pluralistic: The history of religion and philosophy shows that there are many reasonable ways in which the wider realm of values can be understood so as to be either congruent with, or supportive of, or else not in conflict with, the values appropriate to the special domain of the political as specified by a political conception of justice.12 Yet, if a high degree of abstraction has enabled Rawls to overestimate the potential lived diversity within the domain, it is nonetheless certain that his “political conception of justice” remains the final standard in case of

6 Ibid., 140. 7 Ibid., 134. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 141. 12 Ibid., 140.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  31 conflicts that may arise. Only what is “congruent with, or supportive of, or else not in conflict” with a political conception of justice will be held to be reasonable. Based on these observations, I will venture to set forth two premises that together constitute what I will call the Rawls Circle of Legitimacy: 1) A legitimate regime is one wherein a citizen is required to assent only to what is reasonable for all. 2) What is reasonable for all is that which comports with the requirements of a legitimate regime. Both sides of this circle, of course, follow directly from the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation,” the unassailable rectitude of which is presupposed. Now, given the geometrical clarity, symmetry, and –​it must be said –​deft ideological simplicity contained in such a formulation (you say you are against reasonableness and equality?), it is not surprising that it is only under the pressure of events that alternative views have been able to enter the conversation. The realist critique of the Rawlsian reigning liberal orthodoxy constitutes a decisive departure from his approach, although contemporary realists generally go on to propose other means to secure liberal ends. As we have seen, in contrast to the idea that politics begins from an agreement about universal principles facilitating an “overlapping consensus” (principles such as fairness, equality, and reciprocity), contemporary realists hold that “politics arises in human life because we have to live and act alongside those with whom we disagree, about religion, about morality, about politics, indeed about very many things.”13 Crucially, such disagreement extends even to the substance of the supposed “universal principles,” or, in Sleat’s words, “the very fundamental terms of the political association itself.”14 Now, recognition of the dispute over the basic terms of political association means that the question of legitimacy is posed in realist political philosophy with clarity. The central problem to be confronted is that “because the nature of the political framework is itself a matter of perpetual and persistent disagreement between persons, the universal consent or endorsement of that framework cannot be a condition of its legitimacy.”15 As discussed in the last chapter, one implication of this is that it becomes impossible to build a political order based, for example, on a certain conception of individual ethics or understanding of “the person” (a kind of approach that Williams calls political moralism). Rather, the quest for legitimacy must be pursued in an inquiry distinct from ethics (that is, political philosophy, properly speaking). 13 Matt Sleat, Liberal Realism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 45. 14 Ibid., 72. 15 Ibid., 49.

32  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy Beyond posing the problem of legitimacy in an admirably clear manner, however, contemporary realism has been less successful in arriving at analysis that can facilitate solutions in this regard. I will now discuss aspects of Williams’ BLD and John Gray’s “value-​pluralism,” both of which offer extremely helpful insights, and yet seem to be paradigmatic examples of the limitations found in contemporary realist thought. I submit that the difficulties involved are largely philosophical, and that they could benefit from a phenomenological approach. Hence the rationale for a phenomenology of politics.

Williams’ Basic Legitimation Demand For Williams, a legitimate government is one that solves, in an “acceptable” manner, the “first political question” of the “securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation.”16 Williams considers an ‘acceptable’ solution to be one whereby “the state –​the solution –​should not become part of the problem.”17 More specifically, the BLD arises when coercive force is used to secure order, requiring that the force employed must be: 1) justified; and 2) justified to each subject.18 A corollary to this requirement called the critical theory principle states that no acceptance is valid if it has been produced by the coercive power in need of justification.19 Williams assumes that no “radically disadvantaged” group of subjects would find the proffered justification of a regime sufficiently acceptable. Importantly, Williams does not specify as a condition of legitimacy the necessity of a particular manner of arriving at an acceptance, nor a particular constituency within the community (for instance, a majority). In typically realist fashion, such questions are presumably left to be worked out on the ground, in concretely and historically existing communities. Evidently, any attempt to identify a basis of legitimacy beyond this concrete exchange of “justification” (by the would-​be legitimate state) and “acceptance” (by the people) will necessarily involve a turn to universal human moral principles and, consequently, an impermissible passing from politics to ethics. Again, the passing into the domain of ethics is forbidden since it will merely result in an interminable disagreement about the substance of the good life. From a political perspective, what counts is: 1) the raw fact of a justification being made by the would-​be legitimate regime to each subject; and 2) that this justification be found acceptable enough (I believe Williams means here the manifestation of a degree of empirical stability measured by its tolerability). The requirement of such an exchange 16 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3. 17 Ibid., 4. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 6.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  33 is itself the (normative, moral, and so forth) principle that allows Williams to take “as an axiom, that might does not imply right, that power itself does not justify.”20 As Sleat explains, “There is something special about political rule, as distinct from rule as domination, which requires rulers to offer a legitimation story to those over whom they claim authority. This is a normative standard internal to politics.”21 Williams asserts that the kinds of justifications found acceptable to people will vary with historical circumstances. Hence, the assertion that liberalism has become the only acceptable justification for the coercive force required to solve the first political question is one that applies only “now and around here.”22 Decidedly, it is not “because some liberal conception of the person, which delivers the morality of liberalism, is or ought to be seen to be correct.”23 Rather, it is due to the concrete fact that modern liberals have raised “the standards of what counts as being disadvantaged,” as well as “their expectations of what the state can do.”24 Liberals, moreover “adopt…more demanding standards of what counts as a threat to people’s vital interests,” and “take more sophisticated steps to stop the solution becoming part of the problem.”25 For Williams, then, there are at once definite moral standards and yet a refusal to tie legitimacy directly to them. One advantage of this approach is that it avoids the awkwardly dogmatic, moralistic implications of ideal liberal theory, for example that all non-​liberal or pre-​liberal regimes are (and were) illegitimate. At the same time, it does not necessitate moral relativism by holding all legitimate regimes to be equal. Certainly, Williams believed that the liberal conditions of legitimacy in modern states represented a true advance for humanity and a “progressive project.”26 Yet he finds any theory of legitimacy problematic that entails, for example, the condemnation of the political orders of nearly all other historical eras, where perhaps morally inferior laws were nonetheless accepted among the people. In Williams’ view, the rise of liberalism as the only acceptable local and contemporary response to the BLD came about through the realization that traditional hierarchies are usually based, at least in, part on legitimations with a “mythical character.”27 As he explains, once the question of the validity of these hierarchies is raised, the articulation of a valid rational basis becomes necessary. In short, “when the ‘legitimizations’ of hierarchical states are perceived to be mythical, the situation approximates to one of unmediated coercion,” and “in our world, the question has been raised.”28 20 Ibid., 5. 21 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 117. 22 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 8. 23 Ibid., 8. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 17. 27 Ibid., 14. 28 Ibid., 7.

34  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy Notwithstanding the considerable insights contained in these observations, Williams’ analysis is hobbled by theoretical difficulties. Consider, on the one hand, that Williams is quick to criticize Kant’s ethical theory, writing: Can we really suppose, as Kant supposed, that reason itself is liberal reason, and that an ethical practice which is other than the morality of autonomy involves the refusal to listen to reasons at all, the equivalent of covering one’s ears? Surely not.29 Such a criticism is consistent with his refusal to reject all non-​liberal regimes as illegitimate. At the same time, however, Williams’ reliance upon “acceptance” as the ultimate basis of legitimacy entails the retention, in all essentials, of the Rawlsian/​Kantian “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation.” This is because it implies a root conception of a hypothetical collection of generic individuals, thus precluding an elucidation of the political community. Let us explore these issues further. The failure to theorize the political community leads Williams into difficulties along two main lines. First, with regard to legitimacy itself, he is constrained to make force the ultimate arbiter among competing claims to justification. As a realist, Williams avoids political moralism and the equation of politics with “applied” individual ethics. However, by deriving legitimacy from a mere fact (that is, from the event of the BLD and justification, which is nothing other than a certain concrete exchange), the theoretical intelligibility of legitimacy is radically truncated. To see why this is problematic, imagine, for example, as is perfectly likely, that there are two sides claiming the right to exercise coercive power, each offering its own justification for ruling. Since the link between legitimacy and intelligibility has been severed by the reduction of the question of legitimacy to the mere fact of the BLD and justification (the latter of which, indeed, both parties are purporting to offer), there would seem to be no analytical basis for determining who has the superior justification. Rather, it will be necessary to let them fight it out, along with their partisans, until only one side possesses the field. I submit that one need not succumb to political moralism to believe that political philosophy can do more in this regard. Consider further the irony that, so long as the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” remains the essential framework for thinking about legitimacy, it is doubtful whether it is possible to escape the political moralism Williams rejects. In his description of the process wherein the BLD is introduced, Williams hypothesizes that A coerces B and claims that B would be wrong to would be wrong to fight back: resents it, forbids it, rallies others to oppose it as wrong, 29 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 22–​3.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  35 and so on. By doing this, A claims that his actions transcend the conditions of warfare, and this gives rise to a demand for justification of what A does. When A is the state, these claims constitute its claims of authority over B.30 As we have seen, Williams’ argument is that A must offer claims of justification to each subject or else it is wrong for A to exercise the coercive force in question. Now, we are told that A is the state. Yet, what does Williams understand the state to be, if not a certain collection of individuals? We are given no analysis of the political community per se. As such, his argument would seem finally to resolve into a problem of individual ethics, for insofar as there is no real, objective community in his conception, it is the actions of individuals which much be held to conform to a certain standard of conduct. For Williams, the normativity of the political amounts to it being wrong for a person to participate in collective action with other individuals to impose order if they (that is, the individuals in this collectivity called the state, which possesses no intelligible principle of unity) have not made the required justificatory claims. Put differently, in an illegitimate regime, there is no consensus between the individuals exercising power (that is, the state) and those not exercising power. Once again, the realist account of legitimacy would seem identical to that of the ideal liberal, only with much lower standards regarding the degree of consensus required. The second line of difficulty for Williams involves the practical application of his theory. For although Williams explores in some depth the question of what constitutes an acceptable justification, he does not inquire into the basis for acceptance in society. This seems problematic for his political theory since, as Sleat explained, realism is supposedly occupied with theorizing how to proceed politically in the face of disagreement. Acceptance for Williams remains hypothetical. Once again, the difficulty arises from the lack of an account of the political community itself; in this case, one that could inform an assessment regarding whether acceptance has taken place. Consider, in this regard, the practical necessity, in any situation involving the ascertainment or establishment of legitimacy, of being able to identify who comprises the political community. In identifying the “subject” of a state, Williams has only this “definition” to offer, which is revealing in its formulation: The subject of a state is anyone who is in its power, whom by its own lights it can rightfully coerce under its laws and institutions. Of course this is not satisfactory for all purposes, since a state can claim too many people, but I shall not try to pursue this question. I doubt that there

30 Ibid., 6.

36  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy is any very general answer of principle to the question of what are the proper boundaries of a state.31 Thus, in a manner similar to his analysis of legitimacy, Williams blocks all inquiry into the intelligibility of the political community by reducing it to a decision on the part of the state (that is, the ruler). The rationale of the state in deciding who the subjects are is not inquired into because it is irrelevant. We are told only that it uses its “own lights” in deciding. It will be said that the political community remains unidentified because any answer given will be contested, whereas the coercer using physical force is empirically certain. Yet, in the actual absence of a legitimate government, making an objective assessment of the identity community will likely be no more difficult than assessing precisely who is exercising coercive force over purported subjects. Often, claimants to rule will identify themselves in highly fluid, indeterminate, and even contradictory ways, for example in terms of ideological, national, ethnic, or religious self-​conceptions (and/​ or combinations thereof). In such situations, identifying “the coercer” and even drawing the line between subject and would-​be coercer is part of the dispute itself. A truly realistic account of politics, then, must acknowledge that legitimate order comes into being through the forceful assertion of (often multiple) claims to rule in relationship to, or within the context of, an (at least somewhat) coherent community (identified, for example, by the sharing of an ontologically coherent universe). Consider, in this regard, that when Williams says that legitimacy will depend on an ascertainment of “what we would now find acceptable” as an answer to the BLD, the word “we” indicates a community already possessing –​at least minimally –​a way of life and a history, with certain nascent or partial structure(s) of authority.32 Otherwise, he could not say “we.” To object that the “we” in question consists simply of those legally authorized to participate in government is to presuppose the legal (that is, legitimate) existence of the very system that stands in need of legitimization. Without a certain foundation for disagreement, an exchange of the kind imagined by Williams in the BLD could not possibly take place. Like other contemporary realists, Williams believed, more or less contradictorily, that the disagreement undermining the possibility of liberal consensus could be dealt with by employing the same philosophical analytic as ideal liberalism (for example, conceived as a kind of game involving generically “free” individuals constrained to act in accord with liberal political ideals). Yet, this would seem insufficient if the same ambiguities inherent in liberal principles that undermine consensus in public discourse also undermine the coherence of any political theory designed to deal with the discord created by those ambiguities in the first instance. Having pointed out the disagreement persisting due to the relative 31 Ibid., 4. 32 Ibid., 10.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  37 incoherence per se of concepts like “freedom” and “equality,” realists like Williams inevitably fall back on what might be described as second-​ order (that is, yet more generic) liberal principles, such as “reciprocity,” “acceptance,” and “respect.” The fact that liberal principles are brought in only from a perspective “once removed” from a posited zone of disagreement does not make them, in themselves, any more coherent or useful. The result, as I have pointed out, is simply a watering down of the liberal standards. Williams observed that pre-​liberal regimes underwent a crisis of justification in the face of the progressive project of liberalism. Ironically, the justification of the liberal order itself is potentially now being exposed as resting upon a merely mythical basis.33 This crisis of legitimacy would appear to involve the pervasive failure of the rationality and coherence of the order of society itself. Now, it is not the traditional hierarchy, with its supposedly mythical foundation, whose authority is revealed as lacking a plausible justification. Arguably, a vacuity incapable of informing real relations between human beings has been found at the very heart of the liberal ideal and the society conceived as “a fair system of cooperation.” If a situation of pure coercion is produced when a justification is no longer credible, it is because such justification has come to be seen as lacking in sense. Yet, such a situation of unreason also threatens (in the absence of a common historical narrative) shared cultural references and sensibilities, as well as some commonly accepted conception of the relationship between the people and the gods. Notably, in this new crisis the problem of legitimacy extends to the validity of the order of common life, at the very least insofar as there is mutual incomprehension. If the establishment of order and legitimacy becomes increasingly problematic under such conditions, an analysis of the role played by a common milieu of meaning would seem needed. This would include an inquiry into the conditions within which a justification evoked by the BLD can be posed, comprehended, and accepted. Insofar as such a dimension of life is part of the universal structure of politics, I submit it is not merely of sociological or psychological interest, but rather essential to the intelligibility of legitimacy properly speaking. In sum, legitimacy cannot arise out of pure disagreement. Some kind of agreement must subsist, it would seem, that is neither about “universal principles of politics” nor, for that matter, the product of any mere discursive engagement. If so, what is needed is the identification and explication of the essentially political significance of this foundation, within which the hearing and accepting of the justification of an exercise of coercive power can take place. Upon returning to this question, after having undertaken a phenomenology of the political, I will propose that such a foundation is in fact the deepest root of legitimacy.

33 Ibid., 7.

38  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy

Gray’s Modus Vivendi At the heart of Gray’s philosophy is a critique in which he distinguishes between a superficial pluralism of private choice and a more profound pluralism in which different ways of life are embodied. In the dominant form of liberalism, he explains, the fact of pluralism refers to a diversity of personal ideals whose place is in the realm of voluntary association. The background idea here is that of the autonomous individual selecting a particular style of life.34 Gray describes this understanding of diversity as analogous to choosing among a variety of different kinds of ethnic food. One chooses one’s own lifestyle and ideals just as one chooses a restaurant on a Saturday night –​as a part of one’s private life. Yet, according to Gray, “the fact of pluralism is not the trivial and banal truth that individuals hold to different personal ideals.”35 Such a mistaken view of diversity is only possible given the ideal liberal view of politics as taking place on the basis of a consensus on universal values, in which deeper disagreements are seen as politically irrelevant.36 For Gray, however, it is not disagreement on the superficial level of personal ideals that comprises the circumstances of politics. Rather, it is the deep diversity of “rival” and sometimes “antagonistic conceptions of the good life.”37 For Gray, the cause of this deeper pluralism –​and intractable disagreement –​is not simply a human tendency toward conflict, nor yet the vast number of interpretations that can be given to the abstract universal principles of ideal liberalism. Rather, it is rooted in the basic reality that it is not possible to realize the human good in a single way of life. According to Gray, the study of ethics does not reveal the existence of a single definite set of values, but rather that people have reason to live in different ways. Different ways of life embody incompatible aspects of the human good…[and] no life can reconcile fully the rival values that the human good contains.38 The diversity of rival versions of the good life poses a necessary choice for political communities that merely ethical reasoning is unable to resolve. In Gray’s analysis, then, the distinction between politics and ethics is maintained. Moreover, the choice among sometimes antagonistic versions of the good life –​and not merely among the personal ideals of 34 John Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: The New Press, 2000), 13. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 17. 38 Ibid., 9.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  39 individuals –​is seen as the core element in the creation of the circumstances of politics and thus the fundamental problem for politics. For Gray, the existence of a number of good yet incompatible forms of life need not imply scepticism or moral relativism.39 There are indeed “generically human” virtues which, however, are often rivals in concrete circumstances.40 The conflict occurs because there is no ideal life in which universally human values fit perfectly together, either on the individual or societal levels. Translated into political terms, this means that “there are better and worse regimes, and some that are thoroughly illegitimate; but none that fully realizes all universal values and is thereby a model for all the rest.”41 Gray’s project invites us to think through the political consequences of this situation. Now, implied in the idea of a multiplicity of good ways of life is a certain “moral scarcity,” which is “built into the fabric of human life.”42 For, after all, not all good ways of life can be chosen. Consider, for example, that one political community might pursue artistic achievement to the detriment of the potential development of its military readiness. Similarly, a regime might choose to sacrifice a degree of community coherence and continuity in allowing greater economic freedom and prosperity. Yet again, different political communities might decide in equally valid –​yet conflicting –​ways about whether individual expression or civic virtue should have greater weight. A similar “scarcity” exists in the organization of cultural and social life. In manners, architecture, art, language, food, dress, and holidays, for example, choices must be made which necessarily exclude other options. Not only is any community largely “stuck” with the choices made in this regard by previous generations, but, in any case, it is typically impossible to choose what is objectively “best” in such situations. The attempt to avoid a common decision through multiculturalism itself has definite drawbacks, both on the aesthetic and human levels, not to mention significant difficulties and contradictions in terms of implementation. Finally, scarcity is manifest in the necessity of making prudential decisions regarding the pursuit of various equally valid political goods. Gray cites the example of “supporting a strong state as a bulwark against anarchy” versus risking the “abuse of power.”43 In short, any regime must make concrete choices concerning finite human goods –​choices for which there is in principle no “right” answer derivable from ethics. For Gray, ethics is of limited value for politics because it concerns individual action. Moreover, the current problems for politics arise chiefly from conflicts between rival ways of life.44 This means that political philosophy 39 Ibid., 9. 40 Ibid., 8. 41 Ibid., 9. 42 Ibid., 10. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 12.

40  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy should be concerned above all with these issues. Ideal liberalism, however, inasmuch as it is an attempt to formalistically impose a “universal regime” through the application of “universal principles,” is incapable of providing an adequate response.45 Now, the root of the inadequacy of liberal theory can be understood by considering the character of the early modern societies from which liberal theory emerged. According to Gray, contrary to what is typically imagined, these early societies were notable for their homogeneity. By contrast, the contemporary world contains many populations with different groups endeavoring to organize their lives around profoundly divergent values and virtues. In this sense, Gray points out, the deep pluralism of our time bears greater resemblance to the ancient world.46 Unfortunately, despite the tremendous political challenge today posed by competing ways of life, “liberal orthodoxy passes over these conflicts because it takes for granted that one way of life is dominant in society.”47 The incapacity of liberalism to deal with deep diversity is most salient in the legalism of liberal political philosophy. For liberalism, Gray explains, political philosophy is a branch of the philosophy of law –​the branch which concerns justice and fundamental rights. The goal of political philosophy is an ideal constitution, in principle universally applicable, which specifies a fixed framework of basic liberties and human rights. This framework sets the terms –​the only terms –​on which different ways of life may coexist.48 The problem, however, is that when we differ deeply as to the content of the good, an appeal to rights will not help us. For in that case, we will differ as to which rights we have. Fundamental differences about rights express rival conceptions of the good. When rational inquiry leaves our views of the good deeply at odds, it is vain to appeal to rights.49 By beginning with the reality of a plurality of rival conceptions of the good life, rather than the “idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” (for instance, one comprised of individuals each possessing his own politically negligible personal ideals), Gray opens the door to the theorization of the political community. In this regard, his approach echoes the criticism of Chantal Mouffe that “the methodological individualism which

45 Ibid., 2. 46 Ibid. The difference between our time and the ancient has rather to do with our “hostility to hierarchy.” 47 Ibid., 12. 48 Ibid., 14. 49 Ibid., 15.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  41 characterizes liberal thought precludes understanding the nature of collective identities.”50 By abandoning such individualism and insisting rather on the centrality of “conceptions of the good,” Gray makes possible an inquiry into who is accepting a proposed justification of coercive force (for example, in Williams’ theory of the BLD). In sum, as with other realists, Gray’s analysis is a philosophical advance insofar as it involves a turn to the real: to these people here, the ones living that manifestation of the good life. Despite these considerable contributions, my view is that Gray’s account encounters difficulties in its theory of legitimacy, which he calls modus vivendi. In this conception, various ways of life merely co-​exist, as it were, within what appears to be a theoretically infinite pool of political legitimacy. Each way of life manages to reach a practical “peaceful coexistence” with the others.51 In short, Gray wants to keep liberalism, but rather than attempting to establish a liberal order on the basis of individuals and universal political principles, he wants to theorize politics as the discernment of the terms upon which essentially incompatible modes of life can co-​exist within a minimally sufficient common order.52 This will be accomplished through the practical management of interests by “institutions,” as opposed to by finding a set of universal principles upon which all reasonable people can agree. As Gray explains, “We do not need common values to live together in peace. We need common institutions in which many forms of life can exist.”53 Thus, Gray seems to imagine a kind of “superstructure” possessing no intrinsic continuity with any of the particular ways of life to be reconciled. It is the ambiguity of these interest-​managing institutions, which seem to be at once perfectly abstract and perfectly concrete, that is the locus of the theoretical problems for Gray. For consider: How would such institutions function? Gray asserts that co-​existence among ways of life can be found in the reconciliation and adjustment of interests, which he believes are sufficiently powerful and sufficiently similar to bring about the necessary agreement. Yet, in the functioning of such institutions, an impossible degree of concreteness would seem to be needed. For strict neutrality would evidently demand their being comprised of individuals themselves without group identity, with the institutional activities taking place equally in all places. At the same time, these institutions would seem to be impossibly abstract. For as a realist, Gray would no doubt reject the prospect of their functioning effectively in terms of an agreed-​upon set of universal principles. At the same time, no institution can be totally lacking in intelligibility. The solution is necessarily that, in the actual facilitation

50 Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge Press, 2005), 11. 51 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 20. 52 Ibid., 33. 53 Ibid., 6.

42  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy of compromise, the intelligible structures, justifications, and procedures would be infinitely general –​and so indisputably neutral. Now, the sheer indeterminacy of the reconciling institutions in Gray’s account means that ultimately, like Williams, the basis of legitimacy for him remains acceptance –​with the difference that acceptance now originates in groups practicing various ways of life, rather than in individuals. Yet, because acceptance is once more posited in a purely formalistic manner (that is, as pertaining to a generically conceived group or way of life), the approach to the reality of communal existence is again radically truncated. The result is a resurgence of the familiar set of theoretical problems inherent in the “idea of society as fair system of cooperation,” only now seen in terms of different ways of life rather than individuals. Such theoretical problems include the question of how, precisely, Gray’s institutions are validly enacted out of a situation of radical disagreement. Is there any basis upon which to resolve, or even talk about, disputes concerning their existence or functioning? What kinds of commonality are presupposed by these institutions? Is there any way to distinguish which ways of life belong to a regime, or which qualify as valid ways of life? Under what conditions, if any, could practitioners of a way of life legitimately declare their political independence? Is it possible to identify a point where various ways of life must succumb to a larger common order? On the basis of what authority would such an assertion be made? So long as disagreement is the rule, and so long as the ultimate basis of legitimacy remains pure, formalistic acceptance, it would seem such ambiguities must always be resolved in one way: through unreasoned force. For a basis for deciding such questions can only be discerned through a sustained turning of the theoretical inquiry toward reality. This is an approach which neither the ideal liberals nor the contemporary realists –​in the end –​undertake. For Gray, pursuing an analysis of the political community per se would seem to constitute an inadmissible attempt to “give practice a foundation.”54 Now, if by giving practice a foundation Gray means the attempt to establish a formal system for deducing legitimacy, or for determining political action with regard to any concrete political problem, then these statements seem sound, reflecting, as it were, a salutary appreciation of the nature of practical thought in general. But if he means –​as I take him to mean –​that political philosophy should refuse such inquiries (for example, into the universal structures of political regimes, in order to illuminate potential connections between legitimacy and being) for prudential reasons, then such restrictions on the theoretical scope of political philosophy would seem to amount to a kind of methodological principle based on a personal political judgment. Yet, this would constitute a turn from philosophy to mere advocacy.

54 Ibid., 139.

Ideal and Realist Legitimacy  43 To conclude, Gray’s rejection of the methodological individualism of ideal liberalism avails him little in terms of a theory of legitimacy, since “the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” is retained, only now conceived in terms of ways of life. The pluralistic groups comprising society are understood as abstractly and identically as Kantian individuals. This means that the justice of the political order in Gray’s account remains essentially Rawls’ idea of “fairness.” Indeed, he expressly asserts his agreement with Rawls that no comprehensive view of the good can be the standard for legitimacy.55 Where Gray differs from Rawls is his rejection of the ideal liberal reliance on an agreement with respect to universal political principles. As we have seen, Gray attempts to preserve the same ideal objectivity and neutrality, only locating it now in fully concrete/​abstract institutions charged with the practical management of interests. In his own way, then, like ideal liberalism, Gray ultimately locates legitimacy in an Archimedean point at once supremely authoritative and devoid of substance. Specifically, it is found in the perspective which will inform the decision-​making and processes of the institutions of which will manage conflicts. Yet, in resorting to such a hypothetical locus of concrete objectivity, Gray ends by abandoning the realist insight that such fictions are both useless and dangerous. This hidden yet inevitable formalism lurking behind Gray’s “institutions” belies the purportedly practical manner in which modus vivendi is supposed to reconcile the interests of conflicting ways of life. It also makes it unclear how such an approach offers a more coherent rationale for bringing co-​existence to groups than ideal liberalism offers for facilitating the cooperation of individuals. Despite these criticisms, however, Gray’s critique of ideal liberalism is both groundbreaking and highly beneficial, especially in its identification of the centrality of the problem of a deep diversity that cannot be rationally addressed in terms of the shallow pluralism of personal ideals. His tying of the acceptance of order to various ways of life is particularly helpful since these are always embodied in historically existing communities of human beings with concrete relations. Yet, because acceptance necessarily comes about in living communities, in terms of concrete thoughts and behavior, further analysis will be needed in order to identify and comprehend the deepest sources of legitimacy. This will require an investigation of the community itself. In Chapter 3 I suggested that there is something more fundamental than the radical disagreement posited by the realists. This is the “agreement” that does not take place in the world but is essential to having a world. It is the agreement that just is the intersubjective community. A primary thesis of this book is that an analysis of intersubjectivity and the corresponding life-​ world holds great significance for political theory. For such an inquiry, the philosophical approach is obviously

55 Ibid., 134.

44  Ideal and Realist Legitimacy decisive. In particular, every effort must be made not to lose sight of the “we-​subjectivity” that is the cause of the community’s being a community. In this regard, we will do well to remember, in Zahavi’s words, that “intersubjectivity is not some relation, within the world, that is to be observed from the outside; it is not something transcendent to consciousness, or some sort of system or structure in which consciousness would be found.”56 Now, because intersubjectivity is not transcendent to consciousness, maintaining the I’s relation to others as the privileged perspective throughout the inquiry is indispensable. In following this path, I hope to elucidate a foundation for politics that nonetheless leaves intact the indeterminacy not only of practical knowledge generally, but more importantly with respect to the special variability proper to politics. Before beginning a phenomenology of politics, however, some discussion of certain key philosophical doctrines and concepts is needed.

56 Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-​ Pragmatic Critique (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 79.

5 The Phenomenological Contribution

I will not attempt to give a full account of Husserl’s philosophy of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the life-​world. Rather, I want merely to identify points in his thinking about these questions that I believe have deep significance for political philosophy. Such points suggest various paths for further development in political philosophy which need not be strictly bound to the specifics of Husserl’s philosophy, although there will be certain aspects thereof that will be seen to be necessary. Generally speaking, my approach will be to particularize Husserl’s interrogation of the individual subject by narrowing it to the interrogation of the subject qua citizen or member of a political community. If it is true, as Zahavi writes, that “all distinctions in the mode of objective reference –​thus not only concerning the that, but also concerning the how and the what –​are descriptive distinctions pertaining to…intentional lived experiences,” then political experiences as well necessarily involve a certain kind of intentionality or subjectivity.1 More specifically, I want to examine whether, and in what way, we can say that political experience constitutes a specific class of intentional acts and what this can tell us about man’s being a “political animal.” In what follows, I rely substantially on certain Husserl commentators who I find to be the most measured and careful interpreters of his thought. Their work is especially helpful since, over the course of his voluminous writings, Husserl approached phenomenology from numerous different paths, with his philosophy undergoing significant development. Furthermore, some of Husserl’s most important doctrines and conclusions are highly contested, leading to a wide variety of interpretations and debate among Husserl scholars. All of this makes it difficult to arrive at what is principally required for the present purpose, which is simply a consensus position representing something like Husserl’s “settled” views, acceptable to the broadest spectrum of philosophers and thus allowing me to explore the significance of his thought for political theory.

1 Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-​ Pragmatic Critique (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 6.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-5

46  The Phenomenological Contribution

The Problem of Naturalism As a first approach to the problem of the life-​world and intersubjectivity, it is necessary to set forth the lineaments of Husserl’s critique of the philosophical impact of the modern exact sciences. For the life-​world as a philosophical issue arises in response to modern science’s positing of a disconnect between the objective, scientific world and the world known through direct experience. Sokolowski states in this regard: Science has great authority in our culture because people think that it tells the truth of things. Even human things like consciousness, language, and reasoning will, it is said, be ultimately explained in terms of the brain sciences, which in turn will be reducible, in principle if not in fact, to the physical sciences of physics and chemistry. We have two worlds, then, the world in which we live, and the world described by the mathematical sciences, and it is generally thought that the life world is a mere phenomenon, totally subjective, while the world of mathematical science is the truly objective world.2 In this “naturalistic attitude,” human beings are found to be mere objects within the world, or “empirical egos,” which Husserl identifies as the part of us that is extended in space, interacts causally with the body, possesses both physical and psychic aspects, and endures through time.3 In this way, the exact sciences completely fail to recognize the “transcendental ego,” which is “no longer simply a part of the world” but “is the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves.”4 Crucially, the transcendental ego is also “the agent of truth,” and is “responsible for judgements and verifications.”5 Husserl contrasts the naturalistic attitude with the “personalistic attitude,” which is achieved through philosophy. From this perspective, Interest is directed toward human beings as persons who, in personal actions and passions, are related to “the” world, who, in the community of life, of personal interrelations…have one and the same surrounding world.6 In focusing interest on persons and the manner in which the world is constituted through subjective acts and in relation to others, phenomenology 2 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 147. 3 Ibid., 112. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970)., 317.

The Phenomenological Contribution  47 is able to access objects of investigation not available to the exact sciences. Specifically, by employing a rigorous and careful methodology, the structure of experience itself is found to be open to concrete investigation, as are cultural and social objects, which are decidedly no less real than objects of perception. Sokolowski explains that in combating naturalism, phenomenology tries to show that the activity of achieving meaning, truth, and logical reasoning is not just a feature of our biological or psychological makeup, but that it enters into a new domain of rationality, a domain that goes beyond the psychological.7 Although it is not possible to go into Husserl’s analysis of reality and true being here, we may say that Husserl endeavors to restore the full reality of the world by showing that the so-​called scientific world remains essentially derivative of the world as lived. Thus, an important goal of phenomenology is to “spell out precisely how the life world is transformed into the world of geometric and atomic realities,” and to make clear that science is “built upon things given to us in a prescientific way.”8

The Life-​World Husserl characterizes the life-​ world as “real,” “concrete,” and “intuitive,” whereas the world described by science is “objective,” “ideal,” and “abstract.”9 The crucial distinction contained in this perspective, between what is real on the one hand and what is objective on the other, is in keeping with Husserl’s view of modern science as a mathematicized and idealized “construction,” or “garb of ideas,” through which “we take for true being world what is actually a method.”10 Thus, as Moran explains, the life-​ functions to some degree as a “polemic counter-​concept” for challenging the illusory world bequeathed to us by “formalized scientific knowledge” and certain tendencies in modern philosophy.11 The idealized world of science, while not precisely false, has nonetheless lost its ground of direct intuitive evidence. By contrast, the life-​world refers to the world that is straightforwardly experienced, directly apprehended, assumed, and immediately recognizable.12 Now, according to Moran, “the life-​world is so intimately present that it is not even a ‘presupposition’…

7 Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 115. 8 Ibid., 147–​8. 9 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 181. 10 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 51 (emphasis original). 11 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 183. Moran attributes the phrase “polemic counter-​concept” to Bernhard Waldenfels. 12 Ibid., 181.

48  The Phenomenological Contribution since all presuppositions are already founded in this ‘pregivenness.’ ”13 Indeed, insofar as “every kind of experience is based on a sense that things are already there,” the life-​world is “unsurpassable.”14 This means, quite simply, that there is no conceivable state of existence for man in which he lacks a world. For “to be human, to be aware of oneself as a man and to exist as a human self, is precisely to live on the basis of a world.”15 Crucially, not only does the life-​world include what we normally think of as the world of nature in its immediately observable existence as clouds, sunlight, trees, animals, and fields, but also “the world of ‘culture’, including ourselves, other persons, animals, social institutions, artifacts, symbolic systems, languages and religions.”16 Moreover, the life-​world cannot be understood as a fixed or definite frame of reference, since it implicitly contains “the idea of historical evolution and development; it somehow includes past, present, and future.”17 In a word, it is temporally dynamic. Now, despite the unsurpassable character of the life-​world, it seldom becomes an object of direct investigation, as this requires careful preparatory (that is, methodological) reflection. By contrast, it is the “permanent ‘background’ of all experience.”18 Nor can the life-​world be equated with “the totality of beings,” “the world as a whole,” the “world in itself,” or the “true world” –​all of which are “scientific idealizations.”19 Rather, it is a “thickly experienced context of embodied human acting and knowing that is not completely surveyable, not fully objectifiable, and which has an inescapable intersubjective and ‘intertwined’ character.”20 The precise reasons why the life-​world is essentially non-​objectifiable and inescapably inter-​subjective must be sought in Husserl’s larger philosophical project. We may affirm, however, that he is not advancing any kind of metaphysical idealism. The situation, rather, is as if modern science had driven us into a kind of mental corner, with the apparent problem being how consciousness can find its way out into the open. Husserl’s philosophy is an attempt to methodically trace the path by which we can escape this situation –​ultimately by discovering that we were never trapped in the corner to begin with. Thinking of Husserl’s philosophy in terms of the metaphysical realist/​ idealist dichotomy is to retain the perspective of the corner. For Husserl, there is an essential relation between being and consciousness whereby, while not identical, they must be understood together. Indeed, from the 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 185. Moran is quoting Ludwig Landgrebe, “The World as a Phenomenological Problem,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. I No. I (September 1940), 38–​58. 16 Ibid. (Emphasis original) I might add states, republics, kingdoms, and poleis. 17 Ibid., 185. 18 Ibid., 183. 19 Ibid., 181–​3. 20 Ibid., 181.

The Phenomenological Contribution  49 “standpoint” of transcendental subjectivity, they are concretely one. This means that the life-​world cannot be completely objectified in the mode of modern natural science, but rather involves an inescapably (though not merely) subjective aspect. In sum, the life-​world is a correlate of the acting, valuing, and experiencing taking place in the individual (in and through his relation to community). The truth of this becomes evident only through a phenomenological investigation. Given the life-​ world’s own peculiar way of existing, the typical approaches of the natural and cultural sciences must be set aside. In their place, a distinct kind of philosophical treatment will be taken up, in which a peculiar type of evidencing can identify its “types” and “levels.”21 As part of the refusal to identify “the” world with the world of objective science, moreover, man must not be reduced to his merely psychological or biological dimensions. For in this work, we are interested neither in the world as mathematicized nature nor in the empirical subjects investigated by positive sciences like psychology and sociology. Rather, what is sought is the life-​world in its political dimension and man as a political animal. For Husserl, understanding the world requires first that “we give up or natural positing of [it], as well as our blind (ontic) occupation with –​and judgement about –​its objects, in order to pay attention to the how of its mode of givenness.”22 This means a radical shift in perspective that Husserl calls the “epochē,” in which there is a “suspension of the natural attitude’s assumptions regarding the mode and manner of the world’s existence.”23 This “putting-​into-​question” of the world means that, subsequent to the epochē, “the world and its objects may only be considered as acceptance-​ or validity-​ correlates” and “may only be investigated as recollected, perceived, imagined, judged, valued, etc., and thus in their correlation to a recollecting, perceiving, imagining, judging, and valuing, etc.”24 With the suspension of the “natural attitude” one perceives that, in fact, every experience or perceived object involves a corresponding intentional accomplishment of subjectivity and that “all objects are what they are only through the acts in which they become objectively present for us.”25 The controversial and easily misunderstood doctrine of the epochē has led to criticisms that Husserl denies the existence of the objective world. Such criticisms are oversimplified and misleading. Consider only, for example, that the claim hardly seems consistent with what we have seen is Husserl’s fundamental criticism of modern science. Namely, that it presents an idealized “garb of ideas” separating us from an actual experience of the world. Given the constraints of the present context, we must

21 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2012), 179. 22 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 4. (Emphasis original) 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 4–​5. 25 Ibid., 6.

50  The Phenomenological Contribution be content in this regard simply to affirm that Husserl in no way believed that “intentional objects” are “immanently contained in consciousness.”26 In Zahavi’s words: There is a decisive difference between the mode of givenness of the intentional lived experience as a really intrinsic content, and the mode of givenness of the intentional object. That which is intended is not immanent to the act (even when it is a matter of something phantasied), but is transcendent to the act.27 Once again, then, we see that in the Husserlian conception, there is a necessary correlation between subjectivity and objectivity. However, the impermissibility of finally collapsing either side of the correlation into the other is equally clear. Now, the goal of a phenomenological investigation is an “analysis of the structure of experience.”28 I would like to employ this approach in inquiring specifically into the structure of political experience. It is hoped such an endeavor will contribute to knowledge of the political, the discernment of the dimensions of legitimacy, as well a deeper understanding of the nature of man as a political animal. Decidedly, in employing the phenomenological approach to political subjectivity, we should begin with the world rather than the subject. This is because, the subjectivity that “has” a country or nation, experiences political authority, and participates in political life can only become a theme indirectly, for the reason that “phenomenological access to the world necessarily proceeds by way of the world’s appearance for subjectivity.”29 At the same time, because the “bracketing” of the world in the epochē is neither its denial nor its reinterpretation, but rather a putting-​out-​of-​play of “the naïve prejudice that simply presupposes the world,” a phenomenological analysis enables us the take a perspective in which the “sense” of the world of natural life becomes understandable.30 Thus, an investigation into political subjectivity will necessarily be an investigation into the structure of the world in which the individual, qua member of a political community, lives. Zahavi states: The elucidation of a particular ontological region, which is then designated as a transcendental leading clue, systematically leads back to the consciousness phenomenologically constituting it, so that the objectivities in question are made understandable, in their sense 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 7. 28 Ibid., 5. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 9.

The Phenomenological Contribution  51 and being, as the essentially prescribed products of the correlative structures of cognitive life.31 This observation enables us at once to dispel an error that is fatal to an analysis of politics, but typical of a naïve acceptance of the world presented by the modern natural sciences: namely, the idea that a state or country, apart from its material infrastructure, territory, resources, and so forth, is merely a “subjective idea” in the minds of the individuals physically present in it. On the contrary, such an entity is in fact an identifiable ontological “region” of the life-​world that is open to elucidation, the concrete experiences of which are transcendental clues for an analysis of political subjectivity. Having set forth these basic considerations, we can proceed to examine the manner in which the life-​world is concretely experienced. Now, in Husserl’s discussions two basic themes predominate in this regard, namely the concepts of “horizon” and “ground.” With respect to the first, he explains broadly that everything that genuinely appears is an appearing thing only by virtue of being intertwined and permeated with an intentional empty horizon, that is, by virtue of being surrounded by a halo of emptiness with respect to appearance. It is an emptiness that is not a nothingness, but an emptiness to be filled out; it is a determinable indeterminacy.32 We see, then, that the Husserlian concept of horizon contains at once the idea of limit, as well as an essential openness. In a certain sense, for Husserl, the world just is a horizon, in that it can never become fully present to any person or group of people. It is the context in which all possible investigations take place, whether of a particular object or of the whole of existence. The idea of horizon, however, should not be understood primarily in terms of sensory perception. Although taken literally the concept of horizon implies certain physical connotations, more properly speaking it is a context of meaning that comes into being through a peculiar kind of limitation.33 One example of a limitation inherent in man’s horizon is his historicity, which constitutes a critical element in the “interpretive context” of the life-​world.34 Finally, Husserl’s concept of horizon includes a consideration of the way in which human life manifests a correlation between the ego and the world. It shows that 31 Ibid., 8. 32 Edmund Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, trans. Anthony J. Steinbock. Husserl Collected Works Vol. IX. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 42. 33 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 193. 34 Ibid.

52  The Phenomenological Contribution “all forms of knowing, believing, supposing, doubting, willing, acting, and suffering presuppose the backdrop of this horizontal world.”35 A question arises about the possibility of a plurality of life-​worlds. In short, can the horizon of the life-​world be regarded as distinct from the horizon of “the” world? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is not simple. On the one hand, it is indisputable that the life-​world is constantly changing and always corresponds in its specificity to a given society at a particular time in history. Husserl certainly speaks of a relativity of this kind, noting that different concretely existing peoples can be said to dwell in different worlds.36 On the other hand, as Moran explains, Husserl was equally definite that all life-​worlds possessed an intelligible universality which defined them as such, which is to say, the life-​world possesses an “invariant structural framework within which the relative and changeable finds its place.”37 Now, while there is some disagreement with respect to Husserl’s final position concerning the nature and intelligibility of this invariant universal structure of the life-​world, it seems beyond doubt that he held there to be ultimately only one world.38 The problem in this regard is the discernment of the degree to which it is possible to know what is essential to the life-​world “in terms of human culture and historicity.”39 I would like to suggest at this time, with due acknowledgement being made with regard to the serious metaphysical and theological issues brought into play, that the “universal structure” of the life-​world can be thought about in terms of Aquinas’ understanding of the eternal law. For Aquinas holds that “the divine reason’s conception of things” provides a “plan” or “exemplar” that “governs all the actions and motions that are found in individual creatures.”40 Such a source for an “invariant structural framework,” which is changeless and moreover cannot be directly perceived, can perhaps make more comprehensible what could be meant by an essential, a priori framework for the life-​world, which nonetheless allows for a manifestation of the sometimes deeply varied experiences of diverse peoples, each with their cultural acquisitions and practices. As a final point, the parallel I am drawing with Aquinas comports well with Husserl’s idea of a general science of the life-​world being concerned with an identification of its essential typicalities.41

35 Ibid., 194. 36 Ibid. (Emphasis original) 37 Ibid. The latter part of this quote is attributed by Moran to Aron Gurwitsch, “The Last Work of Edmund Husserl: II. The Lebenswelt,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 17 No. 3 (March 1957), 376. 38 Ibid., 201. 39 Ibid., 203. 40 Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, Ed. and Trans. By Paul E. Sigmund (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1988), 46–​8. 41 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 202.

The Phenomenological Contribution  53 In addition to the conceptualization of the life-​ world as horizon, Husserl also speaks of it as “ground,” “soil,” “fundament,” or “subsoil.”42 Now, we will return to this characterization later on when we take up the question of legitimacy. We will observe at the moment that speaking of the life-​world as “ground” draws attention to its function with respect to reason. Obviously, we are not speaking here of a “ground” in the sense of any kind of express statement given to justify a conclusion (for example, that the major and minor premises of a syllogism are the “grounds” for its conclusion). Nonetheless, characterizing the life-​world in this way does express a kind of ultimate basis for justifications. Moran speaks in this regard of an “unspoken ground of cognitive accomplishments,” without which reasoning cannot occur.43 In short, the life-​world functions as a ground in providing “a contextualization whereby meaning itself is secured through its horizontal connections with meanings lived through and established in the non-​ objectifiable world of living and acting.”44 As with the concept of horizon, the ground of the life-​world is emphatically not an object. On the contrary, as Moran explains, “the peculiarity of the grounding of the life-​world is that it provides an ultimately subjective, pre-​logical, pre-​rational, temporally dispersed, never fully actual grounding” which is the “always available source of what is taken for granted, given in primal self-​evidence.”45 This view of the life-​world as the prerequisite of reason comports with the Husserlian tenet, touched upon earlier, that man cannot exist in a pre-​ worldly state.

Transcendental Intersubjectivity It would not be appropriate to attempt to give a complete account of the relationship between the life-​world and transcendental intersubjectivity. However, since a primary purpose of this work is to elucidate the essentially political meaning and structure of the life-​world, it will be necessary to give an overview of some important ways in which its constitution is connected to the intersubjective community. One particularly important problem that touches on this question, namely empathy and the apprehension of Others, will be addressed in Chapter 10 in the context of an analysis of foreignness. Here, I will briefly discuss intersubjectivity insofar as it pertains to the constitution of objectivity generally, but also the more politically relevant concepts of normality and tradition. Now, in speaking of “the” world, we speak of the world as experienced in the natural attitude, prior to a phenomenological investigation. In the course of such a phenomenological analysis, however, the life-​world 42 43 44 45

Ibid., 195–​6. Ibid., 196. Ibid., 197. Ibid., 197.

54  The Phenomenological Contribution emerges as an accomplishment of a number of individual subjects in a community of passive and active cooperation. Stated more precisely, “the sense and the categories of transcendence, objectivity, and reality are constituted intersubjectively.”46 As we will see later in greater detail, for Husserl the precise manner in which this constitution of objectivity takes place is essentially bound up with the problem of empathy. This is because the inability to directly experience the subjectivity of other people makes the encounter of Others the first and only experience of a truly irreducible and “alien” otherness in the world. Having encountered the otherness of an alter ego, we then extend the sense of this experience of otherness to objects that do not themselves possess subjectivity. Beyond the constitution of objectivity per se, the intersubjective community is also the source of our experience of the horizonal quality of objects. Consider in this regard that no perceived object is fully present to perception, but rather all objects necessarily possess a horizonal givenness consisting of “co-​existing profiles.”47 For example, a statue I am viewing at a museum has parts which, though momentarily inaccessible to me, are being perceived by Others standing at different locations in the room. My knowledge that the Others are perceiving the same statue alters my own experience of it. In fact, we constantly experience objects as either actually or potentially co-​constituted and co-​validated. In this way, the Other is actually implicit in every perception or experience. According to Matheson Russell, “Husserl maintains that the constitution of an object as something really transcendent and truly Objective requires that it be an object for others as well as for me,” for “the weight of reality that we experience in connection with the world…is only experienced by you or me once we have some awareness of others who also experience the world.”48 Now, an aspect of transcendental intersubjectivity with tremendous importance for politics is the constitution of normality and tradition by what can be called the anonymous community. In a certain sense, normality and tradition contain the closest thing to an articulable substance of the political dimension of the life-​world. This function of the intersubjective community “operates at the level of handed down normality, and…is of constitutive significance as a realm of that which is anonymously public.”49 As “handed down,” it is here that the intrinsic historicity of the life-​world and the intersubjective community comes to the forefront. Indeed, in the Husserlian understanding, “the very constitution of objectivity and of a common objective world is…a historical process,” with “the meaning-​formations ‘objectivity’ and ‘reality’ hav[ing] the status of intersubjective presumptions, which can only be realized in an infinite process 46 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 118. 47 Ibid., 119. 48 Matheson Russell, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 162–​3. 49 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 100.

The Phenomenological Contribution  55 of socialization and horizon-​fusion.”50 Obviously, providing theoretically for this dynamic would seem critical for any analysis of the political. Zahavi identifies two basic kinds of normality, with the first being related to human beings insofar as they are “mature, healthy, and rational.”51 The second kind refers to a specific “home world or cultural sphere.”52 With regard to this second form of normality, which will be our focus, its sense arises through living in a world thoroughly permeated with references to the Others of one’s own community. Zahavi explains, “I am in the midst of a world that has already been provided with sense by others, and my formation of judgments, my self-​apprehension, my evaluations, and my interpretation of the world are guided by a linguistically pre-​articulated understanding.”53 Now, although language is a crucial element of normality, it is not in itself the bearer or source of continuity. For while it may be true that I arrive at an understanding of the world and myself (as a part of it) through a particular “linguistic conventionality,” in the Husserlian view the constitution of the community occurs in a primal fashion at pre-​ linguistic levels.54 The idea of normality entails that the way in which we experience life depends considerably on our pre-​formed notions about goodness and happiness and what constitutes purposeful and meaningful activity generally. It refers to the manner in which our expectations, both on a day-​to-​day level as well as with regard to life as a whole, are formed to a high degree by “intersubjectively handed-​down forms of apperception.”55 Such structures enable entire ways of life (for example, as spoken of in Gray’s philosophy) to achieve continuity in time. Husserl’s philosophy, then, points to an analysis of the very foundation of a thriving political regime: the flow of order. Clearly not all order is political, yet it seems evident that there is a degree of continuity of order that permeates all aspects of the life of a community. It runs, on the one hand, from the most deeply held convictions of members about justice, the state, the family, and God to, on the other hand, more superficial practices, such as that “here,” “one” holds a fork in such and such a manner and greets neighbors in a particular way.56 Now, this question of normality raises a vital topic for politics (to which we will return later): namely the possibility (and even desirability) of dissent from established norms. We may observe now, in this regard, that idea of normality does not imply mere conformity. Rather, it is an analytic

50 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 138. 51 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 91. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 100. 54 Ibid. A major purpose of Zahavi’s book, which is styled “a Response to the Linguistic-​ Pragmatic Critique,” is to argue this point against linguistic theorists like Apel and Habermas. 55 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 134. 56 Ibid.

56  The Phenomenological Contribution concept for better understanding the concrete manner of existing of any community. This deeper meaning is seen in the relation of normality to the broader concept of tradition, of which it forms a part. As Zahavi explains, “The system of normality ultimately points to the chain of generations receding into the past and thereby bears witness to the constitutive significance of tradition and generativity.”57 One could say that our ideas about the intersubjective community and the life-​world converge in the concepts of normality and tradition. For, as Moran observes, normality is in fact “an a priori structural characteristic of worldhood.”58 Furthermore, “the world is defined by what ‘normal’ subjects experience.”59 Now, because normality and tradition are set down and maintained in a specific time and place, by a specific people (through a process Husserl calls “traditionalization”), they possess an essentially political significance.60 For one thing, there is the implication of the existence of multiple “normalities” which, in relation to one another, can be considered “foreign normalities.”61 In this book, I maintain that the political horizon is the most fundamental horizon within the horizon of the world. The functioning of normality and tradition seem to confirm this thesis, inasmuch as the political community just is that group of people living according to a certain concrete order. Moran’s assessment appears to support this view when he states that the highest level of ‘normality’ for humans is when they act in person-​ to-​person relations within the context of a people (Volk) ordered as a state with relations of mastery and obedience.62 In closing this section, certain clarifications regarding the doctrine of transcendental intersubjectivity should be mentioned, in order to avoid potential confusion. First, Husserl’s ideas about normality and tradition should not be confused with the notion that history fully constitutes the being of individuals. Although Husserl understands the world-​constituting, communal “we” as stretching into both the past and future, he does not imagine the process of history as absolute being (or Spirit). For one thing, this would be to abandon the first-​person perspective, insofar as individual subjectivity would come to be revealed as a mere moment of history, with no reality in itself (an absurd conclusion, according to Husserl). Once again, then, it is necessary to insist on both “sides” in the analysis of consciousness and experience –​namely, the constituted world and constituting subjectivity.

57 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 90. 58 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 199. 59 Ibid. (emphasis added). 60 Ibid., 200. 61 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 135. 62 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 200.

The Phenomenological Contribution  57 Secondly, a potential problem arises due to Husserl’s holding that the ego is discovered to function constitutively only within intersubjectivity.63 This is to say that the subjectivity involved in the experience of the Other is in fact dependent on transcendental intersubjectivity, making the latter “absolute” in some way.64 Now, the technical problem of how Husserl understands the supposed absoluteness of the transcendental intersubjective community is impossible to treat here. In order to avoid possible confusion, however, I will clarify that, for Husserl, the individual ego in no way dissolves into a transcendental intersubjective whole. Such a view would (again) entail impermissibly taking a third-​person perspective –​only this time that of the transcendental intersubjective community. Moreover, it seems evident that to speak at all of a “relation” with Others presupposes by definition two poles, since the total “absorption” of the individual ego into the community would result in only one pole. For present purposes, let us adopt Zahavi’s formulation of the situation, which indicates a kind of reciprocity in this regard: “Transcendental intersubjectivity can only be disclosed through a radical explication of the ego’s structure of experience. This indicates not only an intersubjective structure to the ego, but also the egological rootedness of intersubjectivity.”65 In this passage we see at once the reality and irreducibility of the individual ego, yet also the manner in which is it true that “the subject can only be world-​experiencing insofar as it is a member of a community.”66

Phenomenology and Aristotelian Political Philosophy I have discussed, in a necessarily brief and incomplete manner, certain key aspects of Husserl’s thought with potential significance for politics, in particular the life-​world and intersubjectivity. Before passing on to the central theses of this work, however, I want to discuss with some precision what I believe are the connections between these doctrines and the concrete political community. In doing so, I will suggest a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s understanding of the polis. Let me begin by making what would seem to be a relatively noncontroversial connection: namely, that the necessity of a transcendental intersubjective community for the constitution of an objective life-​world is at least part of what Aristotle meant in asserting that the polis is “prior” to the individual.67 In this regard, phenomenology can be seen as permitting us to “enter into” Aristotle’s political community, understanding what “priority” consists of at the most primal level. In addition to material needs and security, and beyond even a necessary context for the actualization of 63 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 172 (§50). 64 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 121. 65 Ibid., 122–​3. 66 Ibid., 120. 67 Aristotle, Politics, 4. I 2 1253a20.

58  The Phenomenological Contribution virtue, we can say that the polis is the concrete locus of the constitution of “the” world. Hence, the “us” about which Husserl speaks of in the Crisis, and to which the world is given “together,” is naturally the polis: “We, in living together, have the world pregiven in this ‘together,’ as the world valid as existing for us and to which we, together, belong, the world as world for all, pregiven with this ontic meaning.”68 The idea that the intersubjective “we” naturally just is the complete and self-​sufficient political community harmonizes with the teaching of Aristotle that the basis of the polis is not the individual, but rather a natural structure of teleologically ordered “communities.” Specifically, for Aristotle the polis comes to be through the “conjoining of [male and female] persons…who cannot exist without one another.”69 Such a community is not “complete,” however, and he proceeds to trace out its completion in the “household,” “village,” and finally the “self-​sufficient” community that is the polis.70 Aristotle speaks of these interlocking communities principally in terms of “function,” which enables him to understand individual virtue as the fulfilment of individual natural potentials within them, and also to conceive the complimentary relationships between them. Now, employing Husserl’s concept of normality in this regard, one could say that the references necessary for a full apprehension of what is normal is attained only in the intelligibility of the “complete community” of the polis, and that a certain degree or scope of normality inheres in each of the lesser communities, yet must be supplemented by the broader, higher horizon. This would seem reasonable in that what is “normal” between men and women will have reference to a “normal” family. Likewise, what is “normal” for a family must be understood in terms of the role that a family plays in a village, and so forth. For Aristotle, or course, such norms are not merely sociological facts but express an intelligible, natural structure of human relationships. Even the polis itself, which is developed most thoroughly through the medium of rational exchange about the “advantageous and harmful, and hence also the just and the unjust,” “belongs,” according to Aristotle “among the things that exist by nature.”71 Now, without in any way attempting to equate the larger philosophical frameworks of the two thinkers, it seems permissible to draw a parallel between Aristotle’s teleological conception of human association and the “invariant structural framework” of Husserl’s life-​ world, posited in the previous discussion, in contradistinction to a concrete “relativity of life-​worlds.” As Zahavi remarks, Husserl “argues that there is a universal and essential structure to every possible lifeworld, regardless of how different it might otherwise be, geographically, historically, or culturally.”72 Implicit in this reasoning, then, is the connection between an 68 Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, 109 (§ 28). 69 Aristotle, Politics, 2. I 2 1252a26–​27. 70 Ibid., 2–​3. 1253b10–​29. 71 Ibid., 4. 1253a1–​15. 72 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 131.

The Phenomenological Contribution  59 essential structure for the life-​world and the deepest end of a spectrum of normality alluded to earlier (for instance, the normality of family relations versus the normality of etiquette). According to Zahavi, “The task of phenomenology consists in systematically explicating and elucidating the ontic sense of the world by investigating the intentional-​constitutive accomplishments of transcendental subjectivity.”73 Now, one can express such an ontic sense in observations in terms of a generic “humanity.” We are interested, however, in the manner in which the ontic sense of the world overlaps with the functionality observed by Aristotle. Of course, no merely empirical investigation can reveal the a priori of the life-​world and the ontological essences it contains. Rather, what is required is a philosophical investigation of the “basic invariant morphological structure of the life world” through the intuition of “morphological essences,” whose ontological status as describing things actually existing in nature is contrasted with ideal essences employed by the exact sciences.74 For Husserl, the life-​world is characterized by a “morphological typicity” which, referring to concrete instantiations we can actually perceive, would include morphological concepts like “dog” or “house.”75 The philosophical goal is to “disclose the a priori of the lifeworld, that is, its ontological essence.”76 Decidedly, the attempt to describe the world in terms of highly idealized concepts will be unavailing, since in doing so we violate the phenomena of the life-​world by imposing exact concepts unsuited to their way of being. On one hand, then, there are “unconditionally universal,” “formal” features such as “a common spatiotemporal worldform.”77 On the other hand, there are concepts that are essentially inexact, for example bodily “corporality” and “all that belongs to it (such as sexual drives, nutritional needs, birth and death, community and tradition).”78 These precisions show the reasons for the fundamental limitations of any political philosophy framed in formalistic, abstract terms, and, consequently the necessity of a sustained turn toward reality and concrete political life. Now, it is true that the degree to which an investigation of the life-​world can impart knowledge of concretely existing aspects of life (for instance, the structure of human relations per se) is a matter of some controversy. It may be objected, for example, that such an inquiry can discover only the formal conditions for intersubjective apprehension of the world (for example, time, space, extension). However, there is good reason to hold that a phenomenological analysis extends even to this content as well. According to Zahavi, Husserl “concedes” this to some degree by making “operatively functioning lived bodilihood” a “primal norm” upon which we can found 73 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 25. 74 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 130–​1. 75 Ibid., 131. 76 Ibid., 130. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid., 132 (emphasis added).

60  The Phenomenological Contribution our understanding of others and our ability to eventually agree and communicate.79 For such a foundation entails “certain ‘material’ conditions such as similarly functioning lived bodilihood or similar instinctual life as the condition of possibility for agreement.”80 There is no reason why the ontic sense of the world investigated by phenomenology could not be said to extend, for example, to the identification of the “conjunction” of male and female that, for Aristotle, was the most basic community within the polis. Arguably, concepts like “instinctual life” would seem intelligible only in terms such a sexual duality. For his part, Husserl, in describing numerous potential paths of phenomenological investigation, speaks of the “transcendental…problem of the sexes.”81 On the basis of these points, I would like to suggest the philosophical possibility of a full overlap between the structures of life described by Aristotle and the ontic sense of the life-​world as discoverable through a phenomenological inquiry. Insofar as such a project was specifically phenomenological, it would not constitute a “natural law” account of the political, for example as a kind of ethical argument. Rather, I propose that following Husserl’s invitation to develop an “ontology of the lifeworld” can be the means for the elucidation and apprehension of the distinctly political. Specifically, what is called for in this regard is an analysis of the unique “ways of being” belonging to the various communities in their essential connection to the world.82 Above all, it calls for an investigation of the universal experience characteristic of life in the complete and self-​ sufficient community: that is, a phenomenology of the political. This project seems consonant with Husserl’s understanding that the life-​world is permeated with “essential types and can be methodically encompassed as a pure a priori.”83 Husserl states that, even without the epochē and reduction, the life-​world can be made the object of a science proper to it, namely “an ontology of the life-​world purely as experiential world.”84 This “world of life,” he says, “takes up into itself all practical structures” and “holds to its essential lawful set of types, to which all life, and thus all science, of which is it is the ‘ground,’ remain bound.”85 In what follows, I will advance the proposition, central to my project, that the life-​ world and the political community are correlated in a fundamental sense –​ a sense which it is our great interest to explore. Now, Husserl expressly mentions the political community at times in his writings, yet without, to my knowledge, clearly describing it as fundamentally correlated with the life-​world. On the one hand, in his Vienna lecture he speaks of men living

79 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 94. 80 Ibid. 81 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 188 (§ 55). 82 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, 201. 83 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 173 (§51). 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. (emphasis added)

The Phenomenological Contribution  61 within a “universal life-​community (their nation)” –​a statement which would seem to implicitly draw a strong correlation.86 On the other hand, he speaks elsewhere, more loosely, of various forms of “community-​horizon,” such as the family, the nation, and even “supranational” communities.87 This looser way of speaking may result from the fact that Husserl is interested in the life-​world (and its communities) above all as starting points from which he can elucidate “universal intersubjectivity.”88 Thus, it makes sense for him that, in philosophizing, the world would be “transformed into the all-​communal phenomenon ‘world,’ ‘world for all actual and possible subjects.’ ”89 In this work, however, we are not investigating the “world for all actual and possible subjects,” but rather we seek to clarify the ontic sense of the world insofar as the world is (normally and naturally) correlated to a concretely existing complete and self-​sufficient community. To say so is not, to be sure, to break with the phenomenological perspective and adopt an “objective” view. For in order for us to succeed in our undertaking, the world must still be transformed into phenomena and subjectivity must be always retained. The difference is that, in our inquiry, the “all-​communal” world will always and explicitly be understood as our world. Because the political dimension of the life-​world –​or, conversely, the life-​world as political community –​cannot be grasped through concrete images or a distinct set of principles, thinking clearly about it and avoiding pitfalls requires attention and subtlety. The principal reasons for the difficulty are: 1) the life-​world is per se non-​objective; 2) the structures inherent in human life are, like all morphological essences, characterized by an essential vagueness; and 3) neither the life-​world nor the political community are fixed, but rather in a state of constant flux and flow. All of these factors mean that the attempt to describe, visually or conceptually, such a “structure” will be perforce piecemeal, approximate, and incomplete. Above all, however, the quest for a definitive “view” of the political dimension of the life-​world is unavailing since it would require an abandonment of the very first-​ person perspective necessary to access the essence of the political community. For this reason, insofar as it is merely “in” the world, an account of the intelligibility of the political community will not be pursued, although this is a legitimate enterprise in its own right. In this regard, aside from certain qualifications I might make (concerning, for example, the problem of the ultimate size of the political community), I shall rely on Aristotle’s empirical acumen and simply assume the basic structure he describes.

86 87 88 89

Ibid., 281. (Appendix I) Ibid., 270. Ibid., 179 (§53). Ibid., 255–​6 (§71).

6 The Life-​World Is Political

We now turn directly to an elucidation of the political dimension of the life-​world. In this chapter, I will propose a number of clarifications and observations necessary for the advancement of my principal thesis that the political community and the life-​world are coterminous. These points will bring the phenomenological background set forth in the previous chapter into an engagement with political philosophy, thereby setting the direction for the analysis contained in the rest of the book. It will be recalled that, in approaching Husserl’s account of the life-​ world, we began with the paradoxical situation of the relation between the empirical and transcendental egos. Specifically, it was observed that, on the one hand, we are “the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves.”1 At the same time, we are also a “part of the world, one of the many things that inhabit it.”2 I would like to suggest that there is a similar paradox at work with regard to the complete and self-​ sufficient (that is, political) community. Consider the following two propositions, both of which seem true: 1. The life-​world corresponds to the political community, with the effect that the experience of any object not a part of that community is refracted through its status as “foreign” or “otherworldly.” 2. The political community exists within the world, with other political communities/​life-​worlds being essential, a priori potentialities. Now, in a manner similar to the situation involving the individual ego, thinking well about politics entails maintaining the paradox described. To this end, my primary burden will be to establish and elucidate the first truth, for the reason that the first-​person perspective implicit in it (and the “we-​ subjectivity” with which it is intrinsically involved) is highly fragile theoretically. Quite simply, the political community ceases to exist in the eyes of philosophy when it becomes a mere “part” of humanity –​notwithstanding 1 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112. 2 Ibid.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-6

The Life-World Is Political  63 its confinement geographically, sociologically, and legally. In the absence of competent theorization of subjectivity, the political community, in its reality, is dissolved. Political theorists will typically “explain away” the paradoxical tension between these propositions by simply dismissing the totality of the experiential referents implicit in the first statement as merely “personal” or “psychological.” Such a view assumes the naturalistic perspective critiqued by Husserl, which was discussed in the last chapter. It naïvely accepts the world as presented by the physicalistic objectivism of the modern sciences wherein communities lack “objective reality” apart from the individuals that compose them. I will attempt to show why this is a great mistake that carries with it profound consequences for political thought and ultimately for political practice. Consider for example that, in Williams’ account, there is no theoretical basis for establishing who is accepting the proposed justification offered by the wielders of coercive force. For him, it is an apparently undetermined set of “subjects,” whose only intrinsic commonality is apparently that, out of a “humanity” of individuals, they happened to be the ones affected by the exercise of force. By failing to identify who is engaged in accepting (or not) the justification proposed in response to the BLD (that is, who is the “we”), Williams is thereby unable to give any account of what the required acceptance might look like concretely. As there is no identifiable community (for instance, as structured in some intelligible way, perhaps in terms of language, authority, tradition, preexisting institutions, and so forth), one is left with a vague notion of an indefinite collectivity of ideal, “contractual” type exchanges. Most profoundly, however, it will be seen that the failure to identify the community blocks all possibility of rooting legitimacy in any place other than an undefined collectivity of personal egos. In this way, the Kantian presuppositions of Williams’ framework keep him from extending his engagement with the real to the political itself. In what follows, a more systematic exposition of these points will be undertaken, specifically as set forth in three subsections. In the first two, important clarifications relevant to my thesis will be given through a discussion of potential difficulties. In the third section, I will lay out in a more direct manner the reasons for concluding that the world-​constituting intersubjective community is naturally and normally the political community. It may be said up front, however, that this last venture will be inconclusive, revealing the need to turn, in succeeding chapters, to direct experience and a phenomenology of the political.

1 For Husserl, all experience is achieved through a “community-​horizon.” More precisely, he held that human beings have the world “pregiven” to them on the basis of a common life, shared by a certain concrete number

64  The Life-World Is Political of individuals which, as a community, could be understood as possessing its own we-​subjectivity.3 Husserl explains: In the consciousness of each individual, and in the overarching community consciousness which has grown up through [social] contact, one and the same world achieves and continuously manifests constant validity as the world which is in part already experienced and in part the open horizon of possible experiences for all; it is the world as the universal horizon, common to all men, of actually existing things.4 Within this universal horizon, of course, each individual has his own experiences and validations, as well as experiences pertaining to particular social groups internal to the community-​horizon.5 Yet the analysis of intersubjectivity reaches “all the way down,” as it were, (and “all the way up,” for that matter!) to the constitution of the objective life-​world itself, which in the largest sense is therefore “subjective-​relative.”6 In short, the community-​horizon that constitutes the life-​world is an “all inclusive, universal synthesis” and the “universal form of meaning-​formation.”7 As indicated above, the main thesis I want to advance and explore in my exposition is that the community-​ horizon and world-​ constituting we-​subjectivity are in fact (normally and naturally) the complete and self-​ sufficient political community. This is to say that the political community and the life-​world, while analytically distinct, are coterminous. Because political communities concretely exist and, in principle, each exists as one among other potential communities, this view entails the seemingly paradoxical idea of a plurality of “universal horizons.” Stated differently, it would seem to imply the existence of a multiplicity of life-​worlds, each constituted by limited and concretely existing (political) communities of people. Now, although we touched briefly upon this question in the last chapter, it is necessary to clarify more precisely why the intersubjective accomplishment of the life-​world should be understood neither as negating the existence of “the” world nor as implying relativism with regard to the potential apprehension of a natural order. These clarifications will also help us begin to understand the precise way in which the political community is part of objective reality. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl asserts the existence of an “Objective Nature” and a “single Objective world” for all existing rational beings, or, as he puts it, “the community of all co-​existing monads.”8 3 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 109 (§ 28). 4 Ibid., 164 (§ 47). 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 170 (§ 50). 7 Ibid., 169–​70. (§ 49). 8 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 140 (§ 60).

The Life-World Is Political  65 According to Husserl, this single “community” is a kind of super-​ community of existing communities that comprises an “intersubjectivity… that possibly lacks every actual relation of community with the other intersubjectivity.”9 In this way, the various life-​worlds “are related to one another as those that may belong to stellar worlds we cannot see…”10 What is crucial to understand in this account is that the “single Objective world” and single “community of monads” of which Husserl speaks is neither experienced nor a source of experience, at least in terms of any kind of experiential content. It is for this reason that, in the comments of Husserl’s just cited, actual relations between communities of “monads” is irrelevant. Thus, while there is indeed a single Objective world, the world of pure Nature, belonging to the totality of all co-​existing monads (the true predications of which should be affirmed by all human beings and societies), no one actually lives in this world –​at least not fully. Of what, then, does the purely Objective world consist? In particular, Zahavi mentions “such components [as] are free in principle from any ‘contingent’ relation to the subject, since if they pertain to one subject, they pertain to all subjects. Husserl includes space, time, and all purely logical concepts in this category.”11 A consideration of such fully objective components of nature clarifies that, in principle, what is “objective,” while undoubtedly true, is not for that matter what is most real. Short of a purely objective world, Husserl understood nature more generally as that which is “accessible for everyone in unconditional universality,” “unconditionally held in common,” and “identically experienceable.”12 Now, in this regard, one particular issue which has relevance to the present inquiry should be touched upon. Namely, the question of how much concreteness it is possible to attribute to “objectively” natural things (that is, things accessible to everyone). I will only say in this regard that it seems possible to hold a spectrum of various positions. On the one hand, one might consider only the most abstract elements to be objective, such as spatio-​temporal and logical forms. On the other hand, one could go so far as to maintain as objectively knowable, for example, the intelligible capacities and potentialities that form the content of the natural law. In terms of the spectrum I have just proposed, including a high degree of concreteness within the ambit of what is “objectively natural” would seem compatible with the discernment of the morphological essences mentioned in the last chapter. I believe it is also consistent with Husserl’s invitation to establish “a ‘general science’ of the Lebenswelt which will identify the lawful ‘essential typicalities’…that correspond to it.”13 My own 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Subjectivity: A Response to the Linguistic-​ Pragmatic Critique (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001), 93–​4. 12 Ibid., 93. 13 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2012), 202.

66  The Life-World Is Political view –​again, expressing a more Aristotelian interpretation –​is to favor greater concreteness. However, this is not the place for me to defend this position. What should be noticed at this time is that the entire spectrum I have described pertains to what is meant by Objective Nature. For there is a second kind of objectivity belonging to the world which must be discussed and which is always concretely intertwined with the first. In addition to an “absolute world structure…running through every surrounding world that is held in common by any self-​contained, constituted life-​community,” there is also the objectivity concretely related to the intersubjective community itself.14 The political community, insofar as it exists in objective reality, is rooted in the first kind of objectivity, though it is not confined to it. In fact, the two objectivities are inseparable. Husserl distinguishes them in the following terms: 1) Objectivity as intersubjectivity, apprehensionally related to a “universe” of subjects, although the universe can be a limited one, e.g., that of the community of normal subjects; 2) “strict” objectivity related to the actual unlimited “universe,” the totality of all knowing subjects, of whatever sort, who stand in relationship to the knower.15 To be clear, the line between these two objectivities is one of distinction, and moreover cannot be sharply or absolutely drawn. In this regard, Husserl speaks readily about the singularity of “the” world, while at the same time discussing the plurality, modulations, appearances, and disappearances of different life-​worlds.16 We will touch again on this problem in addressing the question of foreign “worlds” (and the “worlds” of foreigners). For the moment, these observations should suffice.

2 I would next like to take up a problem related to the one just addressed inasmuch as it concerns the attempt to understand the community of all co-​existing monads as fully concrete. This is a question of great significance for political philosophy, and, moreover, would constitute the basis for an objection to my thesis. According to such a view, a political theorist, although perhaps persuaded by Husserl’s idea of the intersubjective constitution of objectivity, could nonetheless attempt to retain the “idea of society as fair system of cooperation” by asserting that the world is constituted concretely by humanity. After all, Husserl does speak at times of the “world as the universal horizon, common to all men, of actually existing things.”17 Do not the words “all men” precisely mean all men? 14 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Subjectivity, 92 (quoting Husserl). 15 Ibid., 93 (quoting Husserl). 16 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 201–​2. 17 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 164 (§ 47) (emphasis added).

The Life-World Is Political  67 Does not the idea of a “universal horizon” entail a single horizon –​and therefore a single life-​world –​for the totality of existing human beings? Again, in speaking of the paradox of “humanity as [a]‌world-​constituting subjectivity” that is somehow “incorporated in the world itself,” does not Husserl contradict my thesis that world-​constitution is achieved only by a specific community-​horizon?18 I would respond that, in such examples, Husserl is speaking in terms of a relative universality, given that he, as a phenomenologist, never abandons the perspective of the analysis of experience. In the statements just referred to, because Husserl has not abandoned the first-​person or “We” perspective when speaking of a universal horizon common to all men, he is still assuming some particular –​though unidentified –​community, upon the horizon of which any man (in all of humanity) could potentially appear. In other words, every community has its own universal horizon common to all men. Inasmuch as all individuals could potentially meet one another (for instance, in theory) it is the same universal horizon. Yet, nonetheless, the world is still actually constituted for each man only in accord with his own intersubjective community. There is never the idea (which in fact is unthinkable) that a person could step outside of every human community and view “objectively” a single horizon which equally contains all communities and yet is proper to none of them. It will perhaps be beneficial to touch briefly upon other points relevant to this question. Consider moreover, in this regard, that tying the intersubjectively constituted world to the totality of existing human beings would conflict openly with Husserl’s account of the life-​world as characterized by concrete specificity in terms of “historicity, generativity, tradition, and normality.”19 These fundamental elements of the life-​world belong only to limited, concretely existing communities. The life-​world is consistently described as a “homeworld” comparable with “foreign normality.”20 Yet there is a deeper philosophical confusion at work in the notion of a world-​constituting humanity. According to Zahavi, Husserl in fact describes two kinds of relations with Others.21 On the one hand, there is the intersubjective community constituted on the basis of the concrete experience of the actual Other, or “lived bodily foreign I.”22 On the other hand, there is the intersubjective community of transcendental egos which comprises what is called “open intersubjectivity.”23 The former, then, concerns limited, empirically identifiable communities in the world. The latter for its part, concerns the transcendental egos of the totality of human beings. In his analysis, Zahavi takes up the question of which of the communities is

18 Ibid., 182 (§ 54), emphasis added. 19 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 125. 20 Ibid., 135. 21 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 52–​61. 22 Ibid., 52. 23 Ibid., 53.

68  The Life-World Is Political ultimately primary. He concludes that the concretely existing community of lived, bodily foreign I’s is in fact founded on transcendental intersubjectivity, stating that “the horizon structure of our relatedness to the world points to open intersubjectivity, and it is the latter (along with our own horizonal openness) that makes our thematic and concrete experience of the other possible.”24 Despite the ultimate primacy, however, of “open intersubjectivity” in terms of founding, is would be a mistake to conclude on this basis that the life-​world is constituted by the totality of humanity. On the contrary, one could not even speak about (thematize, for instance) the “anonymously co-​functioning open intersubjectivity” without first having had a concrete experience of others. Zahavi explains: “While open intersubjectivity can be situated with respect to the horizon structure, the concrete experience of others…permits the self-​mundanization of the transcendental I and the thematic experience of validity-​for-​everyone.”25 Similarly, Sokolowski asserts the impossibility that the ego could be detached from the world, that it could be found or even imagined to exist without a world. Even as transcendental, the ego’s intentional character requires that it have things and a world correlated with itself. The ego and the world are moments to one another.26 These passages show the necessity of an experience of the concrete, lived bodily presence of others for the constitution of objectivity. Thus, notwithstanding its “potential metaphysical importance,” the community of transcendental egos, or “open subjectivity,” is not a source of world constitution, which occurs rather at the level of concrete, embodied communities. Emphatically, a political community is a community of self-​mundanized I’s. We may therefore reject the idea that humanity constitutes the life-​world, inasmuch as it entails the erroneous presupposition that the world of the individual ego is merely the manifestation of the functioning of transcendental intersubjectivity. Although intersubjectivity may belong to the a priori structure of subjectivity, and although the concrete experience of others may itself be contingent in some way upon transcendental intersubjectivity, the constitution of the life-​world nonetheless requires a concrete encounter with bodily existing foreign I’s.27 This is in keeping with the principle that the life-​world is composed of various layers, or levels, which are experienced according to their own way of existing, and which together form a kind of hierarchy in which sensory perception is primary.28 As Zahavi states, Husserl in no way “substituted the transcendental ego as 24 Ibid., 57. 25 Ibid., 59. 26 Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, 113. 27 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 57. 28 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 201.

The Life-World Is Political  69 the phenomenological point of departure for the historical community of the lifeworld.”29 In terms of political philosophy, rejecting the possibility that a life-​world could be constituted by humanity would seem to mean that the ideal liberal “idea of society as a system of fair cooperation,” which in principle denies the political community any real existence, necessarily leads to a worldless conception of politics. Such a political theory is thus greatly limited in its ability to theorize politics in accord with how it is actually lived. It is, in fact, theoretically restricted to producing only formalistic arguments involving individuals abstractly conceived. For ideal liberal theory, such a loss of the real is of little consequence, and mere formalism is embraced as a liberation from the corruption of social contingency. For contemporary realists, however, it seems to create a conflictual stance, since –​qua realists –​ they claim to turn their theorizing toward the world as it is.

3 We have seen that the life-​world corresponds to a community rather than merely to a group of individual human beings who happen to share a life-​ world but, somehow, it is said, do not form a community. I would like next to examine how this thesis that the life-​world and political community are coterminous contributes to the ability to locate the political. To this end, let us first clarify the relationship between the life-​world –​which, as we have seen, is the ultimate accomplishment of the intersubjective community (founded, as it is, upon transcendental intersubjectivity) –​and the multiplicity of existing “communities” within the life-​world. For it is granted that all of us belong to numerous “communities,” each with its respective horizon. In this regard, Peter Costello emphasizes a dynamic, harmonizing aspect of the life-​world. He writes: The life-​world’s life is experienced as the life that sustains the phenomena that occur between ourselves, the life of the “between” that most of the time gets immediately and concretely constituted as the “separate” life of intimate relationships, families, and societies. Each experience of a relationship appears as having a kind of agency that we belong to, that we help to flesh out, but that we do not singularly or perhaps even together necessarily control. We experience the life-​world as that which is responsible for these separate lives of our interpenetration, responsible for their very appearance, for the larger notion of their “higher level personality” or life. The life-​world is alive in the sense that it “organizes” us, compels us towards, sustains or challenges our relationships with others.30

29 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 139. 30 Peter R, Costello, Layers in Husserl’s Phenomenology: On Meaning and Intersubjectivity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 100.

70  The Life-World Is Political Costello’s account is interesting for a number of reasons. In particular, by emphasizing the way in which the life-​world manifests above all in the “between,” he connects the life-​world as world, on the one hand, with the intersubjectivity through which the life-​world is constituted, on the other. Equally significant is that, in highlighting the “organizing” dynamic of the life-​world, through which the various “relationships, families, and societies” (more or less, we might add) harmoniously interpenetrate, Costello elucidates a characteristic of the life-​world which will be central to our analysis of legitimacy: that the life-​world is an ordered whole. He goes so far as to conclude: “To the question of whether the description of a life-​ world truly (and not simply metaphorically) appears as a Gestalt or an Organasmus, I believe Husserl to have answered in the affirmative.”31 That the life-​world is, across various ontological regions, a seamless whole means that its objectivity includes much more than what we typically designate as “nature.” Moran explains that the life-​world involves “the ‘intertwining’…or interpenetration between nature (as the object of the sciences and natural experience) and spirit (as culture).”32 Thus, it includes “ourselves, other persons, animals, social institutions, artifacts, symbolic systems, languages and religions.”33 That Moran did not expressly name states, republics, or kingdoms should not dissuade us from the obvious conclusion that these entities belong to the list. That such political realities may be rooted in the physical world does not mean that they can be reduced to their physical existence. In Husserl’s understanding, every concrete object in the life-​world necessarily has some kind of bodily character. Yet, a thing may have more than a merely bodily existence if it also possesses psychic or spiritual properties. That the objectivity of the life-​world also includes “objective spirit” should remind us that, for Husserl, “scientifically” reducing the world to its material existence is precisely the path that has led to the peculiar unreality characteristic of modernity. For positing a nature that is “independent of subjectivity, interpretation, and historical community” inevitably means conceiving it as a mere “system of idealities that in principle transcends sensuous experience.”34 In terms of political philosophy, a parallel may be made here between the “scientific world” (which is in fact no world) and “the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation” (which is in fact no political community). Now, we have seen that the life-​world corresponds to a “community” comprised of numerous other communities yet whose ultimate boundary and organization has until now been conceived only in a vague sense. On what basis can it be said that it is necessarily the political community that corresponds to the life-​world? Furthermore, why should it be said that 31 Ibid., 105. 32 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 184. 33 Ibid. 34 Zahavi., Husserl’s Phenomenology, 126–​8.

The Life-World Is Political  71 the life-​world is correlated with a single community? Moran, for example, observes that “there are enlarging circles where we belong –​my home, my workplace, my colleagues, my neighbours, my culture, my nation and so on.”35 This would seem to suggest a certain equivalency among communities, or at least gives no reason to think that there is one that is dominant in any way. Yet, if the life-​world truly is defined by the “universal horizon,” the “horizon of all experience,” and a “context of meaning” that provides a limit –​and if it itself is indeed intersubjectively constituted –​then there must be a singular community correlate to it. This would seem to be true even if (what must be called) subordinate communities, each with its own relative horizon, to some degree comprise this singular community. For in ruling out the possibility of a constitution of the life-​world by “humanity,” we will have necessarily also ruled out its constitution by an indefinite number of smaller “overlapping” communities. Consider, then: either the life-​world corresponds to some supposedly “smaller” community (than the political community) or it does not. If it does, then it becomes the singular community. If it does not –​and since the life-​world does not correspond to the totality of humanity (a possibility we have ruled out) –​then some larger community must be the source of the constitution of the world. This source must indeed be a community, at the very least insofar as it is functionally able to constitute the life-​world. Moreover, it must be one community, insofar as there is one life-​world. As Zahavi explains, the life-​world is “not at all a ‘heap of things,’ but is rather the all-​encompassing horizon and context of sense” that “exists in a uniqueness for which a plural form makes no sense.”36 In this light, the typical list of various communities of the life-​world commonly cited by Husserl commentators, invariably ending with “etc.,” or “and so on,” should not be taken as implying an actual indeterminacy in this regard, but rather as the result of a decision not to pursue this line of investigation. The fact that the specific community corresponding to the life-​world may not (indeed, will not) match up perfectly with any socially acknowledged legal, institutional, or cultural organizations or groupings is not only unproblematic, it is highly illuminating in terms of political philosophy. For it allows us to affirm with greater insight that the political community cannot simply be identified with the state qua legal apparatus. In zeroing in on the correlation specifically between the political community and the life-​world, I would like to suggest a spectrum that should help the analysis. On one far side, there is the (just dismissed) “community of humanity.” On the other extreme end of the spectrum, we can place Aristotle’s most basic “community” of man and woman. Now, we will assume with confidence that the horizon of the man-​woman relationship 35 Dermot Moran, Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 220. 36 Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, 41.

72  The Life-World Is Political is merely a horizon within the ultimate horizon of the life-​world (that is, their “world” is not “the” world simply). It seems established, then, that the world-​constituting we-​subjectivity resides not at either end of this spectrum, but rather somewhere in between. But where? My thesis, of course, is that the community we are in search of is normally and naturally the political community. Although I have laid much groundwork, in this chapter I have failed to establish this thesis. In what follows, however, in conducting a phenomenology of the political I will attempt to establish, through an appeal to direct experience, that the deepest meaning of Aristotle’s characterization of the political community as “complete” and “self-​sufficient” pertains to its continuous functioning with respect to the constitution of the world. By the same token, if successful, it will also be seen that functioning with respect to the constitution of the world can be said to be the deepest measure of any would-​be political community. To frame the issue more precisely, consider that there appear to be two basic approaches to locating the complete and self-​sufficient community on the spectrum laid out above (that is, with the “community of humanity” on one end, and the community of “man and woman” on the other). The first involves an investigation of the Aristotelian sort, observing human beings in real life and in particular in the functioning of their relationships, communities, and patterns of action. This approach discerns the natural intelligibility that indicates the presence of excellence and flourishing. It notices that the political community is the community in which human beings are able not only to live, but to live well. One observes in this regard that the mere village is not extensive enough to allow for full human flourishing. One also observes that organizational structures beyond the political community, while possibly practical and desirable in particular circumstances for partial and specific ends, are not essentially necessary. A second avenue of inquiry for establishing the complete and self-​ sufficient (that is, political) community is to identify the community which constitutes the life-​ world through its intersubjectivity. This approach requires an adoption of the phenomenological perspective. Whereas in the Aristotelian approach there was a discernment of what was necessary for full functioning and flourishing, we will now be concerned with tracing and elucidating the specific types of intending that I will call, broadly speaking, “political subjectivity.” Notably, this approach adopts the first-​person perspective, by which access to intersubjectivity may be retained. For example, the shift to political subjectivity will involve the observation that the experience of all objects beyond the “limit” of the political community is refracted through their intentional apprehension as “foreign” or “otherworldly.” As we will see, it will also involve an analysis of experiences of belonging/​possession and authority as well. Admittedly, until such a phenomenology of the political is carried out, my thesis rests upon mere definition: the political community is by definition that one which constitutes the life-​world through its transcendental intersubjectivity. Moreover, there remains the theoretical possibility that the

The Life-World Is Political  73 complete and self-​sufficient community discovered through an Aristotelian inquiry into objective flourishing will not, in fact, match up with the one discovered as world-​constituting. Yet, this too will be established through an analysis of direct experience. For evidence for (or against) making a correlation between the objective structures of the political community and the content of political subjectivity is necessarily present in an elucidation of the latter. The essential relation, then, between the concrete structures of legitimate law and government, on the one hand, and experiences of authority, on the other, will be directly seen –​if at all –​in carrying out a phenomenology of the political. Having accomplished such an inquiry as the one I have described, a new path for locating the political will have been found. This approach would seem to go beyond the Aristotelian insofar as 1) it proceeds on distinctly human terms (for Aristotle, man is the “most” political animal) and 2) it documents the “inner” structure of the living political community.

7 Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions Transition to Political Subjectivity

The appropriate philosophical footing for undertaking an ontology of the political community is reached through what in phenomenological parlance is called the eidetic reduction. The final knowledge aimed at in such an inquiry will not concern individual existing regimes, but rather will begin with concrete particulars as a means of seeking a priori essences through “eidetic intuition.”1 This process is descriptive rather than deductive. Levinas characterizes the eidetic reduction as follows: “Using as ‘an example’ the world concretely given, perceived, or imagined, we reach its essence and describe its necessary structure.”2 Now, the eide arrived at through the eidetic reduction “have neither the exactness nor the perfect determination of geometric concepts,” and any attempt to express them in such terms will necessarily “deprive them of their life and concreteness.”3 One sees precisely this reality doom all attempts to theorize the political community in terms of “the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation.” For indeed, in order remove all social contingency, a kind of “geometrical” conception of society is adopted, in which the human community is conceived of as x number of people –​understood as equal, identical, contracting individuals –​engaged in a common “project” of securing generic “social goods.” In this way, the political is lost, for the reason that, as Levinas remarks, it is “primarily through those inexact concepts [of eidetic intuition] that we determine the essence of the world.”4 Despite the importance of the eidetic reduction and apprehension of essences, however, this is in fact only “the first step toward the phenomenological attitude,” the fullness of which is achieved through what is called the transcendental reduction.5 According to Matheson Russell, the operation of the transcendental reduction “brings into view the fundamental subject matter of Husserlian phenomenology –​i.e. pure intentional

1 Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 116. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 117. These are the “morphological essences” discussed by Zahavi. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 116.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-7

Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions  75 consciousness –​and isolates it as a sphere of being for investigation.”6 A detailed account of this operation is not permitted to us. We should say, however, that it involves a radical alteration of the normal, taken-​for-​ granted positings regarding the existence of the world characteristic of the natural attitude. The transcendental reduction is achieved through a methodological “bracketing” or “putting out of action” of ordinary, unreflective assumptions concerning the real existence of the world. Such an alteration, called by Husserl the epochē, will figure in our coming analysis, most explicitly in relation to the question of foreign worlds. Through the epochē, explains Matheson, “one enters into the field of philosophical enquiry by staying aloof from all positive affirmations of the real world –​including even the tacit affirmations that are interwoven in ordinary perceptions.”7 Critical for our inquiry is the consequence that, through this change of perspective, “the subject’s ‘possession’ of the world is precisely what becomes thematic.”8 Up to this point it has not been necessary to specify these methodological precisions. At this time, however, it is appropriate to observe that our inquiry into the political community has thus far made use only of the eidetic reduction and the seeking of the a priori “essence of the world” (to use Levinas’ phrase). Specifically, throughout our various discussions, I have spoken of the intelligibility of the complete and self-​sufficient community and the various “sub”-​communities which comprise its essential structure. In doing so (via a reference to Aristotle for reasons of brevity) I have relied on the “evidence” of the reader’s imagined or perceived experience of the political. In the last chapter, however, I introduced the central thesis that the political community and the life-​world are coterminous. Now, as we have seen, the life-​world is not an object of investigation in the natural attitude. My findings were therefore inconclusive, since I did not attempt an analysis of the life-​world, but only defined the political community as that community responsible for its constitution by transcendental intersubjectivity. To enter into an investigation of the life-​world and political subjectivity, it will be necessary to undergo the transcendental reduction. In doing so, however, we will not be concerned with “constitutive analysis” per se (that is, the constitution of the totality of the real by transcendental subjectivity), but rather with acts specifically constitutive of the political domain. Having discovered and isolated “pure intentional consciousness” through the transcendental reduction, political subjectivity may be explored through an eidetic analysis of political experience. Such an inquiry is possible because, as Levinas explains:

6 Matheson Russell, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 58. 7 Ibid., 66. 8 Ibid., 73.

76  Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions Erlebnisse [that is, experiences] have essences, a necessary structure, and as such they are governed by eidetic laws…the structure of the act which constitutes each category of objects is a necessary structure and has its foundation in the eidetic laws of these acts.9 For Husserl, the fact that conscious experience is itself a concrete (though not physical) object means that the world will not drop out or be abandoned in our analysis.10 Indeed, it is fundamental to emphasize that the operation of epochē and reduction in no way entail that the being of the world is somehow excluded from the sphere of phenomenological research.11 Rather, the idea is that through the shift to the phenomenological perspective, in which the validity of the natural attitude is “suspended,” we are enabled to “approach reality in a way that will allow for a disclosure of its true sense.”12 Thus, as will be seen in the following chapters, with the transition to political subjectivity the ontological structure of the political community remains available. The inseparability of conscious acts from the objects (of perception, imagination, and so forth) with which they are correlated is precisely what is meant by the Husserlian concept of intentionality. Matheson explains the manner in which the intentionality of consciousness emerges in the transcendental reduction: The conscious experience of the world which remains after the transcendental reduction is given the title “intentionality.” The “intentional” structure of transcendental consciousness is the primary object of interest for Husserlian phenomenology…phenomenology is about staying with the conscious experience of the world itself, tarrying awhile, observing it in all its variety and in all of its dimensions, and then describing it according to its structures. In short then, the transcendental reduction leads directly to the central topic of phenomenological research: intentionality.13 Exploring political subjectivity will therefore be to pursue the intentionality proper to political experience. In this investigation, instead of tarrying and observing the world “in all its variety and in all of its dimensions, and then describing it according to its structures,” we seek to observe and describe the structure of the specifically political dimension of the world. In the Crisis, Husserl asserts:

9 Levinas, The Theory of Intuition, 140. 10 Ibid. 11 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 45. 12 Ibid. 13 Matheson, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed, 73.

Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions  77 If we systematically uncover [the] “intersubjective constitution” of the world, meaning by this the total system of manners of givenness…the world as it is for us becomes understandable as a structure of meaning formed out of elementary intentionalities.14 It is specifically the political sense of the world’s “structure of meaning” that we wish to elucidate. Now, it is axiomatic that the intentionalities to be uncovered and described, collectively comprising “political subjectivity,” involve categories of intentional acts essential to any human world-​consciousness. In other words, the intentional acts I will attempt to analyze implicate necessary categories of meaning for any conceivable life-​world. Thus, although the knowledge sought is in a certain respect “inexact” and “descriptive” (that is, not geometric, for instance), aiming at the essence of political experience is nonetheless an attempt to reveal what is universal for human beings. Political intentionalities are constitutional achievements that correspond to the lawful “essential typicalities” of the life-​world and its universal ontological structure. Just as color or temporality, for example, are essential categories of experience for any normal human consciousness, so the intentional acts which I will identify as properly political –​constituting the experience or perception of authority, for e­ xample –​correspond to the “universal ‘form’ of the life-​world.”15 To further anticipate the knowledge sought in this inquiry, we may say already that it is characteristic of various objects or actions of a specifically political nature to pertain to the whole community since, as we have said, the political community is correlated in some way with the horizon of the life-​world. Now, from the phenomenological perspective, all objects, in a certain sense, are revealed as ultimately “pertaining” to the whole, insofar as the world itself becomes thematic in this way. This can be seen in Husserl’s reasoning that every datum is given within a horizon, beyond which yet “further horizons are implied,” with the final consequence that “anything at all that is given in a worldly manner brings the world-​horizon with it.”16 Nonetheless, despite this fact that every worldly datum, through a series of implicit horizons, brings the world-​horizon with it, we will see that political objects are characterized by a more or less direct connection with the order of the whole, insofar as they determine or represent the whole in a more or less explicit manner. The difficulty for our inquiry arises from the fact that, in the absence of an express association with certain designated concrete objects such as governmental buildings and so forth. (which express designation is not 14 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1970), 168 (§ 49). 15 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 210. 16 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 264–​5 (§ 47).

78  Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions itself determinative), “the political” cannot be grasped as an object per se in the natural attitude, any more than the life-​world. Just as the life-​world is a kind of horizonal “limit idea,” so the United States, the Kingdom of Morocco, or, for that matter, Ancient Athens or the Roman Empire cannot be grasped as objects fully present (in fact or to the mind). Thus, in identifying and analyzing the objects, actions, and experiences that most directly determine or represent the order of the whole, the ultimate overlapping of the political community with the life-​world makes the political difficult to discern. In short, the political just is the order of the life-​world, only insofar as it is apprehended in terms of its latent or actual correspondence to the concrete life of the whole community. The problem is not one of mere perception (for instance, that one cannot take in Russia in a single visual glance) but that Russia is –​above all –​a world. For Russians, it is “the” world. On the other hand, as we will see in our discussion of foreignness in Chapter 10, the possible experience of “not Russia” by a member of the Russian world alerts us to an important divergence between the concepts of the life-​world and political community. My thesis, however, is not that the life-​world and political community are identical, but rather that they are inseparably connected. I have used the word “coterminous.” By this, however, I do not mean primarily any kind of shared external boundary (for example, a circumference), but rather a more or less actualized overlapping at all points. My goal is to highlight and explore the “places” or “ways” in which –​in the nature of things –​the connection between the life-​world and political community is most clearly and properly manifested. This will be accomplished through an analysis of the essential structures of a certain definite set of universal political experiences. Now, given the purpose of establishing the political sense of the life-​ world, the technical meaning of the word “sense” (Sinn) in Husserl’s phenomenology should be briefly clarified. Moran remarks that, in fact, the discernment of sense or meaning is the central focus of phenomenology, broadly defined as the establishment of the “essential character” of the “mode of givenness” of any object of experience (including dreams and hallucinations).17 Certainly, then, this conception carries wider connotations than its mere linguistic meaning. Rather, “sense” refers to the status of an object as remembered, as perceived, as imagined, or as a material object with a corresponding spatio-​temporal existence.18 The sense of an object also includes its “own peculiar way of coming to prominence, its own temporal duration, its structural form, implied connection with other experiences and so on.”19 Finally, the sense or meaning of a thing includes its ontological status or ontic meaning. We note, for example, that the ontic sense of a rosary is notably different than that of the same 17 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 51. 18 Ibid., 50–​1. 19 Ibid., 51.

Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions  79 object used as a necklace. In the same way, the ontological character of the magazine I am reading is of a specific kind, even though I may temporarily use it as a fly swatter. Finally, understanding the meaning of “sense” requires a consideration of the central teaching of phenomenology with respect to the correspondence between the intended object and the intentional act. In this way, then, sense is “two-​sided,” having both subjective and objective dimensions.20 Now, the constitution of objects by subjectivity means that sense will always be due in part “to our particular attitudes, presuppositions, background beliefs, values, historical horizons and so on.”21 Moreover, because the life-​world is constituted intersubjectively, our sense of the world will also be partly due to the contribution of Others. However, the objective element of the two-​sided nature of intentionality means that neither the subjective side of sense nor its necessary constitution within the intersubjective community are barriers to the discernment of essential structures of experience or a corresponding ontology of the life-​world. In this present inquiry, we wish to suspend, or bracket, some actual experience of a particular political community, either perceived, imagined, or remembered. This done, having adopted the perspective by which we can make our own experience an object of investigation, we will attempt to clarify and elucidate its universal eidetic sense. More specifically, we will proceed through the exploration of three major themes, giving an analysis of: 1) the experience of common belonging and possession; 2) the experience of authority; and 3) the experience of the foreignness of people and/​or places (from) outside the community. Aristotle remarks that, “just as a sailor is one of a number of sharers, so is a citizen.”22 Now, to share is to have a number of people possess something in common. The specific order created in the sharing will depend on who the people are and what is shared. With regard to a political community, Aristotle observes that many things may and must be shared for a political community to exist –​such as a certain territory, language, legal system, economic market, relationships of intermarriage, and a common defense.23 These elements, however, are not sufficient for the existence of the unique entity that is the polis. For this, he says, what is needed is a sharing in a special kind of friendship and a commitment to a form of excellence and “noble deeds.”24 We may accept that Aristotle is correct that a commonly understood good life is the core of the political relationship and what makes a regime be a regime. It is, moreover, no doubt the part of the political philosopher 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 52. 22 Aristotle, Politics, 67. III 4 1276b20–​21. 23 Ibid., 75–​7. 9 1280a7–​1281a8. 24 Ibid., 77. 1281a2–​3.

80  Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions to pursue knowledge of what is universal within a spectrum of possible good ways of life, and to explain why it is only within a political partnership that virtues are both comprehensible and achievable. Yet, insofar as the ever-​present possibility of a resurgent radical disagreement among human beings can and factually does overwhelm any shared intelligible common order, political philosophy must also 1) provide an analysis identifying the conditions and actual process by which common order concretely comes to be (when, indeed, it does come to be) out of a state of radical disagreement and/​or mutual incomprehension, and 2) offer an understanding of legitimacy that traces its origins to the conditions and the process just mentioned. Having been thrown back, as it were, upon the radical disagreement in which apparently nothing can be presupposed about the good life, and nonetheless constrained by the demand for justification and understanding inherent in human rationality, the peculiar competency of phenomenology becomes evident: a fresh turn to an analysis of political experience –​a phenomenology of the political –​emerges as the logical starting point. The theoretical orientation sought, the fruitfulness of which becomes available only in the transcendental reduction, takes its bearing from the observation that: each individual “knows” himself to be living within the horizon of his fellow human beings, with whom he can enter into sometimes actual, sometimes potential contact, as they can also do (as he likewise knows) in actual and potential living together.25 Every man knows, of course, that he experiences the same things as his fellows, only from different perspectives and at different moments. However, each man is also aware that his own unique experiences are derived from the “same total system of multiplicities of which each individual is constantly conscious (in the actual experience of the same thing) as the horizon of possible experience of this thing.”26 What is of particular interest for a phenomenology of the political is how the “knowledge” that I have of myself as living within the horizon of my fellow human beings is operative in achieving a legitimate political order. Realism is no doubt correct that coercion is needed to establish and maintain a framework in answer to the first political question of establishing a basic order. Yet to the extent that reason must both precede and inform the pursuit of legitimate order –​and, moreover, to the extent that legitimacy just is a rational justification –​political philosophy must seek to know how the “knowledge” that I and my fellows “can enter into sometimes actual, sometimes potential contact” is essential to creating political “space.” If part of knowing myself to be living within the horizon of my fellow human 25 Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 164 (§ 47). 26 Ibid.

Eidetic and Transcendental Reductions  81 beings is knowing that I and my fellows, in our actual contact, are related to the same experienced things, it must also be asked what commonly experienced things are specifically constitutive of political order? From these precisions, it is evident that our interest is not in intersubjectivity per se, but rather the discernment of the political, insofar as it is a defining aspect of the “total set of multiplicities” in which the members of the community participate. In sum, we seek to know, with regard to the concretely existing political community, what are the intentional objects and acts involved in the “knowledge” that a regime is legitimate, that the person next to me is a fellow countryman, that this is a public place?

8 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity I Belonging and Possession

The first theme of political subjectivity to be addressed is that of belonging and possession, which is in many ways the most basic and accessible. Consider, for example, the way a person –​either casually, emphatically, proudly, or perhaps with disgust –​speaks of “my country.” I submit that in speaking this way, the word “my” expresses a certain consciousness, a particular relationship between oneself and reality in general. It is not mere information, or a legal or geographical “fact” about oneself, as one might talk about “my” social security number. Yet neither is it primarily personal, in the way that I speak of “my family” or “my social circle.” It possesses universality, but in a worldly sense –​it is public. Although later in life I may move abroad, I do not initially choose my country, thus lending it the aura of destiny. Indeed, I could renounce my country, setting my face henceforth like flint again all “political” associations, living only as an “individual,” or “member of society.” But what society? What is its structure and authority, its manner of overcoming disagreement and dissent? And who am I, and in what world do I dwell, living in that mathematicized garb of ideas natural science calls “nature”? Perhaps a god? Perhaps a beast? Yet if such things are impossible, what is involved in “having” a political community, in “belonging” within an order both universal and in a certain sense anonymous, and yet which penetrates to my deepest self ? How is such experience related to the overall structure of consciousness? More precisely, what are the subjective acts that make such experience both possible and necessary? Having posed these questions, let us begin the analysis with a concrete example: Two men stand near the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, on a radiant, yet slightly crisp spring day, during the National Cherry Blossom Festival. One of them, Mr. Gonzales, is American, and the other, M. Mourlon, is French. Now both of these men are regarding the same physical structure. However, the ontic sense the edifice has for each of them is dramatically different. As we have seen, a particular manner of intending –​a specific intentional DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-8

Belonging and Possession  83 act –​corresponds to each of the different ontological senses apprehended by each man. Notably, the American intends the structure as “mine” in some sense, even though he does not of course have legal title to the property. By contrast, the Frenchman, as much as he may admire the structure or appreciate its symbolic and public function, does not intend it as “mine.” He may intend it as “formidable,” “moving,” or “effective,” but not as “mine.” Now, discerning political subjectivity involves elucidating what is essential in this situation. In doing so, we shall subtract the two men’s feelings about the monument. For it is fully possible that the American, for example, detests the Washington Monument, from either an aesthetic point of view or because of contempt for his country, of which it is a part. Yet, so long as he “knows” himself to be an American, he nonetheless intends it as “mine” in a certain sense. To observe that he might vehemently want to disown the monument (and the country to which it belongs) would merely prove the point that it is “his” in a fundamental sense. The removal of these and other contingent or variable dimensions of experience is crucial in establishing the essential structure of this aspect of political subjectivity. For while a potentially infinite range of individual affective responses could in theory attach to an object (praise, resentment, or even indifference), the theme “belonging and possession” involves a certain irreducible and categorical ontic sense that the world has for everyone. Political belonging and possession is an a priori potentiality of human experience, meaning that any person will necessarily intend the Washington Monument as “mine” (or not) in this specific sense, as the case may be. We shall attempt to elucidate this special kind of intending or subjectivity. In proposing political belonging and possession as an essential category of experience, inherent in the very structure of the life-​world, I assume a normally knowledgeable and rational person. Thus, for example, a very small child may not, indeed, regard the monument in quite this manner. Consider, however, a philosophical objection to my thesis, such as an anarchist might make, who has concluded on the basis of rational argumentation that no state is authoritative (and hence that no political community truly “exists”). I would respond that his argument does not alter the evident truth that such political belonging and possession is an essential potentiality of human experience. Although he might insist that the “essentiality” of which I speak was no such thing, but merely a kind of collective delusion, I would simply point out his argument takes place at a level of abstraction removed from actual experience. In fact, he either does (or does not) intend it as his own. It seems evident that discerning the specific mode of belonging and possession which we are in the process of elucidating presupposes and depends on an analysis of human embodiment and spatio-​temporal existence, which we shall not give here. Moreover, we begin from the fact that populations of people do intend their common world as “our own.” The task of “proving” the essentiality of this specific type of intending involves

84  Belonging and Possession identifying it as a unique and irreducible dimension of the life-​world. For this we assume not simply the first-​person perspective, but furthermore take our own consciousness as a concrete object of analysis, seeking to grasp the eidetic laws of its acts. In phenomenological reflection, we use a “concrete perceived state of consciousness” as an “example” (which may consist in actual experience or, as in the present case, an imaginary hypothetical), entering into “ideative reflection…in order to return to its essence.”1 The analysis we are pursuing tells us that we constitute the world in terms of belonging and possession. The point is not to assert a strict dichotomy –​ there may be subtlety, nuance, and even ambiguity in the ways we possess and belong –​but rather that the world is constituted in these terms. To identify more precisely this specifically political sort of belonging and possession, let me slightly adjust the hypothetical. Standing beside Mr. Gonzales is Mr. Nabokov (also an American), a colleague who is accompanying him on this fine day. They are in town for a conference and, having the afternoon off, have gone out to do some sightseeing. Speaking of the Washington Monument, we can say, in Husserlian terms, that Gonzales “knows” that he and his companion are related to the same experienced things in such a way that, although each perceives, at a given moment, different aspects, sides, and perspectives, the experienced objects are nonetheless taken from the same “total system of multiplicities of which each individual is constantly conscious (in the actual experience of the same thing) as the horizon of possible experience of this thing.” Now, although the terms “aspects,” “sides,” and “perspectives” refer most plainly to the intending of perceived objects, Husserl’s analysis in this passage applies to the horizon of possible experience. This means that, beyond a physical structure possessing the same identity for all (despite being perceived, for example, at different angles by different individuals), in the total system of multiplicities, objects such as the Washington Monument will also appear as possessed in a political manner (or not). Gonzales “knows” that the people with whom he interacts themselves either do or do not intend the monument as “mine,” and he intends them as such. The upshot is that, in intending the object as “mine,” and knowing that others say “mine” in this specific sense, each member of the community also says “ours.” For Gonzales and Nabokov in their intersubjective relationship, then, the Washington Monument has the ontic sense “ours.” Their intending “ours,” of course, extends beyond the two of them to all Americans, each of whom, as they “know,” can and does say “mine” in this special sense.

1 Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 141.

Belonging and Possession  85 It is central to my thesis that there is a fundamental, continuous (if not continuously an object of reflection) identification of the individual with his community as a whole. I want to say that this is a necessary and therefore essential dimension of human experience or consciousness. The opposite, for example, does not seem to be imaginable, at least for a normally functioning individual. For consider that if I reject all political organization, strictly taking myself to be only one individual among other individuals, I nonetheless know myself to be living “along with” some definite, if evolving, number of other human beings existing within the whole universe. In this way, I necessarily conceptualize myself as living in a supposed “community of humanity.” In short, I must take up some relationship to the others, even if it is only that of an asserted separation from the “them” of whom I can never be quite free so long as (I know that) they exist (or could potentially exist). As Husserl says, every individual knows himself to be living within the horizon of his fellow human beings –​which is to say he knows himself to be a part of a concrete community. That the community can possess things can be seen in our example of the Washington Monument, which has the ontological status of “belonging” to America and Americans. Of course, anyone’s particular experience of the monument will vary greatly depending on an indefinite number of other possible factors ranging from their historical knowledge to their personal life experiences. Yet despite such diversity of knowledge and experience, we notice that the monument is apprehended as related in each case to the political community as a whole in terms of this belonging and possession. Even the aforementioned anarchist will see it as a structure which does not belong in any way to the asserted non-​community of the totality of existing human beings. It is this relation to the whole that is the locus of the distinctly political. It is therefore the intending of objects as related (in some way) to the whole that designates a particular constitutive act consciousness as a function of political subjectivity. For this reason, while the relationship of the monument to my family is not political per se (since my family is not, indeed, coterminous with the life-​world), the monument’s relation to American families is political! Yet it is not only explicitly public lands or edifices that entail the whole and therefore are political. Private property, for example, by definition possesses a special and moreover highly charged political significance. For when I intend another’s property as “theirs,” I understand it specifically as “marked off ” within the whole in a peculiar sense, as determined by the particularities (legal, customary) of the concrete political community. Nor is it only physical objects that are intended as belonging to the whole and “possessed politically.” One intends our national honor, or holds in esteem our architectural sensibility, martial spirit, intellectual achievement, or perhaps the physical beauty of “our” citizens. The common possession of “our” citizens explains the specific outrage and urgency that attends the danger or injury of fellow countrymen abroad. We intend one another –​and have

86  Belonging and Possession the ontic sense for one another –​as belonging to each other in the specific political sense of being part of the whole of the (political) community. This “knowledge” of belonging to (and being possesses by) the whole can be seen more clearly if we widen yet further the perspective of our hypothetical. If, for example, Gonzales and his companions were to shift their attention from the Washington Monument to the cherry blossoms and stroll along the Potomac River, gazing up at the billowy clouds and the resplendent April sky, we notice that the “world” in which they are living and breathing has the ontic sense “ours.” Furthermore, if, as Gonzales and his companion make their way, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of the day, the two discuss a third colleague who is currently visiting Glacier National Park in Montana, we notice that in doing so they intend that absent location as “ours” too. As an objection to my thesis, let us say that someone, unhappy with the “politicization” they perceive to be involved in my thesis, insists that a certain natural expanse (say, some part of the Appalachian Mountains) has a non-​political existence preceding –​and therefore more fundamental –​than the political community “America.” They say that, although individuals may “occupy” it, any political claims to this area are, as it were, invalid. They assert, contrary to my thesis, that they intend it utterly “non-​politically” and that, for them, it has the ontic sense of being a pure, untamed wilderness that is not subject to the “laws of men” except by imposture and trespass. Yet, this way of putting it would be a misunderstanding, in that the legal status of a given territory is not determinative with regard to the existence of the political, the essentiality of which entirely precedes modern concepts of legislation. There may or may not be an institutional apparatus to which claims of sovereignty are attributed in any given area. The significance of the argument that the Appalachian wilderness is not part of any political territory lies in its implied assertion that a “hole” or lacuna might exist in the political meaning with which the world is intrinsically infused. However, with an understanding of political subjectivity, we perceive that the claim of a non-​political expanse of wilderness merely demonstrates that the objector, who is necessarily an embodied human being and part of an intersubjective community, is continuing to view the world in terms of political categories –​in this case specifically as not belonging to any “we” whatsoever. In may be countered that the objection was raised only in response to a prior, unnecessary politicization (in this case, created by the claim asserted by “America” over a zone in the Appalachian wilderness). Now, it could be argued against this counter-​objection that, in fact, governments (and therefore “politicization”) will always exist, since individuals or small groups cannot reliably and sustainably supply their own needs, including protection from the violence of others. Yet, such an appeal to merely factual exigencies of this kind is not of present interest. Rather, the relevant challenge posed by the counter-​objection to my thesis involves the assertion

Belonging and Possession  87 of an essential possibility of leaving the political behind –​of living merely as individuals who possess and belong only as a matter of choice (that is, “socially”). First of all, the idea of determining one’s belonging and possession purely on an individual basis contradicts Husserl’s account of the life-​ world by seeming to presuppose individuals without any concrete intersubjective community (for example, as in a literal reading of a “state of nature” account of life, prior to civil society). For Husserl, this would mean, per impossibile, the existence of “worldless” subject. Secondly, however, and above all, in imagining or judging an area of the world to be without political order, one nonetheless intends political order, only, in Husserlian terms, absently. This is to say, one intends the area precisely as unpossessed and as a place in which no one belongs, thus proving the essentiality of this dimension of political subjectivity. Consider, for example, that one might enjoy contemplating (or not) the idea of a whole universe without human or any other rational life, attempting to imagine what a world would be like without human political community. Yet, of course, in doing so, one secretly projects oneself into this universe supposedly devoid of human life –​a universe offering the ever-​present possibility of proclaiming oneself king! Now, political possessing and belonging, though pertaining to the whole, should not be taken in an overly literal or static sense. On the one hand, the intersubjective constitution of the world, combined with the embodied dimension of human life and relations, necessarily entails a connection between the life-​world and a physical setting. Moreover, such a larger setting is also critical in that physical objects –​including the lived bodily presence of human beings –​can only be perceived as objects along with a co-​intended background. On the other hand, the world is always more or less in a state of constant flux and development. Such fluidity in the setting or background creates no exception to the truth of political subjectivity –​that the world is experienced as possessed (or not). To take an extreme example, even members of a nomadic tribe would seem to experience themselves as “rooted” within the order of the world in which they move. The fact that they do not remain in one place, fix permanent boundaries, and attach regulatory laws with sanctions to specific plots of land does not make it any less “their” world. Conversely, a group of shipwrecked sailors will likely experience themselves as “aliens” on the very small, remote island where they take refuge. Confined to a practically unchanging setting for many years, in a life in which they are the sole and uncontested “rulers,” they may nonetheless never come to know the island as “theirs.” In the same way, in a modern urban setting in which practically all aspects of life are regulated and controlled, people may very well not feel “at home.” In short, although it may be normal and natural for man to belong to and possess his world, there is no necessity that it be experienced as such. Rather, what is necessary is only that it be experienced in these terms. These examples, moreover, make

88  Belonging and Possession it clear that “political belonging and possession” do not primarily pertain to the functioning of legal systems or geographical territory. Governments, laws, and territories are in fact objects that may be imbued with the political, as it were, but they are not “the” political –​which is indeed a non-​ objectifiable dimension of the life-​world. With regard to this theme of political subjectivity, then, we assert, strictly speaking, that the world is necessarily seen as “ours” (or not) in the sense of its belonging –​we to it, and it to us. Crucially, although “the” world is (normally and naturally) experienced as “ours,” certain objects (for instance, the territory of other countries, but also certain objects in our own country) may be not-​ours. We will turn to this problematic in the third theme of political subjectivity, specifically that concerning political others and foreignness. For the moment, we observe only the all-​encompassing nature of the subjective experience of “our” world. Inasmuch as the life-​ world is the ultimate horizon of experience, the thesis that the political community is experienced as coterminous with it means that the world is experienced as ours in its totality –​which is to say, that we belong to this world and no other –​ because there is no other. It is, of course, possible, upon reflection, to understand in an abstractly rationalized manner that “the” world (that is, of Nature) in fact belongs to a number of different communities. Yet an investigation in the phenomenological perspective reveals that, unless confronted with a specific object of attention that is not-​ours, subjectivity intends the whole world, the non-​ objectifiable co-​intended background to all objects, as definitely ours. Such an observation explains the deep sense of alienation entailed in the viewpoint wherein the natural and normal common intending of the world as “ours” is disrupted, for any number of reasons, in the experience of a given individual. Because of the tension necessarily involved (due to its abnormality and unnaturalness) in such a dissonance with the community on this most profound point (that is, being part of “the” world), it becomes easier to comprehend the interest and inclination of certain individuals to join together and create a more or less nascent and insurgent revolutionary “anti-​world” within the political community. In returning to the original hypothetical, we recall that the scope of the analysis, which began with the “possession” of the Washington Monument, expanded to the “possession” of the world “America.” By means of the hypothetical, we discussed the manner in which one “looks at” one’s political community (that is, sees a part of it, internally imagines it, or simply “knows” it is there) and says “mine.” The more recently raised points, however, have emphasized the way in which, as embodied active egos existing within the world, we also intend ourselves as belonging to and possessed by the world. Let us clarify that in saying “mine” with regard to America, our hypothetical American personages (Gonzales and Nabokov) indicate a certain “objective” existential situation (paralleling the paradoxical relationship of the empirical and transcendental egos) wherein they equally

Belonging and Possession  89 belong to and are possessed by America (in this special sense which we want to identify as political), the experience of which will vary depending on their perspective at a given moment. With regard to belonging, to intend myself as an “object” that “belongs” to the larger political community is to intend myself as being in a certain condition with regard to the whole of my political community (and the world). Political possession folds over, as it were, into political belonging, and vice versa . As “belonging,” I recognize that my community and I have certain reciprocal claims on each other. Again, it is necessary to subtract any number of the vast, shifting, contingent, affective experiences which may attach to my belonging. I may, for example, experience it deeply as a true home which I love and admire, of which I am proud, and which I am willing to defend. On the other hand, I may find my belonging to be odious, oppressive, and unwanted. Be that as it may, I will necessarily regard and intend myself as belonging (or not) to a given political community. To conclude this theme, the phenomenological investigation we have conducted seems to make deeply problematic the idea that a normally and naturally functioning person could, in fact, not belong (in the special political sense which we want to identify) to a political community. To do this, one would evidently need to deny either 1) the intersubjective constitution of the life-​world, or 2) that the life-​world and the political community are coterminous –​that is, to assert that “our” world is not “the” world. On the other hand, the mere fact of intersubjectivity does itself not “prove” the thesis that the life-​world is political. Moreover, with regard to the second possible denial, establishing the world-​expansive character of belonging and possession does not alone establish the life-​world as specifically political. Other themes must be pursued. To summarize our results thus far, let us take three statements, each of which will embody some conclusion with regard to this theme of political subjectivity. In order to highlight the point that the “political community” cannot be identified with any particular constitution or legal entity, we will vary our examples by imagining hypothetical (no doubt somewhat caricatured) statements of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, a “son of Virginia.” In the first statement, let us imagine Gen. Jackson in conversation with a visitor, gesturing about himself with pride and exclaiming “This is Virginia!” Now, in light of the specific sensibilities and legal opinions of his time, it seems likely that the life-​world of Jackson would have been none other than Virginia. This is certainly why, beyond any practical or constitutional arguments in favor of secession (which he initially opposed), he would have chosen loyalty to his state over the federal government. In this statement, in exclaiming “This is Virginia!”, Jackson does not mean to refer to any particular physical object in his immediate surroundings or even beyond. Nor is he drawing attention to the totality of his physical environment, including that which exceeds his present perceptive field. Rather, in exclaiming “This is Virginia!”, Jackson is indicating –​and

90  Belonging and Possession attaching a name to –​his “world.” Such a statement embodies the basic principle of political subjectivity that the true political community maps onto the life-​world. I will now propose a second statement. Imagine Gen. Jackson huddled in a meeting with other Virginians discussing the possible seccession in response to the Union invasion of the state. At some point he states, with emphasis, “With courage and tenacity, we shall defend our state.” Now, we already discussed, in some detail above, how Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Nabokov, each sharing the same horizon and “knowing” the experience of the other, saw America together as “ours.” Here, in a different context, in a different life-​world and political community, we see Jackson intending and expressing the experience of the “possession” (along with the other citizens around him) of “their” world of Virginia. For the third statement, imagine Jackson, having been seriously wounded at Chancellorsville and now afflicted with the pneumonia from which he would die in the next week, lying in bed and engaged in a conversation in which he is reflecting on his life as a whole. Although admittedly Jackson’s ultimate motivations seemed to be religious, we may imagine him at one point leaning forward and, looking intently into the eyes of his interlocutor, saying definitively, “I am a Virginian.” I propose that such a remark is a “transcendental clue” from which we can trace a line to a fundamental element of political subjectivity, namely the way in which one “belongs” to one’s political community. Again, the sense of belonging to one’s family or to a particular civic association would not have the specifically political character of belonging to the whole world, and hence would not be part of political subjectivity. Now, to be clear, I do not say Jackson has no “knowledge” of larger “communities” (for example, the Union or the Confederacy as a whole). “Political,” however, by definition refers to the dominant horizon and its corresponding community. Jackson surely “knew” that Virginia was just one state within the Union, but he would have experienced it (that is, unreflectively, in the natural attitude) as the horizon of “the” world. “The Union” would have been abstract to him and derivative upon “the” world of Virginia. In concluding this first theme of political subjectivity, we affirm that, in order to discern the “sense” of the world revealed by each of the above statements, and in doing so to adumbrate some of the main lines of political subjectivity, it is necessary to take the phenomenological perspective. I begin by bracketing or “putting out of action” the normal positings regarding the existence of the world, a step whereby my possession of the world becomes thematic. In this way, my perception of the world as “Virginia,” as “mine” and “ours,” and of myself as “a Virginian” becomes directly (and objectively) clarified. More than that, however, through the epochē, the pure intentional consciousness in which the world is constituted becomes available for investigation. In subsequently exploring this “sphere of being” of consciousness, I am able to perceive the evident truth of the

Belonging and Possession  91 statements we examined: the world really is “Virginia,” really is “mine” and “ours,” and I really do “belong” to it. Typically, the realities to which such statements as we have just examined refer are perceived naïvely, in the natural attitude. This means, for example, that in my experience that the world is America, I am not aware of my own “contribution of consciousness” or the “transcendental accomplishments” involved in the constitution of its objectivity.2 For Zahavi, to the extent that I remain unaware I am “self-​alienated” and the world is unliberated due to “a hidden abstraction.”3 Yet, through philosophy, when I “cease to posit the world naïvely,” although I “continue to observe, thematize, and make judgments concerning” it, I now consider it as an “intentional correlate.”4 Now, if to remain naïvely political is to be “self-​alienated,” this might seem to raise the possibility of “freeing” oneself (through a phenomenological inquiry) from political existence altogether. In seeing that the world is essentially constituted in terms of possession and belonging, one purports to free oneself from the need to possess and belong in this way. Drawing such a conclusion, however, would be precipitate. For, just as the phenomenological epochē can provide a kind of liberation from the alienation entailed in the attempt to live in the “world” as presented by the empirical sciences, taking the phenomenological perspective may indeed free us from certain distortions wrought on the personality and the community in political life (in fact, this book can be seen as an attempt to do just this). However, just as phenomenology does not destroy but, on the contrary, leaves perfectly intact the world as experienced in the natural attitude (that is, the real world in which we must continue to live), it would be a profound mistake to take the discovery of political subjectivity as pointing to the means by which a supersession of political life could be attained. In our inquiry, then, we have, beginning with certain experiences, explored intentional acts correlated to the particular ontic sense of the life-​ world which, in the broadest sense, and for the reasons we have discussed (and must continue to discuss), is claimed to be political. Zahavi states that in taking the phenomenological perspective, the life-​world is revealed “in its concretion as a constituted network of meaning.”5 My thesis is that this “network of meaning” has an essentially political dimension.

2 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Legacy: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, & Transcendental Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 60. 3 Ibid., 59–​60. 4 Ibid., 59. 5 Ibid., 60.

9 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity II Authority

The second theme of political subjectivity to be addressed, political authority, comprises what is arguably the definitive component of the political. In a certain sense, political philosophy just is the science of authority. Consider, in this regard, the principle we have laid down, that “the political” is that which is intrinsically connected in some way with the order of the whole. Yet because, as we have seen, the circumstances of politics involve disagreement about that order, we must always take the presence of any order of the whole as an indication that some solution has already been made to the problem of authority, regardless of what that solution actually was. Now, given the effect of authority as an immaterial, moral cause in bringing about the order of the whole, we may say that it has the purest political meaning, as compared with, for example, “mere” intersubjectivity, which nonetheless remains essentially political. In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl asserts that the universal de facto structure of the given Objective world –​as mere Nature, as psychophysical being, as humanness, sociality of various levels, and culture –​is, to a very great extent (and perhaps much further than we yet can see), an essential necessity.1 In the last chapter, I attempted to elucidate belonging and possession as essential to man’s experience of this “structure of the given Objective world.” In the investigation that follows, I will take a similar approach with the theme of authority, proposing again that relationships of authority are an essential part of human experience. Crucially, I will distinguish between the question of what constitutes authority or legitimacy in a substantive sense, or as a matter of right, from an analysis of the category of noetic acts wherein something or someone is experienced as authoritative. Notably, in pursuing the latter goal we will identify the fundamental basis and key

1 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (New York: Springer, 1960) 137 (§ 59) (emphasis original).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-9

Authority  93 a priori condition for any experience of authoritativeness: a perception of the good. Allow me to begin this second theme of political subjectivity with a continuation and enlargement of our previous hypothetical: A third person, a woman named Ms. Wright, enters the area around the monument and stands alongside Mr. Gonzales. A history major at a nearby university, Ms. Wright believes with great conviction that the American settlers stole land properly belonging to the native inhabitants, and moreover that the subsequent successful development of the country was due primarily to the exploitation of slave labor. In this, case we can imagine Ms. Wright looking around herself and, despite the orderliness and pleasantness of her surroundings, experiencing the Washington Monument (that is, intending it) and other public buildings as a grand imposture –​the poisoned fruit of historic crimes. She experiences and intends the order within which she finds herself as produced by an invasion and sustained by a hostile and illegitimate occupying force. Gonzales, by contrast, standing only a few feet away, is engaged in a deep reverie in which he experiences pride in his country’s accomplishments. He regards the monument and surrounding buildings as embodying a system of government that generally serves the interest of the people, and, moreover, as representing one of the greatest engines for human happiness and flourishing in history. Based on these competing views of the American regime, consider the following development. Mr. Gonzales and Ms. Wright both observe as a police officer casually enters into the perimeter of the monument, circulates around, and then exits. Now, one can easily surmise the different sentiments of Gonzales and Wright as they observe the officer. This, however, is not of interest for us. Indeed, we once again want to abstract from such considerations altogether. Consider instead Wright’s apprehension that the entire American law enforcement structure, in its very existence –​from the local police to the armed forces serving abroad –​is completely lacking in moral justification or right. By contrast, Gonzales regards law enforcement as necessary and beneficial, operating with the sanction of the community and fulfilling the valuable service of protecting the common goods of the political community. Putting ourselves, imaginatively, into their respective belief systems, and tracing back, from the phenomenological perspective, their different correlate intentions, we can notice that Gonzales experiences the officer (and the order in which they are both a part) as imbued with a certain distinct category of estimation which we may identify as authoritativeness. For Ms. Wright, of course, this sense is completely absent. Nonetheless,

94 Authority the essential dimension of authority remains –​for her, the officer qua law enforcement agent (and the order of which they are both a part) is precisely illegitimate and palpably lacking in authoritativeness. Yet, what is the specific character of this “authority” with which the world of the one is imbued, and yet which is absent from that of the other? Authority does not seem reducible to any other ideas, experiences, or sentiments. It appears to be directly experienced –​and therefore intended –​ constituting the ontological sense “authoritative.” We must continue to interrogate this category of experience in order to elucidate it further, setting it in higher relief and more precisely determining its structure and role in the experience of the world. Now, despite the great division among political philosophers throughout the ages regarding the question of what constitutes legitimate authority, there has been wide agreement about the need to distinguish right from force in some way, and hence to distinguish political order from tyrannical oppression. I want to offer Aristotle’s discussion in the Politics, wherein he holds forth on the problem of the different “claims to rule,” as pointing to potential transcendental clues through which we may trace back the experience of authority to some identifiable common intentional essence. Specifically, in searching for the sources of justice in the polis, Aristotle asserts in a general way that claims to authority arise from an appeal to either “virtue,” “wealth,” or “freedom.”2 More specifically, however, he identifies valid claims to rule as belonging to various categories of people, namely, “the good” (that is, virtuous), “the wealthy,” the “well born,” and also the “political multitude.”3 In following the course of Aristotle’s reasoning, one discovers in fact that all of these apparently diverse sources of authority are kinds of surrogates for, and are thus translatable into, claims to virtue, by which of course Aristotle means excellence. For example, Aristotle explains that the claim of the political multitude to a voice in the regime is justified because the many, of whom none is individually an excellent man, nevertheless can when joined together be better –​not as individuals but all together –​than those [who are best], just as dinners contributed by many can be better than those equipped from a single expenditure.4 Likewise, it would appear that the achievement and maintenance of wealth signals certain excellences and contributions to society, while being “well-​ born” indicates a familial tradition of virtue and honor which may be assumed to be passed down (to some degree) through the generations. Thus, although it may be manifested under different forms, all claims to 2 Aristotle, Politics, 111. IV 8 1294a21. Note that what he calls “good birth” is a combination of wealth and virtue. 3 Ibid., 84. III 13 1283b2–​4. 4 Ibid., 79. 11 1281b1–​4.

Authority  95 rule are in some sense claims to possess excellence. Put simply, for Aristotle it is ultimately the “good” that is authoritative. This indissoluble link between goodness and political authority can be seen dramatically in Aristotle’s account of kingship, in which he carries out a surprising reflection on the “crisis” that would be undergone by a political community with the sudden appearance of someone possessing wisdom and virtue to a surpassing degree. If there is one person so outstanding by his excess of virtue –​or a number of persons, though not enough to provide a full compliment for the city –​that the virtue of all the others and their political capacity is not commensurable with their own (if there are a number) or his alone (if there is one), such persons can no longer be regarded as a part of the city. For they will be done injustice if it is claimed they merit equal things in spite of being so unequal in virtue and political capacity; for such a person would likely be like a god among human beings.5 Consistent with this view of the authoritativeness of goodness, Aristotle indicates that the hypothetical man (or men) of surpassing virtue is (or are) in fact prior and superior to law and legislation: From this it is clear that legislation must necessarily have to do with those who are equal both in family and capacity, and that for the other [that is, superior] sort of person there is no law –​they themselves are law. It would be ridiculous, then, if one attempted to legislate for them.6 In terms of our preceding analysis, we could say on this basis that such a “disruptive” introduction of goodness into the life-​world of the polis would in effect “explode” its ontological structure, destroying it and creating a new and altered world-​structure. Emphatically, there is no indication that the potential to wield superior violent force is the cause of such disruption. Rather, it is moral excellence that changes everything (that is, “virtue” and “political capacity”). Aristotle proposes a range of possible responses to such a disruptive influx of goodness, each of which is instructive. First of all, the highly virtuous individual(s) may be exiled. This is an action which, if it is done for the common good, can even be said to possess, on the basis of a kind of “proportion,” a “certain political justice.”7 The analogy he employs in this regard is that of a chorus master refusing to “allow someone with a voice louder and more beautiful than the entire chorus to be a member of it.”8 5 6 7 8

Ibid., 85. III 13 1284a5–​11. Ibid. 1284a11–​15. Ibid., 86–​87. 1284b4–​17. Ibid., 86. III 13 1284b12–​14.

96 Authority Yet the solution of exile, although a real option, is not ideal, “for surely no one would assert that such a person should be expelled and banished.”9 At the same time, it remains true that on account of their extreme goodness, “neither would they assert that there should be rule over such a person.”10 The best solution, Aristotle concludes, is simply to recognize the inherent political authority that derives from virtue, writing: “What remains –​and it seems like the natural course –​is for everyone to obey such a person gladly, so that persons of this sort will be permanent kings in their cities.”11 Now, two illustrative cases of the societal and political dynamics evoked by the link between authority and virtue, while not at all commensurate, can be seen in Jesus and Socrates. With respect to Jesus, being quite literally God among men, it “makes sense” in a certain manner, based on Aristotle’s analysis, that this “person so outstanding by his excess of virtue” would be “intolerable” to the degree that he “had” to be executed.12 In a less dramatic example, which, however, still embodies the relevant principle, one could say that Athens, being unwilling to undertake the moral self-​examination called for by Socrates, “had” to eliminate him. The philosophy of Eric Voegelin captures the manner in which the presence of truth may cause an existential tension within a political order. In the case of Socrates, Voegelin remarks that because “the order of Athens was not regenerated either by Socrates or Plato…Socrates had to die in the attempt.”13 In his book on Voegelin, Michael Federici explains: The truth that the political philosopher offers is often rejected because the path it illuminates is beyond the existential strength of the society. The consequences for the political philosopher, in such circumstances, range on a continuum, from death, as in the case of Socrates, to simply being ignored.14 For Voegelin, the existential tension generated will be greater or lesser relative to the virtue of the “offending” party and the existing level of virtue and goodness of the political order. If too great, it must be resolved one way or another. Combining Voegelin’s and Aristotle’s insights, we may say that the presence of truth and goodness make “existential demands” on a political community. Such existential demands underlie the reasoning in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when, having stated the intention to “hallow” a portion of the battlefield as a “final resting place” for the soldiers “who [there] gave their 9 10 11 12 13

Ibid., 87. 1284b28–​29. Ibid. 1284b30–​31. Ibid. 1284b32–​34. It seems that the “natural course” of “obeying [him] gladly” was not to be expected. Eric Voegelin, Volume III Order and History: Plato and Aristotle (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana State Press, 1957), 12. 14 Michael Federici, Eric Voegelin (Washington: ISI Books, 2002), 39.

Authority  97 lives” that the nation might live, Lincoln balks at the appropriateness of doing so, explaining: “But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate –​we cannot consecrate –​we cannot hallow –​this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”15 Yet, precisely what kind of “power” does Lincoln mean to say he lacks, the absence of which positively prohibits him (for example, “we cannot”) from consecrating, hallowing, and dedicating the ground of the battlefield? In short, he does not feel authorized to do these things in the face of the goodness of the sacrifice of the men who gave the “last full measure of devotion.”16 He questions the right of those present be the ones “in charge” of the hallowing. Rather, isn’t it the “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here” that possess the authority? The connection between goodness and authority is also evident in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, for example in his response to the question “Would One Man Have Been Lord over Another in the State of Innocence?”17 He explains that, while there would have been no slavery had there been no sin, there would nonetheless have been “dominion” of one person over another “as a free man,” insofar as the former “directs [the latter] to his own good or to the good of the community.”18 The basis of this dominion of one man over another, which, again, is distinct from slavery, is justified by the differences in virtue which would exist among human beings even in the absence of sin. As Aquinas explains, even in the state of innocence there would also have been differences of goodness [justice] and knowledge in the soul, for man would have functioned on the basis of free will, not by necessity. Therefore he could give greater or lesser attention to the development of his moral and intellectual faculties. Therefore some would have advanced further in goodness or knowledge than others.19 In other words, even if man did not sin, he would not simply by this reason have perfect virtue. Individuals would freely pursue the attainment of knowledge and goodness with various degrees of vigor, on the basis of different innate endowments, resulting in differences in excellence. Crucially, on the basis merely of the existence of these variations in knowledge and virtue, Aquinas concludes that a certain right to rule in society is created. He states: “If one man were superior to the others in knowledge

15 Gregory Suriano, Great American Speeches (New York: Gramercy Books, 1993), 93. 16 Ibid. 17 Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: Norton, 1988), 39. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 38–​39.

98 Authority and justice it would not have been appropriate for him not to exercise this superiority for the benefit of others.”20 As with Aristotle, the basis of the appropriateness of the dominion of those who are superior in justice and virtue can be traced to the intrinsic authority of goodness. This is made explicit in Aquinas’ response to the question “Is One Man Obliged to Obey Another?”21 Here he explains that in nature, higher beings necessarily move lower ones to act by virtue of a natural superiority which is given them by God. So also in human affairs it is necessary for superiors to move inferiors through volitional acts by virtue of an authority which is established by God. To move the reason and the will means to command. Therefore just as in the order of nature established by God lower elements in nature must be subject to higher ones, so in human affairs inferiors are bound to obey their superiors according to the order contained in the natural and divine law.22 Now, despite the clear link drawn between goodness and authority, it is important to specify that the designations “superior” and “inferior” should not be taken to obtain directly and simplistically in individuals. One could say that the correspondence of goodness and authority constitutes a general ontic principle rather than a personal relationship. Consider in this regard Aquinas’ careful thinking in responding to the question “Are Subjects Obliged to do Everything that Their Superiors Command?”, where he specifies that in matters that relate to the internal movements of the will a man is not obliged to obey man, but God alone. One man is obliged to obey another in outward bodily actions, but in matters relating to human nature, for example, those relating to bodily sustenance and the procreation of offspring, a man is bound to obey God alone, not another man, because by nature all men are equal.23 Based on this reasoning, Aquinas concludes that, for example, “slaves are not obliged to obey their masters, nor children their parents, in contracting marriages or deciding to remain a virgin or the like.”24 The relevant principle, he states, is that in matters that relate to the ordering of human actions and affairs a subject is obliged to obey his superior in the area in which he is his 20 Ibid., 39. 21 Ibid., 75. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 75–​6 (emphasis added). 24 Ibid., 76.

Authority  99 superior –​a soldier, for example, should obey the commander of an army in matters that relate to war.25 It may be objected that the link between authority and goodness in Aristotle and St. Thomas has been decisively severed, and hence definitely refuted, with the advent of moral egalitarianism and the apparently universal acceptance of the idea that free, rational, and equal individuals can in no way be obligated to one another apart from their prior consent. I submit, however, that this apparent exclusion of the good from politics does not withstand a phenomenological investigation. Consider, for example, a person who advocates a system of government in which political power is explicitly declared to be deployed in society in a manner independent of any “substantive” good, but which rather insists only on the free and equal participation of each individual in the political process. Is it true that our objector does not intend any political object as good? On the contrary, it seems evident that the system itself, the political process, which is regarded as embodying and achieving the values of equality and freedom, is regarded as good –​and therefore as authoritative. What other possible reason could there be for supporting such a system (even, it must be assumed, in the face of what might be otherwise regarded as certain attendant negative social consequences)? The objector might respond that he believes merely in the “justice” of the system, or the fact that it upholds the “respect” or “dignity” of each person. Yet, are not all of these characterizations of the system, or the set of ideal relations at which it aims, finally desired because they are held to be good? And is this goodness not precisely the justification for the system’s practical imposition qua authoritative? Supporters of such a liberal system might argue –​for instance, in a Kantian fashion –​that their conclusions are merely the dictates of pure reason. However, insofar as they are in fact attempting to implement these supposed dictates of reason concretely, they are necessarily motivated by the fact that they regard a certain desired state of affairs as good. Based on this goodness, they believe they have the authority to act. But this is precisely what the proponents of a substantive good believe –​and (it might be added) for reasons that they themselves judge to be most rational. Consider, alternatively, a communist regime: it seems evident that the system of state ownership in favor of the proletariat is regarded as good by the revolutionaries. Although, from the perspective of the Marxist ideology itself, all morality, and hence all ideas about goodness, may be regarded as merely the result of the consciousness determined by the particular configuration of economic conditions of a given time, the revolutionaries no doubt regard the communist order as justified (that is, authoritative), above and beyond their personal preferences. As proponents of a political

25 Ibid. (emphasis added).

100 Authority order worth instituting and defending, they see certainly do not see (that is, experience) themselves as acting arbitrarily or without intelligent purpose. Rather, they struggle to implement the best order in their view, and therefore one that is truly authoritative. Thus, if one investigates the precise reason for the authority of the communist order, one sees that the revolutionaries intend it as good. Indeed, is it only by intending the communist goals as good that the revolutionary actions of individuals could be effectively motivated. With these observations we are brought back to the traditional principle that the human will is intrinsically ordered to the good. Consider, for example, that if I took the radical approach of maintaining that it is not possible to justify any government, this would be in effect to argue that every individual is, essentially, his own sovereign “state” (that is, in possession of absolute authority over his own person vis-​à-​vis others), resulting in the practical condition of a multitude of absolute authorities. But precisely why should I approve of such a condition? Apparently, the answer must be that, for some reason (perhaps because of the type of society that results or the desirability of living consistently with reason), the absence of government is good. Alternatively, if it was argued that, although no government could be rationally justified, we should nonetheless, for practical purposes, pretend this was the case, we should again ask the reason for the public deception and await the inevitable response: that pretending would lead to some good. Finally, for someone advocating a political system in which all questions are settled through discourse and rational inquiry, it seems evident that “reason” (and the discourse through which it was attained) would be intended as the highest good –​and therefore the highest authority. On the basis of the preceding analysis, I propose that intending something as good is to intend it also as authoritative. Conversely, to intend something as authoritative is essentially and necessarily to intend it as good. With regard to the first of these propositions, we saw that goodness makes an “existential claim” on society. With regard to the second, we saw that the contrary claim (for instance, that of a system instituted only as a rational procedure and not as embodying any vision of the good) does not withstand phenomenological scrutiny. In such cases, there is necessarily some “background” (for example, ideological) good that is actually being aimed at, such as “equality,” “freedom,” “respect,” or perhaps an activity or state of affairs that is seen as the correlative of these. The point of this chapter is not that goodness and authority are somehow “relative” to the experiencer, or “in” the perception, but rather that goodness and authority are ontologically joined. The world and the human consciousness which manifests it are structured such that we necessarily experience goodness and authority together. They are essentially and intrinsically related. Summing up, then, we may say that authority is the “practical effect” of goodness. It is “goodness making present” or “applied goodness.” It is “the imperative of the good.” To speak somewhat metaphorically –​and perhaps most accurately –​we may define authority as the voice of the good in the world.

Authority  101 To better clarify the ontic structure of this aspect of political subjectivity, consider the situation of civil war. In this case there is, by definition, a dispute within a political community involving (at least) two claims to authority. Based on our analysis, we can say that each disputing side, in claiming to be the rightful authority, regards the state of affairs at which they aim as good. Conversely, each regards itself as the rightful authority because of the goodness of the course they intend to pursue or the state of affairs they intend to bring into existence (or preserve). Now, despite the correctness of this formulation, it is possible to pursue the analysis further, in order to do justice more fully to the phenomenon in its concreteness. For I am proposing that authority is an essential dimension of the life-​world. Let us remark further, then, that the contestants in the struggle for ascendancy are not, strictly speaking, acting on the basis of mere “arguments” (or prejudicial “conclusions,” for that matter), but rather are motivated in their actions by the concrete perception (factual or in imaginative anticipation) of the goodness of the “world” they wish to prevail. Indeed, such high stakes would seem required, in order to reach the level of intensity of emotion and conviction necessary for killing on a large scale. In short, each side is willing to die to make its world “the” world. It is true that, considered in isolation, particular individuals in such a situation might be understood as acting for merely private interests or desires (for instance, fleeing in fear or fighting to obtain some object of pleasure). Yet, this is to enter into abstraction. At the very least, it may be pointed out that all individuals take action only within an objectivity that is intersubjectively constituted. More to the point, however, to the extent that there is coordinated action between individuals (that is, as part of a “side” in a civil war), life is concretely experienced and their actions make sense only in terms of a single vision. The intensity of civil war arises from the fact that the very identity of the community is at stake in the struggle. This identity is defined by the “world” to which the intersubjective community corresponds. It seems clear, then, that authority is not something abstract or intended in the mode of an ideal object, such as a mathematical equation or the empirical findings of science. Rather, authority is in the life-​world, where it is necessarily perceived and experienced (even if only imaginatively or in remembrance) as evidently good. I do not say that authority inheres physically in the objects of one’s surroundings. For, as we have seen, the life-​ world should in no way be understood as the totality of the objects of the universe, or even as the universe as a whole. The life-​world becomes apparent when “the” world is regarded from within the phenomenological perspective and is thereby seen as intended in a certain specific manner by subjectivity. Thus, although authority is “in” the life-​world objectively, and is not merely a rational conclusion in my own mind, it is not in the world as an object. It may be imagined as presenting a certain kind of “ambiance” or “aura” within the life-​world (for instance, as “possessed” by certain people, objects, or places), though of course it has no physical presence per se. The

102 Authority fact that the connection between authority and the life-​world is made evident only in the phenomenological perspective (wherein we “see” that we intend certain people, places, and things as authoritative/​good) accounts for the difficulty of its conceptualization for political philosophy. To summarize: As good is experienced in the world, authority is also experienced as present in a corresponding manner. Any asserted regime, law, or governmental action at odds with the perceived goodness of the life-​world will necessarily be experienced as lacking authority and therefore illegitimate. A hypothetical life-​world in which goodness was perceived to be (per impossibile) utterly absent would result in the experience of a world devoid of authority. And yet, a world devoid of authority is nonetheless a world constituted in terms of authoritativeness as an essential and fundamental category of being, or a world in which good order is intended absently. In proposing that authority corresponds to perceived goodness in the life-​world, I necessarily speak abstractly. In actual experience, authority attaches to a multiplicity of objects, in a multiplicity of ways, in the same way as goodness itself. With reference to the definition of authority proposed above as “the voice of good,” we can say that this voice is “heard” in many ways and from a variety of different sources. For example, it could be a certain person, or group of people, particular institutions (such as a court or a public office), particular architectural structures, certain respected publications, or symbols (a flag, for example). Historical traditions held to be good will be authoritative and impart authoritativeness. Certain documents or books that are held to be particularly insightful or wise (that is, good) will have authority. Of course, since our inquiry is elucidating political subjectivity, we are not concerned with what is actually good and authoritative, but rather with the manner in which these categories of human experience are a universal and essential aspect of life. To close, let us attempt to distinguish with greater precision what is proper to political authority. I have said that political objects are such as depend on the intensity or proximity of their connection to the to the order of the whole. If so, it stands to reason that a source of goodness in the world will give rise to an authority of a more specifically political character, depending on this same kind of connection (that is, to the order of the whole). This is to say that authoritative people, institutions, buildings, symbols, important historical sites, intellectual or artistic works, and so on that are particularly identified with, or which have a particular connection to, the order of the community as a whole will be imbued with political authority. Thus, whereas the goodness of scientific expertise, for example, is likely to become connected with the order of the whole only incidentally (for instance, a brilliant doctor’s political views may indeed receive more consideration than those of a less accomplished man), other forms of goodness may be more directly political. In particular, excellence of character seems to possess an intrinsic connection with the order of the whole, for example through presenting to others a compelling “way of life.” Similarly,

Authority  103 according to this analysis, institutions or activities that are in many respects “private” may have deep political significance due to the moral respect and esteem attaching to them. Such goodness, in combination with a degree of intrinsic influence and significance for the order of society, make such “private” goods a potential source of tremendous political authority. Thus, marriage, for example, which on the one hand seems directed predominantly “inward,” must also be recognized as profoundly political in light of the intrinsic authority it possesses based on its goodness and foundational role in the order of the whole.

10 Major Themes of Political Subjectivity III Political Others and Foreignness

The Essence of Foreignness The third theme of political subjectivity to be addressed, political Others (for example, Other-​we’s-​than-​us) and foreignness, presents the greatest philosophical challenge because of its complexity and subtlety. To begin, I will raise a formidable objection to my thesis that the political community is, in a certain sense, coterminous with the life-​world. The objection refers to a presumed contradiction (entailed by my thesis) between the two following propositions: 1) the life-​world is the horizon of all experience and includes everything that is experienceable; and 2) other political communities and life-​worlds exist and are experienceable. For if the life-​world is the horizon of all experience, and yet there are multiple experienceable political communities, then how can the life-​world and political community be coterminous? In effect, this objection will force us to clarify the meaning of the words above that the political community and life-world are coterminous “in a certain sense.” In addressing the objection, we recall the meaning of the concept of “horizon” for Husserl. As we have seen, although “horizon” has both spatial and temporal connotations, its true sense is found in its functioning as a “context of meaning.” Moran explains: “The foundational meaning of the notion of ‘horizon’ is the co-​perceived context within which a perceived object is perceived: literally, the limit of the visual scene.”1 Such being the case, let us observe forthwith that the life-​world and political community have this in common: neither is cable of being “taken in” in the natural attitude, in the manner either of an ideal or physical object. Consider for example that the political community cannot be perceived as a physical object: even if one were in a spacecraft looking down on the United States, one would in fact see only the land mass of the North American continent, with perhaps some human infrastructure. Yet, of course, the United States consists, even primarily, of intangible elements like minds, laws, language, collective memory and history, purposes,

1 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 193.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-10

Political Others and Foreignness  105 manners, attitude, and so forth.. The United States, then, is not a perceivable object from any “side,” from no matter what perspective or location. Yet the inability to perceive the United States as an object does not arise from its essentially “spiritual” way of existing. The play The Tempest, for example, though possessing a physical dimension in its performance, would seem ideal. Despite the play’s essential intangibility, however, and the fact that it must be experienced over a given duration of time, it can indeed be apprehended as a stable “object.” The United States, by contrast, though possessing a certain constitution and stability of form, would seem fundamentally self-​creating and open ended, due to the fact of the freedom of its people to write their own “script” in history. Being “made” primarily of free human beings and their common life, “it” possesses an essential indeterminacy that makes its concretely “objective” apprehension problematic, though not fully impossible. This difficulty of apprehension and the largely physicalistic, objectivist character of human sciences today (modeled, as they are, on the methods of the natural sciences) create a temptation to radically diminish, or deny outright, the very existence of the political community, regarding it as reducible to the sum of the individuals that compose it. I submit, however, that the impossibility of taking in the political community as an object arises not because “it” doesn’t “really” exist, but rather because “it” is a non-​objectifiable “world.” For this reason, phenomenology indicates that, like the life-​world, a political community in itself (which is to say, as a whole) can only be experienced subjectively. This latter point means that the epochē, through which the “world” does in some fashion become available for investigation, holds a special significance for political philosophy. For, according to Husserl, through the epochē it becomes possible to “see the purely subjective in its own self-​enclosed pure context as intentionality and to recognize it as the function of forming ontic meaning.”2 In this way, it is possible to investigate the total ontic meaning of the political community and “see” its relationship with the “self-​enclosed pure context” of the purely subjective. Yet, there is this obvious difference between the life-​world and the political community: whereas the life-​world contains “everything experienceable,” the political community is the life-​world taken in a specific ontological sense. My thesis is not that the political community simply is the life-​world, but rather that the two are coterminous. Yet, what is the precise meaning of the word “coterminous” in this context? If the political community cannot be apprehended as an object, we may straightaway eliminate a physicalistic interpretation of “coterminous,” in which the “limit of the visual scene” of the life-​world corresponds with the territorial borders of the political community. Yet how precisely do we mean “coterminous” here? Consider the following example: 2 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University, 1970), 169 (§ 49).

106  Political Others and Foreignness I am visiting a friend who lives in Texas who takes me hiking in the Big Bend National Park. From a perspective of some altitude, we stop briefly to admire a gorgeous canyon illuminated by the golden rays of the setting sun. Now, standing and looking out at the canyon extending into the distance, although I may wonder and comment on the beauty of the landscape, or perhaps express curiosity about a particular geological feature, I nonetheless co-​intend it as part of my political community, that is, America. Yet if my friend, who as a local knows the area, informs me as we stand there gazing, “That’s Mexico over there,” I will have to adjust my conception of the world accordingly, bringing the object to which I am attending (the canyon across the way) to mind in a new way, as specifically “not-​America” (that is, as foreign). The question arises, then, as to how it is possible, since the Mexican canyon across the way is surely “in” the world, to maintain that the life-​ world is coterminous with my own country. The point is well taken, and it is here that the phenomenological epochē is necessary to clarify this decisive aspect of political subjectivity. For, in assuming the phenomenological perspective and following through with a reduction to the intentional act by which we intend the world, the disparity of the two objects as physically distinct (the mountains across the way and the ground of my own country under my feet) becomes, in terms of the crucial distinction, incidental. Explaining this situation requires the introduction of an important corollary principle (corollary, that is, to the coterminous relationship of the life-​world and political community); namely, that the life-​ world, in the absence of a supervening intentional act, is always co-​intended as one’s own political community. This corollary means that the accuracy or inaccuracy of any information about my geographical location is not of consequence for the operation of political subjectivity, which functions necessarily. For the manner in which the world is experienced as coterminous with our political community is not a matter of knowledge at all, but is essential to consciousness itself. The hypothetical described is therefore entirely distinct from a situation in which, for example, I believe a former classmate is still single until I am told one day that he is married. The co-​intended world, although not expressly meant, is a constant source of experience which makes all of my intended objects possible. As co-​intended, both the world and the political community are “invisible” to me, even though I experience them in a certain manner. The crucial point is that the same content is co-​intended with regard to the world and “my country.” It is only when I cease co-​intending an object and begin to expressly mean it in terms of its political status that a difference arises between “my country” and “the world.” This means, for example, that a Brazilian person walking on the beach “sees” –​that is, co-​intends –​a specifically “Brazilian sun” until he considers, distinctly, that it is in fact

Political Others and Foreignness  107 an “unclaimed” stellar entity lying outside of any actual asserted jurisdictional claims. Imagine that a person has been living in a foreign country for a certain length of time, let us say one month. The principle of political subjectivity we are elucidating means that, so long as they are not reminded by some unusual (that is, unusual to them) object in their environment (for instance, some distinctive architectural structure or feature of the landscape characteristic of the country they are in, a foreign siren, a sign written in a foreign language, the presence of people with distinctive dress, different money, and so on), and to the extent that they do not consciously recall to themselves that they are presently abroad, they will continue to intend and hence constitute the world around them as their own political community and as belonging to them. On the other hand, as the person continues to live in the foreign country –​perhaps a year or more –​they may actually begin to co-​intend the new country. Now, at first, this may be seen as an objection against the principle I am asserting, that one always co-​intends one’s own country (the person is, let us presume, still a legal citizen of their original country). However, the true meaning of the transfer of co-​intention from the original to the new country means that the person has politically (in the deepest sense of the term) now begun to belong to (and possess) the new country (which, to the degree that such a transition has occurred, is no longer “foreign”). That the life-​world and the political community are coterminous also means that foreign worlds are outside of “the” world, which is our world. Yet how is this possible? The very concept “world” is only thinkable in terms of one world. Is recognizing another world as a world not precisely to explode my own world and create a new world including both? At the same time, this new supposed “combined” world would in fact be no world at all, since it would be constituted according to two distinct we-​subjectivities. The contradiction here arises from the fact that it is specifically in the act of recognizing the other world that my own world is exploded as “the” world. For attempting to intend another world as a world breaks off my co-​intending of “the” world. The other world raises the question, in some sense, of what “the” world really is. Now, that I can recognize the other world means that I intend it. Yet, I can intend it only as not-​my-​world. This is because intending the other world as an object (which I do in recognizing it) is incompatible with my experiencing it, since a world can be experienced only in being co-​intended. However, it is impossible to co-​intend another world. In short, the problem is: How can I both recognize another world and experience it? How can I experience the concrete achievement of an intersubjective community of which I am not a part? To begin to answer this question, consider that while I cannot intend a world as an object –​for this would be to destroy it in a certain fashion –​it is indeed possible to intend a certain object (an article of clothing, a word, even an idea) as, in a specific sense, not-​of-​my-​world, which is to say, as

108  Political Others and Foreignness foreign. Moreover, I may intend a collection of objects as not-​of-​my-​world, for example a landscape and the city I see on it. Yet, the very idea of something being not-​of-​my-​world necessarily still includes, implicitly, the idea of my own world as a kind of reference. With this in mind, one could say that an essential element of the intending of foreign objects is to intend my own world absently. Thus, when it comes to experience of a foreign political community as a whole, one could say that I intend my own political community absently. I intend it as not my own political community, or as Other. Yet this is still not to intend the foreign world in itself, but only its objectivity as something –​perplexingly –​neither outside of “the” world nor in the world. To come back to our example, having been informed by my friend that we are standing near the Mexican border, I gaze at the canyon across the way and am confronted with an irreducible mystery: a “world” that is not a world because it is not in “the” world. Yet, unless I respond to the invitation presented by such an experience to enter into reflection, I do not confront this enigma directly, but rather apprehend the vista before me as a perceptual moment of an intentional act wherein I constitute my world absently. In intending Mexico, I intend not-​my-​world, which is to say, I intend a place where my world is not. In doing so, I project, in a certain fashion, my world, my political community, now with the transformed status of being foreign, into “the” world. Of course, I perceive the canyon, trees, and so forth of the foreign “world” perfectly clearly. In doing so, however, I intend them specifically as objects not-​of-​my-​world (that is, as foreign). Those are Mexican trees! In sum, “the” world remains my world, and the Mexican world both exists and yet doesn’t exist –​so the mystery remains. One could say the Mexican world “tries” to exist –​or is on the “verge” of existing –​but cannot, for I, an American, live in “the” world, which as world, is the horizon of all experience. This is not a case of nationalism or ethnocentrism and so on, for the situation is the same for any Mexican looking across at America.3 Rather, this dilemma is simply the result of the normal functioning of political subjectivity. Thus, it would seem there is no way for Mexico to actually exist, except by my becoming –​in the crucial sense –​Mexican. Yet this would be no simple matter! Notably, if accomplished, my own country, America, would cease to exist, except in memory (in such a case, only the “me” of a previous time, the one involved in my recollections of life in America, would still belong to and possesses America). Given the intense and intimate relationship –​in a profound sense, the unity –​between any person and their world, such a transformation as would necessarily be involved in my becoming Mexican in the crucial sense (achievable no doubt only through 3 This example holds true, of course, insofar as the Mexican and American nations correspond to actively functioning intersubjective communities.

Political Others and Foreignness  109 a transformative process) would clearly entail deep consequences for my identity and interior life. Now, we obviously cannot be satisfied with the formulation that there is a mystery or enigma regarding the existence-​yet-​non-​existence of other worlds. In pursuing the question further, let us begin by reaffirming the principle that, because the world must be co-​intended, one may not live perfectly in two different political communities. Yet surely experience shows that it should be possible to know, at least to a certain extent, a foreign world “from within,” as it were. Precisely how, then, can we know a foreign world without, however, really coming into being, since my world necessarily remains “the” world? In fact, the case seems similar to the situation of empathy between two people. In that situation, I know and experience the Other in their subjectivity (which, insofar as they are a transcendental ego, is not in the world), without, however, my ego constituting the self-​givenness of the Other. I experience the Other’s self-​givenness as “there” in a certain sense, yet it does not enter into “the” world. In this way, the Other remains in some sense irreducibly alien. In light of the parallels suggested by this idea, let us briefly examine some details of Husserl’s account of empathy, as a possible source of insight for the problem of the experience of political Others and foreignness. We shall, of course, pay lively attention to the ways in which the parallel with individual empathy may not hold and the idea of “political empathy” may not be justified.

The Hypothesis of Political Empathy I have evoked the irreducible foreignness of the Other political community by emphasizing that one cannot live, properly speaking, in two worlds at the same time. The assumption, of course, is the coterminous relationship of the life-​world and political community and the all-​embracing, horizonal character of “world.” We may “know” that another political community is “there,” but insofar as it is the manifestation of a different intersubjectively correlated world-​horizon, it remains necessarily unexperienceable. Likewise, in Husserl’s account of empathy, we find that Others are irreducibly “alien” in a certain respect. At the same time, however, the inaccessibility of the Other cannot be so complete that the Other does not appear at all. For, as Zahavi states, “One cannot speak meaningfully of the absolutely foreign unless this alterity appears as a phenomenon one way or another.”4 Moving forward, I will cite and discuss several significant passages in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations in order to introduce, as accurately as possible, certain crucial concepts for the account I wish to establish. The first establishes the overall framework of his analysis. Husserl writes: 4 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 114.

110  Political Others and Foreignness Experience is original consciousness; and in fact we generally say, in the case of experiencing a man: the other is himself there before us “in person.” On the other hand, this being there in person does not keep us from admitting forthwith that, properly speaking, neither the other Ego himself, nor his subjective processes or his appearances themselves, nor anything else belonging to his own essence, becomes given in our own experience originally…A certain mediacy of intentionality must be present here, going out from the substratum, “primordial world,” (which in any case is the incessantly underlying basis) and making present to consciousness a “there too,” which nevertheless is not itself there and can never become an “itself-​there.” We have here, accordingly, a kind of making “co-​present,” a kind of “appresentation.”5 There is of course no question of setting forth the extensive philosophical groundwork underlying Husserl’s account of empathy, or of tracing out its implications in all respects. Consider, however, that it is impossible, according to Husserl, to experience the other in his own self-​givenness. Accordingly, if the Other is to appear, there is a need for “a certain mediacy of intentionality,” a making “co-​present,” or “appresentation.” What is important for our purposes is to understand the specific way in which such appresentation makes present to consciousness a “there too,” which, nevertheless, is “not itself there” and can moreover never become an “itself-​there.” The reader will likely have noticed the parallel between this formulation and the paradoxical dynamic we encountered regarding the foreign political community. We had said that, given an encounter with a foreign country, we needed to acknowledge the existence of this “other world,” and yet that it could not be experienced as part of the “world of our country” (that is, “the” world), which, as world, contains all possible objects of experience. To adapt Husserl’s formulation to our context, then, we could say that an Other political community is a “there too,” which, however, is “not itself there” and can never become an “itself-​there.” Although the otherness of the Other indeed contains an irreducible alterity, Husserl did not believe it was unanalyzable or that it origins, presuppositions, and conditions could not be clarified.6 In understanding his account of empathy, it is imperative to establish that Husserl did not understand the experience of the Other as a case of analogical inference, but rather of actual experience.7 On the other hand, as stated in the passage above, “experience is original consciousness,” and he did not hesitate to admit that, “properly speaking,” the other ego, his subjective processes and appearances, and all things belonging to his essence are unable to become 5 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 108–​9 (§ 50). 6 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 113. 7 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 111. (§ 50).

Political Others and Foreignness  111 “given in our own experience originally.” So, the question arises as to how it is possible to “actually” experience the Other without “properly” experiencing him. To answer this question, it is necessary to explore the concept of appresentation in more depth. According to Husserl, the nature of apperception itself is variable, depending on its correspondence to “different layers of objective sense.”8 In each case, however, there is a givenness beforehand such that, on the underlying basis of a perception proper, an analogizing apprehension takes place, with the pre-​given sense being transferred to the Other.9 In discussing how appresentation functions, Husserl gives the example of a child who will forevermore perceive a pair of scissors as a scissors having once originally constituted it as possessing this meaning. This means that whenever we apprehend an object as possessing a pre-​given sense, with specific horizons proper to it, there must necessarily have been a “primal instituting” whereby we constituted a similar object with that sense for the first time.10 Again, it is crucial to note that an apperception is not an inference from analogy, or any kind of thinking act, but happens at a glance.11 Now, Husserl distinguishes sharply between, on the one hand, the kind of apperception involved in the apprehension of a perceived physical object as a certain kind of thing and, on the other hand, the apperception involved in the experience of an Other (or alter ego), the genesis of which occurs at a “higher level.”12 There are two crucial differences between these radically different kinds of apperception. First, Husserl explains, with an alter ego or Other person “the primally institutive original is always livingly present, and the primal instituting itself is therefore always going on in a livingly effective manner.”13 Interestingly, then, with the apperception of another person, the original “genesis,” wherein a person “learns” the meaning of something in the world for the first time, is constantly taking place. The second difference is that, as opposed to the appresentation of physical objects, whereby, for example, what is merely appresented can potentially become presented immediately, with regard to an Other, what is appresented through an analogizing apprehension can never become actually present.14 Apropos of this second difference, we see once again the crucial idea that there is a kind of irreducible alterity to Others. Given, as we have seen, that the “analogizing apprehension” taking place in any apperception requires an “underlying basis,” or “perception proper,” it will be asked what this might be in the case of the constitution of the 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 110–​1. (§ 50). 10 Ibid., 111 (§ 50). 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 112 (§ 51). 14 Ibid.

112  Political Others and Foreignness experience of Others. Husserl replies that this basis is nothing other than one’s own “incessant self-​perception.”15 Indeed, this must be the case, for as he points out, my own body is the only originally constituted experience of an animate organism possible. In describing the process that enables the experience of an Other as a living organism, Husserl posits an “apperceptive transfer from my animate organism,” which, however, excludes any direct, primordial perception of the attributes of life as subjectively experienced.16 In this way, then, on the basis of a certain perceived similarity between myself and the Other, a transfer of my own original experience to another occurs, which is a “primal instituting” of the Other’s experience and not a “thinking act.” Now, the fact that the apperception of the Other occurs in a continuous fashion (and does not merely transfer a sense given beforehand, as with objects) leads Husserl to posit a second concept central to empathy, namely “pairing,” in which there in a kind of ongoing, stable structure of primal instituting between myself and Others. He explains that pairing is a form of “passive synthesis,” by which he means certain pre-​reflective performances of transcendental subjectivity that unite our varied perceptions, providing the continuous and harmonious experience characteristic of the world. According to Moran, “Passive syntheses are performed [to] guarantee the ongoing continuity of our experience.”17 Finally, Husserl distinguishes between a passive synthesis of “identification,” on the one hand, by which we understand the identity of a particular object over time, from, the passive synthesis of “association,” on the other, which is proper to pairing and empathy.18 Through the passive synthesis of association, pairing accomplishes the uniting of my own self-​perception and my perception of the other, which is the core of empathy. Husserl states that, in a pairing association, two data are given intuitionally, and with prominence, in the unity of a consciousness that, on this basis –​essentially, already in pure passivity (regardless therefore of whether they are noticed or unnoticed) –​as data appearing with mutual distinctness, they found phenomenologically a unity of similarity and thus are always constituted precisely as a pair. If there are more than two such data, then a phenomenally unitary group, a plurality, becomes constituted.19 This last remark, concerning the extension of the pairing relationship to a plurality of people, and thus constituting a phenomenally unitary group, should be highlighted since, as will become apparent presently, it indicates the direction our analysis will take. 15 Ibid., 110 (§ 50). 16 Ibid., 110–​1 (§ 50). 17 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, 199. 18 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 112 (§ 51). 19 Ibid.

Political Others and Foreignness  113 Although we cannot make further precisions with regard to these doctrines of Husserl’s, which moreover, it must be said, cannot be understood apart from their basis in transcendental intersubjectivity, some idea of the basic framework by which he understands concrete human relationships should be apparent. It is in these terms that he confronts the question of the constitution of the objectivity of physical objects (that is, precisely as other), but more than that, he also attempts to answer the question specific to the experience of Others: namely, how the ego is able to have, and “go on forming, in himself such intentionalities of a different kind, intentionalities with an existence-​sense whereby he wholly transcends his own being.”20 At this time, we enter into an area of great theoretical difficulty, fraught with many possible errors. To explore this third major theme of political subjectivity, I want to begin by setting forth a basic hypothesis that may help guide us, although it is quite possible that it will turn out to be fundamentally untenable. Namely, I want to propose that appresentation and pairing may operate not only between individuals (or between an individual and various groups) but also between political communities. The question is not simply whether other political communities may be phenomenally unitary groups, noticingly grasped and apprehended at a glance (that is, apart from inference from analogy or a thinking act). Rather, perhaps the central theoretical question to be addressed concerns the significance of the fact that the apprehended phenomenally unitary group (that is, the Other political community) is not my own (or in my own) intersubjective community. Let us hypothesize further that, as in the case of individual empathy (wherein a certain perception proper must be present as the basis for the pairing appresentation), the primally institutive original for “empathy” with Other political communities will be my own experience of “us,” which must also be livingly present. In no case, then, would political experience be an analytic construction or idealization derived secondarily, so to speak, but it would be rather an apperceived living unity. Finally, if the idea of political empathy turns out to be sound, we may hypothesize that the experience of an Other political community is the fulfilment of a unique and essential potentiality of human intentionality, corresponding to the universal structure of the ontological “region” of the political. This is to say that pairing-​like structures between political communities would be revealed as “essential necessities,” discovered in the course of carrying out the “task of an a priori ontology of the real world,” and moreover part of the “universal de facto structure of the given Objective world.”21 The difficulty –​perhaps ultimately insurmountable –​ will be to understand how such “structures” of political empathy could be harmonized with the thesis that the life-​world and political community are coterminous. 20 Ibid., 105 (§ 48). 21 Ibid., 137 (§ 59).

114  Political Others and Foreignness

The Experience of “Us” Schematically presented, one can distinguish three types of relationships, each warranting its own proper analysis: specifically, individual Others, we-​others or Others-​of-​us (that is, others of our own political community), and finally Other-​we’s-​than-​us (which is to say, “them”). Notably, although I do hold that “we” cannot fully exist without Other-​we’s-​than-​ us, I will argue that, contrary to Carl Schmitt, political Others are not to be understood primarily as enemies. Rather, the philosophical account we have been pursuing suggests the possibility of a kind of political empathy in which political Others appear as merely otherworldly, strange, foreign, exotic, different, mysterious and/​or unknown. If, in actual fact, political communities tend more toward a warlike defensiveness than to openness and engagement, there are no doubt good and identifiable reasons for this. For my part, however, I submit only that the reason is not to be found in the essential typicalities involved in the constitution of political communities in the life-​world. We touched briefly on the individual I–​Other relationship, which necessarily comes first in terms of analysis. We shall accept Husserl’s account in this regard. Proceeding, then, to the second relationship, that of We-​others or Others-​of-​us, Husserl has also provided a substantial discussion. The area of particular concern for my analysis is whether the constitution of the “we” of the community is “primally instituted” in an “always livingly present” manner, as in I–​Other empathy, or if it is merely an analogical inference or extrapolation from I–​Other relationships. In other words, do I perceive and experience “us” in an ontologically fundamental manner, as a living “subject” of some sort, or is the “us” I perceive merely a rational conclusion derived from my individual experience of other persons, and hence not really experienced per se? To address this problem of how “we” can become an object to ourselves, it is necessary to turn to Husserl’s account of communalization. In his analysis of the constitution of objectivity, Husserl says that “the otherness of ‘someone else’ becomes extended to the whole world, as its ‘Objectivity,’ giving it this sense in the first place.”22 Now, the primacy of the single Other, in this way of stating it, is a function of the reference to a temporal process (for instance, in the life of an individual, who begins in a special relation to his mother) or a methodological approach (in the case of a phenomenological analysis) and should not be seen as metaphysically determinative. For Husserl likewise asserts an a priori universal sense-​stratum that “emanates” from other subjects and makes possible “an Objective world for me.”23 Crucially, these “other subjects,” from whom the

22 Ibid., 147 (§ 61). 23 Ibid., 92–​3 (§ 44).

Political Others and Foreignness  115 universal sense-​stratum emanates, are pure others, with no actual existence, who rather precede all “Objective subjects…existing in the world.”24 Thus, it is on the basis of the “universal sense-​stratum” emanating from pure others that the objective world and all actually existing Others are constituted. What is critical for our purposes is that it is also in this way that the community comes to be perceived in a certain fashion, and every single member of it –​even someone solitary –​obtains the sense “member of a community.”25 Husserl explains: This constitution [of the objective world] arising on the basis of the “pure” others (the other Egos who as yet have no worldly sense), is essentially such that the “others”-​for-​me do not remain isolated; on the contrary, an Ego-​community, which includes me, becomes constituted (in my own sphere of ownness, naturally) as a community of Egos existing with each other and for each other.26 These observations indicate that, just as the I–​Other relationship is an essential potentiality of human experience, making possible the associative pairing relationship with a single Other, there is also an a priori basis for a relationship with a plurality of Others (that is, a “we” or “us”). My hypothesis is that an associatively constitutive pairing-​type relationship also functions for myself and Others-​of-​us as a whole (that is, “we”). That the constitution of objectivity arises on the basis of a sense-​stratum of pure others mean that the world itself is necessarily infused with the sense of community –​which is precisely what is meant in proposing that the life-​ world and political community are coterminous. Husserl writes: Manifestly, it is essentially necessary to the world constituted transcendentally in me (and similarly necessary to the world constituted in any community of monads that is imaginable by me) that it be a world of men and that, in each particular man, it be more or less perfectly constituted intrapsychically.27 Because the world is essentially a “world of men,” the perception of the “we” does not need a specific “bodily” object associated with it, as with a pairing relationship with another individual. Even in the latter case, because the pairing relationship is an essential potentiality for human beings, empathy does not require the continual bodily presence of another. One can empathize with another person over the phone, for example. Although it is not sufficient to establish or fully account for the living experience of 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 129 (§ 56). 26 Ibid., 107 (§ 49). 27 Ibid., 130 (§ 56).

116  Political Others and Foreignness the “we,’ one sees in this regard the manner in which the world can be “us,” or in which “we” are the world. More concretely still, since a political community fundamentally “resides” in its members, giving it its specific identity, it is necessary to elucidate the manner in which this identity is lived in an ongoing manner. In addition to the universal, essential structures of relationships of empathy we have discussed (pairing, passive synthesis, and so on), Husserl asserts that, concretely, in order for apperception of others to occur, there must also be a degree of harmony between what he calls “appearance-​systems.” He writes: It is implicit in the sense of my successful apperception of others that their world, the world belonging to their appearance-​systems, must be experienced forthwith as the same as the world belonging to my appearance-​systems; and this involves an identity of our appearance systems.28 Now, appearance-​systems are composed of various strata of experience, from the apprehension of the natural world to the spiritual objectivities of culture.29 Husserl indicates a kind of spectrum of possible overlap of appearance-​systems, ranging from a more or less “identical” correspondence to differences concerning entire “strata” of experience (consider, for example, that for a deaf person the strata of sound would be absent).30 I would like to propose that, in the apprehension of “us,” there is an experience or perception of the fact that others share a common set of appearance-​systems with oneself –​a self-​conscious realization that “we” are living in the same commonly grasped world –​and that this can occur only when this commonality has been evoked or rendered explicit in some way. This can come about in a multitude of ways, for example (and most saliently) in an attendance at a public event of some kind, such as a political speech, wherein the “we” is expressly evoked. Yet, it may equally occur in private, for example while reading a book on the history of the political community. The “we” may be apprehended in a mere thought of one’s country, looking down from the window of an airplane during a landing. What is notable in this respect is that none of the objective sources evoking or making explicit the shared appearance-​systems is itself the actual “we” that is experienced, any more than the experienced body of another person is the Other per se. Nor should the apprehension of the “content” of the appearance-​systems be strictly identified with an experience of the community itself –​just as the words (and the thoughts they express) of another person, although they may manifest who the Other is, are not themselves the living Other that is apperceived. All such content 28 Ibid., 125 (§ 55). 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

Political Others and Foreignness  117 would seem to be part of the “perception proper” that functions as the underlying basis for an apperception of the “we.” It may be objected that, because I myself am part of the “we,” there cannot be the pure alterity required for the experience of a genuine Other. It will be said that my “we” is just a moment of my own experience and therefore I cannot apprehend our “we-​subjectivity” in any objective sense (that is, as transcendent to my own subjectivity). In this way, any experience of my “we” is only an inference or conclusion drawn from my experience of other individuals. In the case of an individual Other, there is indeed the categorical impossibility of experiencing their subjectivity. By contrast, I am part of the “We,” and hence a pure alterity is lacking. Now, it is here that a disanalogy with individual empathy does seem come into play. In responding to the objection, then, I will begin by noting the obvious fact that we-​subjectivity does not refer literally to a single “mind,” as with an individual. For this reason, it becomes possible to assert the presence of what I will call a “perspectival alterity” between myself and the political community as a whole. In this way, I propose that the “we” can be both truly Other and also experienced directly by me within my own self. Consider that, since the needed alterity obviously cannot reside in the shared appearance-​systems (which precisely is necessary for the “we” to be a “we”), it must come from a true “division” within the whole, which is to say that fundamental difference (that is, otherness) must be present within the political community itself. Yet how can a political community be both united and divided? It is unavailing to posit differences on an individual level, placing the needed alterity at the level of personal preferences. For the alterity in question –​in order to function as providing true otherness –​ must be fundamental (that is, structural). Differences at the merely superficial level of preferences create only the kind of “alterity” found in crowds or mobs, which are not a true “we.” One the other hand, making such personal preferences primary (that is, having them go “all the way down”) would in fact vitiate any truly experienced appearance-​systems, thus once again destroying the “we.” However, if we understand the necessary alterity within a political community as arising from the existence of parts of a whole, it does become possible for individuals to be both within the “we” and yet experiencing the “we” as, in some fundamental sense, Other. This is only possible insofar as the “we” is made up of a plurality of Others that is part of the typical ontological structure of the life-​world. Such a view would correspond to Aristotle’s insistence that the individual is “prior” to the whole, and that virtue is “relative” in some degree to function. With perspectival alterity, although there are truly shared appearance-​systems which represent and define who “we” are, each individual experiences the common appearance-​ systems, and the “we” which they reveal, from a certain “place” within the common whole. Everyone experiences the same “we,” but no one experiences it in a purely objective sense. I am truly part of a real, objective, “we” –​that is, however, not just me.

118  Political Others and Foreignness In this regard it becomes clear why both realist and idealist liberalism, in theorizing the political community as a “fair system of cooperation” among generic individuals, necessarily exclude an account of the “we” from their political philosophies. Moreover, in light of the formative function of political ideas, in thoroughly imbuing society with this conception, an ideological impetus is created through which a lived experience of the “we” is suppressed and eviscerated. Yet more: since the sense-​stratum “pure others” must become a community of objectively existing subjects in order to achieve the constitution of the world (that is, “a world of men” in which all have the sense “member of a community”), then the forced reduction of the community (through the removal of all social contingency) back to an assembly, per impossibile, of “objective pure others” amounts to a de-​constitution of the world. Put differently, if the existence of the “we” and the constitution of the world are intrinsically bound up together, then stripping the life-​world of its political structure (through an ideological obfuscation of ontological sense) leaves, at best, only the (uninhabitable) “world” of natural science. By contrast, Husserl’s account of communalization opens the way for an exploration of we-​subjectivity. It is not possible here to explicate the manner in which transcendental intersubjectivity is able to account for the experience of the “we.” I have, however, attempted to trace out the way in which a true experience of a “we” can be understood phenomenologically as rooted ultimately in the universal sense-​stratum of pure others and manifesting most immediately in the common appearance-​systems that are represented and evoked (perspectivally) in society and the world in multitudinous ways. Husserl speaks clearly, in this regard, of the ability to thematize we-​subjectivity, by “considering, together, objects pregiven to us in common, thinking together, valuing, planning, acting together.”31 Through an alteration of perspective, we-​subjectivity itself, which is “somehow constantly functioning, becomes a thematic object, whereby the acts through which it functions also become thematic, though always with a residuum which remains unthematic –​remains, so to speak, anonymous.”32

The Existence of Other-​We’s-​Than-​Us Let us proceed to the third relationship to be explored under the theme “political Others,” namely Other-​we’s-​than-​us. We begin by observing that, on the most basic level, the same nature is necessarily shared by everyone.33 Likewise, in a certain sense, the world of culture is given to me and to everyone in common, possessing intrinsic accessibility to all.34 However, through an investigation of the precise nature of culture’s objectivity, it

31 Husserl, Crisis of the European Sciences, 109 (§ 28). 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 133 (§ 58). 34 Ibid., 132 (§ 58).

Political Others and Foreignness  119 becomes apparent that its accessibility is not totally unconditional.35 In this regard, Husserl writes: Each man understands first of all, in respect of a core and as having its unrevealed horizon, his concrete surrounding world or his culture; and he does so precisely as a man who belongs to the community fashioning it historically. A deeper understanding, one that opens up the horizon of the past (which is co-​determinant for an understanding of the present itself), is essentially possible to them alone /​and barred to anyone from another community who enters into relation with theirs.36 Now, we have rejected the possibility of a concretely existing intersubjective community of men which includes all human beings, both actual and potential: a “we-​humanity.” In this passage, Husserl makes clear that this impossibility is due, at the very least, to the embodied and temporal nature of men, which connects them to a specific culture and history. One does not live simply in objective nature, but in the world. Beyond this, it seems practically impossible for there to be a single intersubjective community given the number of people on earth, the concrete divergence of existing historical traditions, and many of man’s innate tendencies. Furthermore, however, even when hypothesizing such a community (perhaps supposing a great “fusion” of communities in the future), it becomes apparent that it would still have to be considered finite and limited, in the sense that Other (human) beings from outside could nonetheless potentially arrive (that is, from somewhere else in the universe). Husserl writes: For each man, every other is implicit in this horizon –​physically, psychophysically, in respect of what is internal to the other’s psyche –​ and is thus in principle a realm of endless accessibilities, though in fact most other men remain horizonal.37 This passage makes it clear that every intersubjective community is essentially open to the encounter with Other (human) beings. Now, given the outward-​facing nature of human communities, living in time and space and essentially open to others, and moreover the we-​ subjectivity of every community, I would like to posit –​in a manner similar to Husserl’s concept of pure other individuals –​a universal stratum of pure Other-​we’s-​than-​us (one could likewise say that the pure Other-​we’s-​than-​us are “in” the stratum of pure others) that are “not yet” objectively existing. With the encounter of concrete Other political communities, there seems to be in principle no reason not to posit a pairing and apperception 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., 133 (§ 58) (emphasis added). 37 Ibid., 130-​–​1 (§ 56).

120  Political Others and Foreignness among political communities (that is, between we-​subjectivities) such that a kind of “empathy” among regimes comes into view. I, insofar as I am part of the we-​subjectivity of my community, and “we,” insofar as I and my we-​others are concretely related to a foreign political community, could appresent, in accord with an essential potentiality inherent in this horizon, the we-​subjectivity of an objectively existing Other-​we-​than-​us. The universal correlate of such essentiality would be the universal experience of the life-​world as possessing the ontic sense “world of a plurality of political communities.” Clearly, however, such a line of reasoning would seem inconsistent with the central thesis I have advanced regarding the coterminous relationship of the community and the life-​world. For, how can I posit my own political community as coterminous with “the” world while asserting at the same time that the existence of other political communities is (essentially) implicit in this horizon? In this regard, I will propose a political quasi-​epochē which is unique to the experience of Other-​we’s-​than-​us, and which forms a key part of political subjectivity. It is necessary to specify that my thesis holds for what is normally the case –​that Other political communities, being Other worlds, are, strictly speaking, inconceivable as actually existing. However, just as the epochē and reduction make the life-​world (which of course is not an object in the normal attitude) available for investigation, I propose that Other political communities become accessible through a political quasi-​epochē, which is a peculiar potentiality of human consciousness effected under the “stress” of an encounter (in some form or other) with a foreign “we.” In this epochē, the impinging presence of a foreign life-​world (that is, another political community) radically calls into question my own in such a way as to cause a suspension of my taking it, naïvely, as “the” world. In sum, this quasi-​epochē operates such that a certain “distance” opens up –​always for the first time, as it were –​between my political community and “the” world. Let me attempt to explain this political quasi-​epochē in greater detail. Consider that, for Husserl, the truth of the existence of the world is given through direct, unbroken, harmonious evidence. Thus, for example, physical objects in the external world can only be verified through external experience, and this only so long as that experience continues in a harmonious, synthetic manner.38 A break in this harmonious synthesis calls the very reality of the world into question, or, less dramatically, it calls for an adjustment as to the truth about what reality is. Now, consider that, in a parallel manner, the epochē consists of a bracketing or suspension of the validities of the natural attitude, which is to say that it brings about an “abrupt suspension of a naïve metaphysical attitude,” although, to be sure, it does not call into question the content of reality.39 In the epochē, the world is no longer taken in a straightforward manner, but rather as phenomena. Albeit with important differences, then (for example, the epochē 38 Ibid., 62 (§ 28). 39 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 46.

Political Others and Foreignness  121 is consciously chosen while a dis-​harmonious experience in the world is undergone), a calling into question of the being of the previously assumed “world” occurs in both the epochē and a dis-​harmonious experience of what had previously been taken as reality. Now, perhaps the fundamental thesis of this work is the proposal that the life-​world and political community are coterminous. This is to say that, with regard to “content,” they are normally identical, with the dimension “political community” coming to the fore regarding the human organization within the whole as such. Living in the normal life-​world of America, all things to me are “America”: the people, the land, the clouds, the sky, even the moon and sun. This American world exists in an unbroken and continuous manner. However, suppose that as I am driving under the “American” moon, I see a road sign written in French and English. Such an occurrence, being dis-​harmonious, might threaten to suspend or interrupt my experience of America. If, soon after, I see a Canadian flag flying in the front of public building, and furthermore several license plates from Quebec, the “world” of America might dissolve altogether. The Canadian world may have come into being. Given the radical transition I have undergone, and depending on a host of factors (my experience, attitude, personal beliefs, and habitualities), I may now view the Canadian/​Quebecois “world” as something akin to phenomena, and indeed, conversely, may now also think of my own country with a certain suspended detachment, “seeing” it with new eyes, as it were –​ in its givenness as a political community –​a kind of “quasi-​phenomenon.” As Zahavi puts it in discussing the philosophical epochē, “Suddenly, the perpetually functioning, but so far hidden, transcendental subjectivity is disclosed as the subjective condition of possibility for manifestation.”40 In the political quasi-​epochē, it is not necessarily transcendental subjectivity per se that is disclosed (although this is very likely now more accessible), but rather an awareness of myself as someone whose way of being in the world, even in its most intimate dimensions, is shaped livingly in conjunction with a concrete set of Others (my we-​others) who, despite having perhaps great differences, nonetheless share an intersubjective identity. The reason why such a political suspension involves a mere quasi-​epochē is that, unlike with a properly phenomenological epochē, the entirety of the being of the world is not bracketed. I do not cast into suspension the straightforward reality of rocks and trees, as I do in the epochē, now seeing them as rocks and trees “given as actually existing.” Rather, what is suspended is the “dogmatic attitude” that overlooks the way in which the concreteness of my political community imbues every dimension of my existence, ranging from the way in which I “take” the natural world as having a certain political “identity” (for example, “French trees”) to the deep “normality” of our sense of history and life –​for instance, who we are,

40 Ibid.

122  Political Others and Foreignness where we have been, what our purposes are, what is acceptable, honorable, contemptible, valuable, and worth fighting for, and so on.41 Although the bracketing in the political quasi-​epochē does not expressly touch the validity of perceived nature, I nonetheless do not shrink from using the word “epochē” in this regard. This is because, at least prior to the political quasi-​epochē (that is, normally), the life-​world and world of the political community are indeed coterminous, thus making a disruption in this regard a truly radical suspension of the ongoing passive synthesis through which I constitute the world. The thoroughness of such a disruption is evident in that, as we have seen, the cultural world with its spiritual objectivities is not given separately from nature. For Husserl, it will be recalled, “concretely the world is given to me and to everyone as only as a cultural world.”42 Since, as I have proposed, it is the political community that intersubjectively constitutes objectivity and reality, any fundamental change in the political perspective would necessarily touch even objective nature. Truly, I was driving under the “American” moon, and now I am driving under the “Canadian” moon.

The Necessity of Other-​We’s-​Than-​Us Having laid this theoretical groundwork, I turn to the problem of the constitution of the political community qua political, and in particular the necessity for this process of an encounter with an Other-​we-​than-​us. Now, it follows from what we have said that, strictly speaking, prior to the political quasi-​epochē, no relation with an Other-​we-​than-​us is possible, due to the fact that normally, without the distance opened up by the encounter with foreignness between my political community (that is, our we-​subjectivity) and the life-​world, no other worlds exist than that of my own political community. This being the case, there is no actual Other, but rather only the “primordial ownness” of our own political community (to continue the parallel with the analysis of individual empathy). This statement, however, must be qualified in a crucial respect, for there is a unique situation in which an encounter between a “we” and a political Other (or Others) takes place without the political epochē: namely, in a founding. Consider in this regard that any existing political community will in fact have already fulfilled the essential possibility of “encountering” –​in some form or other –​an Other-​we-​than-​us. To understand the dynamic (and essential potentiality) at work, the analogy with the individual ego is once again instructive. According to Zahavi, a differentiation should be made between “our first primal experience of Others –​which once and for all makes the constitution of objectivity, reality, and transcendence possible, thus permanently transforming our categories of experience –​and 41 Ibid., 45. 42 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 132 (§ 58).

Political Others and Foreignness  123 all subsequent experiences of Others.”43 I want to suggest that something analogous takes place for the political community. Specifically, I propose that the full constitution of we-​subjectivity for a political community is achieved only through the encounter with political Others (that is, Other-​ we’s-​than-​us). Our world achieves its definitive form, as it were, only under the “stress” of an encounter with an Other world. In what follows, I will both qualify and justify this thesis in a discussion of three significant disanalogies with the process involved in individual relationships. The first disanalogy to be identified is that, while in the life of the individual the first primal experience of Others occurs only once (Zahavi says our categories are “permanently transformed”), with the political community this transformation must be constantly and fundamentally re-​achieved in the continual flow of new generations of individuals that perpetuates its existence. Of course, since successive generations do not concretely experience the founding, an indirect “primal” experience must take place “imaginatively,” for example through the knowledge of history and/​or the active-​ minded engagement with certain important historical sites, memorials, artistic works, and so forth. Both the importance and the difficulty of achieving such an indirect primal experience is readily apparent, presenting a well-​known political challenge for any community. Now, it would be a mistake to consider the requisite founding encounter with a political Other(s) in a simplistic manner. Consider for example that, with the “birth” of the American republic, the colonies became fully constituted as a true “we” only through their conflictual relationship (that is, their “encounter”) with a Great Britain, whose geographical location was quite distinct. By contrast, in the case of the revolutionary French Republic, the opposing Other-​we-​than-​us would in fact have been the Old Regime of the same territorial France. Nor is it necessary that the encounter with the Other-​we-​than-​us be violent, although this is often the case. There have been numerous “bloodless revolutions” in history. There would seem to be a second disanalogy in that, in addition to the full constitution of a political community’s we-​subjectivity being ongoing in a manner disanalogous to the consciousness of an individual, the fundamental categories of experience of a political community should not be literally equated with those of an individual consciousness. Consider that, whereas for the individual ego the primal experience of an alter-​ego once and for all makes the constitution of objectivity and transcendence possible, the full constitution of the political community, in some relationship with an Other-​we-​than-​us, only “solidifies” or “clinches” a certain take on being (that is, it is a “higher level” of constitution). With this clarification we touch once more upon the delicate nuance of identifying the dimension of the political which, although materially coterminous with the life-​world, is yet narrower (or perhaps “thinner”) in terms of ontological primacy.

43 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 116.

124  Political Others and Foreignness Hence, while the full constitution of the political community (for instance, “America”) affects the manner in which both reality and objectivity are constituted, the political community, qua political, does not make possible objectivity and reality, strictly speaking. One could say in this regard that the life-​world is “shot through” with the political. Thus, the categories of experience of a political community, which are attained in relationship with at least one Other-​we-​than-​us, would not seem to pertain to the objectivity of nature so much as to a certain concrete mode or way of experiencing the world, running from the “style” with which nature itself is presented to the crystallization of an orientation based on fundamental purposes, values, or a way of life (for instance, “We are a conquering people,” “We endure and survive,” “We are a prosperous people,” “We are artistically flourishing,” and so on.) Attention to this point helps to identify what is suspended (and what is not) in the political quasi-​epochē. In this epochē, it is not the objectivity per se of the moon that is suspended, but rather the “naïve apprehension” of the moon as an “American” moon –​a moon which, indeed, differs ontologically from the “Canadian” moon. This clarification, in addition to the ongoing (though mostly indirect) character of the constitution of a political regime, explains why it is that, although in a founding (which necessarily includes, I am saying, an experience of the otherness of an Other-​we-​than-​ us) the political community is fully constituted, the fundamental categories of experience of political communities are variable –​among regimes, and also in the same regime over time –​in a way disanalogous to an individual ego. It would seem, for example, that profoundly impacting events (for instance, a famine) or encounters with political Others (for instance, in a war) could alter or significantly impact the categories of experience of the we-​subjectivity. If the effect were to change those categories of experience in a manner essentially discontinuous with the founding, then, in fact, there would be a new founding and different regime. The third and perhaps most important disanalogy to be made between individual and political “empathy” concerns not the founding of a political community, but rather the problem of ongoing relations with political Others. Specifically, I want to propose that although the stressful encounter with an Other world (in the political quasi-​epochē) is an essential possibility for a we-​subjectivity (and necessary for a political community’s full constitution), the encounter does not conform to any universal ontological feature of the life-​world. In other words, there is no essential potentiality of constituting “two worlds in tension” in the same way that the empathetic encounter represents a potentiality to be fulfilled such that, for example, the world will henceforth have acquired the permanent sense of a “world of men.” On the contrary, it is precisely the nature of the “stress” of which I speak that an encounter between “two worlds” means in fact a loss or destabilization of “the” world. This stress is resolved only when the life-​world is reconstituted in its original state, which could come about through a

Political Others and Foreignness  125 return to one’s community or, for example, through a situation wherein, in the momentary absence of stress, one temporarily forgets one is present “within” a foreign intersubjective community. Of course, it’s also possible that one eventually begins to live in the Other world, in the crucial sense. To be clear, because we are speaking merely of the political quasi-​ epochē, worldly objects (especially as apprehended in an ideal or primordial fashion) will still be more or less naïvely intended. In the strict sense, then, with loss and regaining of “the” world in the encounter with a foreign world, there is nonetheless a certain level of continuity in terms of the primal apprehension of nature (including human nature) and ideal objects (like mathematical objects). Yet even here, the style of nature will be lost (and reconstituted). In reflecting on the concrete functioning of these dynamics, it is easy to see that, although the structure of the experiences we are discussing is universal and essential, in any particular case an individual’s character and habits of thought, in addition to their concrete circumstances, will directly affect operation of the political quasi-​epochē and the ability to apprehend and “empathize” with Other-​we’s-​then-​us. For example, the political quasi-​epochē will be practically inescapable for someone travelling in a foreign land strikingly different from their own. Contrariwise, even someone working daily in an international setting (for instance, in an embassy) might habitually fail to achieve the political quasi-​epochē if their encounters with the foreign intersubjective community become merely commonplace; for example, through the “construction” of a more or less worldless work-​ space (which is to say, through the creation of a more or less generic and partial “work world”). In this case, there would be no real encounter at all.

Empathy with Other Regimes? Yes and No Given the important disanalogies between the individual ego and the we-​ subjectivity of the political community, it is tempting to dismiss the idea of political empathy altogether. Yet, this would be premature. In proceeding to a final position on this question, let me begin by briefly summarizing the theoretical situation. Recall that, for Husserl, the transcendental sense “other subjects,” and the universal sense-​stratum emanating from them, precedes the existence of objective (individual) subjects in the world. Now, in pursuing a potential analogy for we-​subjectivity, I had suggested a transcendental sense “other political communities” and a universal sense-​stratum emanating from them which precedes all objective Other-​ we’s-​than-​us in the world.44 The difficulty was that my central thesis, the coterminous relationship of the life-​world and political community, would seem to negate such a conception, insofar as a sense-​stratum emanating from pure “other political communities” would evidently underlie an 44 The important question of the precise relation (or perhaps identity, in some way) of these two sense strata is not of present concern.

126  Political Others and Foreignness ontology of the life-​world with an essential sense “world of co-​existing political communities” (just as the sense-​stratum “other subjects” underlies a “world of men”). In response to this problem, I would like to suggest that through the political quasi-​epochē, the encounter (whether direct, hypothetical, imaginary, or otherwise) with a political Other opens up a temporary distance between the life-​world and political community, allowing for the manifestation of a horizon of other political communities and thus the potential for a kind of political empathy. This possibility is due to the fact that the ontologically “partial” character of the political epochē does not penetrate to the constitution of being itself, but rather only brackets certain higher levels of constitution (while remaining coterminous with the life-​world). Hence, while continuing to have a world in some “partial” sense (for instance, at the minimum on a primordial level), one can understand oneself to be in a “world of political communities.” Now, this horizon of other political communities, to be sure, is not inherent in the ontological structure of the life-​world, but arises in tension with it, due to the calling into question of “the” world of my own political horizon. Thus, although the ground or horizon of Other-​we’s-​than-​us, introduced into the life-​world, is intelligible, it remains a kind of construct, assertion, or hypothesis insofar as it does not correspond to the normal, passively synthesized structure of consciousness. Concretely, then, the coming to be of Other-​we’s-​than-​us within the world is an exceptional case, brought about when, either through a certain “spiritual” effort or perhaps under the deconstructing stress of certain foreign objects, a “space” for Other worlds is opened. As soon as the effort ceases (or the stress is reduced), the opening between the life-​world and the world of the political community “snaps shut,” as it were. Having set forth the manner in which an opening toward political empathy is possible –​and keeping in mind the basic lines of analogy and disanalogy between individual relationships and those of political communities –​let us proceed to a discussion of political empathy, properly speaking, by first recalling Husserl’s assertion of the necessity of pairing in individual relationships. Is it possible to posit a kind of “pairing” between political communities? Consider: whereas in individual empathy the “perception proper” is one’s own self-​perception, the analogous perception proper in the case of political communities would naturally seem to be a political community’s own experience of itself qua political community –​ it’s experience of itself as a “we.” From this point, there would be an “analogizing apprehension” of the Other political community through which that community could in some degree be livingly presented in the unity of its objective (as it appears for me/​us) and subjective (as they experience themselves) dimensions. Once again, in positing a political empathy between political communities analogous to that between individuals, we must be vigilant for disanalogies and necessary clarifications. Above all, as already suggested,

Political Others and Foreignness  127 whereas Husserl seemed to posit the pairing structure as a kind of fulfilment of an essential potentiality of the life-​world, the analogous pairing relationship between two regimes would not appear to have this character –​ a point which harmonizes with the idea that political empathy can only occur with the suspension of normal we-​subjectivity. Nonetheless, the analogy does seem appropriate in that we do appear to experience, at times, an active appresentation of Other-​we’s-​than-​us. The difference would be that such an appresentation does not conform to the ontological “landscape” of the life-​world in the same way as is the case with individual empathetic relationships. Our world would seem to be constituted as “home to Others,” but not as “home to Other we’s.’45 The analogy with empathy also helps us to understand why our we-​ subjectivity is only fully constituted through the encounter with Other worlds. For, just as it is only through the presence of something alien (that is, an alter-​ego) to our individual subjectivity (operating as a kind of immanent transcendency) that the objective world is constituted, the essential foreignness of an Other regime also creates the “experience” of a world external to our political community. However, a major disanalogy is present, in that the appresentation of the Other regime, since it does not conform structurally to an essential potentiality of the life-​world, is temporary and partial, occurring only under stress or effort. Such an observation would seem to make the Other regime more distant than individual Others, creating a greater barrier to empathy. On the other hand, however –​and perhaps surprisingly –​an Other we-​subjectivity would also seem to be closer to our experience than the subjectivity of Other individuals. For the impossibility of entering into the subjectivity of the individual Other arises from the fact this subjectivity is an individual Other “pole,” like my own “absolute” subjective pole, and hence definitively cut off from the possibility of being given to me originally. By contrast, an Other we-​subjectivity is not in principle inexperienceable by me. Rather, one could say that its otherness arises from the great difficulty in finding the small, narrow, and fleeting “door” to the intuition of the Other world, in addition to that of overcoming an inevitable aversion to the “trauma” involved in (necessarily) sacrificing of my own (that is, “the”) world to gain access to it. Hence, we may say that, although a kind of appresentation of an Other regime may occur at the level of imagination, political empathy, in its most pure form, would be no such thing at all, strictly speaking. Rather than appresentation per se, it would seem to involve a kind of marginal consciousness wherein one directly “perceives” another world –​and in doing so intuits in some fashion the relative irreality of one’s own (that is, “the”) world. All else being equal, we may say that empathy with an Other regime is both more achievable (in principle, if not in fact) and far more “traumatic” than individual empathy.

45 The question of foreign individuals will be addressed below.

128  Political Others and Foreignness Normally, I have said, the idea of a world “larger” than our political community lacks intelligibility. However, if the “we” is only fully constituted, as I have said, in an encounter with an Other “we,” we may expect that such a “primal instituting” –​in which the “we” was experienced as existing within a larger world –​would remain with us in some way. Perhaps we may here have recourse to Husserl’s understanding that for objects apprehended immediately as possessing a given sense and certain horizons, there must necessarily have been an original, primal instituting wherein a similar object was constituted with that sense and those horizons for the first time.46 In a similar manner, we may say that the objective world given to us as coterminous with our political community retains, nonetheless, an “echo” of ontological finitude, perhaps experienced as a kind of existential doubt or mortality with regard to our “we.” Of course, the universal and essential apprehension of the world as our world prevents the constitution of this finitude. Yet, it apparently has the strength to persist to some degree even without the political epochē –​ which may arise from the fact that the founding takes place technically in the normal attitude. On a day-​to-​day level, the continued “pointing” to the primal institution of the “we” (at a time when “we” were one among Others) seems to manifest in a kind of (more or less strong) hovering sense of “them” being “out there” –​of the existence (somewhere, somehow) of the unknown, foreign, and otherworldly. Strictly speaking, however, such a sense cannot attach to the world per se, although a foreign object within the world may come to represent it.47

Carl Schmitt As a final matter pertaining to question of political empathy, it will be helpful to briefly consider the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt in light of the preceding analysis. Now, Schmitt makes a clear distinction between the “state” and “the political,” although he understands them as related. For him, the political is decidedly fundamental, for “the concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.”48 By contrast, Schmitt criticizes liberal thought for defining the two in a merely circular manner. He writes: In one way or another “political” is generally juxtaposed to “state” or at least is brought in relation with it. The state thus appears as something political, and the political as something pertaining to the state –​ obviously an unsatisfactory circle.49 46 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 111 (§ 50). 47 It should be recalled that because the political quasi-​epochē does not penetrate to being as such; it is much more fluid and a matter of degree than the true philosophical epochē. 48 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 19. 49 Ibid., 20.

Political Others and Foreignness  129 According to Schmitt, this equivocation serves the liberal goal of making the procedural guarantee of individual rights the sum and total of politics. By “evading” or “ignoring” both “state and politics,” liberal thought attempts to obviate the political.50 Instead, it moves “in a typical always recurring polarity of two heterogenous spheres, namely ethics and economics, intellect and trade, education and property.”51 Unlike the liberal realists, who criticize only ideal liberalism’s exclusion of disagreement from the domain of politics, Schmitt also connects the contemporary negation of the political to individualism. According to Schmitt, “The negation of the political…is inherent in every consistent individualism.”52 Hence the paramount need for an elucidation of the concept of the political. In this regard, Schmitt’s approach comports with the analysis in this work. However, instead of attempting to give a “definition” of the political, which would be, in his words, “indicative of substantial content,” he seeks only to give a definition “in the sense of a criterion.”53 Yet it may be asked: How can a trustworthy criterion be established in the absence of an elucidation of the substantial content of that for which the criterion is being provided? To find a definition “in the sense of a criterion,” Schmitt looks for a “special distinction” for the political in the same way that “in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable.”54 His famous conclusion is that “the specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”55 In my view, the truth in this “definition” lies in the fact that, as we have seen, the political community cannot be fully constituted without an Other-​we-​than-​us. Yet, what is it precisely that makes Schmitt insist that the Other must be an enemy? Why is it that Schmitt’s political community is unable to let the Other be? To answer this question, it is necessary to enter more deeply into Schmitt’s account of the political Other. Consider this crucial passage: The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But

50 Ibid., 70. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 26. 54 Ibid., 26. 55 Ibid.

130  Political Others and Foreignness he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.56 Now, what is striking in this passage in terms of our analysis is the perspective of objectivity that is adopted. For in Schmitt’s account, despite his reputed realism, we see in fact that a philosophical distance from reality is taken precisely at this crucial juncture –​with the Other being declared an enemy in ideal terms. Although Schmitt insists that “the concern here is neither with abstractions nor with normative ideals, but with inherent reality and the real possibility of such a distinction,” the Other, insofar as he is presupposed as an enemy (despite this characterization being, as he admits, only a “possibility”), is indeed an abstraction –​“the” (ideal) enemy. Schmitt expressly tells us in the above passage that the enemy is such, quite apart from being evil, ugly, or economically threatening. Furthermore, although “the friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing,” the enemy does not in fact emerge from an actual situation of war. Schmitt specifies in this regard that “the definition of the political suggested here neither favors war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism.”57 Nor is his idea of the enemy “an attempt to idealize the victorious war or the successful revolution as a ‘social ideal,’ since neither war nor revolution is something social or something ideal.”58 Rather, although war does indeed have an “existential” meaning, its importance in the constitution of the political Other is in fact purely theoretical. Finally, to complete the abstraction that is the essence of the political for Schmitt, he distinguishes carefully between the “political enemy” on one hand, whom one “need not…hate personally,” and the “private adversary” on the other, who is presumably a real person (otherwise how would you know whether they were a foe?).59 Yet, what can it mean, ontologically speaking, that the political Other is an enemy just by the simple fact of being other? In light of our preceding analysis, we could say that Schmitt sees the enemy as a pure political Other. What is crucial to note is that, whereas for Husserl pure others do not “as yet” have the sense “Objective subjects, subjects existing in the world,” for Schmitt the pure political Other appears, per impossibile, objectively in the world (as the pure –​yet somehow existing –​negation of one’s own community). This Other “we,” then, representing the pure idea of a foreign intersubjective construction of “the” world, represents only the threat of “non-​world.” For Schmitt, an Other-​we-​than-​us is only the destroyer of “the” world. In my analysis, when the Other world does appear 56 Ibid., 26–​7. 57 Ibid., 35. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., 28–​9.

Political Others and Foreignness  131 on the horizon (that is, in the political quasi-​epochē), it does indeed pose the “threat” of negating “the” world (that is, the world corresponding to my own we-​subjectivity), but only insofar as it poses an alternative to my own –​an alternative which I could, in principle, experience through entering (admittedly at the loss of my own world and potentially even my identity to some extent). It is consistent with Schmitt’s “idealism” regarding the pure enemy that there appears to be no we-​subjectivity, properly speaking, in his account, but only a pure “we” of ego poles (existing, again per impossibile, objectively in the world). This explains the peculiar absence in Schmitt’s thought of any sense of the alteration of perspective through which we-​subjectivity becomes a thematic object, enabling the “reflecting activity” though which “we attain habitual knowledge” of “us” and an “evaluation of ourselves and the plans and actions related to ourselves and our fellows.”60 Despite Schmitt’s appeals to the real and existential, construing the political as coming to be in a relationship of ideal opposition also removes it from its home in the embodied community. We could say that for Schmitt’s philosophy there is no reason why the political community must exist objectively in the world in order to be political. To shift from Husserlian to Aristotelian language, “we” are not according to nature –​that is, an organically structured, teleologically ordered series of communities culminating in a naturally self-​sufficient whole. The “we” for Schmitt has no intelligible being per se. Rather, it is the ideal opposition between “us” and the enemy that is fundamentally constitutive of “us.” The political Other is not (as in my analysis) merely the occasion for the full and complete actualization of our we-​subjectivity. In sum, for Schmitt, the political Other simply must remain both pure and an enemy, for it is only in this way that “we” can maintain our own pure existence. It goes without saying that no relation of empathy is possible with an objectively existing pure Other. In a Husserlian analysis, such a pure Other is, strictly speaking, inconceivable. As pure (that is, ideal) threat, the Other political community cannot appear to our we-​subjectivity as they experience themselves. Thus, empathy is impossible. For Schmitt, because “we” are not an embodied intersubjective community living in conformity with the a priori ontological sense of the life-​world, there is no possibility of the political quasi-​epochē opening the distance between “the” world and our political community and making “room” for the Other political community to be. Furthermore, Schmitt’s “we” fails to achieve (through the knowledge that “they” also experience “us” as a political Other) the objectivating equalization through which we know that we are but one political community among others. Finally, in the unrelieved, existential conflict that takes place in the absence of the political quasi-​epochē, the foreign is unable to appear in its positive aspect as “exotic,” “mysterious,” “stimulating,” or

60 Husserl, Crisis of the European Sciences, 109 (§ 28).

132  Political Others and Foreignness “interesting.” Indeed, as pure objective enemy in the world, it is impossible to let political Others be.

Individual Political Others In concluding this third theme of political subjectivity, let us pursue the analysis to the individual level. As we have seen, in Husserl’s philosophy there is a basic empathy available to all humans, regardless of considerations of foreignness. This level of empathy includes the universality of the unconditional accessibility of nature to all people, the fact of being a living organism, and also a certain level of psychophysical experience proper to humanity in the most general sense.61 More specifically, as we have seen, through the pairing association we perceive in the natural body of another the existence of an alter-​ego, an Other subjectivity, governing in their own organism (as we perceive ourselves doing in ours) and moreover actively perceiving “the” world (as we ourselves are doing).62 Further still, based simply on the mere existence of another human being, a certain degree of empathy is accessible in terms of the relatively higher psychic sphere. In describing Husserl’s idea of a “law of motivation,” Russell explains that an analogizing apprehension allows me to expect certain “patterns of behavior” on the part of the other, and on this basis to “set up a series of anticipations,” even if they do not prove entirely accurate.63 One sees immediately in this regard that certain experiences –​for instance, pain, laughter, the fear of falling, getting hungry, the love of one’s children –​would be universal. In this way, then, a degree of empathy is possible for all humans, for example as pertaining to self-​preservation, sexuality, the desire for knowledge, and care for offspring: in short, those aspects of human experience corresponding generally to the inclinations forming the basis of natural law.64 Despite these elements of what I will call universal human empathy, I propose that the relation of foreignness affects concrete human relations in a way so radical as to require a special kind of empathy to meet the challenge it poses. This barrier of foreignness obtains even though, at any given time, depending on the situation, universal human empathy may “surge forth” and fill the field of experience, temporarily eclipsing the distance between myself and the (foreign) Other. In order to elucidate the peculiar difficulty involved here, let us return to our hypothetical situation at the Washington Monument, which was set forth in Chapter 8. Consider three new personages who enter the periphery of the monument to enjoy the bright spring day and contemplate the structure. There 61 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 132 (§ 58). 62 Ibid., 123 (§ 55). 63 Matheson Russell, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006),, 175. 64 Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: Norton, 1988), 49–​50.

Political Others and Foreignness  133 is: 1) Mr. Khatun, a man from Bangladesh who is the country briefly to attend the wedding of a relative; 2) Mr. Malcom, the chief of staff of a newly elected American senator; and 3) Mr. Drinkel, who works in a foreign policy think tank and, as it happens, specializes in South Asian policy. On this day, Khatun is taking an opportunity to do some sightseeing. Malcom and Drinkel, recent acquaintances, are out for a stroll after finishing a friendly lunch. Now, being in America, all have a basic predisposition to view others as Americans. Thus, Malcom and Drinkel both assume Khatun is American. At a certain moment, however, Khatun receives a phone call and begins speaking to his interlocutor in Bengali. Hearing the foreign language, the other two men begin to apprehend Khatun differently. Malcom, his train of thought temporarily interrupted upon hearing the unusual language, pauses to wonder whether this man is perhaps from another country. For his part, Drinkel, having lived and studied extensively in Bangladesh, has a basic familiarity with the language. He quickly deduces the circumstances of Khatun’s trip from the overheard snatches of conversation. Now, two main lines of inquiry are of interest with regard to this situation: first, the peculiar nature of the empathetic relationship between a “native” and a foreigner, and, second, the differing quality of the individual empathetic relationships established by the two “natives” due to their concrete particularities.65 Consider that, to the extent that Khatun’s natural body is perceived by Malcom and Drinkel, the two men necessarily appresent the former, qua human, first of all as governing in his own body (that is, as “the body over there”) and also as governing mediately within nature, which appears to him perceptually. It is necessary to immediately recall, however, that nature is always given concretely to each individual only as a cultural world. Husserl states that everyone has fashioned nature “into a cultural world… with the necessary communalization of [one’s] life and the life of others.”66 Therefore, in appresenting the nature that appears perceptually to an Other, one necessarily appresents to some extent a “cultural world” (fashioned out of it) as well. In terms of the goals of empathy, the appresented nature (of the Other) is ideally the same communalized nature that I experience (that is, the one formed according to my own communalized living and doing). It is clear, however, that in taking Khatun to be American, Malcom and Drinkel will have failed (more or less) in terms of the goals of empathy by 65 I put the term “native” in quotations to alert the reader to the fact that I use the term in a precise manner to indicate someone who is part of the intersubjective community. Notably, this does not require the person to have been physically born within the territory possessed by the political community. 66 Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 133 (§ 58).

134  Political Others and Foreignness in fact appresenting a nature different than the one perceived by Khatun –​ insofar as nature is necessarily given concretely as a cultural world. Now, upon realizing their error of taking Khatun to be an American, it is evident that Malcom and Drinkel are not equally capable of overcoming the distance that opens up between their own “world” and that of the Bangladeshi man. In being confronted with the existence of another life-​world “in” Khatun (which was previously “impossible”), both Drinkel and Malcom will likely have been provoked into the political quasi-​epochē. We assume that both men, being of goodwill, make the effort to maintain the opening. As such, they are both capable of some degree of individual political empathy. Malcom, however, knowing practically nothing about Bangladesh, is able to empathize more or less exclusively in terms of universal humanity. Drinkel, due to his study, travel, and knowledge of the Bengali language, is of course capable of a much fuller and richer appresentation of Khatun’s “world.” However, being American in the crucial sense (that is, people whose objectivity is constituted in accord with the intersubjective community of America), for both men Khatun remains to some extent “in” a different “world” and hence to some degree irreducibly “foreign.” In order to clarify the situation more systematically, I propose dividing empathy into two major types: first, normal empathy (with someone of the same intersubjective community), and second, empathy with another concrete person occurring within the political quasi-​epochē, or individual political empathy. Now, in the normal situation, with the appresented nature of the Other given concretely in terms of the same cultural world, the primary empathetic challenge (occurring within the “higher psychic sphere”) pertains to the appresentation of content broadly concerning what is going on in the Other’s life. By contrast, in individual political empathy, although in the appresentation of the Other the universally human may surge forth and (temporarily) eclipse the experience of difference, what is urgent and prominent in terms of the empathetic challenge is the lack of a “worldly” foundation for the appresentation of the Other’s experience. Thus, the primary task in individual political empathy –​always insurmountable to some degree inasmuch as the Other is “foreign” –​is the appresentation of the Other’s life-​world. As we have seen, because this appresentation of another life-​world is not, per se, an essential potentiality of consciousness (for example, one corresponding to the a priori ontological structure of the life-​world), it is actually a spiritual effort of imagination. With political empathy, then, there is an irreducible otherness (corresponding to the difference of intersubjective communities) that cuts both “below” and “above” the zone of universal empathy. It cuts above in the sense that the more-​developed, higher spheres of culture, manners, collective historical experience, political ideals, and so forth of the Other are more or less unknown to me. More fundamentally, however, it cuts below in that, since the very nature that the Other experiences is concretely intertwined with his foreign culture, I have a relative “blank” in this regard

Political Others and Foreignness  135 as well. In a peculiar sense, then, always excepting cases when the immediate empathic experience is dominated by a surging forth of the universally human, in the foreign Other I am confronted, through the absence of “the” world (that is, my own life-​world) “in” him, with the political community to which the Other belongs. Individual political empathy, then, involves a special “hurdle” in endeavoring to appresent the individual foreign Other’s experience. Because what is missing in my experience of him is precisely his own intersubjectively constituted life-​world, what must be sought as prerequisite to true empathy pertains to the foreign “we” of which he is a part. To empathize with him, I must know his political community. To conclude, allow me to summarize our findings regarding individual political empathy. First, because a foreign “we” is present in a certain manner “in” every foreigner –​the (imagination-​based) appresentation of which is the peculiar task of individual political empathy –​it is clear that empathy with a foreigner can take place only within the political quasi-​ epochē, wherein what is normally impossible (the co-​existence of two life-​worlds) may occur in a special fashion. Secondly, although I may continually empathize with the foreigner in terms of his universal humanity, a full empathetic relationship requires the appresentation of strata of experience both below and above this “zone.” For this reason, universal humanity is an insufficient basis for a common life-​world –​and hence for a political community. This observation is in keeping with the conclusion arrived at elsewhere in this book that conceiving society as a fair system of cooperation (that is, of generic human beings) is precisely to exclude the political from political philosophy.

11 Political Intentionality The Essence of Political Experience

In the preceding three chapters I have attempted to elucidate political subjectivity through an identification and discussion of the ontological structures of the life-​world essentially connected to political experience. Now, in an analysis of what we may call political intentionality, I will endeavor to discern the essential structure of the intentional acts common to all objects apprehended as “political.” This inquiry will complete the analysis of political subjectivity and hopefully provide insight into the nature of the political. Before proceeding to an identification of this common structure of the acts of consciousness underlying political experience, some distinctions regarding the question of intentionality will help focus the inquiry. In our analysis of political subjectivity thus far, we have focused, in Husserlian terminology, on the “noematic” dimension of experience, which is the “transcendent, constituted correlate” of subjectivity in the stream of consciousness, or, put somewhat differently, the “object-​as-​it-​ is-​intended.”1 According to Sokolowski, “the use of the term ‘noema’ signals that we are in phenomenology, in philosophical discourse, and that the things being talked about are being discussed from a philosophical viewpoint, not from one of the viewpoints within the natural attitude.”2 In discussing the world apprehended as “belonging” to a people, for example, we have been studying its “noematic structure.”3 By contrast, in this chapter I want to turn to the immanent, noetic component of political subjectivity. The term “noesis” refers to “the intentional acts by which we intend things: perceptions, signifying acts, empty intentions, filled intentions, judgings, remembering.”4 Specifically, then, I will examine the intentional acts by which we apprehend things as political, or what I call “political intentionality.”

1 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 57–​8. 2 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 59. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 60.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-11

The Essence of Political Experience  137 Intentionality is, of course, a concept central to Husserl’s thought. Russell describes the way in which Husserl, isolating the field of pure consciousness through the philosophical epochē, finds consciousness directed beyond itself to a vast array of objects. That is, within the field of “pure consciousness,” he finds both acts of consciousness and objects of those acts –​e.g., acts of perceiving and, along with them, things perceived, acts of remembering and things remembered, acts of meaning and things meant, and so forth. This pattern is, for Husserl, the principal characteristic of conscious experiences (Erlebnisse). It is given the name “intentionality.” To say that consciousness is “intentional,” then, means that consciousness is always “directed” toward and object: consciousness is always consciousness of something.5 Now, according to Zahavi, each intentional experience can be analyzed from three different perspectives. Specifically, one can focus on the psychical process, and analyze the immanent (reelle) content of the act. One can analyze the meaning of the experience, and thereby investigate its intentional content. Finally, one can focus on that which is intended, that is, on the intentional object that the act is conscious of.6 In attempting to identify what is essential or universal in political experience, it is evident that we are not concerned with the “psychic process” involved, which (as psychological) refers to a “worldly” occurrence (that is, one apprehended in the natural attitude). The third option, the “intentional object,” which is “simply identical with the intended object,” would seem to refer to the noemata of political experience, upon which we focused in previous chapters.7 Thus, it seems clear we should seek the “intentional essence” of political experience neither in the “psychical process” nor in the “intentional object,” but rather we should look to the intentional content, which gives the act its directedness and is due to “internal moments in the experience itself.”8 How shall we approach these “moments” of the experience of the political? Levinas explains: “Constitutional problems will be solved by means of the eidetic intuition of consciousness. The structure of the act which constitutes each category of objects is a necessary structure and has its 5 Matheson Russell, Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 79. 6 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 22. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

138  The Essence of Political Experience foundation in the eidetic laws of these acts.”9 This approach will guide our inquiry, broadly speaking. More specifically, however, Zahavi explains that Husserl subdivides the intentional content into two inseparable accidents, namely the intentional matter, which “specifies what the experience is about,” and the intentional quality of the experience (for instance, hoping, desiring, remembering, affirming, doubting, fearing, and so forth).10 I will examine these in order, attempting to elucidate in each what is proper to political experience. For its part, the intentional matter can be defined as the “ideal meaning or sense of the act.”11 Zahavi states: It is meaning or sense that provides consciousness with its object-​ directedness. … More specifically, the matter does not only determine which object is intended, but also what the object is apprehended or conceived as. Thus, it is customary to speak of intentional “relations” as being conception-​dependent. One is not simply conscious of an object, one is always conscious of an object in a particular way, that is, to be intentionally directed at something is to intend something as something. One intends (perceives, judges, imagines) an object as something, that is, under a certain conception, description, or from a certain perspective.12 Based on this description, we may formulate our inquiry in this way: When an object or state of affairs is conceived or perceived as political, what, precisely, is the essence of that conception or perception which causes it to be perceived, judged, or imagined as political? If, in seeking the intentional matter, we are looking for a particular way of intending –​which is to say, in terms of a specific conception or perspective –​what is the distinctively political conception or perspective? In this regard, I would like to propose that intending politically involves apprehending things as part of, or in terms of, the order of the community as a whole. Of course, since the political community and life-​world are coterminous, there is a continuity between the order of the community as a whole and the order of the life-​world. This effectively means that the political pertains to the general question of “the way things should be” or perhaps just “right order” in the broadest sense. Yet, since right order finds its concrete basis in the existing, embodied political community, this order is understood specifically as “belonging” to the “we” in some way –​or, conversely, the “we” is understood as the special recipient or representative of right order. 9 Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 140. 10 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 23. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 23–​4.

The Essence of Political Experience  139 Now, given this account of the intentional matter of the political (that is, as anything apprehended “in terms of ” the order of the whole), it is implicit that any object can become political. We may say more precisely, then, that any object or objects, or any state of affairs, is intended politically when “meant” in terms of the order of the community as a whole. At the core of man’s identity as a political animal, then, is the a priori and essential potentiality of consciousness wherein the world is apprehended in this way. Let us examine in greater detail the crucial phrase in our formulation –​ intending something “in terms of the order of the whole.” First, and above all, we are not concerned with “the whole” as referring to a political entity understood as a mere totality. I might, for example, conceive a plan to shake the hand of every single one of my fellow citizens (that is, the totality of the citizens of the country). Yet, this would not be a properly political plan, since, in itself, it does not specifically intend anything relevant to the order of the whole. Stated positively, the idea of a whole order must be present in the intentional matter in order for an act of consciousness to be properly political. The necessity of a whole order for any given political community can be seen in concretely functioning intersubjectivity itself. For if, indeed, the objectivity of the life-​world is intersubjectively constituted by a community, then a certain concrete order of thought must be present, with a content to some degree specific to that community. Otherwise –​given the fact that one does not live in objective nature (which is, after all, a system of pure idealities) –​there would be no intersubjectivity, and hence no world properly speaking. The existence of an objective world, then, by definition involves a critical degree of intersubjective “agreement” across numerous levels of experience, for example from the level of the perception of physical objects to that of cultural and spiritual “objectivities.” This order of agreement is so fundamental that it must exist even for disagreement to occur. Zahavi writes: If my constitution of objectivity is dependent on my assurance that Others experience or can experience the same as I, it is a problem if they claim to be experiencing something different–​although the fact that we can agree on there being a disagreement already indicates a kind of common ground.13 The order of this agreement is not proper to any individual –​or to each individual considered separately –​but rather involves a whole order, in the sense that each individual participates in it in a dependent manner. Finally, the embodied existence of man means that human flourishing necessarily requires a sufficient degree of “agreement” on the physical level. For example, a division of labor and the natural complementarities present 13 Ibid., 134.

140  The Essence of Political Experience in the different communities (for example, the family, the village) constitute a whole order on the level of material existence. Given, then, that order is a fundamental element in the constitution of any community, we can get an idea of what our definition of political intentionality means by conceiving something “in terms of the order of the whole”: namely, it refers to the intending objects or states of affairs as somehow bearing upon or connected to this specific order. Thus, to take another hypothetical, if I had the idea of getting all the members of my community to always say hello to each other every morning upon meeting, my vision would indeed entail properly political intentional matter. For a change in what everyone does upon seeing each other every morning does indeed pertain to the order of the whole. We notice, then, the broadness of the scope of political matter proposed in my account. Everyone (or at least a certain critical mass of compliers) saying hello upon meeting every morning is political since it is conceived of in terms of the order of the community as a whole. It should be observed, furthermore, that the idea itself in this example is a properly political idea, without having been put into action in any way. It possesses an essentially political structure. To actively promote its implementation (for example through diffusing videos on the internet aimed at persuading people what a pleasant world it would be if we all greeted each other this way) would accordingly be political action, the status of which as such would in no way require an attempt to make it a law or governmental policy. For the government and legal order are themselves only parts (albeit crucial and active parts) of the order of the whole. In my analysis, then, an object is political simply by intending it in terms of the order of the whole community. This means that cultural trends, artistic movements, commercial enterprises, and religious proselytization are all political, properly speaking –​that is, insofar as they are connected to or constitutive of the order of the community as a whole. When one intends them in this respect, under this aspect, one intends them politically. Confusing the community “as a totality” and the community “as a whole” philosophically eclipses the reality that the community, precisely insofar as it is intersubjectively constituted, necessarily has a preexisting order. The community (and the world) is an organized whole, with a continuity that moreover persists across time. Thus, in the formulation “community as a whole,” the “as a whole” specifically indicates a conceptualization not merely in terms of constituent parts, but rather comprehending the shared patterns of activity and relationship from which an overall “structure” arises –​a “way of life.” The account of the political I have been giving (for instance, the intentional matter as I have described it) makes clear why the methodology employed in ideal liberal theory obscures the political, since it concerns only the legal status of the totality of individuals (generically conceived) vis-​à-​vis one another and “the government.” Thus, in liberal theory, a project aimed at changing the role of fatherhood in society through depictions of the family in films, and not geared toward achieving any particular

The Essence of Political Experience  141 legislative goal, would not be understood as political. In my analysis, however, even though no legal change is aimed at, and even though fathers comprise only a certain relatively minor part of the whole, fatherhood is indeed constitutive of the common structure of the community –​which is to say, a part of the order of the community as a whole –​and therefore such a project should be considered properly political. Now, we have been exploring the intentional matter of political experience, which we have said is primary, given that “it is the matter that provides the act with its directedness toward an object.”14 It might seem possible to stop the analysis at this point, insofar as we have indeed identified “what the experience [of the political] is about.”15 Yet, we must go further, for the account provided thus far lacks a crucial element. Recall that the intentional matter is distinguished from the intentional quality, which “qualifies” the former, making it “an experience of a specific type” (such as remembering, hoping, affirming, desiring, doubting, and so on).16 It is important, however, not to make an artificial, reified dichotomy between these two aspects of an intentional experience (that is, intentional matter and intentional quality), which are in fact only “abstract components that cannot exist independently of each other.”17 Such a dichotomy would appear especially invalid in the case of political experience, wherein a certain intentional quality –​a kind of existential or ontological willing or affirming –​would seem intrinsic to the very concept of the political. To get an idea of how these elements fit together, consider that our purpose is to identify the essential structure of political experience as discovered through an analysis of its meaning or intentional content. Following Zahavi, we distinguished two aspects of the intentional content, namely the intentional matter and the intentional quality. Concerning the matter of political experience, I proposed that it involves intending in terms of the community as a whole. Now, I am proposing that the quality proper to political experience involves a peculiar kind of willing or affirming. What political experience is “about,” then, is not only apprehending something in terms of the order of the community of the whole, but more completely it is: willing or affirming an object (or objects, or state of affairs) insofar as it affects, or in terms of its connection to, the order of the community as a whole. The essential structure of political intentionality perhaps finds its archetypal expression in the case of a revolution. On the one hand, the revolutionaries affirm or will a new regime (that is, a new or fundamentally altered order of the whole), while the defenders of the old regime affirm a continuation of the present order (of the whole). In each case, the intentional matter and intentional quality are clearly present. For the political order 14 Ibid., 23. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.

142  The Essence of Political Experience as a whole is at issue and hence clearly intended by both sides. Likewise, there is present for both –​in its starkest form, as it were –​the peculiar kind of willing and affirmation proper to the political. For the one, the order is affirmed as bad and willed to be changed. For the other, it is affirmed as good and willed to be preserved. Given this analysis of political intentionality, a great variety of modulations may be discerned. Although not as dramatic, they nonetheless contain the same essential structure as the case of a revolution. Consider, for example, my willingness to go door to door in support of a candidate who has promised to reform healthcare. My activity is political since, in my desire to see improved healthcare, I affirm a perceived change for the better pertaining to the political community as a whole. Again, however, political experience need not be concerned with the “political process” or government. Simply hoping for a certain candidate to win an election (even if I don’t take the trouble to vote) would involve the essential structure of political intentionality. Other examples: affirming more or less immigration, insofar as this would affect the order of the whole, would involve political intentionality, as would desiring an increase or decrease of religious practice, insofar as, on the one hand, it might “reform morals” or, on the other, “reduce bigotry” in the country. Nor must the intentional quality involve an affirmation of change: I will have intended politically if, in a quiet moment, I think to myself, “I live in a great country and I hope we keep all the freedoms we have.” All of these varied examples have the same structure in terms of the intentional content as I have described it. In reflecting on the willing and affirming proper to political intentionality, one is struck by its divine-​like quality. For consider that, even when casting my vote in a democratic election –​ostensibly the most decentralized and least “authoritarian” political form –​I necessarily think I am “right” in the outcome I desire (or at least I think I am making the best choice in light of the evidence). Furthermore, when I vote, I necessarily have some idea about the change or preservation I would like to affect concerning the order of the whole. This declaration, then, of my will for the order of the whole involves an inescapably royal “Let it be thus” that is intrinsically godlike. Although politics does not create ex nihilo, the willing or affirming characteristic of the political nonetheless “calls” for something to come into being –​namely, it invokes and “creates” an order for “us.” More profoundly still, the account provided here (wherein the life-​world and political community are coterminous) makes clear that the order of the whole at stake in politics is precisely the concrete set of relationships through which –​insofar as it is an achievement of intersubjectivity –​“the” (objective) world “comes into being” (that is, is constituted). Now, the divine-​like aspect of political willing and affirming is also evident in its necessarily creative and positive character. This is related to the structure of the will itself, which is intrinsically oriented toward a (perceived) good. Thus, willing in terms of the order of the whole necessarily wills a (perceived) good order. Consider in this regard that even the

The Essence of Political Experience  143 willing of the abolition of a certain order (or part or aspect of an order) of a community involves an implied affirmation, insofar as behind the desire for destruction there is an intrinsically “positive” idea or conception of what the world will be like when the change is made (“It will be better than the old order”).18 If, per impossibile, a person could manifest a nihilistic will of pure destruction and the negation of order, this would, indeed, not be an example of political intentionality. Consider then –​still presupposing the connection between the political community and the life-​world –​the following theoretical spectrum: On the one hand, the most purely anti-​ political intentional act possible would be to will (again, per impossibile) the world’s extinction. Conversely, the will to bring order from chaos, to found a new regime, would be the ultimate political act –​the equivalent, in some sense, of the “creation” of a world. Hence the godlike stature attained by founders of political communities. A final clarification concerns the necessity of purity in the intentional quality of the acts of consciousness comprising political subjectivity (that is, the purity of the willing and affirming). Specifically, insofar as the affirmation made regarding the order of the whole is truly political, it must be made for its own sake (that is, because the willed order is good). The degree to which an “external” motivating element has invaded the intentional quality is the degree to which the properly political quality of the intentional act will be reduced. For example, efforts to obtain power or money by changing, influencing, or controlling the order of the whole are obviously a dominant and constant issue for politics. Yet such “political realities” are in fact only the conditions of politics. On the one hand, in such cases, inasmuch as there is an occupation with the order of the whole, the intentional matter would seem to be political. However, insofar as the reasons informing the willing are private or “impure,” the intentional quality of the act of consciousness loses its political character. The alteration of political intentionality effected by an adulteration of the intentional quality (due to a merely private motivation) can be seen in that the willing and affirming in this regard lacks the divine “Let it be thus.” To illustrate, imagine that I have invented some device facilitating new forms of entertainment and communication that will “revolutionize” society (for instance, significantly alter the overall structure of human relationships). Let us say that I aim at the most widespread adoption of my product possible, and as such, I do indeed will and affirm the change to 18 On the other hand, there also seems to be a certain human “need” for destruction, which may be incorporated into the order of a community through various rites. Consider, for example, that “sacrifice is the highest form of religious worship. It is the outward expression of man’s entire dependence upon God. This absolute dependence of man upon his Creator is expressed in the destruction, or change, of the things offered. Without this destruction, or change, it would seem that man did not fittingly express his interior acknowledgement that God was the Sovereign Master of life and death and, as such, worthy even of being honored by the sacrifice of man’s life, were He to require it.” Msgr. George Moorman, The Latin Mass Explained (Charlotte: TAN Books, 2007), 7.

144  The Essence of Political Experience the order of the whole which will result from the universal adoption of my product. By conceiving and willing my project in terms of the order of the community as a whole, I have ventured onto political ground (that is, the intentional matter is political), and one could say that, in this sense, I am a political actor. However, if my motivation (that is, my reason for acting) is simply financial gain, then in terms of the structure of the acts of consciousness involved, I will not have intended politically. Political experience, then, is characterized by the affirmation of an order understood as right and beneficial (that is, good). To be clear, however, the “purity” of the affirmation involved in political intending does not signify altruism. Perhaps surprisingly, the structure of political intentionality does not seem to essentially involve any aspect of personal sacrifice. For one thing, altruism involves a higher level of functioning than political intentionality. Consider in this regard that altruism is governed by a choice made according to the logic that I shall decrease so that another may increase. By contrast, the affirmation and willing characteristic of political intentionality involves an identification with an existing or willed order in such a way that I increase or decrease to extent that it does. It may be that I suffer or die in the furtherance of, or loyalty to, the order of the whole. However, in choosing to sacrifice (the good of) my life for the greater good of my country, I would seem to have passed from mere political intentionality into the higher realm of love (for example, of country), which has a different structure altogether. The structure of political intentionality can be elucidated more precisely through a consideration of the life of honor as particularly pertaining to political life. In seeking honor, one acts primarily for oneself. At the same time, in striving for honor, one identifies with the political order in a profound sense. Honor, then, if not precisely pure, is the “selfish” motivation most compatible with the essence of political intentionality –​one gains honor by benefiting, perfecting, and protecting the order of the whole. Even the pursuit of honor, however, to the extent that it is a private goal or desire, is not perfectly political. Its object is first and foremost the individual and only secondarily the order of the whole. Yet the purity of political intentionality is the purity of the “we” –​ and not the disappearance or diminishment of myself. In sum, in perfect political intentionality, I am not oriented toward private aggrandizement at all, but neither am I sacrificed to or for the political community. I belong to the order of the whole. Equally, however, the order of the whole is my order. The loving or altruistic person cares only about the good of the Other. The great political benefactor believes it fitting that there should be a memorial or holiday instituted in his honor.

12 The Legitimacy of the Life-​World

Contemporary realists reject the quest for a set of universal political principles upon which political legitimacy could be established for the quite sound reason that, in Gray’s words, “the right can never be prior to the good.”1 At the same time, he says, because we will not agree about the good, we should “reject theories which promise a final resolution of moral conflicts, since their result in practice can only be to diminish the goods that have generated our conflicts.”2 Such a stance seems implicitly to reject the possibility of the development of 1) a theory of “right” 2) based, indeed, on a “prior” understanding of the good that nonetheless 3) does not entail a “final resolution of moral conflict.” Now, this book is premised on the idea that the contemporary realist rejection of such a possibility results not so much from any inherent theoretical barrier as from a lack of the philosophical resources necessary to meet the défi. As we saw in Chapter 4, in proposing a theory of legitimacy, this is reflected in the use of certain concepts that are fundamentally insufficient. Specifically, this would be Williams’ idea of an “acceptance” of a justification of coercive power, and Gray’s interest-​managing “institutions.” In this chapter, having generally adopted the contemporary realist critique of ideal liberalism, I will attempt to ameliorate this deficit, setting forth a three-​phase or three-​dimensional theory of legitimacy drawing on the phenomenology of politics I have provided. The position I articulate accepts the truth of both of Gray’s assertions in the preceding paragraph: 1) that the right cannot be prior to the good; and 2) that we must reject political theories purporting to offer a final resolution of moral conflicts. To reconcile them, what appears to be needed is a basis of legitimacy for the political community that is both a concrete, intelligible good and yet not susceptible to formulations in terms of final resolutions of moral conflicts. I will propose that this foundation of legitimacy is found the life-​world itself.

1 John Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: The New Press, 2000), 19. 2 Ibid., 25.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-12

146  The Legitimacy of the Life-World

1 To begin, let us forthrightly acknowledge that if the right can never be prior to the good, then the avoidance of the question of the good cannot be put off indefinitely. Without, indeed, proposing a final resolution of moral conflicts, political philosophy must nonetheless find some morally “objective” foundation for the legitimate rule. As we have seen, even the contemporary realists reject the idea of a purely coercive foundation for rule. However, their attempt to discover a moral basis for political order (while nonetheless avoiding a moral foundation –​conceived of as a reliance on a particular ethical account; that is, political moralism) has been simply to dilute such a basis of substantive content as much as possible. This has been done, as we have seen, through recourse to merely generic notions of “acceptance” or “consent,” attributed to society as a whole, moreover in a vague manner. Now, in addition to the criticism that such notions are otiose in their practical application (that is, in their ability to illuminate reality), I would like to consider two other problems in this regard, the examination of which may assist in identifying a path forward. First, although coercive force may indeed be necessary for any solution to the first political question (that is, the “securing…of the conditions of cooperation”), there must also be some pre-​given basis for the engagement through which the “acceptance” that is the justification of power can occur. Without this –​without some commonality in terms of a vision of the nature of human institutions and relationships and conceptions of justice and ethical categories –​no mutual understanding at all can take place. The offered justification for the use of coercive power by the would-​be legitimate regime will not be heard or understood. As Zahavi states, “The fact that we can agree on there being a disagreement already indicates a kind of common ground.”3 In short, a phenomenological analysis indicates that there must be a shared milieu of meaning such that, even in the condition of “radical disagreement,” there is nonetheless the potential to produce an exchange leading to acceptance of a justification of coercive power. In this regard, it seems misleading, at the very least, to reduce the conflict between different intersubjective groups (or the individuals thereof) with profoundly different experiences of the world (that is, reality) to mere “disagreement.” Given the importance of such milieu of meaning for the emergence of legitimacy, it seems obvious that an analysis in this respect would be critical to political philosophy. Secondly, consider that it is doubtful whether acceptance or consent, without more, can be the basis of a moral claim at all. This, indeed, is a problem plaguing all varieties of liberal political thought, insofar as the concept of “legitimacy” seems logically dependent on the idea of authority. Thus, a legitimate government is precisely one that possesses authority

3 Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 134.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  147 while, conversely, an illegitimate government is precisely one lacking authority. To put it the other way and assert that an authoritative government is one that is legitimate merely begs the question. For, although it may be proposed that a legitimate government is one that has come into being according to a certain procedure and so forth, the question remains as to why this procedure is said to bring about legitimacy. At this point, many answers can be given. Yet, unless some answer proper to the idea of rule (that is, a claim to authority) is elucidated, any justification would seem arbitrary. A reason is required as to why the justification “Legitimate rule belongs to the man receiving the most votes” is superior to the answer “Legitimate rule belongs to the eldest of the royal blood.” According to the analysis in Chapter 9, authority has an intrinsic link with goodness. But rooting legitimacy in mere “acceptance” severs this link, since human choosing is by definition indeterminate –​neither good nor bad in itself but only insofar as it is determined by its relation to objects. Even Kant, who argued that the only thing unqualifiedly good is a good will, would seem to concur on this point.4 Thus, the mere fact of willing (for instance, “accepting”) the rule of a regime would not seem to confer any moral claim to rule. Indeed, liberalism concedes this in its rejection of pure majoritarianism and its inevitable adoption of the requirement of respecting individual rights, understood in some way or other. To provide a moral basis for society, then, the contemporary realists must produce something other than bare acceptance. One may agree with Williams’ suggestion that politics has a morality “inherent” to it and not “prior to politics,” yet it would seem nonetheless to require reference to a good beyond a hypothetical collective act of the wills of a certain aggregate of individuals (that is, beyond bare “acceptance”).5 Now, in the analysis of political intentionality in the last chapter, in discussing the intentional quality proper to political experience, I described the inherently “positive” or creative dimension of political willing or affirmation, which I said was linked to the intrinsic orientation of the will toward some (perceived) good. Furthermore, insofar as the intentional matter of political intentionality is the “order of the whole” (which is in the end none other than the order of “the” world), I pointed out the divine-​like quality of the political, namely that of willing the “being” of the world (for instance, “Let it be thus”). Observing the convergence of all of these theoretical trajectories, I want to advance the thesis that, as inherently common, inherently ordered, and inherently good, the life-​world itself is the deepest root and basis for political legitimacy. Moreover, given its singular way of being (that is, as in a certain sense both objective and subjective), it fulfills the need, referred to above, of providing a concrete, intelligible basis for 4 Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, Trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49. 5 Bernard Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 5.

148  The Legitimacy of the Life-World legitimacy that is not, however, susceptible to formulations in terms of a final resolution of moral conflicts. We have seen that the world is intertwined and interpenetrated with “spirit” or “ ‘culture,’ and that, far from being confined to mere nature, ‘the’ world includes ourselves, other persons, animals, social institutions, artifacts, symbolic systems, languages and religions.”6 Furthermore, individuals cannot be understood in isolation, either from other subjects or from the world itself.7 As Zahavi explains, “The constitution of the world, the unfolding of self, and the establishing of intersubjectivity” take place within a “threefold structure,” namely “subjectivity-​intersubjectivity-​ world.”8 In theorizing politics, then, we must extend our analysis of the political community such that it includes not only individual subjects and the community, but also the world itself. Indeed, my thesis is that, within this intrinsic threefold structure, it is in fact the life-​world that is the key to solving the problems that arise in the quest for a real basis of legitimacy –​namely: 1) the locating of the community, both within the world and vis-​à-​vis other political communities; 2) providing an account of the concrete emergence of a common order (that is, through intersubjectivity); and 3) discovering a common good capable of endowing the common order with authority. By contrast, in relying on a contractually conceived acceptance or consent, liberalism languishes interminably, having decreed a world devoid of authority and moreover philosophically incapable of providing answers concerning questions regarding the “who, what, and how” of the community. In elucidating the legitimacy of the life-​world, it is helpful to recall that Husserl used multiple characterizations in order to express its meaning; for example, in speaking of it as a “horizon.” For purposes of an analysis of legitimacy, however, it is perhaps particularly instructive to think of the life-​world in terms of the other image employed by Husserl, namely “ground,” “soil,” or “fundament.” Interestingly, Moran sees the notion of “ground” as to some extent “in tension” with the characterization of life-​ world as horizon.9 He explains: As a horizon, the world is not objectifiable; it retreats as emptily co-​intuited behind the directly presented objects of experience that are primarily intuited. … On the other hand, a “ground” normally is construed as a reason, something that gives the sense of legitimation, justification, entitlement, stability, security, a rational basis, a principle, on the basis of which true assertions can be made.10

6 Dermot Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 184. 7 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 75–​7. 8 Ibid., 76. 9 Moran, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences, 196. 10 Ibid.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  149 Thus, without suggesting that it could possibly be an object “in” the world, thinking of the life-​world in terms of “ground” highlights its more definite, concrete, in some manner “objectifiable” sense. Indeed, in thus describing the life-​world as a source of “legitimation, justification, entitlement, stability, security, a rational basis,” Moran points directly to the aspect of the life-​world I wish to highlight and the appropriateness of its applicability to an analysis of legitimacy. Now, insofar as the life-​world is not strictly objectifiable, the notion of “ground” must be understood as fundamentally “relational.”11 Moran uses the analogy of being on a ship, which for the sailors or passengers aboard is itself the “ground,” from which they observe other boats or objects on the sea approach or recede.12 In terms of legitimacy, this means that, although morally “objective,” the authority of the regime is nonetheless “relational” with regard to the political community (for instance, insofar as it pertains to a community existing in a particular time and place, for a particular people, and with a specific history). This relationality would mean, for example, that the legitimacy of one political community would not extend over that of another. Similarly, explains Moran, in conceiving of “ground” in terms of a “reason,” we should not imagine a “Cartesian, axiomatic, self-​evident first principle from which evident truths are deduced.”13 Now, although “the life-​world is not a principle of rational grounding” and cannot, moreover, “by its very nature…provide any kind of objective grounding at all,” such a lack of “objectivity” should not be read to imply that the grounding of the life-​world is merely subjective.14 In a passage that better reflects the subtlety of the matter, Moran states: The peculiarity of the grounding of the life-​world is that it provides an ultimately subjective, pre-​logical, pre-​rational, temporally dispersed, never fully actual grounding. It provides a peculiar kind of evidencing. Indeed, the life-​world is a “realm of original self-​evidences,” which itself provides the grounding for every conceivable type of evidencing.15 As ground, then, the life-​world is indeed always available and “given,” providing a specific type of “evidencing.” What is provided at this level for an analysis of legitimacy is the evident goodness of the world –​and hence the goodness of the order of the community –​and moreover a basis for intelligibility accessible in principle to all of the community. As will be seen, the fully actual intelligibility will be supplied at higher levels of objectivity that correspond to the other dimensions of the analysis of legitimacy. Yet these 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 197. 15 Ibid.

150  The Legitimacy of the Life-World are founded “on” and “in” the life-​world. As good and the basis of a commonly intelligible objectivity, the life-​world is the deepest root and source of legitimacy. It is indeed a real, concrete source of “legitimation, justification, entitlement, stability, and security.” At the same time, however, although providing the ultimate root of legitimacy (that is, of the order of the whole) such legitimacy in no way entails the idea that a particular way of life has been derived from the ground of the life-​world (that is, as a “conclusion” drawn from its intelligibility and goodness) which could on this basis be asserted as a final moral solution to the problem of politics. It is evident, then, that designating the life-​world as the source of legitimacy entails an approach to political philosophy opposed to the typical liberal starting point of the generically conceived individual. Moran describes the phenomenological approach as working “from the outside in,” which is to say, beginning with undifferentiated experience and only subsequently investigating the manner in which different aspects of life can be taken up by various individual sciences.16 For political philosophy, working “from the outside in” corresponds to the Aristotelean view that the political community is prior to the household and each of us. However, in light of transcendental intersubjectivity, it also means an exploration of the life-​world as correlate of the political community. In general terms, we may say that rooting legitimacy in the life-​world goes beyond Aristotle in providing 1) a theoretical account of the source of common intelligible order, and 2) an analysis of the manner in which authority is a function of the ontological goodness of the world itself (that is, flows from its being). Such “working from the outside in” in no way contradicts the insistence on a first-​person perspective in conceiving of the political community. On the contrary, it comports with the idea in phenomenology that the true object of inquiry is “neither the world nor a worldless subject, but the becoming of the world in the self-​constitution of the transcendental subject.”17 As I have emphasized, the life-​world is necessarily the correlate of subjectivity (and intersubjectivity). It is precisely the absence of such a perspective that defines the physicalistic objectivism of modern natural science, as well as the prevalent orientation of modern political philosophy, with its characteristic distortions and limitations. The “crisis of the European sciences” concerns not only natural science, but the human sciences as well. What is needed is a political philosophy in which the individual and the life-​world are treated together. In summarizing these various points, one may say that, to a certain degree, the life-​ world “automatically” justifies the community. First, because having a world presupposes the existence of the community, and secondly, because if the world is indisputably good, then the community is too. Therefore, the political community should exist. It is, in a word, legitimate. This basis of legitimacy does not reside in a conclusion of pure 16 Ibid., 196. 17 Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, 75.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  151 practical reason –​for example, insofar as it is a community of individuals understood as a “kingdom of ends” –​but rather it is this community that is legitimate, because it is this community that is concretely correlated with the life-​world. It may be asked: Even if the world, and therefore the community, is necessarily good, and as such has a “right” to exist, what if the order of this community perpetuates evil? Moreover, does the theory of legitimacy I am advancing supply any explicit basis for deciding the question of who is entitled to rule? These objections indicate that we are not yet at the end of the inquiry. Each will be addressed in the discussions of the two remaining dimensions of legitimacy.

2 Although the source of legitimacy is found in the life-​world, its mere existence is not sufficient for the establishment of a legitimate regime. I now want to propose two additional features that should enter into an adequate analysis of legitimacy. Taking legitimacy in the image of a tree, we can say that the roots of a legitimate regime and political order are found in the ground or soil of the life-​world. Secondly, however, the trunk of the tree must not be severed or impeded from growing through the perpetration of too great a number of evils (or evils of too extreme a nature). This dimension of legitimacy is 1) a matter of degree (that is, there is no single, sharp, identifiable line that can be drawn between legitimacy and non-​legitimacy), and 2) merely “negative.” This latter point serves to clarify that legitimacy is not produced by the absence of universal evils, but rather –​as proposed in the previous section –​legitimacy has its foundation in the goodness and intelligibility of the world. In what follows I will give a basic account of a conception of universal rights that accords with this dimension of legitimacy. In doing so I will primarily follow Gray, whose analysis I find to be most helpful on this issue, although I do not agree with him in all particulars. Of course, it will be impossible to enter into the myriad problems and questions that inevitably arise with this kind of topic. Rather, assuming that some such account can be sustained, my interest will be to show how universal rights function with regard to the analysis of political legitimacy. In the next section, I will move on to the third major element in the “tree of legitimacy,” my own understanding of acceptance, which will find its analogy in the branches and foliage of the tree. Gray affirms that “some goods and evils are generically human” and that “there are some rights that all regimes must meet if they are to be reasonably legitimate in contemporary conditions.”18 In my view, such a requirement may –​but need not –​be understood in terms of the basic

18 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 106.

152  The Legitimacy of the Life-World exigencies of the natural law, which are identifiable, for example in Thomas Aquinas through the presence of universal inclinations of human nature. For his part, Gray conceptualizes them in terms of basic human “interests” or “universal values.”19 He writes: We do not assert that a right is possessed by all human beings because of any formal properties it may possess, such as consistency with other rights. What supports such a claim is the importance of the human interests which the right protects.20 Translated to the political sphere, “universal rights” become enforceable conventions, framed to give protection against injuries to human interests that make any kind of worthwhile life impossible.21 What, specifically, does Gray have in mind by such “universal rights”? The right to live free from things like genocide, institutional torture, true religious persecution, or regimes whose power depends on the enslavement or suppression of certain specific groups.22 Now, although such examples seem relatively straightforward, according to Gray there can be no definitive list, nor a universally applicable theory, of rights.23 This is because any account of universal rights consists, at least in part, of “judgments about human interests whose content shifts over time as threats to human interests change.”24 As necessarily articulated –​and politically recognized –​within some concretely and historically existing regime, “rights” are always to some degree conventional.25 To this extent (and for this reason) deciding which rights are “universal” will not depend on a “truth that exists already,” but rather will involve the answer to a practical decision about “what human interests warrant universal protection.”26 Consider in this regard that, as Aquinas himself tells us, the natural law is the rational creature’s “participation in the eternal law.”27 Yet, this participation, through which the natural law is known to us as applicable in specific circumstances, involves the practical reason, which works with the contingent things related to human actions. Therefore although there is a certain necessity in its general principles, the further 19 Ibid., 106–​7. 20 Ibid., 113. 21 Ibid., 107. 22 Ibid., 107. 23 Ibid., 113. 24 Ibid., 113. 25 Ibid., 106. 26 Ibid., 113. 27 Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: Norton, 1988), 46.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  153 one goes down into specifics the more frequently one encounters exceptions.28 Thus, although it is evident that as to the general principles of reason, whether speculative or practical, there is a single standard of truth and right for everyone which is known by everyone. However, when it comes to the specific conclusions of the speculative reason, the truth is the same for everyone but is not equally known by everyone. It is universally true, for instance, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles but not everyone knows this. When we come to the particular conclusions of the practical reason there is neither the same standard of truth and rightness for everyone nor are these conclusions equally known by everyone.29 Given the lesser degree of surety pertaining to the practical reason that accompanies the “contingent things related to human action,” it makes sense that Aquinas focuses on natural human inclinations in articulating the basis of the natural law rather than attempting, for example, to identify any list or “doctrine” of rights that could be made the basis of a political ideology. When Gray says that universal rights do not depend on a truth that “already exists,” I do not (necessarily) take him not to mean that there is no truth with regard to intelligible human interests, but rather that, like Aquinas, he believes that any translation of them into practical (that is, legal, political) terms will be in part contingent and variable. Aquinas directly acknowledges this contingency and variability when he explains that, although “it is right and true for everyone to act in accordance with reason…exceptions become more likely the more we come down to particular cases.”30 Although Aquinas is speaking with reference primarily to situations concerning individual ethical action, it seems evident that such “contingencies” are also present –​and can even be amplified –​in the context of prudential governmental action and the enactment of legislation, especially given differing populations of people in sometimes vastly different concrete circumstances. With legitimacy as its main concern, Gray’s perspective reflects the way in which accounts of universal human rights, qua politically relevant, are particularly subject to the vicissitudes inherent in dealing with “contingent things related to human actions.” In theorizing universal human rights, Gray implicitly incorporates the dimension of practical application into his account. In this way, universal rights, inasmuch as they are understood as political rules for protecting human interests, probably correspond most 28 Ibid., 50. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid.

154  The Legitimacy of the Life-World properly to something like Aquinas’ conception of the “law of nations” –​a division of the human law to which belongs “the things that are derived from the law of nature as conclusions from its principles.”31 Thus, in his discussion of human rights, we should not take Gray as opposed to a natural-​law approach. Neither then, should we take as a sign of moral relativism his conclusion that “the legitimacy of any regime is always partly a matter of historical accident.”32 Let us consider, for a moment, more precisely how the content of a “universal human right,” insofar as it is necessarily asserted in a concretely existing community, can be affected by particular historical and political circumstances. In doing so, I want to highlight two levels of ambiguity, specifically regarding questions of 1) what the right actually is, and 2) its legal and political meaning. Now, a certain baseline acceptance of the right of private property would seem to have been present in most times and places in history, thus indicating a substantial degree of universality. Let us briefly consider this right in terms of the two levels of possible ambiguity. With regard to the first level of ambiguity –​what the right really is –​ consider that one historically important expression of the right to private property has been the demand for a degree of political participation in any government that takes the property (for example, through taxation) of its citizens or subjects. The sixteenth-​century French political theorist Jean Bodin, for example, articulated a version of this right. As explained by George Sabine, for Bodin, the right of private property “is guaranteed by the law of nature,” constituting “more than a moral limitation on the power of the sovereign.”33 For Bodin, “so sacred is property that the sovereign cannot touch it without the owner’s consent. Accordingly he asserted that taxation required the assent of the estates.”34 Within the early American setting, of course, the right of private property was also asserted in various ways, including the famous rejection of taxation without representation. Yet, despite a certain agreement between the American and French contexts, in terms of its political expression (for example, “no taxation without representation,” or some other theory of consent), the nature of the right (that is, of private property) being protected was understood quite differently. For Bodin, property was safeguarded insofar as it was “an indefeasible attribute of the family, and the family is an independently existing unit out of which the state is constructed.”35 According to Bodin, then, protecting private property fulfilled the interests of maintaining the integrity of the family and maintaining the state insofar as it is “constructed” from families.

31 Ibid., 54. 32 Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism, 106. 33 George Sabine, A History of Political Theory, 3rd Ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1937), 410. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  155 By contrast, the American colonists, rather than understanding the right to property as pertaining to the family, sought in its protection the interest of individual liberty and personal security. Edmund Morgan writes: For the colonists, as for the rest of the English, property was not merely a possession to be hoarded and admired; it was rather the source of life and liberty. If one had property, if one had land, one had one’s own source of food and could be independent of all other men, including kings and lords. Where property was concentrated in the hands of a kind and aristocracy, only the king and the aristocracy would be free, while the rest of the population would be little better than slaves, victims of the eternal efforts of rulers to exploit subjects. Without property, people could be starved into submission. Hence liberty rested in property, and whatever threatened the security of property threatened liberty.36 In comparing the American and French contexts, we recall Gray’s claim that universal human rights –​in this case the right to private property –​ arise from the desire to protect certain concrete human interests. Consider in this regard that, in neither of the two contexts was the right to private property seen as absolute. In fact, the difference between them pertained to the reasons considered valid for taking property. Yet, the reasons given are precisely an expression of the interests protected. In this case, the interests (on the one hand, the family, and on the other, that of individual liberty and security) were both expressed in a demand for a prohibition of taxation without some kind of consent. Yet, it is not difficult to imagine situations in which protecting these different interests (that is, “liberty” and the family) lead to divergent –​even contradictory –​trajectories in terms of political order. In this respect, take, for example, the simple choice of a tax benefit for families that is denied to non-​married individuals. Depending on the policy implemented –​which follows from the interest protected –​the content of the right to private property shifts accordingly. With regard to the second level of ambiguity and contingency –​the legal and political meaning of a right –​the political expression of the right of private property is discovered to be highly dependent on context, and in particular on the overall political theory through which it is understood. For example, in the case of the assertion of the American colonists’ desire to be free from taxation without representation, the primary difficulty was to determine what precisely constituted representation or consent. For their part, the British argued for a theory of “virtual representation,” which held that the members of the British parliament represented not only their electors, but also the totality of the empire.37 They reasoned, based on this 36 Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763–​1789 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 17. 37 Ibid., 19–​20.

156  The Legitimacy of the Life-World view, that the colonists were indeed represented. Interestingly, even some pro-​revolutionary colonists favored the general validity of this logic, disputing only the manner in which the theory of virtual representation was applied in their case, since, as they saw it, virtual representation occurred only when “the people who had no right to vote had interests otherwise similar to those of the people who did vote.”38 In short, individuals who equally favored the right of property and its protection through the prohibition of taxation without representation found themselves on opposite sides of the Revolutionary War due to a difference in interpretation regarding its political meaning. Another difficulty for the practical assertion of a universal right of private property can be seen in the fluid status of specific goods, depending on the circumstances of the moment. Aquinas explains that, in fact, private property occupies a twilight position of being at once “necessary for human life” and yet not directly ordained by the natural law.39 Rather, he states, it “has been added to the natural by the inventiveness of human reason.”40 Thus, although Aquinas definitely believes that private property is necessary for any decently tranquil and orderly human life (hence, indeed, its “universality”) he states that, if there is a clear and urgent need, so urgent and clear that it is evident that an immediate response must be made on the basis of what is available, such as when a person is in imminent danger and cannot be helped in any other way –​then a person may legitimately supply his need from the property of someone else, whether openly or secretly. Strictly speaking, such a case is not theft or robbery.41 To be sure, the decisiveness of such “contingencies” is an argument against neither the existence of a universal human right to property nor the intelligibility of such a right. They show, rather, that the “content” of these rights, which are in fact certain interests (or “inclinations,” in Aquinas’ thought), is at least partially a function of their application and interpretation in concrete circumstances. These contingencies indicate, moreover, just how fundamental, and basic, rights must be in order to be “human” and “universal.” The cases of self-​defense and capital punishment are straightforward examples of how even a right as basic as the right to life must nonetheless be interpreted and defined in its political expression. Protecting such a right to life, moreover, would also seem to raise questions regarding the availability of necessary goods, healthcare, police protection, and national defense.

38 Ibid., 25. 39 Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, 72. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 72–​3.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  157 In short, universal human rights may indeed be considered part of the natural law. However, insofar as they are political rights, their articulation –​and therefore in some sense their substance –​will vary according to the circumstances. In terms of the present analysis, it seems clear, then, that legitimacy cannot be constructed simply on the basis of any schema or doctrine of human rights. In the first place, the variability and context-​ contingency of universal rights would seem to presuppose reference to an unarticulated intelligibility. In particular, I am referring to the intelligibility of the interests or inclinations protected. Secondly, because human rights are assertions regarding the correctness in the domain of action, they are not grounded in any theory of the goodness of being that could establish that they are worthy of protection. Such qualifications and limitations, however, do not prevent us from affirming that the violation of universal human rights –​as contrary to goodness and reason –​involves the destruction of legitimacy. I have proposed that human rights function “negatively” in an assessment of legitimacy, but that they cannot establish its basis. This understanding informs Gray’s logic when he writes that “the circumstances of human history are too complex and shifting to allow universal values to be translated into a universal theory of political legitimacy.”42 However, it is not only the ambiguity and variability in the application of universal human rights that make a theory of legitimacy impossible. Their intrinsic character of pertaining to individuals also prohibits it. For, although they are asserted within a larger order, human rights are nonetheless possessed by individuals insofar as they are subject to governmental action (or inaction). These rights may involve direct governmental action upon citizens (for example, the right not to be imprisoned without some due process), or concern relationships with others (for instance, the oppression or terrorization of some individuals by other citizens as allowed or facilitated by the government). Yet, legitimacy is a political problem that cannot be solved in terms of individual ethical standards. Human rights can tell us whether a given action or policy of the government is acceptable in terms of basic ethical norms. However, they cannot justify an entire political order. Even if a given population of people could overcome their disagreement and settle upon a schema of human rights, it would not amount to a theory of legitimacy, but rather, at best, it would be a constitution. For consider that a constitution needs to be “enacted”: the legitimacy of the order it establishes must be justified through the giving of reasons why this order –​ among other ethically acceptable possibilities –​should be considered authoritative. Because, as Gray says, “human rights make conflicting demands, whose conflicts can be rightly reconciled in different ways,” we may conclude that no set of rules delineating a plan for merely ethical governmental action can legitimate a particular reconciliation (that is, of demands).43 42 Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, 110. 43 Ibid.

158  The Legitimacy of the Life-World Thus, although we may say that the unethical acts of a regime vitiate legitimacy, a theory of legitimacy must go beyond this and identify a basis for discerning which among various contending “orders of the whole” should prevail.44 In the realist view, a political order need not be liberal to be legitimate.45 In Gray’s thought, this understanding relies on a difference between universal human rights (the respecting of which is necessary for legitimacy) and those merely derived from “liberal values” (which need not be present in order for a regime to be legitimate). As we have seen, the characteristic of a universal human right is that it protects those interests that are generically human. Such rights, if systematically violated, make any decent human life impossible.46 By contrast, rights derived from liberal values depend on a “specific social or economic ideal.”47 When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, identifies a “right” to periodic holidays with pay, Gray asserts it is speaking of a right derived from liberal values.48 For, as he points out, such a right is nonsensical in a society without wage labor as the primary form of work.49 Furthermore, Gray asserts that liberal rights often concern a specific entitlement (for example, free education), whereas truly universal human rights (for instance, to property, life, and so on) entail “a bundle of entitlements,” on the basis of which various claims –​sometimes conflicting –​may be asserted.50 Finally, liberal rights express the political ideals of a specific historical period and cannot be said to apply to all human societies in all times and places.51 Although most of the time human rights and liberal values overlap, it would be a mistake to understand them as identical.52 Gray warns, in this respect, that “to think that universal rights require the projection of liberal values throughout the world is to press human rights into the service of a species of liberal fundamentalism.”53 Based on the preceding analysis, it should be evident that legitimacy cannot be conceived of as an all-​or-​nothing situation. Although some regimes may indeed lack legitimacy, most will no doubt be more or less legitimate. “Manifestly,” says Gray, “not all actually existing regimes are equally legitimate. Just as some ways of life do better than others in resolving universal conflicts, so do some regimes.”54 Despite the existence of “degrees” 44 In this regard it is also possible, as is the case not infrequently, that a dispute will arise regarding the identity of the “whole order” (for example, in cases of secession and so forth) 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 111. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 110. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 106.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  159 of legitimacy, however, regimes do not necessarily resemble each other more as they become increasingly legitimate.55 For, because a single right may make conflicting practical demands, a variety of different –​though equally legitimate –​responses are possible. In his discussion, Gray alludes to a situation in Singapore in which protecting the right to proselytize (that is, religious freedom) would have contributed to a civil upheaval, making it difficult for the government to ensure the right to worship (that is, religious freedom).56 It may be objected, with regard to this second phase in the analysis, that my requirement that a regime “clear the hurdle” of a relative absence of universal evils in order to qualify for legitimacy is, in actual fact, no different from the ideal liberal legitimacy based on a consensus on universal principles. For, in either case, the result will be the same. It will be asked: What, indeed, is the difference between saying, on the one hand, “A regime’s legitimacy is not impugned if it does not pursue a program of slavery or genocide,” and on the other, “A regime’s legitimacy arises from its agreement that all humans have a right to freedom and life”? In response, I would begin by pointing out that, within the totality of the analysis I am proposing, in conceiving violations of human rights as negations of legitimacy, one presupposes the concrete existence of some regime. As concrete, and therefore necessarily rooted in the life-​world, the regime will partake in goodness (and hence legitimacy) at the very least to that extent. Negations of legitimacy will therefore be discerned in terms of judgments about specific deviations of (or within) a regime from an existing order that would be otherwise legitimate. Now, this existing political order obviously cannot be understood as deriving its legitimacy (to the extent that it has any) merely from the freedom and rationality of its members, since these qualities may be used for evil, and, moreover, by themselves do not entail any politically relevant ontological goodness. Rather, the goodness of the order of the community flows from the life-​world –​which the community constitutes, and of which the community is a part –​with its typical ontological regions and structures. In this way, assuming a concretely existing political community comports with the idea that human beings are naturally political and communal (that is, intersubjective).57 Finally, this “negative” approach of discerning deviations from legitimacy by (or within) a concretely existing regime must involve reference to specific, historically contextualized acts (or cases of inaction). For example, it will not suffice to say that a certain political community lacks legitimacy because it has failed to attain certain ideal benchmark goals in terms of human rights. By contrast, making legitimacy dependent upon a priori principles (that is, claiming that regimes are legitimate if they ensure certain rights) 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid, 112. 57 This is not meant to imply that political communities arise automatically, but only that they are according to nature.

160  The Legitimacy of the Life-World means beginning with those principles –​conceived as abstracta rather than as “moments” of an existing regime –​and measuring existing regimes by holding them up to such principles, rather as concrete physical objects are measured by a ruler. Notably, this approach assumes and requires, in advance, a knowledge and understanding of universal principles in themselves, apart from historical circumstances. According to this view, there is a certain content contained in these principles (for example, ideal benchmarks that any legitimate political community will meet) that is brought to bear in the same way in all times and places. One asks: Is this regime legitimate? I refer to some combination or arrangement of political ideals that I know (in advance) constitutes what a legitimate regime is. I begin with my “knowledge” of what a legitimate regime must be. In this view, the essence of legitimacy, having once and for all been apprehended like a truth of geometry, is applied indiscriminately to existing regimes, whose a priori, inherent legitimacy (as a part of the ontology of the life-​world) is not apprehended. The political philosopher, as well as each individual citizen, in possession of the knowledge of the essence of legitimacy, “sees” only worldly orders of human beings (that is, regimes) that are ontologically devoid of legitimacy. Legitimacy resides in the judgment that is made. Concrete existence is consulted insofar as it is necessary to evaluate whether relationships between rational, equal individuals conform to a certain prior understanding of rights. Now, on the one hand, in making an evaluation of concrete relationships (that is, in terms of rights) the exclusive focus of an evaluation of legitimacy, this approach arguably protects such rights in a more vigilant manner. On the other hand, in this approach, no regime is understood to derive its legitimacy from the goodness of an order common to the members of the community. In making conformity of individual relationships to ideal principles the exclusive test of legitimacy, the political community must be understood as possessing neither real existence nor goodness (otherwise it would be a rival source of authority outside of the evaluation of rights). By contrast, the approach I am proposing sees right order as intelligibly found in the world. In the absence of violations of human rights, one assumes a concretely existing common order to be legitimate –​although not all legitimate regimes will be equally good or authoritative. Rights may, indeed, be vigilantly protected in this conception, but vigilance will consist in looking for breaks in legitimate order. As we have seen, moreover, insofar as legitimacy arises from the ground of the life-​world (which is proper to a particular intersubjective community), it justifies this particular order, which is, however, but one manifestation among other (sometimes equally) legitimate possibilities for living the good life. Above all, although the legitimacy of any regime is defeasible –​and although judgments about this will necessarily be made by individuals –​the legitimacy of a regime is nonetheless not contingent upon the evaluations of individuals. For the members of a concretely existing political community, the legitimacy of the common order is, in a word, objective.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  161

3 The third phase of the analysis of legitimacy concerns the element of “acceptance,” properly speaking. With regard to the image of the tree of legitimacy, this element corresponds to the branches of the tree. In its most perfect manifestation, the tree of legitimacy blossoms into strong, plentiful branches, bearing the foliage and flowers of concord and friendship. The result is the great “fruit” of human flourishing. In this regard, it stands to reason that if, through the presence of violations of human rights, the trunk has been cut or damaged –​or if the roots of the tree are not anchored deeply in the vital soil, or “ground,” of the life-​world –​this will be evident in the verdure and fecundity of the branches. Decidedly, if a tree has no branches, or very few, one must consider it either dead or not a tree at all. In the analysis I am proposing, acceptance must be assessed on a continuum, “empirically” (for example, with evidence) in a potentially infinite number of ways. For example, at one end of the spectrum, represented in the analogy by a virtual absence of branches and verdure, one might envision an open and violent rebellion of citizens against the existing order. At the other end of the spectrum would be a state of flourishing concord such that affirmations of the political order are abundant and manifest, with coercive laws needed only to deal with cases of private corruption. Although the meaning of “acceptance” in my account is the same in many ways as in the work of the liberal realists (and other liberals generally), there are also profound differences, in particular with regard to its role within the totality of the analysis of legitimacy. Most importantly, in my understanding, acceptance is less a cause of legitimacy than its result or expression. For this reason, in my account acceptance is philosophically less fundamental than in liberal political theories, in which it often occupies the decisive position (at least in theory). To be sure, I maintain that acceptance remains a true and distinct requirement for legitimacy, that it must be (more or less) existent. On the other hand, because it is an extremely varied and often subtle phenomenon, I do not believe acceptance can be fully treated in an ideal (for instance, contractual) or procedurally-​assessed (for example via polling or voting) manner. Generally speaking, I propose that acceptance should be understood: 1) as a present-​moment representation of legitimacy, which is rooted ultimately beyond the decision(s) of the political community (or any human being) in the life-​world; and 2) as expressing acceptance of the order of the whole, and not just the acceptance of the possession and exercise of power by the government. In response to my broadly empirical approach to discerning acceptance, it may be objected that my account does not admit of sufficiently clear criteria. It will be said that a truly empirical determination of legitimacy would involve a quantifiable procedure for assessing the will of a people. However, gauging the will of a people (that is, their acceptance) through quantifiable measurement is a dubious enterprise. Robert Talisse summarizes many of the problems in this regard, which

162  The Legitimacy of the Life-World typically center around difficulties of procedure and methodology.58 For example, results obtained through such efforts will vary greatly depending on 1) the questions asked, or the options given, 2) the degree of participation, 3) the availability of understandable and accurate information, and 4) outside pressure and influence and so forth.59 Finally, in practice, supposedly measurable assessments of acceptance (for example, the consent of the governed obtained for the establishment of civil society) are often converted into unempirical fictions of the most speculative kind (for instance, “implied consent,” and so forth). In the approach I am proposing, purportedly quantifiable measures of acceptance are evidence to be given an appropriate weight in accord with specific circumstances. Other evidence, however, in every aspect of common life, remains constantly available in the immediately observable concord and flourishing (or discord and languishing) of the political community. It is critical to note, in this regard, that the significance of such present-​moment evidence of acceptance must be assessed within the overall structure of the analysis of legitimacy, specifically in relation to the ultimate ground of legitimacy in the life-​world, which endures through time. This time-​bound nature of acceptance means that an analysis of legitimacy will always be backward-​looking. For, in the first instance, the order of the whole which is being accepted or rejected is only intelligible in terms of what is coming to us from the past. In a still larger sense, the validity of a merely present-​moment acceptance must be weighed in terms of its conformity with the past, insofar as the life-​world of today (that is, the ground of legitimacy) is constituted through such an inheritance. Contemporary realists reject the rationalizations of ideal liberal political philosophy, intending instead to turn to the concrete and practical. In this regard, they necessarily adopt a more empirical posture. However, because they do not say anything about human relationships or the structure of the political community, their account of acceptance is not connected to the world. Impossibly, they seek an assessment of acceptance that is equally de facto and devoid of concrete criteria. This characteristic ambivalence about the concrete world is at the heart of the problems undermining the contemporary realist theory of legitimacy. Consider, in this regard, that having abandoned a consensus on universal principles as the basis of the regime, yet remaining liberal, they are left with acceptance as the sole possible basis of legitimacy. Yet, if such a doctrine is to be at all helpful, more precision needs to be provided. For example, one might reasonably ask: If legitimacy comes from the acceptance of a justification for coercive force offered in response to the BLD (for example, as in Williams), precisely how many individuals must accept the justification? A majority? Insofar as they are realists, such speculation is rightly rejected, since this line of 58 Robert Talisse, Engaging Political Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: Routledge Press, 2016), 132–​44. 59 Ibid.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  163 reasoning inevitably terminates in the kind of ideal construction they reject. Yet as liberals, committed equally to abstaining from inquiring into any foundations for the regime, they are forced into an awkward vagueness at the very point where clarity is most required. Sleat, for example, says that a regime will be legitimate if a “significant portion” of the people “endorse the norms and values through which it is justified.”60 For his part, Williams resigns himself to saying that “who has to be satisfied that the Basic Legitimation Demand has been met by a given formulation at one given time is a good question, and it depends on the circumstances.”61 In an aside pregnant with implications, Sleat concedes that “appealing to the beliefs, norms and values of a given society does give us some clear limits as to which justifications will count as plausible or credible within it.”62 Such a statement would seem to suggest possible paths connecting acceptance to the life-​world (and thereby to a concrete and authoritative common order). Yet, evidently, for Sleat, these “limits” (that is, those arising from the beliefs and values of the society) regarding what is an acceptable justification for a regime remain irrelevant in terms of legitimacy. The failure to draw such connections may be the result of prioritizing liberal ideology over philosophy. Yet it may also be due to the belief that reason is unable to attain the intelligibility of the world. In any case, Sleat does not pursue this line of inquiry. Falling back on acceptance, he simply concludes: “There is no authority above the political association that can settle the question [of what counts as an adequate justification], or at least not one that all accept to be ultimately authoritative.”63 Now, it is decisive for the peculiar understanding of acceptance in contemporary liberal thought (both ideal and realist) that political actors are conceived in the Cartesian, Hobbesian, and Lockean manner of being enclosed consciousnesses, aware primarily of themselves and their own ideas. By contrast, phenomenology asserts the publicness of the mind and “the reality of the appearance of things.”64 According to Sokolowski, there are no “mere” appearances, and nothing is “just” an appearance. … For phenomenology…things that had been declared to be merely psychological are not found to be ontological, part of the being of things. Pictures, words, symbols, perceived objects, states of affairs, other minds, laws, and social conventions are all acknowledged as truly there, as sharing in being and as capable of appearing according to their own proper style.65 60 Matthew Sleat, Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 50. 61 Williams, In the Beginning was the Deed, 135–​6. 62 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 50–​1. 63 Ibid., 50 (emphasis added). 64 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 15. 65 Ibid.

164  The Legitimacy of the Life-World The “world in common,” the objectivity of which receives its philosophical justification in phenomenology through the doctrine of intentionality, permits us to “enter into a life of reason, evidence, and truth” –​a life in which the truth can make “demands” on us.66 Recognizing that the truth about a “world in common” can make demands on us would seem to hold decisive consequences for political philosophy. Specifically, it undermines the idea that the acceptance by individuals of governmental power could be the sole basis for legitimacy. Now, given a philosophical anthropology devoid of intentionality (for instance, one in which the access of reason to the intelligibility of the life-​ world does not occur), it is implicit that “the political association” (above which, for Sleat, there is no political relevant authority) is itself essentially a product of acceptance. Moreover, this acceptance is the product of choices made by contemporaneous individuals whose freedom is conceived (in principle) as based on a state of prior indifference (which is to say, the will not intrinsically ordered to the intelligible good). Presupposing this account of human relationships (with each other and the world) confounds distinct regions of being (and the different structures of human experiences correlate to them) with decisive consequences for a theory of legitimacy. Specifically, it would seem to understand acceptance as evidenced either in 1) discursive and verbal acts manifesting legal significance, or 2) physical acts of resistance (or nonresistance) to coercive governmental power. It would not appear to admit –​as relevant to an assessment of legitimacy –​acceptance as evidenced in the concreteness of an intersubjectively constituted, objective world possessing a universal ontological structure. Practically speaking, without some agreement we would not even have a common language in which we could disagree, let alone have a common basis –​a world –​in which we could comprehend a justification of coercive force and express our acceptance of it. Thus, when Sleat remarks that “realism takes disagreement to go ‘all the way down (in theory as well as practice),’ ” he goes too far.67 However, this third phase of the analysis of legitimacy (analogized by the branches of the tree), which I am currently describing, does indeed acknowledge and give place to the type of acceptance recognized by liberalism. However, whereas for liberals it comprises the totality of legitimacy, in my view it is only its proximate source, and not its ultimate basis. For acceptance in this narrow, liberal sense, presupposes the deeper acceptance of we-​subjectivity (through which the order of the whole is suffused with the goodness of being). In light of the preceding considerations, it may be helpful to distinguish between “horizontal” and “vertical” types of acceptance. Horizontal acceptance pertains to the continual stream of choices that are directly and currently observable in society. Manifesting in various forms, it refers

66 Ibid., 10. 67 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 49 (quoting J. Tully).

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  165 to the greater or lesser concord, harmony, and flourishing, experienced in the world.68 Horizontal acceptance is the outward spread of the branches, the increasingly extensive and robust concord within society at a given moment. By contrast, vertical acceptance refers to the robustness and solidity of the tree trunk as it grows and develops through time. By way of the “roots” of the common order, plunged deep into the nourishing ground of the life-​world, legitimacy rises up like life-​giving sap into the branches, foliage, and fruit of the tree. As temporally extended, vertical acceptance is “hidden” insofar as one sees only the present moment. It is acceptance over time, by this political community, of the common “world” that the members of the community intersubjectively constitute. Because it requires a significant duration of time, to the extent that there could be an “act” of vertical acceptance at all, it would have to be a kind of participatory affirmation or expression, by the political community, of who we are. For a regime to be legitimate, horizontal acceptance must be observable in 1) more or less spontaneously arising indicators of human flourishing, like strong families, artistic achievement, intellectual vibrancy, religious faith, or refined manners, as well as in 2) those indicators directly concerned with the public order, like virtuous and effective rulers and governmental institutions, a transparent and just legal system, and a strong and well-​ disciplined military. At the same time, it seems evident that the two forms of acceptance (vertical and horizontal) are mutually related, and that, of the two forms, vertical acceptance is primary, being the channel through which legitimacy flows. Although horizontal acceptance is indeed the most visible and immediate source of legitimacy, the perspective enabled by a phenomenological analysis reveals that the deepest sources of authoritative political order are nonetheless not the product of immediate ego acts. The theory of legitimacy I am proposing makes clear the impossibility of extremely rapid, legitimate fundamental change in the political order, insofar as a fundamental change introduces a discontinuity or dissolution of the life-​world. Such changes, occurring suddenly on the horizontal level, even if “accepted” (that is, legally), must be seen as revolutionary, and to that extent illegitimate, for the reason that the discontinuity between the trunk and the branch creates a break between the political community and the life-​world qua order of the whole subsisting through time. Fundamental changes of this sort –​whether resulting from social, technological, or political causes –​are illegitimate insofar as they sever the connection between the life-​world and the intersubjective community to which it is properly correlated. Such a situation (that is, a split within the tree) can be conceived theoretically from the third-​person perspective of standing outside the temporal continuity of the community and life-​world (for example, I understand that the order of yesterday is no longer the order today). Practically 68 It is important to keep the idea of “human flourishing” in focus since the mere absence of conflict or resistance to the political order should not be confused with “concord” or “harmony.”

166  The Legitimacy of the Life-World speaking, however, given the intersubjective constitution of the life-​world, such a revolution (to the extent that it is truly a disruption at the level of we-​subjectivity and not merely an institutional or legal “adjustment” to an intersubjective fait accompli) would entail a widespread and profound loss of consciousness. Not all changes to the order of the whole are, of course, immoral or undesirable from a practical perspective. However, insofar as they are revolutionary, they are illegitimate, for the reason that they cannot properly be said to arise from the political community as a coherently ordered entity extended in time. Thus, the sudden transformation of a political community to an objectively better, but fundamentally different, way of life, would nonetheless be politically illegitimate. Conversely, so long as it did not violate basic human rights, a regime could become objectively worse while remaining legitimate. In this regard, then, the analysis I am proposing is consistent with the realist principle of the distinction (though not total separation) between ethics and politics. Now, although revolutionary changes to society are illegitimate, the point is not that change should never be undertaken given the totality of the circumstances. For it is certainly possible that non-​revolutionary changes to the political order may be justified. Without such justification, however, we are not “free” to make changes to the political order, even though they be both voluntary and even the product of the unanimous agreement (that is, of contemporaneous individuals). As Thomas Aquinas writes in considering “Should Human Law Be Changed Whenever an Improvement Is Possible?”, “Human law should never be changed unless the common welfare is compensated in some way for the harm done in that respect.”69 The “harm” referred to by Aquinas in this regard is the evil of a lessening of the “restraining power of the law,” which necessarily follows from such changes.70 A more profound reason, however, as to why change to the order of the whole is harmful is that the political order in fact subsists, in a certain manner, independently of the “authority of the ruler.”71 In this regard, Aquinas explains: law can be changed and developed by the repeated actions that comprise custom. In addition, something can be established by custom that obtains the force of law because such repeated external actions effectively reveal internal motives of the will and concepts of the reason, since if something is done a number of times it seems to be the result of a deliberate rational decision. In this sense, custom has the power of law, it abolishes law, and it acts as the interpreter of the law.72 69 Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, 57. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid.

The Legitimacy of the Life-World  167 Aquinas’ reasoning in this passage is especially interesting in that he gives a cogent theoretical articulation of the “legislating” authority of the lived, concrete existence of the community.73 With respect to the tree analogy, this “lived legislation,” as it were, corresponds most fundamentally to the trunk of the tree, which is removed to a certain degree from the present-​ moment expressions of acceptance of that order. In Aquinas’ analysis, the trunk is indeed intelligible, and is, moreover, the product of the choices of the members of the political community. Yet this order of the whole is historical, since its intelligibility arises in that “repeated external actions effectively reveal internal motives of the will and concepts of the reason.” Thus, present-​moment repudiations of the order of the whole will harm (that is, damage, cut) the integrity of this trunk, even if the changes are for the better, considered in abstraction (for example, on a certain branch) from the whole order. Once again, this is not to say that such changes may not be potentially justified if the amelioration that is achieved outweighs the harm done. Now, the question might have occurred to the reader as to whether even a revolutionary change could not be justified, for example in the case of an evil so great as to require a fundamental change to the order of the whole. Yet, with regard to the analysis of legitimacy, this is likely an illusory problem. For it is difficult to imagine an evil so great as to justify a revolutionary change that would not itself have vitiated the legitimacy of the regime. Yet, in this case –​since, indeed, there would not have been a legitimate order to overthrow in the first place –​ the “fundamental change” in question would not have been a revolution, but rather a founding.

73 Ibid.

Conclusion

At a given moment, as I become conscious of myself (for example in a discussion about a current issue in international politics) as belonging to a certain political community, a kind of “halo” emerges, beyond which the “worlds” of Other-​we’s-​than-​us can begin to manifest. It is not, of course, that I ever denied the existence of those “worlds,” but rather that they had not been able to exist. This is because, in the absence of the operation of what I have called the political quasi-​epochē, the life-​world and the political community are coterminous. My political community just is the world. Now, this political structure of the life-​world, whose specific constituting acts I have referred to as political subjectivity, is discovered within the phenomenological perspective. Despite their essentiality, however, the fulfilment of these potentialities of consciousness, insofar as they are contingent upon a concrete intersubjective community and affected by other historical circumstances, may be more or less successfully achieved. It seems obvious that the legal jurisdiction asserted by political regimes never corresponds perfectly to any unified intersubjective community. Moreover, because of the complexity of various social groupings, roles, identifications, “lower” communities, and so forth, there are many shadings, levels, and perspectives one can assume with regard to what is, precisely, any given person’s intersubjective community. Nonetheless, despite these qualifications, I submit that for every human attaining a mature and differentiated consciousness, there is a dominant communal horizon, and that, in the nature of things, it should be identified as fundamentally political, in the sense that reference to such a horizon is precisely what “political” means. However, it is not the case that I have simply selected, in a mere act of definition, the most expansive or encompassing horizon among others to designate as political, for an analysis of political subjectivity shows that it is exclusively in this community that the distinctly political experiences of belonging, authority, and foreignness can be had in their concrete fullness. Now, the purely objective “world” of modern science, economics, and liberal political theory, existing as it does as a “garb of ideas” and not in reality, is in conflict with, and corrosive of, the life-​world. Moreover, as purely “rational” (in the geometric sense), it amounts to an idealization to DOI: 10.4324/9781003361343-13

Conclusion  169 be implemented to the extent practically possible by all concrete communities. Unfortunately, in obscuring the intelligibility of the life-​world, and in failing to identify the constitutive nature of we-​subjectivity, this political and social project of constructing a progressively “rational” world paradoxically undermines objectivity itself, which is rather the function of a concrete and coherent intersubjective community. Science, economics, and liberalism are held up as the only true hopes for mankind, with their “rationality” taken as a self-​contained moral justification for remaking the common order whenever de facto possible. Yet, in the absence of an analysis that can ground them in reality, they are the great destroyers of worlds. For this reason –​according to the analysis developed in this book –​ they are also the annihilators of legitimate political order. Thus, the “crisis of the European sciences” described by Husserl has a specifically political dimension. Following the Aristotelian understanding of excellence as the unfolding of intelligible human capacities, I take the correlation between the essential potentialities of subjectivity (that is, political subjectivity) and the political structure of the life-​world as presenting a normative standard. Perhaps the most important practical consequence of this normative orientation is that it is good for legal and constitutional structures to correspond to intersubjective communities. In concluding, I want to briefly outline what I believe are the most important consequences of the normative good of fostering and respecting the political and also make some distinctions in order to avoid possible misinterpretations. The most likely objection to the assertion of the normative desirability of aligning political and intersubjective communities is that such a project is somehow “nationalistic.” This criticism, however, is of course not philosophical, but is likely due to an ideological commitment whereby a strategy of “disenchantment,” “weakening,” and “homelessness” is a moral duty given the need to constantly work to prevent the resurgence of “authoritarian” politics.1 Yet, as R.R. Reno writes in his book Return of the Strong Gods, Today, the greatest threat to the political health of the West is not fascism or a resurgent Ku Klux Klan but a decline in solidarity and the breakdown of trust between leaders and the led. Fearful of strong loves and committed to ever-​greater openness, the postwar consensus cannot formulate, much less address, these problems. Unable to identify our shared loves –​unable even to formulate the “we” that is the political subject in public life –​we cannot identify the common good, the res in the res publica. Under these circumstances, increasingly prevalent in the West, civic life disintegrates into the struggle among 1 See, for example, R.R. Reno, The Return of the Strong Gods (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2019). Ironically, the implementation of such strategies often requires measures that in themselves can only be considered authoritarian.

170 Conclusion private interests, and in this struggle the rich and powerful win. In the twenty-​first century, oligarchy and an unaccountable elite pose a far greater threat to the future of liberal democracy than does the return of Hitler.2 The political theory I have pursued in this book is, I believe, capable of offering guidance for comprehending and navigating the problems attendant upon the loss of a strong and coherent “we” identified by Reno. Equally, however, the account of legitimacy I have provided, in rooting the authority of the political order in an intelligible ontological good (that is, the life-​world) that altogether transcends the human will –​and, moreover, in adhering to an understanding of universal human rights –​explains precisely why totalitarian regimes, whether “left” or “right,” would be illegitimate. Now, the idea that the disintegration of the intersubjective community will lead to the loss of a properly human consciousness comports with the most profound sense of Aristotle’s doctrine of the priority of the polis (which, I have suggested, receives theoretical articulation in the we-​ subjectivity of Husserl). Consider, for example, that a man may be said to be “conscious” in the basic sense that any animal is conscious –​a state he could lose, for example, by being hit hard over the head. Such a crude “consciousness” does not belong to a man qua human being, and could hypothetically be possessed without ever encountering another person. When Aristotle asserts, however, that “he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity,” and speaks of the “natural outcast,” who “may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts,” he means to describe someone who, though “conscious” in a strict sense, lack a consciousness that is properly human.3 That the attainment of this properly human consciousness involves a political community is seen in Aristotle’s comment that “just as man is the best of animals when completed, when separated from law and adjudication…he is the most unholy and the most savage of the animals, and the worst with regard to sex and food.”4 I submit that “law and adjudication” in this passage do not refer to mere restrictions or commands understood in a literal or superficial sense. On the contrary, the “completion” of a man is a function of the formative experience of a participation in the order of the community. This explains Aristotle’s subsequent characterization of “adjudication” as “an arrangement of the political partnership.”5 If my analysis is correct, the weakening of intersubjectivity that is the result of the liberal restructuring of the political community in accord 2 Ibid., xv. 3 Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), 1 2 1253a2–​7. 4 Aristotle, Politics, I 2 1253a32–​38 (emphasis added). 5 Ibid., 1253a38–​39.

Conclusion  171 with an individualist, a-​political philosophy explains many things about the world today. Looking to the future, we could say that this dynamic, at best, will create merely “smaller” (that is, smaller-​minded) people who simply never experience the fullness of the essential potentialities of political subjectivity we have described –​belonging, authority, and foreignness. At worst, however –​and as suggested by Aristotle –​it is also possible that human beings, no longer possessing a consciousness characterized by the objectivity that can only be obtained through a connection to a coherent intersubjective community and life-​world (that is, a properly human state of mind), will become increasingly savage and inhuman. An alternate path that remains open, of course, is to recognize man as a political animal and strive to deal prudently with the reality of our communal way of being in the world. I have argued that a flourishing and coherent intersubjectivity is a normative imperative. Therefore, the attempt to remake man as a-​political in the hope or rendering him harmless is in principle immoral. At the same time, an assessment of any concrete political order will necessarily give place to prudential trade-​offs among competing goods. For example, it may be better, all things considered, to opt for a larger but less legitimate regime rather than one that is smaller and more legitimate. In other words, political legitimacy is not the ultimate or absolute value to be pursued at all times and at all costs. While, as a true good, it is never morally licit to intentionally stifle this natural dimension of human flourishing, there may indeed be good reasons to opt for a less legitimate regime, just as there may be good reasons to buy a house of lesser quality if, for example, the location is not good, one cannot afford the better house, or moving into the better house at a given time might otherwise cause too great a hardship. Certainly, one could not, following my analysis, violate universal human rights in an attempt to achieve greater legitimacy. Moreover, it would be a grave misunderstanding of the account I have set forth to imagine that the substantial correlation between legitimacy and intersubjective coherence (that is, a shared life-​ world) should be taken as prescribing an ideal of uniformity within society. Such a superficial and erroneous reading mistakes the meaning of the universal ontological structure of the life-​world, which, far from being static, facilitates and encompasses a rich, natural variety of complimentary relationships and activities. Whereas the individualism and abstractionism of typical “liberal” thought invites disintegration and mutual incomprehension in society, a coherent life-​world makes possible and supports an abundance of aesthetic and intellectual movements, allowing for both a certain kind of “fleetingness” as well as the retention of certain achievements as permanent additions to the common order. Such dynamism and variety, far from threatening the legitimacy of the community, add to its coherence. On the other hand, “diversity” on questions concerning the deepest purposes of life, what is fundamentally honorable or disgraceful, and the significance and functioning of the basic institutions of society is inherently

172 Conclusion problematic. This kind of “variety” serves only to dissolve objectivity and we-​subjectivity, spread mutual incomprehension, and create potentially unworkable practical conflicts –​thus rendering the political order less legitimate. To prevent misunderstanding my analysis as a support for “nationalism,” it may be helpful to highlight its potential for both revolutionary and conservative interpretations, depending on the circumstances and the prudential judgments involved. What is consistent in my analysis, however is a tendency to seek out and locate legitimacy. On the one hand, it is conservative in that it takes “what is” (that is, the life-​world) to be the primary and indispensable element of legitimacy. On the other hand, it is potentially revolutionary (in the legal sense) in that it understands that a government profoundly separated from the objectivity of the intersubjective community by that fact possesses a very thin basis of legitimacy, with the de facto legitimacy of other potential communities becoming, ontologically speaking, increasingly possible. It is perhaps instructive in this regard to compare my understanding to the dynamic described in Madison’s “Federalist 10,” in which he famously deals with the problem of faction. There, Madison defines a faction as: a number of citizens, whether amounting to a minority or a majority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.6 What is crucial to emphasize is the radical ontological difference between the intersubjective community of my analysis, on the one hand, and a “number of citizens” who might be “actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest,” on the other. Such “impulses” and “interests” play out on the same level as “acceptance” in liberal theory (that is, at the level of the branches in the “tree of legitimacy”). A life-​world is decidedly not something that can be “actuated” at a given moment in the same way as an interest or passion. Thus, in no way should my analysis be understood, superficially, as attributing a “right” to specific objects of interest or to the passion of various “groups” of people (for example, racial, religious, or economic classes) within society. Locating legitimacy in the life-​world means that a political order finds its ultimate justification on an ontological level entirely separate from that of ego acts of any kind –​either individual or collective. Rooting legitimacy in the life-​world means that legitimacy corresponds only in a derivative and secondary sense to any “identity.” As such, the possible use of my theory for polemical or ideological purposes is, in the nature of the case, sharply circumscribed. One does not “assert” legitimacy

6 James Madison, The Federalist Papers (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1999), 46.

Conclusion  173 at all, properly speaking, but rather points to it. In short, the view I am taking is primarily descriptive, although, as I have mentioned, it does show the desirability from a normative standpoint of a correspondence between intersubjective community and constitutional structure. How this can be best achieved, however, is a matter of political prudence, wherein the means, moreover, is never justified by the goodness of the end. Madison’s solution to the problem of “faction” is, of course, to increase the “extent of territory” in order to “take in a great variety of parties and interests,” thereby making it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.7 Madison’s remarks here are completely in keeping with my analysis, which, as I have said, concerns an entirely different ontological level within human relations. In Madison’s time, the early Americans, although prone to squabbling, were highly homogenous on the level of the constitution of the world through intersubjectivity. They shared, for example, a common pride in their English descent, a common language, and common historical traditions, and they were almost all Protestants.8 For the early Americans, “being English meant having a history that stretched back to a golden age of Anglo-​Saxon purity and freedom.”9 Madison, then, arguing in “Federalist 10” for the desirability of ratifying the proposed constitution, was concerned with managing mere conflicts of interest through mechanisms of government, in a context in which the roots of legitimacy were strongly established. Emphatically, then, it would be an error to take my account of legitimacy as according rights to any faction over and against the order of the whole in a legitimate existing regime. Of course, if an existing regime was illegitimate (that is, if there were no regime), then any group would be free to institute political institutions if, of course, they could do so without violating natural human rights. To be clear, although the new regime must –​ like all regimes –​draw its legitimacy from the life-​world, the rightness of establishing these particular new institutions (that is, in the face of the old, illegitimate non-​regime) would not arise from the legitimacy of the life-​ world, but rather from the acceptance of the new institutions (that is, in a founding). So long as the old regime, however, remained legitimate to a “substantial” degree, a would-​be independent intersubjective community would face the fundamental moral constraints of obeying the law. Even 7 Ibid., 51. 8 Morgan, 101. 9 Ibid., 6. That this latter golden age had little historical justification is irrelevant to the present point.

174 Conclusion a more coherent nascent political community emerging within the existing order could not simply assert its superior “legitimacy” as a matter of right over the existing regime, insofar as the individuals of whom it was composed would remain bound in conscience by the laws of the regime in which they continued to live. Admittedly, however, the presence of the nascent “community” would create a certain existential tension according to the degree of the compact goodness of its incipient “world.” Such a trajectory, moreover, makes apparent a necessary point wherein, due to an inversely proportional weakening of the order of one “world” and strengthening of another, a true crisis of legitimacy must take place. My analysis shows that communalization deep enough and concrete enough (for example, to amount to an independent “ground” or “horizon of all possible experience”) within an existing regime would, by that very fact, have necessary consequences for the legitimacy of that regime. However, the point is not that the intersubjective community within the regime has an immediate “right” to assert itself politically on the basis of such evidence (for instance, as discerned in a phenomenological analysis), for this would be to ignore the multi-​dimensional nature of legitimacy as I have explained it. Rather, my account shows precisely why the existing regime, through the existence of the insurgent life-​world in its midst, would have lost the ultimate basis of its legitimacy precisely to that extent. To understand how an incipient intersubjective community may possess a potentially insurgent character, allow me to distinguish two different cases which concern economic status. Consider first that, in certain extreme circumstances, and given a high degree of alienation within society, it would seem that a “proletariat” could rightly be said to form an autonomous order –​and therefore a “world” –​insofar as the ultimate horizon of the class was centered within it, as it were. For this reason, according to my analysis, it might justifiably begin to sense its own claim to authoritativeness. This again, however, would not automatically remove individual obligations with respect to a (hypothetical) legitimate state in which they were living, nor would it remove from them the imperative of respecting universal human rights. By contrast, in the case of a feudalistic regime, despite a high degree of inequality of property, and moreover a clear and legally recognized stratification of social class and privilege, my analysis would seem to offer little support for a claim to authoritativeness and legitimacy for the “world” of the disenfranchised, insofar as the total feudal arrangement would appear to be a coherent and self-​sufficient entity, with the lower classes enmeshed in highly specific and concrete relationships within the larger order of society. Although they may have reason to assert the injustice of the arrangement (and even have a “right” in specific instances to resistance on this account), and despite the radical difference of perspective within the whole, the “world” of the serf would nonetheless be the same as that of the lord –​and for this reason the legitimacy of the political community would remain intact. The relative injustice of the unequal distribution of property

Conclusion  175 would not destroy the goodness and authority of the common order (that is, “world”) achieved intersubjectively by all involved. Now, at the beginning of this work I said that I would hold to two seemingly opposed assertions: On the one hand, that politics entails radical disagreement, even about the framework in which political disagreement takes place. On the other hand, I insisted, with Aristotle, that man is naturally political and teleologically oriented toward political partnership. We are now in a better position to understand this seeming contradiction. The endemic radical disagreement among men, rightly insisted upon by the realists, manifests at the level of discourse and ideas –​precisely the same level on which, as we have seen, liberal “acceptance” occurs. Behind this disagreement, which acts centrifugally to sunder the political community, there seem to be “forces” reaching “all the way down” into the depths of human nature itself. At the same time, as Aristotle recognized, “there is in everyone by nature” a competing “impulse toward this sort of [political] partnership.”10 Such is the human condition. Yet, what I have tried in this work to elucidate is the reality that, quite apart from the nature of man’s being (the teleological orientation toward fulfilment in community of which conflicts with the tendency to disagree), there is, at the level of the constitution of objectivity, an unquestioned harmony among men insofar as intersubjectivity is constantly functioning in allowing the world to manifest. Distinguishing the level of the prior, primal “agreement” (of world constitution) from the level of political disagreement (properly speaking) enables us to more fully illuminate Sleat’s distinction between political disagreement and political conflict.11 “Political disagreements,” he explains, “are contestations between those who are largely committed to the same form of political framework (e.g., liberal, fascist, theocratic, socialist, communist, etc.) yet whose interpretations of the same values and/​or their relative priority differ.”12 Examples of this type of disagreement would the dispute between “ ‘new’ and ‘old’ Labour, the left and right wings of the Conservative party.”13 By contrast, “political conflicts occur between persons who because of their disagreements about values, ends, and principles are led to endorse different forms of political framework, or hold what we might also call different conceptions of the political good.”14 Now, having made this very insightful distinction between political disagreements and conflicts, Sleat is constrained in his analysis (due to what I believe are philosophical limitations) to understand the difference as a matter of magnitude. For example, on the one hand there are the

10 Aristotle, Politics, I 2 1253 29–​30. 11 Matthew Sleat, Liberal Realism: A Realist Theory of Liberal Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 56. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid.

176 Conclusion relatively small disagreements that take place within a common ideological agreement (liberalism, fascism, and so forth). On the other hand, there are those big disagreements about major issues of principles, values, and ends. Such an analysis remains at the level of discourse and ideas, theorized from the third-​person perspective of social-​science “objectivity.” This, however, impedes a fuller understanding of the dynamics at work in real life. A much fuller and more accurate account of the conflict between individuals –​say a political conflict between communists and proponents of a theocratic regime –​would facilitate comprehension of a situation in which no communalization exists between two different groups or populations, who do not, as such, share an experience of the same fundamental objectivities. An analysis in this regard would illuminate the landscape for political action in realistically dealing with such a situation, including the challenge of establishing or maintaining legitimacy. Conversely, in the case of mere political disagreement, no matter how hostile (for example, on the level of horizontal acceptance), there would be the insight that the world within which the dispute is occurring is shared, due to a participation in a more or less common (and more or less coherent) intersubjective community. In this regard, the analysis would indicate the advisability of a focus primarily on the legal and institutional level. Now, it goes without saying that the line between political disagreements and political conflicts will not always be perfectly clear, just as there is no simple criterion for determining at what point a coherent intersubjective community actually “exists.”15 Yet, whereas Sleat can only admit the difficulty of discerning “at what point a political difference is one of degree or kind,” the analysis I have set forth enables an assessment of the realities involved through an examination of the peculiar kind evidence made available in a phenomenological inquiry.16 Just as it would be a mistake to interpret the account I have offered as inherently favoring a particular form of government, rooting legitimacy in political subjectivity and an ontology of the life-​world precludes any notion that coherent intersubjective communities could be formed on the basis of biological or even psychological factors supposedly linked to race. In this sense, then, my analysis directly undercuts any kind of racially based political claims. It seems clear, for example, that the “world” of an African American would resemble far more the “world” of an American of European descent than that of a native African. It may be true that, for strictly contingent historical reasons, there may be a general de facto correspondence between racial groups and intersubjective communities; the analysis offered here, which aims to penetrate to the level of “absolute” human subjectivity, elucidates structures of universal reason, prior to any such distinctions. The primacy of universal reason can be seen in that, 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.

Conclusion  177 especially in a time of increasing “plural identities,” real-​life contexts can involve surprising political coherencies. Consider in this regard a traditional Catholic and a Muslim (whose cultural and ethical formation has endowed them with a similar “architecture of life” in which, for example, God and the traditional family have primacy of place) living on a certain American campus where gender or other non-​traditional social ideologies predominate (for instance, among students, faculty, and administration). In such a case, they may find, in many respects, that they share a life-​world more with one another than with other students. At the same time, however, such a situation indicates the complex manner in which religious affiliation, identification with transnational institutions, and/​or regional identities make the constituency of one’s functional intersubjective community highly variable. The challenge for politics is that, for any mature and integrated consciousness, a single dominant horizon must obtain, within which all such sub-​ horizons are able to manifest. It is only insofar as the dominant horizon of individuals is 1) in fact achieved by those individuals, and 2) substantially the function of a single intersubjective community that a political order becomes manifest. I have identified the normative imperative that legitimate political associations should exist insofar as they are connected to the (indisputably good) life-​world and provide, moreover, the context in which the fulfilment of the (essentially intersubjective) potentialities of reason may be achieved. However, because the ultimate basis of legitimacy (that is, the life-​world) cannot be “chosen,” but rather involves a constantly functioning intersubjective process that precedes reflection, an assessment of legitimacy can only be carried out in an after-​the-​fact analysis: This “attempt” at legitimacy, by this would-​be whole –​did it succeed? Now, given the necessary first-​person perspective for accessing crucial evidence, an assessment of legitimacy will be more difficult to the extent that one does not have concrete (although not necessarily direct) experience of a regime. Moreover, due to the pre-​reflective functioning of intersubjectivity, and the manner in which it surpasses all ego acts, it seems clear that legitimacy cannot be the product of any programmatic implementation. A phenomenology of the political, however, by providing a greater illumination of the context in which action is taken, may enable more prudent decision-​making as well as a more accurate evaluation of questions of justice. At this time, it may be helpful to consider an objection to my approach, as articulated in Gray’s criticism of a view plausibly resembling my own. He states: The ideal of a mode of government that mirrors the values of single community is dangerous because it implies that plural identities are pathological and univocal identities normal. … In any future that we

178 Conclusion can realistically envision, states will be legitimate only if they reflect the plurality and hybridity of common identities.17 Gray goes on to condemn “communitarian” political theories which completely fail to address this problem of deep pluralism. The alternative to such denial of pluralism, he says, is a rejection in principle of any “single community” of identifiable values and for political institutions to be regarded henceforth as mere expedients for the containment of conflicts arising between rival versions of the good life.18 Is a phenomenology of the political, as I have described it, indeed communitarian (and moreover dangerous due to its “pathologizing” of plural identities)? In responding to this potential criticism, I will first point out that my methodological orientation is above all one of philosophical analysis, and only in a derivative sense can it inform prudential judgments, as modified by specific circumstances. My inquiry has been to discern what legitimacy is universally, from a human perspective, in all times and circumstances. When Gray opines about what legitimacy “will be,” “in any future that we can realistically envision,” he seems to suggest that the nature of legitimacy itself can be changed to suit the times. Yet, if there is no truth about the nature of legitimate order for human beings per se, then any “theory of legitimacy” is simply ideology masquerading as political philosophy. While the kinds of regimes that are de facto legitimate may tend to vary in different times (and circumstances), any theory of legitimacy, in order to be properly so-​called, must be able to account for them all. For my part, I have attempted to do this by rooting legitimacy in the intentional structure of reason itself, as lived in flesh-​and-​blood human communities. Now, as a realist, Gray rejects the idealism of basing political order on a consensus regarding universal principles. Notably, however, he also sees as idealistic the prospect of what he describes as “looking to an ideal community to deliver us from conflicts of interest and values.”19 In my view, such a dichotomy is philosophically oversimplified and misguided. For if common order can, in fact, only be objectively and effectively experienced through the constitution of a concrete intersubjective community, then the “idealism” in question resides on Gray’s side. In particular, it lies in his notion of ordering society in terms of an objectivity that is itself beyond any intersubjective community but which merely “reflects” the pluralism of communities that comprise it. There is, indeed, a distinct lack of realism in imagining that “institutions as expedients” could command the necessary respect and authority required to uphold a common order among radically different interests and conceptions of the good. The intelligibility of the life-​world is the actual source of legitimacy that imbues the political horizon with authority. Without an experience of this, 17 John Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: The New Press, 2000), 122. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid.

Conclusion  179 no one takes the regime seriously, let alone feels loyalty or attachment to it. If this truth implies certain limitations on the possibilities for “deep pluralism” within a single political community, then true realism demands that this be faced and accepted. On the other hand, a sound understanding of the necessity of a common horizon for political order does not preclude some representation of plural communities within the governing institutions of a political community. Indeed, a clear vision of these necessities and limitations may facilitate the safe “maximization” of pluralism, as indicated by specific circumstances. That is, a kind of “legitimate pluralism” is possible –​the legitimacy of which is nonetheless contingent upon the greater concrete order. What seems impossible, however, is the prospect that a political community can exist in the absence of a common life-​world recognized as the authoritative basis of legitimacy for this regime, or that governing institutions can function from a perspective that is beyond all concrete horizons. As stressed above, my account of legitimacy does not entail the desirability of taking any and all political actions that would increase intersubjective coherence. Moreover, it is not coherence per se that makes the life-​world the ultimate source of legitimacy, but rather its goodness. It seems inescapable that this goodness, which is experienceable though the intelligibility of the life-​world, is revealed with more or less force depending on the degree of intersubjective coherence (although, again, this does not mean uniformity). Yet, if legitimacy and authority are a function of such goodness, one need not regard a plurality of common identities as pathological in order to recognize that such a situation presents a political challenge from the standpoint of legitimacy –​at least insofar as the plural communities in question comprise independent intersubjective communities. The challenge of deep pluralism cannot be obviated by simply adopting an ideology that denies it is a problem. Rather, what is needed is a political philosophy that can aid in navigating political change in a time of deep pluralism, both avoiding injustice and maximizing human flourishing. This means understanding the kinds of discontinuities, disconnections, and incoherencies that destroy the lived experience of common world and, consequently, the legitimacy of the political order. It is pure idealism to hope to solve the problems that come with the existence of deep pluralism and diverse ways of life through imagined “political institutions” that are themselves completely above the fray with regard to any contested questions. How is this prospect any less fanciful than the liberal idea of a prior consensus on universal political principles? Merely “expedient” institutions (for instance, the U.N.) may (or may not) serve valuable political functions, but they cannot be, in their own right, legitimate. In proclaiming that ethics is not a sufficient ground to establish political legitimacy, contemporary realists break through many dead ends in ideal liberal thought. However, because they remain within the basic philosophical outlook of liberalism, they nonetheless remain, as we have seen, confined to basing legitimacy on a generic appeal to “acceptance” or

180 Conclusion “respect for persons.” In doing so, they offer little insight in terms of the nature of political order and the conditions of its formation and maintenance. To supersede this impasse within contemporary realism, philosophical resources must be brought into play that can root legitimacy in something real and intelligible yet transcendent to the individual ego. I have located this basis in the life-​world, which possesses these qualities without, however, giving a “foundation” for politics in the sense of identifying it with a specific way of life or constitution. The intelligibility of the life-​world means that the legitimacy flowing from it cannot be confused with a mere communitarian merger of consciousnesses –​as if by becoming “one,” a basis for resolving all possible conflicts will have been found. Such thinking mistakes the doctrine of the intersubjective constitution of objectivity for a metaphysical idealism in which both world and ego are swallowed up in a “social construction of reality.” An account of philosophical misconceptions of this sort is obviously beyond the present object of inquiry. Suffice it to say, however, that the life-​world is, at least in part, an intersubjective articulation of the “the” objective world of nature. Although this nature does not define a single, set, political order, it does indeed constrain who “we” are and what “we” can morally do. More than that, it makes available to us –​through the intuition of morphological essences –​the intelligibility of the natural communities constituent of the political whole, which must be respected in all justice. We are embodied beings living in “the” world with its universal ontology. The intersubjective character of objectivity does not, therefore, imply a world of amorphous spirit, at once “communal” and utterly self-​defining. On the contrary, intersubjectivity, embodiment, and objectivity arise together in “the” world. Although there may be a variety of legitimate –​even practically incompatible –​manifestations of the good life, we are nonetheless “constrained” by the realities of time, each other, and the order of nature. Liberalism as a political theory began as an assertion of the ideals of individual freedom and equality –​defined in a particular way –​as a means of achieving peace, safety, and material prosperity. I will call this Phase One liberalism. So long as there was a relatively local homogeneity in terms of a shared “way if life,” Phase One liberalism achieved many of those goals, at least as understood on a certain superficial level. Yet over the succeeding centuries, and for a broad spectrum of reasons, the communalizations functionally underlying the life-​worlds of many nations have increasingly ceased to hold sway. Throughout this process, liberalism has continued to seek peace, safety, and material prosperity (understood in the same manner as stability, autonomy, and commercial prosperity) as ideological goals. However, although the goals are the same, the governmental social policies in more recent years (aimed, at least in part, at dealing with problems arising from the decline of coherent intersubjective communities) have increasingly been conceived as interventions (informed by the social sciences) performed on various “populations” of people. These programs and actions are oriented by the principle that the rationalization of society

Conclusion  181 should displace the life-​world as the fundamental source of objectivity and common order. The political goal of effecting a complete rationalization of society, in all but its most superficial aesthetic character, constitutes a global project which I will call Phase Two liberalism. Although it continues ostensibly to advocate the liberal aspirations of advancing individual rights and so forth, it appears increasingly characterized by the employment of broadly coercive measures to achieve those aspirations. In place of the implicit project of Phase One liberalism –​that of promoting the peaceful, if competitive, co-​existence of prosperous liberal nations, each with a “way of life” proper to it –​Phase Two liberalism aims at bringing about a peaceful, safe, and prosperous global humanity. However, even if we were to attribute the most benign and humane motivations to such a project, I believe the analysis provided in this work shows that it runs contrary to the basic structures of human consciousness and subjectivity. Indeed, such a situation appears to create an inimical relationship in which –​for Phase Two liberalism –​any resurgence of the life-​world in terms of local or regional objectivity, or any assertion of “constraints” on human action based on the capacity of an eidetic analysis to disclose morphological essences, now comes to be seen as irrational and a political threat. In terms of a phenomenology of the political, we may describe the two phases of liberalism as follows: In Phase One liberalism, communalization was seen as generally positive and healthy in itself, but as more or less politically neutral. The functional ideal entailed preserving the ability to move more or less fluidly between the objectivizing idealism of liberal political theory, on the one hand, and the first-​person perspective of the concrete intersubjective political community, on the other. By contrast, in Phase Two liberalism, a permanent third-​person political perspective is the functional ideal, with political communalization and intersubjective political experience being regarded as more or less threatening, except insofar as they might contribute instrumentally to the long-​term achievement of the goals of a fully rationalized public order. A phenomenology of the political, instead of theorizing a system of principles applied to generically conceived individuals, begins with the raw experience of political life (for instance, of belonging and possession, authority, and foreignness) and then pursues an analysis in which the political community is understood as a common order in which the essential potentialities of consciousness corresponding to these experiences find their fulfilment in the best way possible. A phenomenology of the political shows why attempting to evaluate legitimacy without acknowledging the fundamental role of the intersubjective constitution of objectivity will lead either to moralism or generalities so abstract as to be merely otiose. With regard to the latter, it shows why recourse to “acceptance” is unavailing –​ for it is only on the basis of some common (if only incipient) world that it becomes possible to have the luxury to disagree, to make sense of the BLD, and to meaningfully accept a justification of coercive force. In short, a

182 Conclusion phenomenology of the political shows that political philosophy must penetrate to the level of intersubjective consciousness (that is, we-​subjectivity), going beyond relationships of mere discursive exchange. Such a political philosophy is especially needed at a time when the coherence of the political community is increasingly “scrambled.” In the absence of a common life-​world, discourse itself tends to melt into a barrage of words without meaning. A phenomenology of the political, in breaking free of the theoretical stranglehold of naturalism (for instance, biologism or psychologism), can help (re)establish coherence by facilitating a (re)connection between citizens and the ground of their common order, through which a common way of life is known and experienced. At the same time, a phenomenology of the political also contributes to the discernment, evaluation, and comprehension of emerging political orders and communities that will disrupt or destroy existing legal boundaries, borders, and institutions. Have I offered a “liberal” political philosophy? Given the intersubjective confusion and the kaleidoscopic proliferation of sometimes irreconcilable ways of life, the “machinery” of liberal political theory appears increasingly senile and helpless. Thus, in criticizing it, I have perhaps offered a contribution to preserving some of its authentic successes. In any case, it would seem that political philosophy must become more philosophical than it has been under the spell of liberal theory. Contemporary realists deserve credit for breaking open liberal discourse, so to speak, effectively clearing the path for the return of philosophy into political theory. Sleat, for example, writes that “it seems an obvious mistake to make to simply disregard those who reject liberalism as either mindless thugs or idiots and madmen who do not represent, properly speaking, a political problem.”20 The philosophical openness suggested here should extend to a rethinking of the ground of legitimacy, in particular the consensus view dogmatically assumed by liberalism. At the same time, such an inquiry will only be availing within the context of an adequate conception of the political itself. The life-​ world is “shot through” with the political, and is, I have proposed, coterminous with the political community. To see something politically means to “take” it in terms of the order of the community as a whole. Thus, anything in the life-​world can be potentially political –​a person, a building, a landscape, a book, a song, an action, and so on. On the other hand, it seems evident that certain experiences or objects are more or less intrinsically related to the order of whole. In America, for example, the Capitol Building, the office of senator, the Federalist Papers, the National Anthem, a national holiday, an advocacy group for some specific political project, and so on all pertain intrinsically to the order of the political community as a whole. Other objects or activities, such as

20 Sleat, Liberal Realism, 82.

Conclusion  183 sports, music, clothing, food, or medical procedures, are by contrast far less intrinsically political, and can only be taken politically depending on the context. Now, this understanding of the political seems to make possible a more coherent notion of what is public. The public sphere, I propose, is any physical or virtual space that is created by objects of intrinsically political significance, into which anyone may enter, either in an embodied or virtual manner. Thus, all public spaces are political, but not all politically relevant spaces are public. What happens in the family home, or a church, for ­example –​or indeed, behind the closed doors of the Supreme Court –​can be highly political, though none of these are public. This understanding shows why entering a public space, or the public sphere, is potentially so powerful and exhilarating, in a peculiar kind of way. It is a locus of a singularly direct, “live” manifestation of the order of the whole. A public space provides, in effect, for a structurally coherent convergence of all the different aspects of political subjectivity: it is a place where all belong –​in a multitude of different (potentially complimentary) ways. It is a space where authority is incontrovertible and assumed. Moreover, depending on the nature of the regime, it is a place where ideas concerning the good of the community can be freely and vigorously pursued and expressed (although this possibility would not seem strictly necessary). It is a place that preeminently represents the “we” and symbolizes and affirms our way of life (the concrete, localized order of “the” world). Because it is the very essence of the public sphere to express and manifest the order of the whole, it is the supremely political place. Finally, the forced thrusting (via the political quasi-​epochē) in the direction of a philosophical perspective that comes with the experience of the foreign shows, on a deep level, why there is a deep thrill in international travel. It also shows why there is something inherently repugnant and sinister about the prospect of a “world political community” and the reduction of deeply varied ways of life to a mere multicultural mosaic. It explains why the “pluralism” of the global liberal order, once the exhilaration of being an empowered consumer fades, results everywhere in uniformity and the loss of legitimacy. How monotonous is the global liberal project! How could the order it intends to instantiate possibly command respect? The meaning of philosophy in our time, as in all ages, entails rigorous reflection and the elucidation of universality. In our age especially, it also means the discovery of historicity and continuity, the trajectory of lived meaning, inherited goodness and authority, and the vehicular nature of tradition, language, art, literature, religion, and manners.

Index

Note: Footnotes are indicated by the page number followed by “n” and the note number so that 20n47 refers to footnote 47 on page 20. acceptance 51, 63, 172, 173–​4, 175, 179–​80, 181–​2; horizontal 164–​5, 176; and legitimacy 32, 34, 35, 37, 42, 43; and legitimacy of the life-​ world 145, 146–​7, 148, 151, 161–​5, 167; vertical 164, 165 achievements 4, 77, 171 acts of consciousness 136, 137, 143, 144 acts of ego 165, 172, 177 actual experience 49–​50, 79, 80, 83, 84, 102, 110 adjudication 170 alienation 88, 91, 174; see also self-​alienation alter ego 54, 110–​11, 123, 127, 132 alterity 109, 110, 11, 117; see also otherness altruism 144 analogizing apprehension 111, 126, 132 animals 25–​6, 48, 70, 148, 170; herd 25, 26; political 6, 25, 45, 49, 50, 139, 171 anonymous community 54 anti-​political ideology 26 appearance-​systems 116–​17, 118 applied ethics 15, 22, 34 appresentation 110, 111, 113, 127, 134, 135 Aquinas, Thomas 5, 52, 97–​8, 98–​9, 152–​3, 154, 156, 166–​7 “Are Subjects Obliged to do Everything that Their Superiors Command?” 98–​9 aristocracy 16, 23, 155 Aristotle 5, 8, 14, 22, 71, 98, 99, 117, 175; on excellence 169; on flourishing

and functioning 72, 73; on the good life 79–​80; on goodness 95–​6; on justice 94, 98; and legitimate regimes 9–​10, 16; methodology of 6–​7; on the “natural outcast” 170; on the polis 57–​8, 59, 60, 94; political philosophy of 23, 24, 25–​6, 57–​61, 79; on properly human consciousness 170, 171; on virtue 15, 20n47, 22, 94, 98 artifacts 48, 70, 148 aspects, Husserlian concept of 84, 87 association, passive synthesis of 112 authoritarian politics 169–​70 authoritativeness 93–​4, 95, 102, 174 authority, political 9, 17, 50, 92, 95, 96, 102, 103 autonomy of the political 21, 22, 24 basic legitimation demand (BLD) 14–​15, 32–​7, 41, 63, 162–​3, 181–​2 being 48–​9 beliefs 11, 12, 21, 28, 30, 79, 121, 163 belonging, political 83, 88, 89 best regime 16 Big Bend National park 106 BLD (basic legitimation demand) 14–​15, 32–​7, 41, 63, 162–​3, 181–​2 Bodin, Jean 154 bracketing 49, 50, 75, 79, 90, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127 Cartesian Meditations 64–​5, 92, 109 Circle of Legitimacy 31 circumstances of politics 3, 7, 8, 19–​20, 38, 39, 92 civil war 101

Index  185 coercion 8–​9, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20–​1, 21n53, 27–​8, 33, 37, 80 coercive force 15, 20–​1, 32, 33, 35, 36, 41, 63, 146, 162–​3, 164, 181 coercive power 32, 34, 37, 145, 146 collective consciousness 25 common good 17, 93, 95, 148, 169–​70 common life 3, 13, 30, 37, 63–​4, 105, 162 common life-​world 4, 9, 10, 135, 179, 182 common order 14, 41, 42, 80, 148, 160, 163, 165, 169, 171, 175, 178, 181, 182 common values 41 communalization 4, 5, 16, 114, 118, 133, 174, 176, 180, 181 communism 99–​100, 175 communitarianism 178, 180 community: anonymous 54; identity of 101; intersubjective see intersubjective community; of humanity 71, 72, 85; of monads 65, 115; political see political community; single 71, 177–​8 community-​horizon 61, 63–​4, 67, 69 comprehensive doctrine 12, 13, 19, 30 conception of justice 11, 17, 18, 19, 24, 30–​1 conditions of cooperation 8, 32, 146 conditions of order/​disorder 13 conflict 1, 2, 4–​5, 8–​9, 14, 67, 130, 131–​2, 168–​9, 172, 175, 178, 180; of interest 173, 178; and legitimacy 30, 31, 38, 39–​40, 43; and legitimacy of the life-​world 157, 158–​9, 165n68; moral 145–​6, 148; political 175, 176 consciousness 1, 82, 84, 85, 168, 177, 181; acts of 136, 137, 143, 144; and being 48–​9; collective 25; and experience 56; human world-​77; Husserlian understanding of 7, 48–​9, 50, 56, 64, 75; intentional 75, 76, 90–​1; and intersubjectivity 44, 182; loss of 166; marginal 127; political 139, 143; and political otherness and foreignness 106, 110, 112, 120, 123, 126, 134; properly human 26, 170, 171; pure 137; pure intentional 75, 76, 90–​1; transcendental 76 consensus 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 22, 35, 38, 45; liberal 36, 182; overlapping 28–​32; on universal principles 159, 162, 178, 179 consent 9, 20–​1, 28, 29, 31, 99, 146, 148, 154, 155, 162

contemporary realism 3, 6, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 32, 180 continuing consent 29 cooperation 43, 54; conditions of 8, 32, 146; fair system of 18, 19, 22, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34–​5, 37, 40, 42, 43, 66, 69, 70, 74, 118, 135 Costello, Peter 69–​70 coterminous nature of political community and the life-​world 62, 64, 69, 75, 78, 85, 88, 89, 138, 142, 168, 182; and political others and foreignness 104, 105–​6, 107, 109, 113, 115, 120, 121, 122, 123–​4, 125–​6, 128 Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, The 4, 76–​7 crisis of the European sciences 150, 169 critical theory principle 32 cultural world 122, 133, 134 culture 11, 46, 48, 52, 70, 71, 92, 116, 118–​19, 134–​5, 148 custom 85, 138, 166–​7 deep diversity 38, 40, 43 deep pluralism 40, 178, 179 depoliticization of decision-​making 13 difference: experience of 134; political 13, 176 disagreement: endemic 6–​10; political 5, 13, 175, 176; radical 5, 7, 9, 42, 43, 80, 146, 175 dissent from established norms 55–​6 divergent values 40 diversity 16, 30–​1, 38, 85, 171–​2; deep 38, 40, 43 divinity 52, 98, 142–​3, 147 dominant horizon 90, 168, 177 domination 14, 33 dominion 97, 98 economics 4, 39, 79, 99, 129–​30, 158, 168, 169, 172, 174 ego 51–​2, 57, 68, 109, 113, 131, 180; acts of 165, 172, 177; alter 54, 110–​11, 123, 127, 132; embodied active 88; empirical 46, 62, 88–​9; individual 57, 62, 68, 122, 123, 124, 125, 180; other 54, 110–​11, 115, 123, 127, 132; personal 63; transcendental 46, 62, 67–​8, 68–​9, 88–​9, 109 eidetic reduction 74, 75 embodied active ego 88

186 Index empathy 124; individual 109, 113, 117, 122, 126, 127; individual political 134, 135; normal 134; with other regimes 125–​8; political see political empathy; universal human 132 empirical ego 46, 62, 88–​9 encounter 126; with bodily existing foreign Is 68; empathetic 124; with a foreign country 110; with a foreign “we” 120, 125; with the Other 54, 119–20; with an Other “we” 128; with an Other world 124, 127; with an Other-​we-​than-​us 122, 123; the political Other 123, 126; between “two worlds” 124–​5 endemic disagreement 6–​10 enemies 13–​14, 21n53, 114, 129–​30, 131, 132 Enlightenment 16, 29 enslavement 93, 97, 98–​9, 152, 155, 159 epochē 49–​50, 60, 75, 76, 90–​1, 105, 120–​1; phenomenological 91, 106, 121; philosophical 121, 128n47, 137; political 121, 122, 126, 128; political quasi-​ 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 128n47, 131–​2, 134, 168, 183; quasi-​ 121 equality 2, 11, 12, 18, 19, 29, 31, 37, 99, 100, 180 Erlebnisse see experience essence: of legitimacy 160; of political experience 136–​44 essential typicalities of the life-​world 52, 65–​6, 77, 114 essentiality 83–​4, 86, 87, 120, 168 ethics 14, 15, 31, 32, 38, 129; individual 16, 22, 31, 34, 35; and politics 22, 24, 27, 38, 39–​40, 166, 179; and pure reason 29 excellence 23, 72, 79, 94, 95, 97, 102, 169 existential affirming 141 existential claim on society 100 existential conflict 131–​2 existential demands 96–​7 existential doubt 128 existential meaning 130 existential strength 96 existential tension 96, 174 existential willing 141 experience: actual 49–​50, 79, 80, 83, 84, 102, 110; human 7, 20, 83, 85, 92, 102, 115, 132, 164; intentional content of 137, 138, 141, 142; intentional quality of 138, 141–​2,

143, 147; noematic dimension of 136; of Others 25, 68, 112, 113, 122–​3; political 136–​44; possible 64, 78, 80, 84, 174; of “us” 114–​18 faction 172, 173 fair system of cooperation 18, 19, 22, 24, 66, 70, 74, 118, 135; and legitimacy 27, 28, 30, 31, 34–​5, 37, 40, 42, 43 fairness 12, 31, 43 “Federalist 10” 172, 173 Federici, Michael 96 feudalistic regime 174–​5 first political question 8, 9, 32, 33, 80, 146 first primal experience of Others 122–​3 flourishing 1, 72, 73, 93, 124, 161, 162, 165, 171; human 23, 27, 72, 139–​40, 161, 165, 165n68, 171, 179 foreign I’s 68 foreign normalities 56 foreignness 53, 78, 79, 88, 104–​9, 122, 127, 132, 168, 171, 181 forms of life 39, 41 free and equal citizens 11, 18, 19 free speech 2 freedom 3, 11, 18, 20, 27, 37, 39, 94, 99, 100, 105, 142, 159, 164, 173, 180 friendship 12, 13–​14, 79, 106, 108, 129–​30, 161 functioning lived bodilihood 59–​60 functioning of political community/​ institutions 24, 41–​2, 56, 72 fundament 51, 53, 60, 148–​50, 151, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 174 fundamental normative commitment 21 fundamental political problem 29, 30, 42 General Will 29 generativity 56, 67 geographical location, and political subjectivity 106, 108 Gettysburg Address 96–​7 global humanity 181 God 2, 55, 96, 98, 143n18, 177 godlike stature 142, 143 gods 37, 82, 95 good: common 17, 93, 95, 148, 169–​70; political 27, 39, 175; private 103; social 74; see also virtue good birth 15, 94n2; see also virtue; wealth

Index  187 good life 1, 12, 30, 32, 38–​9, 40, 41, 80, 160, 178, 180 good order 102, 142 goodness 55, 173, 174, 175, 179, 183; and authority 95–​6, 97–​8, 99, 100, 101, 102–​3; and legitimacy of the life-​world 147, 149, 150, 151, 157, 159, 160, 164 government: action of 102, 157–​8; authority of 20; illegitimate 147; legitimate 32, 36, 146–​7; mechanisms of 173; power of 164 Gray, John 151–​2, 153–​4, 157, 158, 159, 178; modus vivendi of 38–​44 ground of the life-​world 51, 53, 60, 148–​50, 151, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 174 group identity 41 happiness 1, 55, 93 harm 25, 58, 166, 167 herd animals 25, 26 historical horizon 79 historical tradition 102, 119, 173 historicity 51, 52, 54, 67, 183 honor 85, 94, 122, 143n18, 144, 171–​2 horizon 51–​2, 53, 58, 68, 71–​2, 77, 104, 111, 119, 120; community-​ 61, 63–​4, 67, 69; dominant 90, 168, 177; of all experience 104, 108, 174; of fellow human beings 80–​1, 85; historical 79; life-​world as 148; open 64; of Other-​we’s-​than-​us 126, 128, 131; political 56, 126, 178–​9; of possible experience 84; single 67; ultimate 88, 174; universal 64, 66–​7, 71; world​ 77, 90, 109 horizonal “limit idea” 78 horizonal openness 68 horizonal quality of objects 54 horizon-​fusion 55 horizontal acceptance 164–​5, 176 human experience 7, 20, 83, 85, 92, 102, 115, 132, 164 human flourishing 23, 27, 72, 139–​40, 161, 165, 165n68, 171, 179 human inclinations 153 human interests 2, 4, 9, 33, 41, 43, 101, 152, 153–​4, 155, 156, 157, 158, 170 human law 154, 166 human life 1, 12, 14, 23–​4, 31, 39, 51–​2, 61, 87, 156, 158 human nature 12, 98, 125, 152, 175 human relationships 58, 113, 143–​4, 162, 164

human rights 40, 154, 157; universal 153–​4, 155, 157, 158, 170, 171, 174; violations of 159, 160, 161, 166, 173 human will 100, 170 human world-​consciousness 7 humanity 33, 59, 62–​3, 66, 67, 132, 170; community of 71, 72, 85; global 181; of individuals 63; life-​world constituted by 68, 69, 71; universal 134, 135; we-​ 119; world-​constituting 67 Husserl, Edmund 6, 55, 65, 92, 113, 120, 125, 128; on appearance-​ systems 116; on communalization 4, 16, 118; community-​horizon concept of 63–​4; on conscious experience 76; on consciousness 7; on cultural world/​culture 119, 122, 133; on the ego 57, 68–​9; on empathy 109–​11, 131; epochē concept of 75, 105, 137; ground concept of 148–​9; on horizons 63–​4, 77, 84, 85, 104, 119; on individual I–​Other relationship 114; intentionality concept of 76–​7, 137, 138; on intersubjectivity 4, 16, 25, 45, 57; law of motivation of 132; on the life-​world 4, 6, 45, 47–​53, 57, 58–​60, 61, 62, 67, 70, 87, 148; on nature 65; normality concept of 58; on objectivity 4, 50–​1, 64–​5, 66, 114–​16; on pairing 126, 127; phenomenology of 74–​5, 76; on pure others 130, 131; on relations with Others 67; on sciences 46–​7, 169; sense concept of 78–​9; traditionalization concept of 56; universal horizon concept of 66–​7; on the “us” 58; we-​subjectivity of 118, 170; on world-​constituting, communal “we” 56 ideal legitimacy 27–​44 ideal liberal theory 1–​2, 9–​10, 11, 21, 33, 69, 140–​1 ideal liberalism 11, 12–​13, 18, 19–​20, 21, 22, 28, 36, 38, 40, 43, 118, 129, 145 identification, passive synthesis of 112 identity 1, 84, 109, 112, 131, 172; of appearance systems 116; community 36, 101; group 41; institutional 11; intersubjective 121; moral 11; noninstitutional 11; plural 177–​8; political 121–​2; as political animal

188 Index 139; political community 116; public 11; of “whole order” 158n44 ideology 1, 2, 21, 31, 36, 118, 169, 172, 176, 180; anti-​political 26; and deep pluralism 179; liberal 4, 163; Marxist 99; non-​traditional social 179; political 22, 23, 24, 153, 178 illegitimate government 147 illegitimate regimes/​societies 33, 34, 35, 39, 102, 165, 166, 170, 173 immanent content of the act 137 immanent transcendency 127 individual ego 57, 62, 68, 122, 123, 124, 125, 180 individual empathy 109, 113, 117, 122, 126, 127 individual ethics 16, 22, 31, 34, 35 individual I–​Other relationship 114 individual liberty 155 individual Others 114, 117, 127 individual political empathy 134, 135 individual political Others 132–​5 individual subjectivity 25, 45, 54, 56, 125, 127 individualism 129, 171; methodological 40–​1, 43 innate political orientation 6–​10 institutional identity 11 intelligibility: of institutions 41–​2; of the life-​world 52, 149–​50, 164, 169, 178–​9, 180; and legitimacy 34, 37; natural 72; of order 8; political 8–​9, 22, 23–​4, 27, 36, 58, 61, 75, 128, 167; of universal rights 156, 157; of the world 151, 163 intentional acts 45, 77, 79, 91, 106, 108, 136, 143 intentional consciousness 75, 76, 90–​1 intentional content of the experience 137, 138, 141, 142 intentional matter 138, 139, 140, 141–​2, 143, 144, 147 intentional object 50, 81, 137 intentional quality of the experience 138, 141–​2, 143, 147 intentionality 45, 76, 79, 105, 110, 113, 164; political 136–​44, 147 interest-​managing institutions 41–​2 interests, human 2, 4, 9, 33, 41, 43, 101, 152, 153–​4, 155, 156, 157, 158, 170 intersubjective coherence 171–​2, 179 intersubjective consciousness 182 intersubjective identity 121 intersubjectivity 4, 16, 25, 43–​4, 45, 46; open 67–​8; political 26;

transcendental 25, 53–​7, 68, 69, 72–​3, 75, 113, 118, 150; universal 61 intrinsic authority of goodness 98, 103 I–​Other relationship 114, 115 “Is One Man Obliged to Obey Another?” 98 Jesus 96 justice 2, 27, 40, 55, 97, 98, 99, 146, 177, 180; equal 29; and locating the political 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 24; political 13, 30–​1, 43, 94, 95 Kant, Immanuel: and coercion 28; constructivism of 19; ethics of 29, 34; on goodness 147; practical philosophy of 18, 21–​2, 27–​8, 29; society as fair system of cooperation 30 Kantianism 43, 63, 99 languages 39, 46, 48, 55, 63, 70, 79, 104–5, 107, 131, 133, 134, 148, 164, 173, 183 Larmore, Charles 27–​8 law: human 154, 166; of motivation 132; of nations 154; natural 60, 65, 132, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157 lebenswelt see life-​world legalism 40 legitimacy: essence of 160; life-​world as source of 150; political 41, 145, 147–​8, 151, 157, 171, 179–​80; realist 27–​44; of regimes 178; theory of 27, 33, 41, 43, 145, 151, 157, 158, 162, 164, 165–​6, 178 legitimate government 32, 36, 146–​7 legitimate order 36, 80, 160, 167, 178 legitimate pluralism 179 legitimate regimes 10, 16, 31, 32–​3, 146, 151, 160, 171 Levinas, Emmanuel 74, 75–​6, 137–​8 liberal consensus 36, 182 liberal crisis 4 liberal democracy 170 liberal ideology 4, 163 liberal theory 13, 16, 21, 26, 40, 140–​1, 172, 182; ideal 1–​2, 9–​10, 11, 21, 33, 69, 140 liberal values 5, 158 liberalism 147, 148, 164, 169, 176, 179–​80, 182; ideal 11, 12–​13, 18, 19–​20, 21, 22, 28, 36, 38, 40, 43, 118, 129, 145; Phase One 180, 181; Phase Two 181

Index  189 liberty 2, 18, 19, 20, 155; individual 155; natural 28, 29; religious 2 life-​world 47, 67; common 4, 9, 10, 135, 179, 182; coterminous with political community see coterminous nature of political community and the life-​world; essential typicalities of 52, 65–​6, 77, 114; as “ground” 53; as horizon 53, 148–​9; legitimacy of 145–​67; Other’s 134; and phenomenological inquiry 60; as political 89; as political community 61, 120, 150; political dimension of 6–7, 11, 26, 49, 54, 61, 62–​73, 76, 169; as prerequisite of reason 53; as source of common order 181; as source of legitimacy 150; as source of objectivity 181; as world 70 Lincoln, Abraham 96–​7 linguistic conventionality 55 lived bodilihood 59–​60 Locke, John 28–​9, 163 McCoy, Charles N.R. 23 Madison, 172, 173 marginal consciousness 127 marriage 2, 98–​9, 103 Marxist ideology 99 mechanisms of government 173 metaphysics 48–9, 52, 68, 120, 180 methodological individualism 40–​1, 43 methodology 6–​7, 17, 25, 42, 47, 48, 75, 114, 140, 162, 178 milieu of meaning 2, 37, 146 modern science 4, 46, 47, 48, 49–​50, 63, 168–​9 modes of life 16, 41; see also ways of life modus vivendi, of John Gray 38–​44 monads 64–​5, 66, 115 monarchy 16, 23 moral conflicts 145–​6, 148 moral identity 11 moral relativism 33, 39, 154 moral scarcity 39 moralism, political 31, 34–​5, 146 morality 14, 15, 31, 33, 34, 99, 129, 147 Moran, Dermot: on ground 148–​9; on horizon 104; and the life-​world 6, 47–​8, 47n11, 52, 53, 70, 71, 150; on normality 56; on passive syntheses 112; on sense or meaning 78; ship analogy of 149 Morgan, Edmund 155

morphological typicity 59 my world 108, 109 naïve apprehension 124 nation state 10 nationalism 108, 169, 172 natural associations 23–​4, 25 natural intelligibility 72 natural liberty 28, 29 natural law 60, 65, 132, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157 natural outcast 170 naturalism 182; problem of 46–​7 natural attitude 46–​7, 49, 53–​4, 75, 76, 78, 90, 91, 104, 120, 136, 137 nature 65 network of meaning 91 noematic dimension of experience 136 noninstitutional identity 11 non-​liberal “political radicalism” 21n53 non-​liberal realism 2–​3n1 non-​liberal regimes 21, 27–​8, 33, 34 non-​liberal thought 16 non-​liberal ways of life 4–​5 non-​traditional social ideology 179 normal empathy 134 normality 53, 54, 55–​6, 58, 59, 67, 121–​2 normativity of the political 8, 14, 21, 23, 27, 28, 33, 35, 169, 177 norms 2, 55–​6, 58, 59–​60, 157, 163 not-​of-​my-​world 107–​8 objectivating equalization 131 objective nature 64–5, 66, 119, 122, 139 objective reality 63, 64, 66 objective spirit 70 objective world 9, 64–​5, 92, 139, 142, 164, 180; and phenomenological contribution 46, 49–​50, 54–​5; and political Others and foreignness 113, 114–​15, 127, 128 On the Social Contract 29 one world 52, 107 ontic sense of the world 78–​9, 98, 101, 105, 120; and belonging and possession 82, 83, 84, 86, 91; and phenomenological contribution 49, 58, 59, 60, 61 ontology 50–​1, 59, 70, 83, 85, 94, 95, 136, 141, 170; legitimacy of the life-​world 150, 159, 163, 164; political Others and foreignness 105, 113, 117, 118, 123–​4, 126, 127,

190 Index 128, 131, 134; transition to political subjectivity 76, 77, 78–​9 open horizon 64 open intersubjectivity 67–​8 order: common 14, 41, 42, 80, 148, 160, 163, 165, 169, 171, 175, 178, 181, 182; conditions of 13; legitimate 36, 80, 160, 167, 178; political see political order; preexisting community 140; right 138, 160; whole 139, 140, 158n44, 167 order/​disorder, conditions of 13 original position 18, 19 Other: first primal experience of 122–​3; individual 114, 117, 127; individual political 132–​5; political see political Others; pure 119, 131; we-​ 114, 120, 121 other ego 54, 110–​11, 115, 123, 127, 132 other political communities 62, 104, 109, 110, 113, 119–​20, 125–​6, 131, 148 Other regimes, empathy with 125–​8 Other we-​subjectivity 127 other worlds 109, 120, 122, 126, 127 otherness 54, 110–​11, 114, 117, 124, 127, 134–5; see also alterity Others-​of-​us 114, 115 Other-​we’s-​than-​us 129, 130–​1; existence of 118–​22; necessity of 122–​5 our world 33, 61, 88, 89, 107, 123, 127, 128 overlapping consensus 28–​32 pairing 112, 113, 115–​16, 119–​20, 126, 127, 132 passive synthesis 112, 116 perception, sensory 47, 51, 54, 68–​9, 75, 76, 78, 90, 101, 136, 138, 139 perception proper 111–​12, 113, 117, 126 personal ego 63 personal preferences 99–​100, 117 personalistic attitude 46–​7 Phase One liberalism 180, 181 Phase Two liberalism 181 phenomenological epochē 91, 106, 121 phenomenological perspective 61, 72, 76, 77, 88, 90, 91, 93–​4, 101, 102, 106, 168 phenomenological reflection 84 phenomenology, and Aristotelian political philosophy 57–​61

philosophical epochē 121, 128n47, 137 Plato 9–​10, 96 plural identities 177–​8 pluralism 38, 178, 179; deep 40, 178, 179; of global liberal order 183; legitimate 179; reasonable 30; shallow/​superficial 38, 43; value-​ 32 polemic counter-​concept 47, 47n11 polis 8n9, 20, 22, 24, 26, 57–​8, 60, 79, 94, 95, 170 political action 15, 42, 129, 140, 176, 179 political animals 6, 25, 45, 49, 50, 139, 171 political association 8, 10, 23–​4, 25, 30, 31, 82, 163, 164, 177 political authority 9, 17, 50, 92, 95, 96, 102, 103 political belonging 83, 88, 89 political community: and appresentation 113; coterminous with the life-​world see coterminous nature of political community and the life-​world; identity of 116; other 62, 104, 113, 119–​20, 125–​6, 148; and pairing 113 political conflicts 175, 176 political difference 13, 176 political dimension of the life-​world 7, 11, 26, 49, 54, 61, 62–​73, 76 political disagreement 5, 13, 175, 176 political empathy 114, 125, 126–​7, 128–​9, 134–​5; hypothesis of 109–​13 political epochē 121, 122, 126, 128 political experience 136–​44 political expression 154, 155–​6 political good 27, 39, 175 political ideology 22, 23, 24, 153, 178 political horizon 56, 126, 178–​9 political identity 121–​2 political ideology 22, 23, 24, 153, 178 political intelligibility 8–​9, 22, 23–​4, 27, 36, 58, 61, 75, 128, 167 political intentionality 136–​44, 147 political (inter)subjectivity 26 political justice 13, 30–​1, 43, 94, 95 political legitimacy 41, 145, 147–​8, 151, 157, 171, 179–​80 Political Liberalism 11 political moralism 31, 34–​5, 146 political Others 88, 122, 123, 126, 129–​30, 130–​1; and foreignness 104–​35; individual 132–​5 political participation 154 political possession 89

Index  191 political power 28, 29, 99 political principles 1, 2, 7–​8, 9, 11, 13, 16–​17, 17–​18, 19, 30, 41, 43, 145, 179 political problem, fundamental 29, 30, 42 political process 99, 142 political quasi-​epochē 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 128n47, 131–​2, 134, 168, 183 political question, first 8, 9, 32, 33, 80, 146 political regimes 42, 55, 124, 168 political rights 157 political rule 33, 153–​4 political structure 6, 26, 118, 140, 168, 169 political subjectivity see authority; belonging; foreignness; political Others; possession; transition to political subjectivity political theory 5, 35, 36–​7, 43–​4, 45, 69, 155, 168–​9, 170, 180, 181, 182 political values 12–​13, 22, 23, 30 politicization 86–​7 Politics 15, 26, 94 politics: authoritarian 169–​70; circumstances of 3, 7, 8, 19–​20, 38, 39, 92; and ethics 22, 24, 27, 38, 39–​40, 166, 179 polity 16, 23 possession, political 89 possible experience 64, 78, 80, 84, 174 power: coercive 32, 34, 37, 145, 146; governmental 164; political 28, 29, 99 practical reason 151, 152–​3 preexisting order, of the community 140 pregivenness 48 private corruption 161 private goods 103 private property 7, 85, 156; rights in 154, 155, 156 problem of naturalism 46–​7 properly human consciousness 26, 170 protection 8, 32, 86, 152, 155, 156, 157 prudence 23, 24, 173 public identity 11 public spaces 183 pure consciousness 137 pure intentional consciousness 75, 90–​1 pure Other 119, 131 purity 143, 144, 173 quasi-​epochē see political quasi-​epochē

radical disagreement 5, 7, 9, 42, 43, 80, 146, 175 Rawls, John: Circle of Legitimacy 31; comprehensive doctrine of a person 12–​13; idea of society as a fair system of cooperation 24, 34, 43; ideal liberalism of 11, 18, 21, 27; justice 19; overlapping consensus 28–​32; realism, contemporary 3, 6, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24, 32, 180 realist legitimacy 27–​44 realist liberalism 118 reality 42, 47, 54–​5, 56, 57, 59; objective 63, 64, 66 reason, practical 151, 152–​3 reasonable pluralism 30 reasonableness 12, 19, 21, 29, 31 reciprocity 12, 31, 37, 57 regimes: best 16; feudalistic 174–​5; illegitimate 33, 34, 35, 39, 102, 165, 166, 170, 173; legitimate 10, 16, 31, 32–​3, 146, 151, 160, 171; Other 125–​8; political 42, 55, 124, 168 relativism 21, 64; moral 33, 39, 154 religion 2, 3, 11, 19, 30, 31, 36, 48, 70, 90, 177, 183; and legitimacy of the life-​world 148, 152, 159, 165; and political intentionality 140, 142, 143n18 Reno, R.R. 169–​70, 169–​70n1 respect 12, 27–​8, 37, 99, 100, 103, 178, 183; for persons 8, 22, 180 Return of the Strong Gods 169–​70, 169–​70n1 revolution 88, 99–​100, 123, 130, 141–​2, 143–​4, 156, 165, 166, 167, 172 right order 138, 160 rights: human see human rights; political 157; private property 154, 155, 156; universal 151, 152, 153–​4, 157, 158; universal human 153–​4, 155, 157, 158, 170, 171, 174 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques 29 Russell, Matheson 54, 74–​5, 132, 137 safety 8, 32, 180 scepticism 2, 7, 39 Schmitt, Carl 2–​3n1, 13–​14, 144, 128–​32 self-​alienation 91 self-​givenness of the Other 109 self-​perception 112, 126 sense 78 sense-​stratum 114–​15, 118, 125–​6 sensory perception 51, 68

192 Index shallow pluralism 38, 43 ship analogy 149 shipwrecked sailors analogy 87–​8 “Should Human Law Be Changed Whenever an Improvement Is Possible?” 166–​7 sin 97–​8 single community of values 71, 177–​8 single horizon 67 single Objective world 64–​5 Sinn 78 slavery 93, 97, 98–​9, 152, 155, 159 Sleat, Matt: circumstances of politics 3, 7; contemporary liberal theory 26; distinction between political disagreements and conflicts 175–​6; explanatory insufficiency 26n68; ideal liberalism 19; identification of legitimacy and domination 14; legitimacy 9, 163; liberalism 4–​5, 19, 182; non-​liberal “political radicalism” 21n53; political association 31, 164; political “problem” 27; political rule 33; political situation 16, 20–​1; realism 35; “tasks” for political philosophy 17; universal political principles 11 social goods 74 social institutions 48, 70, 148 Socrates 96 soil 51, 53, 60, 148–​50, 151, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 174 Sokolowski, Robert 46, 47, 68, 136, 163 speech 2, 25, 26, 116 spirit 1, 3, 56, 70, 85, 105, 126, 134, 148, 180 spiritual objectivities 116, 122, 139 Stonewall Jackson 89–​90 structure of meaning of the world 77 subjectivity: individual 25, 45, 54, 56, 125, 127; Other we-​127; political see political subjectivity; transcendental 49, 59, 75, 112, 121; we-​ see we-​ subjectivity; world constituting we-​ 64, 72 subjectivity-​intersubjectivity-​world 148 subsoil 51, 53, 60, 148–​50, 151, 160, 161, 162, 165, 169, 174 superficial pluralism 38, 43 supersession of political life 91 suspension 49, 50, 75, 79, 90, 120, 121, 122, 126, 127 symbolic systems 48, 70, 148

theory of legitimacy 27, 33, 41, 43, 145, 151, 157, 158, 162, 164, 165–​6, 178 tradition 33, 37, 53, 54, 56, 59, 63, 67, 94, 100, 177, 183; historical 102, 119, 173 traditionalization 56 transcendental clues 50–​1, 90, 94 transcendental consciousness 76 transcendental ego 46, 62, 67–​8, 68–​9, 88–​9, 109 transcendental intersubjectivity 25, 53–​7, 68, 69, 72–​3, 75, 113, 118, 150 transcendental reduction 74–​5, 75–​6, 80 transcendental subjectivity 49, 59, 75, 112, 121 transition to political subjectivity 74–​81 tree of legitimacy 151, 161, 164, 165–​6, 167, 172 trust 8, 32, 129, 169 truth 8, 24–​5, 38, 46, 47, 62, 96, 120, 129, 178, 179; belonging and possession 83, 87, 90–​1; legitimacy of the life-​world 149, 152, 153, 160, 164 ultimate horizon 88, 174 United States 10, 78, 104–​5 universal horizon 64, 66–​7, 71 universal human empathy 132 universal human rights 153–​4, 155, 157, 158, 170, 171, 174 universal humanity 134, 135 universal intersubjectivity 61 universal political principles 1–​2, 9, 11, 13, 31, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43; consensus on 159, 160, 162, 178, 179 universal protection 152 universal rights 151, 152, 153–​4, 157, 158 universal sense-​stratum 114–​15, 118, 125 universal values 7–​8, 38, 39, 152, 157, 178 “us”, experience of 114–​18 value-​pluralism 32 values 1, 11, 30, 79, 124, 163, 175, 176; common 41; divergent 40; of equality and freedom 99; liberal 5, 158; political 12–​13, 22, 23, 30; single community of 177–​8; universal 7–​8, 38, 39, 152, 157, 178 veil of ignorance 18, 19

Index  193 vertical acceptance 164, 165 violations of human rights 159, 160, 161, 166, 173 violence 2, 4, 8, 14, 86, 95, 123, 161 virtual representation 155–​6 virtue 27, 39, 40, 51, 58, 80, 117; and authority 94–​5, 96, 97–​8; and locating the political 15, 20, 20n47, 22; see also good, the Voegelin, Eric 24–​5, 96 Washington Monument example, of belonging and possession 82–​3, 84, 85, 86, 88, 93, 132–​3 ways of life 3, 4–​5, 55, 80, 102–​3, 124, 140, 150, 158–​9, 166, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183; and legitimacy 27, 36, 38, 39–​40, 41, 42, 43; see also modes of life wealth 1, 15, 94–​5, 94n2 we-​humanity 119 we-​others 114, 120, 121 we-​subjectivity 44, 64, 164, 166, 169, 172, 182; and political Others and foreignness 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 131; world-​ constituting 64, 72 whole order 139, 140, 158n44, 167 Williams, Bernard: acceptance 42; basic legitimation demand (BLD) 14–​15, 32–​7, 41, 63, 162–​3, 181–​2;

coercion 63, 145; disorder 2–​3; freedom 20; legitimacy 7–​8, 9, 17, 42; morality prior to politics 15, 147; political disagreement 13; political moralism 31 world in common 164 world of men 115–​16, 118, 124, 126 world-​constituting humanity 67 world-​constituting we-​subjectivity 64, 72 world-​horizon 77, 90, 109 “Would One Man Have Been Lord over Another in the State of Innocence?” 97 Zahavi, Dan: absolutely foreign 109; disagreement 139, 146; on Husserl 58–​59, 59–​60, 67, 68–​9; intentional content 141; intentional experience 50, 137, 138; interrogation of myself 26; interrogation of individual subject 45; intersubjectivity 25, 44; life-​world 71, 91; normality 55, 56; Objective world 65; Others 122–​3; phenomenology 59; philosophical epochē 121; political subjectivity 50–​1; primary community 67–​8; self-​alienation 91; subjectivity-​ intersubjectivity-​world 148; transcendental intersubjectivity 57, 68