Reading Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought 9781666932997, 9781666933000, 166693299X

Citation preview

Reading Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought

CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT Series Editors: Christian Lotz, Michigan State University, and Antonio Calcagno, King’s University College at Western University Advisory Board: Smaranda Aldea, Amy Allen, Silvia Benso, Jeffrey Bloechl, Andrew Cutrofello, Marguerite La Caze, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Dermot Moran, Ann Murphy, Michael Naas, Eric Nelson, Marjolein Oele, Mariana Ortega, Elena Pulcini, Alan Schrift, Anthony Steinbock, Brad Stone The Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought series seeks to augment and amplify scholarship in continental philosophy by exploring its rich and complex relationships to figures, schools of thought, and philosophical movements that are crucial for its evolution and development. A historical focus allows potential authors to uncover important but understudied thinkers and ideas that were nonetheless foundational for various continental schools of thought. Furthermore, critical scholarship on the histories of continental philosophy will also help re-position, challenge, and even overturn dominant interpretations of established, well-known philosophical views while refining and re-interpreting them in light of new historical discoveries and textual analyses. The series seeks to publish carefully edited collections and high-quality monographs that present the best of scholarship in continental philosophy and its histories. Other titles in series: Reframing Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: The Roots of Desire, edited by Elodie Boublil Hegel and Heidegger on World and Nature: Reconciliation or Alienation, by Raoni Padui The Idea of Beginning in Jules Lequier’s Philosophy, by Ghislain Deslandes Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought, edited by Daniel Brennan and Marguerite La Caze Rethinking Philosophy with Borges, Zambrano, Paz, and Plato, by Hugo Moreno The Ontological Roots of Phenomenology: Rethinking the History of Phenomenology and Its Religious Turn, by Anna Jani Negative Dialectics and Event: Nonidentity, Culture, and the Historical Adequacy of Consciousness, by Vangelis Giannakakis Marxism and Phenomenology: The Dialectical Horizons of Critique, edited by Bryan Smyth and Richard Westerman Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World, by Ian H. Angus Max Stirner on the Path of Doubt, by Lawrence S. Stepelevich

Reading Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought Edited by Christian Lotz and Antonio Calcagno

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781666932997 (cloth) ISBN 9781666933000 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations Introduction

ix

1

PART ONE: RETHINKING THE CONSTITUTIVE LAYERS OF THE HISTORIES OF PHILOSOPHY



7

Chapter One: The Drift into Metaphysics: Jean-Luc Marion’s Reading of the Relation between Francisco Suárez and René Descartes 9 Christina M. Gschwandtner Chapter Two: Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truths Marguerite La Caze Chapter Three: On Arendt and Luxemburg Christian Lotz

25



PART TWO: IMAGINING A NEW SOCIAL WORLD

41

61

Chapter Four: The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the World Elena Pulcini

63

Chapter Five: Michel Serres and Ecological Crisis: Listening to the World’s Expressions Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor

79

Chapter Six: Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Till Ryan J. Johnson‌‌‌‌‌‌ v



101

vi

Contents

Chapter Seven: On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Community: Gerda Walther and the Possibilities of Personal Freedom 131 Antonio Calcagno PART THREE: POLITICS AND THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT

147

Chapter Eight: María Zambrano and Hannah Arendt: Thinking in Exile 149 Elvira Roncalli Chapter Nine: One Good Turn . . .: Aristotle, Derrida, and the “Peaceful Transfer of Power” in Democracy Michael Naas Chapter Ten: The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Thought Bettina Bergo Index

171

191

215

About the Contributors



227

Acknowledgments

This volume would not have been possible without the generosity of the contributors, whose work we feature here. We are grateful to Karen Enns and James van Schaik. Their research assistance and copy editing of the text have helped consolidate the ideas and thoughts of the volume. We thank Jana Hodges-Kluck as well as the staff at Lexington Books and Rowman & Littlefield for their continued support. We also acknowledge the Office of the Academic Dean at King’s University College and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous financial help and research funds.

vii

List of Abbreviations

CHAPTER 1 CQ—Jean-Luc Marion, Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). EG—Jean-Luc Marion, On the Ego and on God: Further Cartesian Questions (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). GR—Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). MP—Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). TB—Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, création des vérités éternelles, fondement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981/1991/2009).

CHAPTER 2 IE—Marjorie Grene, Introduction to Existentialism, third impression, 1984 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959). CHAPTER 3 TWB—Hannah Arendt, Thinking without a Banister: Essays in Understanding 1953–1975, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2018).

ix

x

List of Abbreviations

CHAPTER 7 OSG—Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften),” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, vol. 6, ed. Edmund Husserl (Halle: Niemeyer, 1923). CHAPTER 9 R—Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison (Paris: Les Éditions Galilée, 2003). CHAPTER 10 LP—Annabel Herzog, Levinas’s Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

Introduction

CHRISTIAN LOTZ AND ANTONIO CALCAGNO This inaugural volume of Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought seeks to establish the tone for a series that explores the rich relationships among thinkers, schools of thought, and philosophical movements crucial for the evolution and development of continental philosophy. A historical focus allows scholars to uncover essential but understudied thinkers and ideas within these interactions, and these new discoveries along with fresh textual analyses challenge established philosophical views, possibly resituating, even overturning, dominant interpretations. As the essays that follow make evident, a school of thought remains vibrant when it engages not only with its histories but also with emerging movements that enter the scene. It reconfigures itself through both the new knowledge it acquires and the omissions it makes. The scholars gathered here challenge us to rethink how the history of thought is used in the continental tradition, and how it can be mobilized in our search for solutions to contemporary issues. This volume is divided into three parts. The essays gathered in Part One, “Rethinking the Constitutive Layers of the Histories of Philosophy,” explore the vital, underlying historical layers that deeply inform the ideas of continental philosophers and sometimes their reception. In “The Drift into Metaphysics: Jean-Luc Marion’s Reading of the Relation between Francisco Suárez and René Descartes,” Christina M. Gschwandtner discusses important aspects of Jean-Luc Marion’s philosophy. Scholars have largely understudied, with the exception of Gschwandtner, the extensive influence of Descartes on Marion’s philosophical project—it is useful to recall that Marion began his early philosophical career as a Descartes scholar. Gschwandtner brings to the fore the influence on Marion of not only Descartes’s thought, but also the neglected work of the Spanish scholastic philosopher Francisco Suárez. An important member of the Salamanca School, Suárez was often considered a divisive figure, for example, his reworking of the idea of credibility led to the accusation of him and others being “Suarista,” and, as a consequence, his work did not figure prominently in the early twentieth century’s revival 1

2

Christian Lotz and Antonio Calcagn

of medieval philosophy, especially in more traditional Thomist circles. In recent decades, however, further examination of his work has sparked a renewed interest in many of his original ideas, including the denial of the absolute potentiality of matter. Gschwandtner argues that Marion’s critique and dismissal of Suárez’s claim challenging the coincidence of the unity and tri-partite diversity of the persons constituting the Trinity allows Marion to use Suárez as a foil in order to confirm his own philosophical position. As Gschwandtner notes, Suárez’s decisions and arguments are condemned for primarily theological reasons. To preserve the divine unknowability and to maintain the fundamental distinction between finite and infinite, creator and creation, is absolutely crucial for Marion. Anything that transgresses that divide between divine and human is judged blasphemous or idolatrous. . . . The apophatic theological presupposition that God cannot be known and that any rational thinking about the divine is by definition illegitimate lies at the very heart of Marion’s reading of any thinker and is the lens for evaluating any philosophical or theological thought. On this count, Suárez becomes the Ur-devil of modernity’s march away from divine revelation.

Deeply conditioned by the experiences of the two world wars, existentialist thinkers tried to make sense of human action and responsibility while highlighting the importance of freedom in shaping our world. Their writings became influential largely through the primary work of interpreters and translators. Readers will be familiar, for example, with Jean Beaufret for his work in disseminating the work of Martin Heidegger. In “Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truths,” Marguerite La Caze uncovers the life and work of Grene, who, she argues, not only introduced French existentialism to English speakers, but also intervened in the philosophical debates surrounding key questions regarding freedom and action. While our series reflects on critical moments in history that have shaped continental philosophy through an examination of key figures and ideas, it also investigates the influences that work between and across thinkers. By offering readers the opportunity to hear the rich, formidable voice of Marjorie Grene, La Caze adds another layer to the discussion of philosophical exchanges that inform twentieth-century continental philosophy. Christian Lotz’s contribution, “On Arendt and Luxemburg,” explores Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy in Hannah Arendt’s philosophy. In particular, Lotz challenges the critique of Arendt’s attempt to appropriate Luxemburg for her own thought. If one reads Luxemburg’s work closely, he argues, it is clear that her account of democratic revolution shares many affinities with Arendt’s central ideas regarding the spontaneous and non-instrumental character of political

Introductio

3

action. For Lotz, who repositions her beyond Marxist and anarchist appropriations, Luxemburg offers a unique position that has much in common with Arendt’s own views of politics. Lotz concludes, “as we have seen, Arendt’s reading of Luxemburg, even if we take into account that she disconnects Luxemburg from the Marxist reception, points to the core of Luxemburg’s thinking about political action. Luxemburg points out that any new beginning can neither (a) be calculated or determined in advance, nor (b) be disconnected from the living experience of the social and political struggle itself. Direct political action is here conceived of as a performative process in which the future is determined neither in advance as an end, nor as something that is external to the action itself. Rather, the new beginning, that which is coming, is part of the action itself. So, what Luxemburg calls ‘socialist democracy’ is not an external result of revolutionary action, but emerges in the process of change.” Part Two, “Imagining a New Social World,” explores the response of continental figures to specific crises in the social world, namely, environmental degradation, the legacies of racism, and the growing collapse of community. The contributors’ essays draw on the history of continental philosophy to illuminate some of the factors and concepts underlying these various social challenges. Elena Pulcini, a leading representative of contemporary Italian thought and Italy’s foremost thinker in the field of care ethics, passed away as this volume was being prepared for publication, but her compelling voice continues to stir the hearts and minds of thinkers around the globe. In “The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the World,” Pulcini examines the global environmental crisis, which, she argues, marks a new point in human history. She maintains that while the critique of contemporary capital and the “Capitalocene” is powerful in its chronicling of how capitalism’s generation and distribution of wealth is responsible for speeding up the reality of the Anthropocene, it is not robust enough to account for human decisionmaking about life, nor does it help us mobilize the human capacity for care. Pulcini urges us to think toward a new future; without transformative change, she warns, it remains precarious. Pulcini’s work confirms the position of Italian philosophy as the intellectual center for raising questions about human life and possible forms of resistance to real-time problems and human suffering, as Roberto Esposito notes in his Living Present. Pulcini’s contribution brings the history of thought into dialogue with contemporary ideas and a search for possible solutions to the most pressing issue of our time. In “Michel Serres and Ecological Crisis: Listening to the World’s Expressions,” Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor discuss the work of French philosopher Michel Serres, whose writings are admired but rarely examined in depth. The authors argue that Serres’s work is more than—as it is often viewed—a critique of contemporary science, since it also engages with

4

Christian Lotz and Antonio Calcagn

aesthetics, art, and social-political questions. But Oele and Treanor also use Serres’s writings to provide a response to the current ecological crisis. Serres’s notion of expression and its use and becoming in and through poetics, they argue, offers an important tool for helping us reimagine ourselves in a new world not afflicted by climate change. For Serres, thinking through the unprecedented climate disaster that we now face means that we need to create new forms of expression for dealing with the effects of ecological change, expressions that will give birth to fresh ideas in response to the crisis. Oele and Treanor remark, “The challenge or threat of climate change is thus also the opportunity to imagine new structures of peaceful co-emergence and co-existence with the rest of the world. And the first step in that process is to experiment with alternative modes of expressive content (a reconfigured science, music, the body, and a new poetics) that will allow us to hear the world and relate to it in new ways. At stake is nothing less than the possibility of reinvention or rebirth to a more peaceful way of living, feeling, and acting in the world.” In “Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Till,” Ryan J. Johnson interprets the lynching and murder of Emmett Till in 1955 through the philosophy of Hegel and the thought of Fred Moten, Christina Sharpe, and Ida B. Wells. Drawing a parallel between the execution of Antigone, as described by Sophocles and reinterpreted by Hegel, and the extrajudicial killing of Till, the essay explores how racism and responses to it condition dominant views of the law, rights, inclusion, and exclusion. Johnson argues that the abuse and violence sanctioned by the law can be transformed into sites of real resistance and calls for just change without losing sight of the task of repairing the oppression of the past. He moves through modes of historical thinking and events to create a framework in which the past comes alive again, in both painful and transformative ways. Here, “what Fred Moten calls Mamie Bradley’s ‘Black Mo’nin,’ her antigonal refusal of the white drive to annihilate Black life” is considered as a practice of Christina Sharpe’s notion of “wake work.” Antonio Calcagno’s chapter discusses Gerda Walther, an important yet understudied figure of the early phenomenological movement. Her remarkable work focuses on three major themes: the connection between phenomenology and psychology, social ontology, and religion. Walther, who studied with Alexander Pfänder, Edmund Husserl, and Edith Stein, was marginalized in the phenomenological community not only because of her political views, but also because of sexism and her interests in phenomena considered too close to psychology. In “On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Community: Gerda Walther and the Possibilities of Personal Freedom,” Calcagno seeks to recover the importance of Walther’s place in the movement while he highlights the originality of her studies. He argues that Walther’s

Introductio

5

project to give community a partial foundation in a social drive, and her defense of an intense form of fusional community in which individuals join with one another to form a superindividual reality, make it difficult to recognize inauthentic or ungenuine community. Social drive and fusional community can create a certain blindness that unintentionally leads individuals into forms of collective action that may be harmful or unethical. Calcagno points to a possible solution in Walther’s later work, Phenomenology of Mysticism. This robust account of individual freedom makes room for a self that is always aware of its freedom; though pushed by a social drive and the overwhelming draw of fusional community, it can nonetheless choose to resist possible inauthentic forms of community and social acts. The third and final part of the volume, “Politics and the History of Thought,” examines the relationship between politics and the history of continental philosophy. The authors in this section discuss major figures of continental philosophy whose thought can shed light on contemporary political struggles and projects, including democracy, truth-telling, and political exile. Each contribution outlines models of resistance and possible change found in continental philosophy and its histories. Well-known and admired in the Spanish-speaking world, María Zambrano left behind a rich philosophical legacy that is only now partially available to English readers. A critic of General Francisco Franco’s nationalist politics, Zambrano left Spain and took up residence in various countries as she continued to write on religion, politics, literature, and metaphysics. Elvira Roncalli’s “María Zambrano and Hannah Arendt: Thinking in Exile” brings Zambrano into dialogue with Hannah Arendt, another leading philosopher of the twentieth century who fled her homeland because of political circumstances. Roncalli explores the experience of exile, which both philosophers lived firsthand, to demonstrate how this fragile political and cultural status configures a relationship to the world and thought. Exile, for Roncalli is not simply an alienation from or rejection of the world; rather, it manifests deep structures of world experience. Roncalli demonstrates that the two philosophers, though they have unique philosophical visions, share a view of the significance of the world for philosophy. In bringing Zambrano into conversation with Arendt, Roncalli offers readers an encounter with an important continental thinker whose legacy has until now not been fully explored. Michael Nass’s “One Good Turn . . . : Aristotle, Derrida, and the ‘Peaceful Transfer of Power’ in Democracy” turns to recent political events in the United States. The real challenges of the Trump presidency to American democracy motivate Nass to explore the meaning of democracy through the lens of Aristotle and Derrida. Donald Trump’s policies were seen by many around the world as an assault on the core principles of democratic rule, a threat that calls to mind, for Nass, the discussions of Derrida and Aristotle

6

Christian Lotz and Antonio Calcagn

concerning democracy’s possible, and even eventual, end. For Aristotle, democracy must avoid the extreme of possible limit positions, either oligarchic/tyrannical or ochlocratic, if it is to be sustained. And, for Derrida, democracy contains the very limits of its own demise; that is, in order to survive, it must define itself against that which it wishes to block, namely, tyranny and despotism. Nass argues that although an end to democratic rule may occur, we need to continue to fight for and uphold democratic principles. He writes, “between Derrida and Aristotle there is thus no simple alternative. Both will have understood, albeit in different ways, that the problems of democracy are also its promises, and vice versa. Perhaps both would agree, at the very least, that we need to promote a form of education where one would read the two of them together, which is not to say at the same time but in a series, the two together, like continental philosophy and the history of thought, the two not simultaneously, then, but at the very least by turns.” Bettina Bergo’s contribution, “The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Thought,” explores four important sources that helped shape Levinas’s own ethical project: Maimonides, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Talmud. As Bergo traces Levinas’s rich engagement with and transformation of these sources, we discover not only an ethics of responsibility, but also a politics. Bergo demonstrates how critiques of Levinas’s political philosophy as weak fail to take into account the influences that contribute to the robustness of his work, a political philosophy that engages with leading political thinkers such as Michel Foucault and his reworking of the idea of parrhesia. Bergo leaves us with a Levinasian response to current biopolitics, which, she claims, fails to appreciate the significant role of the other in allowing one to speak the truth or to speak for those who have no voice. It is our hope that this series will contribute to uncovering ideas and arguments that shape and change our understanding of the world through a dialogue between contemporary continental philosophy and the diverse historical traditions of which we are heirs.

PART ONE

Rethinking the Constitutive Layers of the Histories of Philosophy

7

Chapter One

The Drift into Metaphysics Jean-Luc Marion’s Reading of the Relation between Francisco Suárez and René Descartes Christina M. Gschwandtner

The French Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), a prominent theologian and philosopher, taught and influenced the curriculum at the Jesuit school La Flèche in the late sixteenth century, shortly before it enrolled René Descartes, who subsequently became one of its most famous students. Often considered the first modern philosopher, Descartes was deeply influenced by the late-medieval scholastic context of which Suárez served as the most prominent and most immediate representative. Jean-Luc Marion, an important contemporary Descartes scholar, often appeals to Suárez in his treatments of Descartes, tracing influences, showing parallels between the two thinkers, and uncovering crucial differences. In Marion’s hands, Suárez becomes the foil who allows Descartes to emerge as the brilliant star—as both profoundly original and yet deeply traditional—who preserves important insights that Suárez had apparently abandoned. Much of Marion’s evaluation of the two thinkers is guided by his own phenomenological presuppositions and theological commitments: on the one hand, Heidegger’s description of metaphysics as onto-theologically constituted, and on the other hand, a fundamentally apophatic approach to the divine, both of which he employs to assess and criticize the late-medieval and early-modern developments. Throughout Marion’s treatment, Suárez is consistently censured, while Descartes is ultimately applauded or at least excused, even when his positions seemingly align with those of Suárez. Suárez becomes the culprit for an inexcusable drift into onto-theology and a univocal conception of the divine that dooms all of 9

10

Christina M. Gschwandtner

modernity to blasphemy and idolatry. The present essay will trace Marion’s reading of Suárez and show the role it plays in his presentation and evaluation of Descartes, especially in regard to what Marion considers the emergence of modern metaphysics. THE DEFINITION OF METAPHYSICS AND REVELATION Suárez’s famous Metaphysical Disputations is indisputably one of the most significant scholastic treatises on metaphysics.1 It makes metaphysics a central term and defines it in ways we now often take for granted, introducing the notion that meta-physics refers to what goes “beyond” physics and defining it as the science that deals with being qua being.2 Marion contends that Suárez coins the neologism metaphysica and unites in one science reflection on the highest being and discussion of the being of all beings, thus becoming one of the first to define metaphysics in an onto-theological fashion, that is to say, to combine thinking about the supreme being (theology) with thinking about all being (ontology). His definition “exercises a decisive influence over all modern philosophy,” because it is adopted, at least to some extent, by Descartes (MP, 41), although the latter develops the onto-theo-logical constitution in far more complicated and more ambivalent fashion.3 Marion shows the parallels, as well as the distinctions between the two thinkers. Both employ the terms “metaphysics” and “first philosophy” in a shared search for sapientia (wisdom), but they define them differently (MP, 42). For Suárez, metaphysics has a triple definition: first, theology or first philosophy deals with God and separated intelligences; second, metaphysics in the strict sense deals with being as being; third, wisdom or first philosophy deals with the knowledge of first causes.4 Descartes will change especially the third part. For Suárez, first philosophy can be reduced to theology, while Descartes relates theology instead to metaphysics. While metaphysics is the universal science for Suárez, for Descartes, first philosophy deals with beings in general (MP, 42). Thus, he inverts Suárez, although all of his contemporaries (except Pererius) follow Suárez on this point (MP, 43). Descartes agrees with Suárez and Pererius that there is a discipline that deals with God and the “intelligences,” although he alone defines science in terms of the order of knowledge (MP, 49). For Marion, the crucial difference between Descartes and Suárez lies in the extent or reach of their universal science. For Suárez, the “objects” of metaphysics range from God to real accidents via an objective concept of being (MP, 49). Metaphysics thus includes God in its universal scope: “God thus no longer holds anything but a particular, though eminent, role in the universality



The Drift into Metaphysics

11

of a science that encompasses all that is real—in accordance with the fact that confusion and abstraction open universality” (MP, 50). Marion contends that all subsequent philosophy follows Suárez on this, with Descartes as the sole exception (MP, 51).5 He makes a similar judgment already in God without Being, again tying it to Suárez: “Henceforth theology will have to place the inclusion of ‘God’ in esse at the center of its work, to the point of ‘comprehending’ ‘God’ in the object of metaphysics (Suárez).”6 Both Descartes and Suárez agree that one needs a preconception to reason about God, but Suárez inverts Descartes’s use: “it precedes and introduces a correct and universally admissible nominal definition of God” (MP, 217). Thus, although they share the concept, it is far more problematic in Suárez: “No doubt, Suárez’s pre-comprehension, like the Cartesian praeconceptia opinio, introduces a vague and indeterminate concept of God. But while in Descartes this indeterminate concept is contradictory, provisional, and false, in Suárez it is already correct, thus, in this sense, definitive and established” (MP, 218). While, for Descartes, imprecision matters in God, thereby protecting the divine unknowability, on Marion’s reading, Suárez has no such hesitations. He also in the end exonerates Descartes to some extent because the confusion of multiple namings of the divine in Descartes’s complicated combination of metaphysical systems ultimately undercuts any clear tie of God to metaphysics: “Descartes teaches us what is at stake in the onto-theo-logical constitution of all metaphysics, and Descartes recognizes limits to onto-theo-logical constitution to the point of exposing it to its potential destitution” (MP, 352).7 Marion often makes similar comments qualifying his judgment or critique at the end of other texts on Descartes, but never does so in his discussions of Suárez. Marion’s description of the impact of Suárez’s definition of metaphysics reaches its height in his Gifford Lectures on the concept of revelation in which he makes Suárez responsible for the development of natural theology and its detrimental epistemological stance toward revelation. The problematic modern “propositional theory of revelation” is best formulated by Suárez, who disengages belief from the act of revelation.8 That is, “if we ask what defines revelation, Suárez suggests in response that it requires only the single sufficient proposition of the revealed object, whether or not the one to whom it comes believes in it, and without it mattering whether it comes to him directly through an inner, direct movement of God, or through an exterior intermediary” (GR, 21; emphasis his). For Suárez, then, divine revelation can be apprehended without faith (GR, 22), which Marion calls a “stupefying reversal of the Thomist position” (GR, 22). Revelation is no longer the subject of a divine science or revealed theology but instead assumes “the status of a sufficient scientific proposition” (GR, 22, emphasis his). Marion thinks that this “assumes the decoupling of revelation from faith”; revelation

12

Christina M. Gschwandtner

becomes “just a piece of information” (GR, 22). Pure reason now governs both revelation and natural knowledge and thus both have a shared “scientific character.” The natural knowledge of God becomes able to “ground supernatural (revealed) knowledge” (GR, 23). Marion contends that this reverses the entire previous tradition: If the natural and the supernatural ways of knowing overlap, this is not (or at least, not at first) because revealed knowledge would reinforce or ensure natural knowledge, itself always incomplete and mixed with errors, but on the contrary because (a) natural knowledge serves as a ground (fundamenta, fundari) to revealed knowledge, which, effectively, (b) remains unable to justify itself according to the criteria of natural science (certainty and judgment); its epistemological weakness, then, is compensated for by the epistemological sufficiency of natural science. (GR, 23–24)

Furthermore, “Suárez extends this reversal to the whole relation between theology and philosophy, the latter itself understood as metaphysica” (GR, 24). Suárez’s epistemological conception of revelation is ultimately a metaphysical move. Marion argues that this has as its consequence that theology must henceforth depend on natural knowledge and on reason rather than relying on revelation. It becomes subject to metaphysics: “without metaphysics, revealed theology would lose its ground and its principles” (GR, 25; emphasis his). This constitutes an epistemological subversion of theology: “In fact and in principle, metaphysica imposes its epistemological demands on theology, which owes to revelation nothing more than some informative content (propositiones sufficientes), and neither its procedures nor its proper logic” (GR, 25). He argues that this Suárezian solution is rejected by the Council of Trent, but adopted by the Protestant reformers. In either case, it has a profound influence on subsequent philosophy and modernity’s position vis-à-vis divine revelation: “This moment—that of philosophical modernity initiated by the last of the scholastics and the philosophy of the Cartesian period—is identified with and as the constitution of the metaphysical system” (GR, 35). Marion concludes the discussion here by accusing Suárez of a dangerous drift: “if one extends this epistemological model to ‘revelation,’ by following, for example, the drift of Suárez, one gains a propositio efficiens, which proposes the ‘revealed truth’ in all its evidence to a will that, provided that it remains in good faith, and thus in faith, should approve it and hold it for true, so as, potentially, to love it” (GR, 36). Suárez’s definition of metaphysics is wrong, not because it is philosophically incoherent or has problematic philosophical implications, but because it is theologically “blasphemous” by



The Drift into Metaphysics

13

subjecting God to metaphysics and by making the divine accessible to human knowledge. This reversal is also highlighted in an important article in Cartesian Questions, in which Marion traces a change in the meaning and employment of the word capacitas. While it originally designated a human capacity for the divine in terms of receptivity, it increasingly came to designate a human power to describe or understand the divine, thus God becomes subject to human capacitas, rather than the reverse. The article locates the moment of transition in Descartes’s work via a computer analysis of the use of the Latin and French terms capacitas and capacité. While Descartes’s use of the Latin term still shows residues of the earlier meaning, his employment of the French one confirms the move to the new understanding. Marion roots the shift in Suárez, chiding him for what, in Descartes, he merely describes. Suárez “deconstructs” capacitas and “empties it of its tension.”9 Suárez interprets capacity in terms of the fulfillment of desires and thus ultimately turns it into a kind of power.10 To do this, he splits the notion of beatitude into a finite and an infinite dimension: “Since blessedness must be conquered by means of a power, and no longer simply received, to the extent that this power remains irremediably finite, a finite, sufficient, and equivalent blessedness must replace infinite blessedness” (CQ, 90).11 Marion argues that Descartes is influenced by Suárez on the issues of God’s power and blessedness, although he speaks of the potential knowledge of God in different terms (CQ, 93–94). Although it is evident in this piece that Marion disapproves of the move from divine to human power even in Descartes, as usual his critique of Descartes is muted or qualified, while no such nuance applies to his treatment of Suárez. THE ETERNAL TRUTHS AND THE UNIVOCITY OF ESSENCE Marion’s strongest disapproval of Suárez—as well as his most thorough treatment of him—occurs in his important, although still untranslated, text Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, in which he examines the demise of the doctrine of analogy in conjunction with Descartes’s insistence on the creation of the eternal truths.12 He considers this stance one of Descartes’s most important contributions, despite not being adopted by most subsequent thinkers. In many of his texts, Marion accuses Suárez of a move to “logical univocity” in his consideration of the divine vis-à-vis logical principles, that is to say, Suárez assumes we can speak of divine knowledge in the same way we speak of human knowledge, especially in regard to the propositions of logic, such as the principle of noncontradiction or the principle of sufficient reason, but this argument is worked out most fully in Théologie blanche.

14

Christina M. Gschwandtner

Marion thinks that Suárez gives an increasingly univocal interpretation to the notion of analogy and, hence, dooms it to become unusable.13 For this reason, he claims, it is not available to Descartes when he tries to free the divine from constrictions of univocity, especially in regard to the notion of the eternal truths. As he outlines in several letters to his mentor and friend Marin de Mersenne, Descartes considers it blasphemous to make the divine subject to human logic and, instead, insists that these truths are eternally dependent upon God and created. To say otherwise would be to make God subject to fate and to elevate human reason above the divine.14 Descartes is thus more faithful to the theological tradition (especially its apophatic strain) than the Jesuit Suárez and the priest Mersenne. Marion contends that Descartes constitutes an exception to the entire early modern tradition on this point, which moves increasingly toward univocity: logical (Suárez), epistemological (Kepler, Galileo, Mersenne), and ontological (Bérulle). Suárez’s version is the one considered first and seen as most insidious. First of all, Suárez makes logical identity independent of divine causality, thus ultimately subjecting God to human logic. This independent status of logic has profound theological consequences. The notion of univocity makes it possible to discuss the truths separately from God (TB, 45). Marion clarifies that the distinction between the divine and logical truths means that they are no longer “expressed” by God, no longer ideas in the divine mind, but instead “representations” of the human mind (TB, 45). He thinks Suárez’s “profound intention” is to apply the contingent-necessary distinction also to God (TB, 44–45). Both contingent and necessary truths are present in God, but in a different sense (TB, 45). Suárez contends that necessary conditions are true necessarily, regardless of God, thus erasing, to some extent, God’s status as creator (TB, 45–46). As a consequence, the truths are anterior to God, dwell in God, but no longer proceed from God (TB, 46). The divine is no longer the “exemplar”; the ultimate root of the absolute nature of necessity lies within the object not in God (TB, 47). In this respect, Suárez anticipates the principle of sufficient reason (TB, 48). This “logical identity dispenses with creation” (TB, 49). Marion argues that the “univocity of logic follows the univocity of essence” (TB, 49), and, consequently, the truths must be eternal (TB, 50). Suárez insists on the independence of logical necessity (TB, 52). Marion shows that this is not just an accidental thesis because Suárez defends it against several objections (TB, 53). Thus, Descartes’s insistence on the creation of the eternal truths and condemnation of those who say otherwise must be directed at Suárez (TB, 57, 60–63). Ultimately, “Descartes remains a better theologian than his theological adversaries” (TB, 61). There are two “operators” of univocity in Suárez: the notion of created substance and an objective concept of being (TB, 110–39). Descartes clearly takes up Suárez’s vocabulary and discussion of analogy (TB, 111), yet



The Drift into Metaphysics

15

disagrees with his conclusions (TB, 113). Suárez applies an objective concept of being (ens) to the relationship between created and uncreated, finite and infinite (TB, 119).15 In this regard, he deviates profoundly from Aquinas (TB, 124–25). Suárez applies universality and distinctiveness to human knowing (TB, 126), calling it the “explicit and irredeemable move of the question of being” such that it “invests the entire horizon of metaphysics” (TB, 127). He provides a categorical definition of the formal concept of being, understood as based on representation (TB, 127). The objective concept relates to a formal concept and erases analogy between finite and infinite (TB, 128). Being can only become an objective concept if it is common, that is, shared by all beings; the formal concept achieves this via abstraction. Being becomes an object of thought (TB, 130).16 Marion concludes that Suárez “led the theological tradition to the most extreme” version of univocity and thus also opened the path for the epistemological move to univocity in Mersenne, Kepler, and Galileo (TB, 176). The shared concept of being is particularly detrimental: “From Duns Scotus to Suárez univocity relies on the indeterminacy, abstraction, and imprecision of the concept of ens—and this univocity by default could remain purely logical, in the face of a physical and metaphysical equivocity” (TB, 185). For Kepler and Mersenne, God becomes submitted to the logic of the mathematical truths; Marion argues that this is equivalent to Suárez’s position on logical identity (TB, 189).17 He condemns Kepler—and by association Suárez—in the strongest terms: “this is nothing else than measuring God by the standard of our comprehension, by the span of our hand, at the measure of our finitude, in short substituting for him an idol” (TB, 186). In another context, too, Marion points out that “in Suárez or in Kepler, as soon as the truths no longer depend upon God, it is God who depends on them” (EG, 127). Unlike Descartes, Suárez makes God subject to destiny (EG, 105), linking the notion of fate closely to the divine (EG, 112). Suárez is inclined to the “univocity of ens, of substances and of logical truths” (EG, 116).18 In a different essay, Marion shows how both Malebranche and Leibniz take up positions articulated by Suárez rather than following Descartes, especially on the creation of the eternal truths. Consequently, “Leibniz exercises, so to speak, a posthumous revenge of Suárez on Descartes” (EG, 138). Marion reiterates the idea that for Suárez God is enclosed within metaphysics in multiple other locations (e.g., EG, 160). He claims that “Suárez filled the analogical gap between the finite and the infinite with a univocal concept of being (conceptus univocus entis), sufficient to represent to the human mind any being whatsoever in a confused and indeterminate way” (EG, 163). Thus, for Suárez, “being applies in the same sense (logically or intrinsically) to both creatures and God: the ontological gap between the finite and the infinite distinguishes God from his creatures less than the conceptual representation

16

Christina M. Gschwandtner

of them as beings join them” (EG, 163). In Marion’s view, Descartes is profoundly opposed to Suárez on this, “reversing Suárez’s doctrine almost word for word” (EG, 170). Marion concludes: “In this way Descartes the philosopher sets himself against the ‘blasphemy’ of the theologians” like Suárez (EG, 170).19 THE NOTION OF SUBSTANCE AND THE CAUSA SUI Another crucial aspect of this enclosure of God in metaphysics is the notion of substance. In the medieval thinkers, Marion contends, only God is genuine substance and the same term cannot be applied to humans. Although the scholastic discussion already considers whether substance is a univocal or an equivocal concept, only Suárez dares to apply it to both God and humans in similar fashion. While he qualifies this application to some extent, its results are detrimental (TB, 114–15). In fact, Marion repeatedly compares Suárez and Descartes on their use of the notion of substance and its role in their respective metaphysical systems. Descartes contends early on that a mathesis universalis would not require the notion of substance, yet he does employ the term in his Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy, especially in the first part. Marion shows that although Suárez serves as the most important “master” for Descartes on the concept of substance, Descartes deviates from him in significant fashion. Whereas Suárez defines substance as perseity and subsistence, thus establishing an equivalence of being with permanent presence in Heidegger’s sense, Descartes, in Marion’s view, takes up Suárez’s terms but inverts his solution (EG, 85). For Suárez, only God is a true substance; no created substance subsists in the full sense as God does (EG, 86–87; TB, 115).20 Yet, for Descartes, substance is applied in its fullest sense only to the human, while its application to the divine remains much more ambivalent. Marion distinguishes the two as follows: “Suárez opposes the two absolutely heterogeneous degrees of substantiality as subsistence to the simple abstention from subsistence. For Descartes these are superimposed on each other—one becomes the eternal, necessary, and permanent condition for the second, which suddenly seizes the full and entire subsistence that was until now reserved for God” (EG, 87). Suárez justifies his choice of attributing substantiality to God “by disqualifying the privilege accorded to the division between created/uncreated” (TB, 115).21 Ultimately, for Suárez, substance is applied equally to God and other beings (MP, 224).22 Thus, in this respect also, analogy between divine and human “drifts” toward univocity in Suárez (MP, 225).



The Drift into Metaphysics

17

Marion claims that Descartes challenges this univocal attribution of substance to God and other beings (MP, 225). Descartes opposes Suárez explicitly by not thinking of substance univocally; thus, in Descartes, substance becomes applied only to the finite without analogy to the infinite (EG, 88–89). To maintain his position that only in God are substance and subsistence equated, Suárez provides a second definition of substance to account for finite substance (EG, 90). This has an epistemological function already in Suárez and Descartes follows him on this point; in this respect, “substance is known only by its accidents and not at all as subsistent” (EG, 91). Yet, Descartes applies this definition of substance to humans instead of the divine: “To arrive at this, Descartes utilizes the two concepts of substance elaborated by Suárez, not to distribute them between God and creatures, but to describe finite substance alone” (EG, 98). Marion’s approval of Descartes and disapproval of Suárez is again evident in his conclusion: “According to this hypothesis, Descartes would be less a new theoretician of substance than the philosopher who marks the beginning of its rapid decline in the history of metaphysics” (EG, 99). Another crucial element in the conversation between Suárez and Descartes is the notion of causality. Suárez develops a notion of “total cause” that is taken up by Descartes, although Suárez still maintains the Aristotelian conception of four causes (formal, material, efficient, final), while Descartes will later concentrate them entirely in the efficient cause: “Henceforth, any kind of causality is really summed up in the single efficient cause, which becomes total in an infinitely more radical sense than the causa totalis of Suárez” (TB, 289). One would think that Suárez’s position is the more preferable and more traditional one, at least on Marion’s terms, but Marion again censures Suárez and exonerates Descartes. For Suárez, efficient causality is concentrated in producing existence, while formal causality applies to essences in the divine understanding (TB, 286). Descartes judges this an incoherent distinction and instead argues that God must be the total and universal cause of everything; God’s causality is so universal that its efficiency includes the other three causes (TB, 287). Marion suggests that this ultimately enables Descartes to attribute an “incomprehensible power” to God that protects the divine incomprehensibility and creativity. By turning efficient causality into a total causality, it becomes possible for Descartes to think God beyond the eternal truths and as their founder and exerciser (TB, 288). God’s causality is unlimited and cannot be plumbed by human understanding. This also has implications for the notion of the causa sui, which Marion insists Descartes is the first to apply to God and only because the medieval notions of analogy are no longer available to him. Yet, even here Suárez serves as (bad) precedent. He can be the guide, because he is “the last scholastic landmark and an indirect master and direct adversary of Descartes, for

18

Christina M. Gschwandtner

it is against the horizon of Suárez that the Cartesian invention of the causa sui (as many other issues in Descartes) becomes intelligible” (EG, 149). Marion argues that Suárez vacillates on whether God is causa sui (MP, 259–61), denying it because the medieval tradition does so, but clearly wishing that it were possible to attribute it to the divine. He implies that Suárez renounces the notion of the causa sui only with regret (EG, 150). Suárez anticipates Descartes by distinguishing between divine essence and existence and submitting God to the principle of reason by making the divine essence a ratio (MP, 260).23 Although Suárez agrees with his medieval predecessors on refusing the causa sui, “he nevertheless attempts to include God tangentially in the empire of causality” (EG, 148).24 On this point, Descartes follows Suárez: “Descartes hence measures perfectly the implications of the causa sui in revealed theology, because Suárez has already opened the dossier for him; none of the theological allusions of the Replies is obscure, insignificant, or negligible,” and, in fact, “even when he is opposed to Suárez, Descartes still speaks in Suárez’s own semantics” (EG, 156). This has implications for the subsequent metaphysical tradition: “the divergence among his successors on univocity and the principle of reason would take its origin in unresolved tension within Descartes himself” (EG, 159). The causa sui is, of course, linked to onto-theology for Heidegger, inasmuch as it constitutes the standard “metaphysical name” for the divine (TB, 455–56). Marion profoundly disapproves of it and yet, although he locates its origin and first full formulation in Descartes, he tempers his judgment of Descartes by ultimately blaming Suárez, both for the latter’s notion of causality and for his detrimental drift toward univocity that permits Descartes no recourse to a doctrine of analogy and, thus, practically forces him to adopt the causa sui. Descartes’s application of the causa sui to God qualifies his account of efficient causality (TB, 433). Marion argues that this constitutes a (failed) Cartesian attempt at something like a notion of analogy (TB, 439)—Descartes modifies the relation between causality and essence in God (TB, 434). Again, Suárez serves as a precedent: “Suárez had underlined that aseity implies the absence of any cause,” but this means that “aseity submits the divine essence to causality” (TB, 435). Descartes is critical of this position in Suárez and thinks aseity differently: “Besides an absence of efficient causality, a positive aseity can be conceived: not requiring a cause in order to subsist is already to deploy a positive cause, which requires the simple fact of subsisting; for subsisting implies that one persevere, thus that a cause at each instant intervene, which maintains the status quo” (TB, 436). Although Descartes introduces a notion of formal causality for speaking of the divine essence, this ultimately returns to an overall efficient causality. It does not subject God to efficiency but establishes analogy between the causa sui and efficiency (TB, 437). This



The Drift into Metaphysics

19

is the only place in which Marion will admit that univocity is also at work in Descartes, but immediately qualifies this judgment. It remains a “tangential” univocity, because although God’s essence becomes identified with causality it remains “immense and incomprehensible” (TB, 438). God wields “incomprehensible power” and the divine essence remains “absolutely transcendent”: “God’s existence becomes causally intelligible only on the condition that his essence appears intrinsically incomprehensible” (TB, 438). Thus, Descartes maintains an appropriate theological stance in regard to the divine even when he draws on Suárezian positions that compromise it. Marion highlights what he perceives as a decisive tension and ambiguity in Descartes’s account. This very ambiguity is itself productive: “The fragility and ambivalence of the radical foundation depends directly on the paradox of the causa sui,” but in such a way as to “rely on a definitive incomprehensibility in God’s instituting power” (TB, 443). Descartes is characterized “by this very ambiguity” (TB, 443), thus his theology remains “blanche”: white, whitened out, blank, even pure, because it is “anonymous and indeterminate, like a blanket permission that qualifies its beneficiary without specifying for what undertaking or like a blank check that does not specify the amount of credit that it accords” (TB, 450). Descartes constitutes the exception in the line “that leads from Suárez, Kepler and Galileo to Malebranche, Newton, and Leibniz” in its identification of human knowing with divine wisdom (TB, 452–53). Only Descartes refuses this move, although he cannot do it entirely successfully because Suárez has blocked his path to a more successful option via the notion of analogy. The “Suárezian compromise” commits all modern metaphysics to the “speculative misery” of natural theology and to a metaphysical inability “to think the relationship between infinite and finite without confusion, without change, and without separation or division” (TB, 454).25 Because Suárez has collapsed the distinctions between human and divine, modernity ends up giving up on God altogether. The decline that begins in Suárez ends in Nietzsche’s death of God.26 CONCLUSION On several occasions Marion makes the startling claim that most of the medieval thinkers are not metaphysical, meaning that they do not subject the divine to an onto-theo-logical constitution.27 Although in an early work Marion had accused Aquinas of favoring ontological language for the divine, he later thoroughly exonerates him.28 Similarly, Marion’s entire lengthy reading of Augustine’s Confessions seeks to show that Augustine is not subject to metaphysics.29 Rather, in Marion’s estimation, metaphysics is an essentially modern project, inaugurated most fully by Descartes. Yet, Descartes’s

20

Christina M. Gschwandtner

conception is complicated and Marion’s evaluation highly nuanced. Even when unpacking a twofold (or even threefold) metaphysical structure in Descartes’s works, Marion highlights all the ways in which Descartes does not simply subject the divine to metaphysics.30 Where, then, is metaphysics found in its simplest, most straightforward, and hence most problematic form? In Suárez! On Marion’s reading, Suárez stands for everything that is problematic in modernity: its definition of metaphysics, its monolithic definition of substance, its subjection of the divine to human logic, its elevation of univocity over analogy, its insistence on human power to know the divine. Marion holds Suárez more or less single-handedly responsible for all major errors of modernity, saddling it with a legacy of blasphemy, idolatry, and atheism.31 Yet, Suárez’s decisions and arguments are condemned for primarily theological reasons. To preserve the divine unknowability and to maintain the fundamental distinction between finite and infinite, creator and creation, is absolutely crucial for Marion. Anything that transgresses that divide between divine and human is judged blasphemous or idolatrous. In the Gifford Lectures, Marion calls Suárez only “minimally Christian” (GR, 93), in this case due to his granting God’s unity priority over the trinitarian distinctions. He describes this as follows: “The motive for this division [between unity and trinity] goes even further: it is not only about distinguishing between two sciences, or marking the difference between unity and plurality; it is about deciding what belongs or not to the divine essence, which is to say, it is about considering the possibility that God can be and be known as such without regard for the trinitarian communion” (GR, 92–93; emphasis his). He judges this as “nothing less than a kind of monotheism by subtraction, affixed to revealed knowledge” (GR, 93). This sums up well his estimation of Suárez overall. The apophatic, theological presupposition that God cannot be known and that any rational thinking about the divine is by definition illegitimate lies at the very heart of Marion’s reading of any thinker and is the lens for evaluating any philosophical or theological thought. On this count, Suárez becomes the Ur-devil of modernity’s march away from divine revelation. NOTES 1. Unfortunately, it is not yet translated into English in its entirety, although several volumes of groups of questions do exist in English translation. Marion refers to several scholars who point to the significance of the work. 2. Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky



The Drift into Metaphysics

21

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 22–23 and 40; henceforth cited parenthetically as MP. 3. Most of Metaphysical Prism is devoted to unfolding two types of onto-theology in Descartes’s thought, which Marion thinks are in competition with each other, one focused on the ego and one on the divine. Only in the latter does God become the supreme grounding of the metaphysical system (in terms of causality). 4. Jean-Luc Marion, Questions cartésiennes II. L’ego et Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996/2004), 371–72. (This essay is not included in the existing English translation.) 5. For example, he points to the influence of Suárez’s definition of metaphysics again in an essay on Mersenne, arguing that Mersenne follows Suárez, disagrees with Descartes, and anticipates Malebranche. See Questions cartésiennes II, 371–91. 6. Jean-Luc Marion, God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991/2012), 82. See also the similar claim in Negative Certainties: “The metaphysical origin (Duns Scotus and Suárez) of the distinction of the concept of ens into finite and infinite is hardly doubtful, but the real intelligibility of a finitude without the background or the foreground of the infinite remains problematic.” Jean-Luc Marion, Negative Certainties, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 229. He comments on Suárez in passing in a similar fashion in Believing in Order to See (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 32, 94, 95, 116; all are parenthetical remarks. 7. Translation lightly modified. 8. Jean-Luc Marion, Givenness and Revelation, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 20; henceforth cited parenthetically as GR. 9. Jean-Luc Marion, Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 90; henceforth cited parenthetically as CQ. 10. Interestingly, Marion often employs the maintaining of tension or ambiguity positively in his evaluation of Descartes. 11. In the Gifford Lectures, Marion speaks of the “Suárezian deviations of a theology of double beatitude” (GR, 14). 12. Jean-Luc Marion, Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, création des vérités éternelles, fondement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981/1991/2009); henceforth cited parenthetically as TB. 13. Marion claims repeatedly that Suárez gave Descartes only confused access to the notion of analogy or closed it down altogether (TB, 13, 152, 159, 185). 14. See also several other essays on this topic in his second volume of Cartesian Questions, partially translated as Jean-Luc Marion, On the Ego and on God: Further Cartesian Questions (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 127; henceforth cited parenthetically as EG. 15. See also his brief discussion of ens rationes in Suárez (MP, 102). 16. Interestingly, Marion claims that Bérulle threatens Descartes in more subtle ways than Suárez because he remains theological, thus implying that Suárez’s deviation from theology is much more blatant (TB, 152–53). 17. For Kepler, God is in the same position as the creature inasmuch as “the creature imitates the Creator” (TB, 189).

22

Christina M. Gschwandtner

18. In his most recent book on Descartes, Marion also appeals to Suárez’s distinction between ens per se and ens per accidens, within the context of Descartes’s debate with Regius. Jean-Luc Marion, Descartes’ Passive Thought: The Myth of Cartesian Dualism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 175. He shows that Descartes appeals to Suárez for the distinction between action and passion (ibid., 202) and that both are opposed to Aristotle on the relation of cause and effect, thus establishing a relation of efficient causality. Ibid., 204. 19. In Idol and Distance, Marion similarly chides Suárez for reducing the theory of analogy and devoiding it of its theological content and orientation, smoothing the path for Hegel and others to “formalize, dialectize, or reject the relation between distance and appropriated withdrawal” between divine and human. Jean-Luc Marion, The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2001), 244. 20. See also the discussion of substance and accidents in the species of the Eucharist, for which Marion highlights Descartes’s “shattering of the Suárezian device” of assimilating created to uncreated substance (EG, 87–88). 21. Marion also outlines the implications this has for the subsequent tradition, not just for Descartes (TB, 116–19). 22. In a different context he says that Suárez divides the divine substance “into two neatly distinguished parts” (GR, 92). 23. Interestingly, here Marion concedes that Suárez still hesitates to define God in terms of power as Descartes will do (MP, 261). He does anticipate Descartes by defining God as the “first” being and in terms of perfection (MP, 253). 24. In a different context, he accuses Suárez’s notion of causality of abstraction and suggests that it “provokes precisely the transmutation of the being into an object of poor phenomenality” (Marion, Negative Certainties, 257). 25. Marion is obviously referring to the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures of Christ here. He acknowledges in a different context that for Suárez, too, the most fundamental definition of being is between finite and infinite, but does not evaluate Suárez more positively for all that (MP, 247). Suárez argues that the negative notion of the infinite provides a positive concept for the supreme being (MP, 248–49). 26. Nietzsche himself, however, is often evaluated positively in Marion’s work. His notion of the death of God immediately opens the possibility for “the death of the death of God.” 27. For example, in the essay on the causa sui he suggests that we might “have to revise fundamentally the question of the metaphysical status of all medieval thought, being unaware not only of the principle of sufficient reason, but above all of its application to the essence of God, hence refusing unanimously the concept of the causa sui, the medieval thinkers could, at least partially, be removed from the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics and hence from an idolatrous interpretation of God” (EG, 160). Similar comments are made elsewhere. He also repeatedly says that one must choose between metaphysics and charity (e.g., EG, 79). 28. See “Saint Thomas Aquinas and Onto-theo-logy,” in Mystic: Presence and Aporia, ed. M. Kessler and C. Sheppard, trans. B. Gendreau, R. Rethty, and M. Sweeney (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003), 38–74. The essay is also included in the



The Drift into Metaphysics

23

2nd revised edition of God without Being and in Marion, The Essential Writings, ed. Kevin Hart (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 288–311. 29. Jean-Luc Marion, In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), xiii–xiv. See also his comments about that book in the interview with Dan Arbib, The Rigor of Things (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 131. 30. See also especially the conclusion to Jean-Luc Marion, On Descartes’ Passive Thought: The Myth of Cartesian Dualism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), 242–49. 31. Often Duns Scotus and Vasquez receive blame by association (e.g., TB, 56–63).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Marion, Jean-Luc. Believing in Order to See: On the Rationality of Revelation and the Irrationality of Some Believers. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. ———. Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ———. Descartes’ Passive Thought: The Myth of Cartesian Dualism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. ———. Givenness and Revelation, trans. Stephen E. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991/2012. ———. In the Self’s Place: The Approach of Saint Augustine, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. ———. Negative Certainties, trans. Stephen E. Lewis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. ———. On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Ontotheo-logy in Cartesian Thought. trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. ———. On the Ego and on God: Further Cartesian Questions. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. ———. Questions cartésiennes II. L’ego et Dieu. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996/2004. ———. Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. Analogie, création des vérités éternelles, fondement. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981/1991/2009. ———. The Essential Writings. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013. ———. The Idol and Distance: Five Studies, trans. Thomas A. Carlson. New York: Fordham University Press, 2001. ———. The Rigor of Things: Conversations with Dan Arbib. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.

Chapter Two

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truths Marguerite La Caze

Marjorie Glicksman Grene (1910–2009) wrote on existentialism as a philosophy with a specific focus on the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Her work played an important role in introducing continental philosophy to North American and British thought as she lived and worked on both sides of the Atlantic. While she gained her PhD from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, she also studied as an exchange student in Germany from 1931 to 1933, had a postdoctoral fellowship in Copenhagen in 1936, lived and worked on farms in Illinois and Ireland, and taught at universities in the United Kingdom and the United States, including, for the longest period, at the University of California, Davis (1965–1978). Her interpretations are based on a thorough knowledge of the history of philosophy and a wide range of philosophical areas, including European philosophy; Grene attended lectures by Heidegger and Karl Jaspers while on exchange in Europe. While her interest was first piqued by Heidegger’s thought, further research led her to investigate Jaspers’s willingness to combine existential philosophy with the life sciences.1 Grene’s views were also influenced by Maurice MerleauPonty’s conception of embodiment.2 Later in life she met Jacques Derrida in Paris.3 Grene thought the existentialists recognized and described an important truth about the human situation, namely, that “even in its knowing, let alone in its doing, is acutely uncomfortable. Finitude, even in the context of knowledge, means not just the comfortable guesswork of Humean induction, but the passionate involvement of the person of the knower in the pursuit of a vision which may be altogether wrong. Every choice may be mistaken, and every choice that matters may be tragically mistaken.”4 My chapter focuses 25

26

Marguerite La Caz

on Grene’s distinctive interpretations of these central works of continental philosophy, which she saw as enabling a better grasp of current philosophical problems,5 especially the question of the nature of the person.6 Her work is very important to the reception of the history of existentialism since, as Charles Sherover notes, her texts on existentialism and Heidegger were published prior to the English translations of Sartre’s and Heidegger’s major works.7 Influenced by Jaspers, Grene saw philosophy as a continuing dialogue or conversation “going back to Thales”—with their time and our time—so that we must look at the context in which they were writing, as well as bring their ideas to bear on current issues.8 Of the continuity of her own work she writes, “This refusal to accept the cogito, and all it implies, as the unique starting point of philosophy has been, I believe, a persistent theme in much of my work.”9 This concern with embodiment shapes her reading of continental philosophy and her interpretations of existentialist thinkers. Grene says that she wrote on existentialism in the late 1940s because she was asked to do so.10 Her book Introduction to Existentialism, published in 1948 under the title Dreadful Freedom: A Critique of Existentialism, begins with a reflection on the meaning of Sartre’s famous slogan “existence precedes essence” and argues that what it really refers to is “just the unique, inexpressible that of any one conscious being’s particular existence—such is the actuality that Kierkegaard and his twentieth-century successors agree in referring to when they declare, as their first principle, the priority of existence over essence.”11 Grene’s interpretation stresses the singularity of existentialism’s focus on the individual. She also compares and contrasts existentialism with the pragmatism of John Dewey and William James, finding their differences, ultimately, more fundamental: “Pragmatism in this regard continues, though in a different style, the heritage of Locke and Hume, while existentialism substitutes a new and puzzling concrete givenness for the indifferent outer flow of sense-data that constitutes the material for scientific construction” (IE, 9). Thus, she concludes that their focus is on a different kind of existence. Even more importantly, Grene contends, existentialist philosophy realizes the separation between facts and values that pragmatism tries to ignore. Likewise, although logical positivism also opposes idealism, it fails to acknowledge the reality of freedom as existentialism does (IE, 11–12). Her view is that existentialism states brilliantly our “tragic dilemma”—that of modern humanity—and also demonstrates “relentless, even extravagant, honesty in the rejection of easy solutions or apparent solutions to that dilemma” (IE, 14). However, she is critical of many of the solutions and suggests her own, as I show in the following discussion of her readings of the central works of existentialism. Her colleague in the history of biology Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis offers insight into the nature of Grene’s

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

27

interpretations when she describes the contradictory elements of Grene’s personality: a “strange mixture of alternating praise and criticism sometimes in what appeared unpredictable combinations.”12 I split her often integrated discussions into a focus on five primary thinkers: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty, with the most detailed analysis of Sartre as Grene engages with his work in the most depth. SØREN KIERKEGAARD Some chapters and sections of Introduction to Existentialism, first published in The Kenyon Review, a literary magazine, offer lengthy quotations, often almost two pages long, and paraphrase, analyze, and evaluate them. In her chapter on Kierkegaard, Grene sees his focus as set on a single question: “‘What is the self that remains if a person has lost the whole world and yet not lost himself?’” (IE, 22). Kierkegaard, on Grene’s reading, takes philosophy in a new direction through his focus on individual existences “as they feel to the person” in time, rather than eternity (IE, 23). That focus, Grene contends, contrasts with the tradition of philosophy since Aristotle, and so can be seen as a return to Socratic reflection on the self. Indeed, she praises Kierkegaard for his serious consideration of the Platonic dialogues, especially the Socratic ones, as sources of philosophical understanding. His approach is compared to that of Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier,13 and Grene even goes so far as to say that Kierkegaard’s return to Plato is a “little renaissance” in the nineteenth century (IE, 26). His focus on death and the contingency behind significance is also contrasted favorably with pragmatism’s avoidance of these topics, and she mentions Conrad’s Lord Jim as an existential character in his focus on expunging his past deed (IE, 28). Grene illuminates another element of Kierkegaard’s thought: the concept of the “leap” which permeates his thought. There is a “stress on the discontinuity of personal existence that Kierkegaard everywhere displays. From the aesthetic to the ethical, as from the ethical to the religious phase, the transition is by a leap” (IE, 31). Moreover, she finds a surprising Hegelian legacy in Kierkegaard’s thought—in his definition of freedom as “to be with oneself” and his formulation of paradoxes of philosophical vocabulary. Here Grene isolates one of the features of his work that is so influential on continental philosophy: a love of paradox, a love that she believes is for the sake of paradox itself, regardless of whether it is true or not (IE, 35). Moreover, her conclusion is that Kierkegaard cannot fulfil the promise of his own philosophy, and she challenges his view that turning to inwardness means turning away from others and any sense of belonging to a community. For her, “morality is . . . meaningless without some conception of a community in which the

28

Marguerite La Caz

individual is set” (IE, 39). Ultimately, Grene finds Kierkegaard leaves us in a state of despair, facing contingency and death. As we will see, she is also unsympathetic to Heidegger’s treatment of these topics, although she finds insights in his accounts of our concern for the world. MARTIN HEIDEGGER One of the interesting points Grene makes about Heidegger is that his view of the hermeneutic circle can extend to all disciplines; she suggests that “as a matter of fact one can, if one wants to, extract the elements of a sound philosophy of science out of passages in Being and Time.”14 Nevertheless, she is critical of Heidegger’s conception of being-in-the-world, including the distinction between the ontological and the ontic.15 Grene argues that while in one sense Heidegger’s view is anti-Cartesian in its rejection of an approach to human being through consciousness, focusing instead on how we find ourselves in the world,16 in another sense, it is “as disembodied as any Cartesian mind could be. It isn’t sexed, for example. Nor is it anywhere except in its human world; its place is in no living environments, among conspecifics or predators or prey, in heat or cold, drought or downpour.”17 From this lack of embodiment she draws the conclusion that human being is therefore not individuated and is an anonymous “they.” Furthermore, Grene finds Heidegger’s account of authenticity to be bound to an ideal of German heroism.18 Moreover, Grene is forthright in her criticism of Heidegger’s speech to the student association in Heidelberg on the role of the university in the New Reich in 1933, describing it as Hegelian in making freedom subservient to a “higher entity—Hitler’s Germany.” She writes, It seemed to me then, and it still does, a disgraceful sellout of whatever core of genuineness underlies the ontological trappings of Sein und Zeit; for it is the complete isolation of the free man, terribly alone with his own mortality, yet splendidly arrogant in the face of the common world of the undifferentiated “one,” that is real in Heidegger’s analysis of human existence. To see in the surrender to the Nazi state the fulfilment of that hard-won freedom is, despite such affinities, for instance, as the anti-intellectualism of both Heidegger and the Nazis, to give away in advance whatever validity Heidegger’s portrayal of human nature has. (IE, 68)

Thus, Grene sees the “Nazi Heidegger” as a superficial guise rather than a sign of his true character or a necessary consequence of his philosophy.19 Returning to Being and Time, Grene agrees with Sartre’s view that Heidegger’s account of relations with others, Mitdasein (existing with),

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

29

presents that relation as very abstract and impersonal in terms of roles, for example, those of student and teacher. Furthermore, she sees his account of authentic relations with others as insubstantial. According to her interpretation, when I care authentically, “I care for others in a genuine, rather than a conventional sense, according to Heidegger, in so far as I refer my care for them essentially to my own free projection of myself’” (IE, 70). Grene sees this relation to others as using them as tools or as means to one’s own ends. She also examines Heidegger’s discussion of historicity as potentially explicating our relation to others when he mentions how individuals grouped together are related to history. However, Grene finds a neglect of analysis of the existential import of community and tradition, and writes, “Nothing is added that makes my world in any real sense ours or lessens in any essential way the grim isolation of the self-resolved-in-face-of-death” (IE, 71). For her, togetherness is only something inauthentic to be surmounted by the authentic individual on Heidegger’s account.20 More sympathetically, Grene describes Heidegger’s view of our dreaded relation to our own death as a “recognition of my radical finitude” as a way to create an authentic future (IE, 53).21 She also believes he is right to appropriate some concepts from religion, for example, guilt and conscience (IE, 65).22 In contrast, Grene finds more important insights in Sartre’s overall analysis of freedom. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Interestingly, in Introduction to Existentialism, Grene treats Sartre and Heidegger together as contemporary atheistic existentialists, a designation that Sartre would have accepted,23 but Heidegger would not.24 Furthermore, she interprets them both as concerned with providing a new account of ontology or being itself (IE, 47). While she rejects their proposals to overcome the appearance-reality as envisaged by Kant, she finds their accounts new and insightful in their relevance to human life. While there are precursors in Socrates for Kierkegaard, in Descartes for Sartre, and in Anaximander and Parmenides for Heidegger, Grene argues that these thinkers consider freedom in a more abstract way and tend to neglect the individual existence that struggles with freedom (IE, 57). Her claim is that only some novelists such as Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare in Hamlet, and, surprisingly, Charles Dickens in Great Expectations, come close to existentialism’s insights, especially into the role that chance and purposelessness play in our lives and the gulf between authenticity and bad faith, the latter two of which she explains in detail (IE, 58–61). This stress on authenticity is a significant insight25 that Grene finds “peculiarly descriptive of the crisis of our time.”26

30

Marguerite La Caz

Grene contrasts Sartre’s view that humans do not have an essence as there is no God with the idea of a human essence as a species and observes that he does not argue against Aristotle’s view of human function, although he could by appealing to evolutionary theory (IE, 43–44). The discussion of Sartre’s view of freedom is subtle, and she illuminates the interplay of freedom with situation: “There is no inner versus outer, rational versus irrational, in human histories. But, on the other hand, though there is no self apart from this particular economic, social, physical situation, such a situation does not constitute the self” (IE, 46). Thus, she sees why Sartre must also reject materialism. The first concept Grene finds articulated in a novel way in existentialism is freedom contrasted with the thought of freedom as given by God or as an illusion. Her description follows Sartre quite closely: “So self and world are continuously born together, in the self’s free transcendence of its situation to form itself-in-relation-to-its-world—a transcendence always already in process, yet always not yet accomplished” (IE, 50). For Grene, this idea of freedom is not a simple solution to the free will and determinism problem, but a discomfiting one due to the responsibility the individual must accept as a result. While she mentions hope, ultimately, she finds existentialism an unforgiving view that brings dread to the authentic human being. Referring to Sartre’s Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Grene notes that dread or “the vertigo that accompanies and even constitutes self-realization— has no definable object within a compartmentalized universe” (IE, 52). Such an object can be seen as related to ideas of nothing and nothingness. Noting Rudolf Carnap’s dismissal of Heidegger’s use of the concept of nothing, as well as Jean Wahl’s criticisms of Sartre’s idea of nothingness, Grene provides something of a defense of them both. While conceding that they both play on the ambiguity of the word “nothing,” she also says it is a “neatly dramatic phrase” that, by tying the sense of uneasiness we feel in relation to an unspecified object to a recognition of our meaninglessness, makes a “significant contribution” to our self-understanding (IE, 52–53). Dread in Sartre concerns nothingness in the sense of the gulf between facts and what I have to make of them. In considering the objection that we do not feel dread on a day-to-day basis, Grene responds that we are distracted from dread in ordinary life and practice various forms of bad faith, such as the “spirit of seriousness” or the pretence of finding ready-made values (IE, 55). Another insight Grene sees in existentialism concerns the question of taste. Again her focus is Sartre, here in his discussion of existential psychoanalysis in L’Étre et le néant. She explicates his views of all taste as being “in some sense a complex sublimation or elaboration” of physical taste and, thus, they “at least describe the phenomena of taste in their integral relation to what the individual essentially is or is becoming” (IE, 63). Likewise, religious

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

31

concepts take on a new reading in Sartre’s idea of original sin as shame and of God as the desire to be self-caused, as Grene recognizes (IE, 66). According to Grene, Sartre acknowledges more seriously than Heidegger does that the individual’s relation to others needs to be thematized. She examines Existentialism is a Humanism first, and his idea that when we choose, we choose for others. While she thinks it plausible that I, for instance, would join a certain trade union, choosing a certain kind of society that I find preferable for all, she contends that, on close consideration, it is more likely that, without a concept of human nature, I choose what suits me best. Grene supports this point with examples of Sartrean heroes such as Garcin in Huis-clos, Oreste in Les Mouches, and Mathieu in L’Age de raison, to show that in each case the hero is primarily concerned with what his acts mean for himself rather than for others (IE, 74). For example, Garcin is focused on whether he died a coward, and in that sense Sartre stays closer to Kierkegaard’s individualism. Grene also interprets Sartre’s treatment, in Existentialism is a Humanism, of the young man’s dilemma—to choose between staying at home with his mother and leaving to fight with the free French forces—as “disturbing” in a different way because it lacks any consideration of the mother’s point of view, an important point to make. Similarly, she does not think one can found a genuine political philosophy of revolution on the basis of freedom for its own sake (IE, 76). However, Grene takes Sartre’s account of “Le Pour-autrui” in L’Étre et le néant to be more genuine and comprehensive. As she explains, Sartre’s intention is to show how we experience the existence of others in an immediate way: another person looks at me so that I experience “the whole transformation of my world that the look behind those eyes implies” (IE, 79). Through that transformation I become a thing for the other like a chair or cup of coffee, to use her examples. From the attempt to overcome the other’s look arises a conflict of which our intersubjective relationship is comprised. Sartre, according to Grene, bases our relationships on conflict due to the fear and shame that the look of another evokes and the pride we try to assert in response. Thus, she finds Sartre’s account of experiences of love, masochism, indifference, desire, sadism, and hate and their failures depressing, if clear-eyed (IE, 87). In order not to fall into despair, Grene suggests we take a closer look at Sartre’s examples.27 She observes that the scene in the park in which a stranger returns the look is “a highly artificial example on which to base an analysis of personal relations. An individual confronts another; but both are abstracted by the public nature of the place from the personal setting in which each of them, in fact, lives his life. So it is not the two as living human beings who face each other but the facsimiles of humanity who are, in Heidegger’s phrase, together in the ‘one’” (IE, 87).

32

Marguerite La Caz

At this point, Grene provides her own very personal example to explain the alienation of these type of experiences: “In the anonymous togetherness of so-called ‘career women’ in a genteel restaurant, for instance, what emerges as real behind their mutual silence is the lack that each one feels of the organic relationships beyond herself that could give substance to what is otherwise an empty freedom” (IE, 88). Her claim here is that wanting to be completed in others, assuming she means in partners and children, is just as genuine or authentic as the existentialist stress on individual freedom. Rather unfairly, she says, there is as much validity in Aristophanes’s myth in the Symposium as in Sartre’s hundreds of pages.28 Her thought here is that there is an original human togetherness of human beings as much as there is an original separateness. Grene elaborates briefly in her comments on Plato’s analysis of love, and explains the completion happens “through shared insights and aspirations. In existential terms, the transcendence of the lover here neither transcends nor is transcended by another but becomes aware of itself, through the participation of the very freedom of another in his freedom; and, in turn, the other’s transcendence—the project that he is—expands and ripens in its way through similar participation” (IE, 90). This mutual enrichment is, according to Grene, a given that Sartre ignores. For her, existentialism also focuses too much on the inwardness of individuals and neglects the fact that we are totally dependent on our mothers before we are born, and that dependence gradually lessens from the point of birth. Furthermore, any conflictual relations that develop in later life will be shaped by our family life.29 Grene is also suspicious of Sartre’s discussion of the keyhole example. While she commends his descriptions of shame and vanity as illuminating in themselves, and for highlighting the importance of shame as an emotion, she balks at the idea that shame is our original relation to the other. Again, Grene counters with the thought that the original relation could be, equally, with another similar to me who enhances and completes my freedom. The rarity of such a relationship is compatible with the idea that it would “for all that, reveal the scope and richness of my freedom as essentially as shame reveals its instability” (IE, 89). Moreover, Grene finds distortion in Sartre’s separation of the existential significance of sex from its relation to biology. She argues that if there is such meaning in sexuality per se, there is equally meaning in the distinction between masculine and feminine, even if that distinction does not map onto physical differences between the sexes. As she points out, avoiding the distinction makes his account look quite contrived. In contrast, Grene sees Sartre’s account of the formation of the nous-objet (us-object) by the presence of a hostile third party as a convincing evocation of the experience of the occupied countries in World War II. The nous-sujet (we-subject) of being with others in the world that is created incidentally by

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

33

the addresses of signs and the other passengers in the Métro, she finds compelling as far as it goes, but, for her, it does not go far enough. Grene gives examples of the unity formed in agricultural activities, such as threshing, as evidence of that aspect of the human condition that may be lost in the modern world but not forgotten (IE, 92). She could also have mentioned that other kinds of contemporary activities may take their place. Other counterexamples to conflictual relations, according to Grene, are the encounters we have with like-minded people, with whom we see “eye to eye,” which, however ephemeral, nonetheless exist (IE, 93).30 She summarizes Sartre as a writer who has “a love of exploring to the limits the extreme or perverse in human nature” (IE, 93). And insofar as we find his accounts compelling, that is a flaw in us. In her final chapter, Grene considers the politics emerging from existentialism through Les Temps modernes of solidarity, revolution, and a free society of equals. At first sight, she sees it as an incongruent addition to the individualist and conflictual philosophy of existentialism. However, on reflection Grene acknowledges that such a politics can be connected through the experiences of the occupation and oppression, and the choices made within those contexts. She is struck by the brilliance of Sartre’s insight into the authenticity of freedom in the face of torture and death. In her view the distinctive experience of the French under occupation gave the existentialists an understanding of the limits of human freedom. The idea that when we choose we choose for everyone, which Grene finds dubious in Existentialism is a Humanism, appears true in the case of the French resistance. She writes, “Like the experience of liberty in enslavement, the experience of ‘total responsibility in total solitude’ is here undeniably genuine” (IE, 100). Nonetheless, Grene remains skeptical as to how this genuine experience can become an abstract theory of freedom. As an exception, Grene’s outline of Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew, which she calls “Portrait of the Anti-Semite,” is complimentary; in her reading it goes beyond the idea of an eighteenth-century thinker such as Hume who believed people would revise their prejudices once presented with appropriate evidence (IE, 105). Instead, Sartre argues that anti-Semitism is fundamentally a project of hate, a view that Grene finds incisive and penetrating, although depressing. She quotes his brilliant analysis of the impossibility of rationally arguing with a racist. For Sartre, anti-Semitism and other forms of racism are a passion and impervious to reason as they are an attempt to be something, to avoid doubt and uncertainty. Others adopt hatred as a way of distinguishing themselves, a phenomenon Grene points out is exemplified in “L’Enfance d’un chef.”31 While Grene finds these analyses both insightful and expressive of his philosophical views, she concludes that the problem of connecting political and social theory with existentialism’s tenets concerning individuals is acute.

34

Marguerite La Caz

Citing Sartre’s articles on materialism and revolution in Les Temps Modernes, she says, “the theory as a whole has a certain artificiality about it: it is, again, somehow too logical in the wrong places” (IE, 113), in spite of the plausibility of his equating the free and the revolutionary act. Her first criticism is that the transcendent freedom essential to Sartre’s existentialism would mean that an individual living in a free society would have to strive against that freedom, an issue based on the need for a more substantial value than freedom. Grene also disagrees with Sartre’s characterization of the working class in the United States, who, she believes, are not as class conscious as those in France. Nevertheless, her most damning criticism, in her view, is that Sartre cannot provide a direct account of solidarity and the basis for the recognition of the freedom of others because of his conflictual account of human relations in Being and Nothingness. For Grene, there is no basis for reciprocal recognition in his account and so, no basis for his political theory. She concludes that “the existentialists’ account of the nature of the value-problem, its nature as a living, inescapable reality for each individual person, illuminates at many points the dilemma of ourselves and our time, perhaps even of humanity. But its very concreteness, the very brilliance of its insights, preclude a general solution” (IE, 149). Writing about Sartre’s work in subsequent years, Grene finds that a glimmer of an account of freedom within the limits of our situation can be seen in Sartre’s writings on Jean Genet and Gustav Flaubert.32 However, even later, in response to a criticism of her earlier interpretation by David Detmer, she wrote “no such change took place” in Sartre’s views.33 Whereas Grene devotes detailed analyses to Sartre’s work, her references to Beauvoir are scant. SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR While Grene does not go into detail concerning Beauvoir’s work in any of her texts, what she does say is interesting. Grene mentions Beauvoir only briefly in Introduction to Existentialism in relation to Stendhal and The Red and the Black (IE, 57) and Pyrrhus and Cineas (IE, 73). There is a bit more detail in relation to revenge and punishment in Beauvoir’s “An Eye for an Eye” (IE, 101); Grene takes Beauvoir to be showing the social implications of Sartre’s analysis of hate in Being and Nothingness, or its relevance to human types or patterns of behavior. She provides a long quotation from the essay without any comment, then goes on to say that Beauvoir’s account of vengeance and punishment is a repetition of “Sartre’s theme of the selfdefeating character of the passions, moreover, and, more broadly, of the double-faced paradoxical character of our freedom itself” (IE, 102). Grene

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

35

makes one concession here—that the problem of punishment and its symbolic character is complex as it involves a person who is also treated as a symbol of wrongdoing—but, ultimately, Grene takes Beauvoir to be spelling out the implications of Sartre’s view of freedom. In addition, she thinks the problems Beauvoir finds in the debasement of human beings to a thing is precisely what Sartre describes in his account of concrete relations to others. While Grene acknowledges that Beauvoir’s view of intersubjectivity differs from Sartre’s in some ways, she maintains it is similar on the crucial point that it does not provide a basis for reciprocal recognition (IE, 120) and does not explain how it is different.34 Thus, there are a number of places where Grene’s ideas could be further explicated in relation to Beauvoir. In a review of The Second Sex, Grene acknowledges that Beauvoir has made an important contribution to existentialism by providing an account of women’s sexuality, but argues that Beauvoir gives no weight to physiological factors and considers sexuality completely “man-made” or socially constructed, thus adding to that interpretation of her work.35 Her treatment of Beauvoir’s arguments prefigure readings for the next several decades. MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY Grene’s most sympathetic account of a philosopher’s work appears in her elucidations of Merleau-Ponty. She first read his Phenomenology of Perception in 1960 and found it to be “something of a revelation”: “Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of the primacy of perception, of his reflection on human perception in particular, gave me a starting point, not made explicit in Polyani’s account of from-to knowing, for a radically post-Cartesian conception of persons as part of living nature, but with a difference.”36 In her Philosophical Testament, Grene describes how she sees Merleau-Ponty as taking Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world and contends, “as he uses it, it appears to me by far the best concept available for the rethinking of philosophical questions about human beings as responsible agents and in particular as knowers.”37 She claims, more emphatically, “Merleau-Ponty has left us, I still believe, the most effective account so far of what it is to be in a world: to be a person living his (her) life in the odd fashion vouchsafed us by the contingencies of global, biological and human history.”38 What is most significant in MerleauPonty’s work, according to Grene, is the sense of humans having a history, and the cogito having spatiality and duration, without an emphasis on the future.39 Instead, he begins in the present and moves toward the past and the future. Grene appreciates the aspect of realism in Merleau-Ponty’s work, which she believes contrasts with Husserl’s phenomenology.40 She finds his discussion of painting particularly useful, especially the way he writes about

36

Marguerite La Caz

the work of Paul Cézanne as an attempt to create nature.41 Painting, according to Merleau-Ponty, shows us our being-in-the world and our embodiment. Grene notes that sculpture and music can also illuminate our being, which Merleau-Ponty acknowledges, but he still sees visual perception as the clearest expression of embodiment. She also compares his account of perception as a mutuality of subject and object favorably to that of Sartre’s, which she describes as “seesawing” instead.42 The writing here is lyrical in supporting Merleau-Ponty’s focus on visual perception rather than word: “The man of vision may teach us, in contrast, how to begin to build a philosophy of indwelling. He shows us how in our very distance from things we are near them; he recreates conceptually, as, for him, the painter does iconically, our mediated immediacy, our attachment through detachment, the very core of our way of being-in-a-world, the puzzle of our freedom.”43 For Grene, Merleau-Ponty overcomes the loneliness and alienation she finds in the other existential philosophers. CONCLUSION Like other thinkers of her time, Grene separates Husserl as phenomenologist from the other philosophers as existentialists. She is very critical of Husserl, as she sees him as an idealist focused purely on consciousness, rather than on reality and embodiment like Merleau-Ponty.44 She seems to think this position and the reductions represent phenomenology, which is why she treats the other philosophers as existentialists, at least in her early work.45 Furthermore, in her book-length account of existentialism, Grene treats existentialists thematically rather than individually, although I have teased out her accounts of individual thinkers. Her reception of Beauvoir’s work as applications of Sartre’s accounts clearly met with acceptance for a long time. In her later work, she reflects on the reception of continental philosophy in the United States and focuses on Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.46 Current research could engage with her posing of the problem of values for existentialism as a tension between the focus on the concrete at the expense of the general, and the need for stronger accounts of community, history, and tradition. NOTES 1. Jean Gayon, “Marjorie Grene: Personal Memories,” Biological Theory 4 no. 2 (2009):188. Nevertheless, in her monograph, Jaspers is grouped with Gabriel Marcel and treated very critically under the heading “The New Revelation.” Marjorie Grene, Introduction to Existentialism, first published as Dreadful Freedom: A Critique of

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

37

Existentialism, 1948 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 122–41. Her later essays are more laudatory. See Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 70–73, 79–86. 2. See Lesley Cohen for a criticism of both Grene’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views of embodiment: Alan Donagan, et al., eds. Human Nature and Natural Knowledge: Essays Presented to Marjorie Grene on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Dordrecht: Springer, 1986). 3. Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, xi. 4. Grene, “On Heidegger,” Encounter 55 (April 1958):69. 5. Grene, Sartre (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973). 6. Randall E. Auxier and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene (Chicago: Open Court, 2002), 26. 7. Ibid., 540. 8. Ibid., 3; Richard Burian, “In Memoriam: Marjorie Glicksman Grene (1910– 2009),” Virginia Tech Department of Philosophy, 2009, https:​//​www​.phil​.vt​.edu​/ people​/memoriam​.html. Accessed August 20, 2020. 9. Auxier and Hahn, Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, 4. 10. Ibid., 10. 11. Grene, Introduction to Existentialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 4; hereafter parenthetically cited as IE. 12. Betty Vassiliki Smocovitis, “Marjorie, Matriarchy, and ‘Wretched Reflection’: A Personal Remembrance of Marjorie Grene,” Biological Theory 4 no. 2 (2009): 194. 13. Baldassar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, ed. Daniel Javitch (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2002). 14. Marjorie Grene, A Philosophical Testament (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 73. 15. Ibid., 75. 16. Ibid., 71. 17. Ibid., 77. 18. Ibid., 78. 19. However, in later reflections, Grene says that there is a deep connection between Heidegger’s account of authenticity and his “undoubted Nazism or fanatical German nationalism.” Ibid., 77–78. 20. Sherover criticizes Grene’s approach to Heidegger, which she stands by in the main. Auxier and Hahn, The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, 537–50. 21. See Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 46, 69. 22. For more detail, see Grene, Martin Heidegger (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1957), 32–35. She also discusses Heidegger’s later work in this text. 23. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 22. 24. Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 2007), 232. 25. Grene, Martin Heidegger, 50. 26. Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 59.

38

Marguerite La Caz

27. In a later essay Grene expresses doubt concerning whether existentialism is despairing. See Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 75. 28. Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Edith Hamilton, Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 189b–193d. 29. It is surprising that Grene does not acknowledge Beauvoir’s discussion of human development or Sartre’s own recognition that other relationships would need to be described in a more nuanced way. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel Barnes (London: Routledge, 2003), 428. 30. This is a place where Beauvoir’s ideas of solidarity and common action are relevant. 31. Jean-Paul Sartre, “L’Enfance d’un chef,” Le Mur (Paris: Gallimard, 1966). 32. See Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 121–22, and Grene, Sartre (New York: New Viewpoints, 1973), 278–87. 33. Auxier and Hahn, Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, 565. 34. See Grene, “Authenticity: An Existential Virtue,” Philosophy in and out of Europe, 57, for a brief discussion of Beauvoir’s view that our freedom depends on that of others and several references to Beauvoir’s Memoirs in other essays: 87, 91, 121. R. Lanier Anderson argues that a serious argument to show how the interconnection of freedoms entails a demand for respect for freedom is still needed, in “On Marjorie Grene’s ‘Authenticity: An Existential Virtue,’” Ethics, 125 no. 3 (2015): 819. 35. Grene, “Á nous la liberté! Review of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir,” New Republic (March 9, 1953):22; Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 118. 36. Auxier and Hahn, The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene, 20. 37. Grene, A Philosophical Testament, 69. 38. Ibid., 80. 39. Ibid., 84. 40. Ibid., 85–87. See also Grene, “Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology,” Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976): 622, and Grene, “The Sense of Things,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 38 no. 4 (1980): 377–89. 41. Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 93. 42. Ibid., 94–95. 43. Ibid., 106. 44. Ibid., 27–28. 45. Grene, A Philosophical Testament, 85–87. However, see her later discussion in which she says “Now of course Heidegger was never an ‘existentialist.’” Philosophy in and out of Europe, 29, and Martin Heidegger, 12. 46. Grene, Philosophy in and out of Europe, 24–37.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, R. Lanier. “On Marjorie Grene’s ‘Authenticity: An Existential Virtue.’” Ethics 125 (3): 815–19, 2015.

Marjorie Glicksman Grene and Existentialism’s Important Truth

39

Castiglione, Baldassarre, and Javitch, Daniel. The Book of the Courtier: The Singleton Translation: An Authoritative Text, Criticism. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. Gayon, Jean. “Marjorie Grene: Personal Memories.” Biological Theory 4 (2): 188– 90, 2009. Grene, Marjorie. “À nous la liberté! Review of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir,” New Republic (March 9, 1953). ———. A Philosophical Testament. Chicago: Open Court, 1995. ———. Dreadful Freedom: A Critique of Existentialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. ———. Martin Heidegger. New York: Hillary House, 1957. ———. Introduction to Existentialism. (Third impression 1984). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. ———. “Merleau-Ponty and the Renewal of Ontology.” The Review of Metaphysics 29 (4): 605–25, 1976. ———. Philosophy in and out of Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. ———. Sartre. New York: New Viewpoints 1973. ———. “The Sense of Things.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 38 (4): 377–389, 1980. Grene, Marjorie, Randall E. Auxier, and Lewis Edwin Hahn. The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene. Chicago: Open Court, 2002. Grene, Marjorie, Alan Donagan, Anthony N. Perovich, and Michael V. Wedin. Human Nature and Natural Knowledge: Essays Presented to Marjorie Grene on the Occasion of Her Seventy-Fifth Birthday. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1986. Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell. London: Routledge, 2007. Plato. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Edith Hamilton, Huntington Cairns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel Barnes. London: Routledge, 2003. ———. Existentialism Is a Humanism (L’Existentialisme est un humanisme); Including A Commentary on The Stranger (Explication de L’Étranger), trans Carol Macomber. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. ———. “L’Enfance d’un chef,” Le mur. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty. “Marjorie, Matriarchy, and ‘Wretched Reflection’: A Personal Remembrance of Marjorie Grene.” Biological Theory 4 (2): 191–95. https:​ //​doi​.org​/10​.1162​/biot​.2009​.4​.2​.191, 2009.

Chapter Three

On Arendt and Luxemburg Christian Lotz

“At the beginning of every social advance, there was the deed.” Rosa Luxemburg, The Proletarian Woman (1914)

In a 1956 letter to Kurt Blumenfeld, Arendt mentions, with pride, that after a talk at Berkeley and during a “boozed-up party,” students told her that they thought of her as “Rosa’s second coming,” even though Arendt had not made any mention of Luxemburg during her talk.1 Not incidentally, 1956 is also the year of the Hungarian Revolution, about which Arendt wrote an essay that she dedicated to the memory of Luxemburg.2 In a letter to her husband and then Bard College professor Heinrich Blücher, who was active in the Communist Party (KPD) until their pre-war move to Paris,3 she expresses her hope that Luxemburg can be used by the young Hungarian generation as a signpost for how “free human beings” can achieve “political control.”4 Although Luxemburg does not have as prominent a place in Arendt’s thinking as other political philosophers, she comes up in her work at decisive points in the development of her political thought. In her review of Nettl’s 1966 biography of Luxemburg, Arendt claims Luxemburg is neither a classical Marxist nor a Communist,5 which is certainly contentious and must sound odd to many Marxist ears, if not offensive. Despite the response, we must remember that the cold war was still in full swing in the 1960s and dogmatic party doctrines in Russia and, most embarrassingly, in the GDR, warned of “Luxemburgianism” which was blamed for the failure of the German Revolution in 1918/19, thereby following the KPD leader Ruth Fisher who, in 1924, went so far as to call Luxemburgianism the “syphilis in the labor movement.”6 Moreover, because of its “anti-communist instrumentalization of Luxemburg,” Nettl’s leftist Luxemburg biography was banned in the 41

42

Christian Lot

GDR, and Luxemburg’s analysis of the Russian Revolution and her critique of the Bolshevist position was not published before 1990.7 Accordingly, for the official Marxist Leninist doctrines in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Luxemburg’s writings were a dogmatically censored “no go area,” and given this, despite Arendt’s at times distortive views of Luxemburg’s historical position and her selective reception, it seems justified to claim that Luxemburg was, at least “officially,” not a Marxist.8 However we think in detail about the historical context for Arendt’s claim about Luxemburg’s pariah position, her move allowed Arendt to appropriate Luxemburg for central concepts of her political philosophy, including the concepts of action, freedom, public happiness, spontaneity, and council democracy.9 For Arendt, Luxemburg exemplifies not only a political thinker who emerges out of political experience, but also a political agent who is “very much concerned with the world and not at all with herself” (TWP, 451), traits that she could easily connect to her own “love for the world.” As all biographers point out, Luxemburg was willing to sacrifice herself for the issues that she took to be the most important concerns of her time, namely, social equality and political freedom.10 As we know, whereas for Luxemburg the decisive experiences were World War I and the Russian Revolution, the decisive experiences for Arendt were the experiences of totalitarianism, the following cold war, as well as the twentieth century, which she called the “age of revolutions.” We can safely assume that if both Arendt and Luxemburg were alive today, they would be hostile to the idea that political philosophy can be reduced to a perspectival and ultimately self-centered and a-historical identity politics based on group interests alone.11 They remained strong universalists and anti-nationalists throughout their entire lives; Luxemburg even more than Arendt, if we take into account that Luxemburg’s communist vision includes the world of plants and animals. As she writes in a deeply moving letter to Sophie Liebknecht from prison in 1917, sometimes, however, it seems to me that I am not really a human being at all but like a bird or a beast in human form. I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and still more in the meadows when the grass is humming with bees than at one of our party congresses. I can say that to you, for you will not promptly suspect me of treason to socialism! You know that I really hope to die at my post, in a street fight or in prison.12

Besides their universalist outlook, it seems to me that the real connection between Luxemburg and Arendt is their non-sovereign understanding of political action as something that occurs as a “miracle” in our world, which is increasingly determined by social necessities, behaviorist concepts of action, capitalist dispossessions, media spectacles, public relations strategies, and

On Arendt and Luxembur

43

technocratic visions of politics. Moreover, their concepts of freedom stand opposed to a certain modern tradition, running from Hobbes to Schmitt, that claims the political realm and political freedom are founded upon sovereignty.13 In contrast, and most visible in Luxemburg’s opposition to Lenin and Arendt’s essays on freedom, political action is only possible if sovereignty, which for Arendt can only be achieved in labor and the private realms, is bracketed when entering the political sphere. Due to the pluralist “spontaneity of the others” that we encounter in public,14 we have to accept that we are unable to directly rule over others, unless we replace politics with the implementation of violent means. Ruling over and power as willpower, Arendt argues, are only possible in private affairs related to social life, and every identification of the political with the social, despite its strong conservative undertones, leads to unfreedom and distortions. As Arendt puts it, “where men, whether as individuals or in organized groups, wish to be sovereign, they must abolish freedom. But if they wish to be free, it is precisely sovereignty they must renounce” (TWP, 231). Against this background, I will present central aspects of an Arendtian reading of Luxemburg’s most famous writings on the Russian Revolution; in so doing I refuse Frigga Haug’s Marxist rejection of Arendt’s appropriation of Luxemburg as “aristocratic thinking” that not only stands opposed to the true social-revolutionary motives of Red Rosa’s thinking and acting, but also seems to render it impossible to develop a contemporary “living Marxism” with Luxemburgian spirit.15 Rejecting Haug’s arguments will allow me to more properly point to some Arendtian motives in Luxemburg. FRIGGA HAUG’S CRITIQUE OF ARENDT’S READING OF LUXEMBURG Accordingly, let me first briefly outline Frigga Haug’s critique of Arendt, which can be found in an appendix to her 2007 book Rosa Luxemburg und die Kunst der Politik. I use her essay here as a springboard for my own discussion because Haug is well known in Germany as a feminist Marxist.16 In her polemical, partly angry essay, she brings out several points against Arendt whom she identifies not as an ally of Luxemburg, but, instead, as an enemy of Luxemburg’s thinking. The main point of her essay is the claim that Arendt’s underlying conservatism and what she takes to be her elitist-aristocratic thought stand diametrically opposed to the worldview of Rosa Luxemburg, which is based on the liberation of the proletarian masses and the will to establish a different society. In particular, Haug pushes five points. Let me briefly address these points. First, Haug argues that Arendt’s rejection of political action as being beyond instrumentality should be rejected, insofar as it cannot be applied to

44

Christian Lot

Luxemburg’s vision of political action as changing society,17 which, according to Haug, clearly proves that political actions in Luxemburg cannot be seen as acts that have no end. I propose that we dismiss this reading as misguided, since Arendt does not argue that political actions in the real world have no ends; rather, Arendt argues, first, that the essence of political actions cannot be reduced to instrumentality, insofar as they cannot be measured through criteria that determine whether political actions are successes or failures, and, second, that political actions cannot be determined and planned in advance through setting fixed ends to be attained through the manipulation of the means necessary to reach those ends. The essence of the political is free from the manipulation of means. I submit that this fits well with Luxemburg’s argument against Lenin that revolutions cannot be schematically planned along top-down criteria and brought about through party discipline. As Ernst Vollrath has pointed out, it is precisely Luxemburg’s noninstrumental idea of revolution, wrested from experience, that differs from the Marxist tradition from Marx to Lenin.18 Given this, it is astonishing, in my view, that Haug does not seem to understand Arendt’s point: action is different from making. Arendt, and we might add Luxemburg, thereby reject what Ernst Vollrath calls “metaphysical theories of political action.”19 Second, Haug rejects Arendt’s claim that political actions are based primarily on the structure of narratives and stories, and that these lead to the discovery of “who one is” in political actions. Haug argues that this is a heroic picture of history. Admittedly, she has a point here, but I wonder whether, at least in regard to the determining political figures of the past, Arendt is correct, insofar as we remember post facti leaders, such as Luxemburg herself, as those who have revealed themselves as unique figures throughout their political performances (and not necessarily through what they achieved in history). Third, Haug argues that Arendt does not understand that for Luxemburg actions are (a) based on changing society, (b) brought on by social necessities, (c) carried out by the masses, and (d) non-monumental. In this vein, liberation from capital and overcoming social domination are not issues for Arendt, according to Haug.20 Though it is certainly correct that Arendt underestimates the social goals of figures such as Luxemburg, which has often been the point in debates about Arendt’s sharp distinction between the political and the social, we should take into account, at the same time, that Arendt has a two-level concept of social liberation in which the necessary (negative) liberation from want must be accompanied by a (positive) desire for political freedom. As Arendt puts it, “freedom and equality thus begin only where the interests of sustaining life have been satisfied” (TWP, 135); or again, in different words, a “stage of liberation” must be followed up by a “stage of foundation” (TWP, 378). If we read Luxemburg’s texts on the Russian revolution carefully, we can see that this is precisely what Luxemburg assumes,

On Arendt and Luxembur

45

too, insofar as she argues against the Bolsheviks that capitalist society will be overcome only by the revolutionized working class and masses if the goal of overcoming the oppression by capital is accompanied by establishing a public sphere in which political equality reigns. True, Luxemburg argues that “there is complete interaction” between the economic and the social,21 but she nevertheless presupposes the distinction itself in her analyses of the revolutionary situation. I will return to this point later. Fourth, Haug argues that Arendt misses the central Marxist point, namely, that life after capitalism is supposed to lead to a world in which the life process can be politically organized,22 by which she seems to have in mind the idea of a communal democracy or some kind of merger between the political and the social. Although I agree with Haug that Arendt is skeptical about the idea of the Commune as the direct government of and by the workers, Arendt’s point is analytical insofar as she argues that, philosophically, we ought not to be confused about social life reproduction issues and the political discussion and organization of these issues. The latter requires, in whatever form, that we step out and distance ourselves from the life process itself, encounter each other in a pluralist fashion, and speak-with-each-other about the issues that are of concern for all of us. This minimal distance of the political from the social cannot be overcome if we are not willing to reduce politics to a form of ruling. One cannot be political and make a living at the same time; hence, the a-linear time of politics differs from the linear and cyclical time of social reproduction. Politics requires its own time and is not determined by the time needed to reproduce oneself, the family, and society economically. Accordingly, Arendt’s support of the idea of the councils and Rätedemokratie (council democracy) as the best examples for freedom in politics is not too far from what Marx writes about the Paris Commune in The Civil War in France. However, even if we think of the councils as primarily workers’ and soldiers’ councils, we cannot draw the conclusion that councils are the direct political organization of the life process itself. A decision about how to organize the labor process or discussions about justice, the common good, and how to live a proper common life differ essentially from the life process itself. Moreover, what Haug does not want to acknowledge is that behind Luxemburg’s support for mass movements and social struggle, she herself remained a supporter of democratic elements that can only be found in a Rätedemokratie.23 Finally, Haug does not seem to be aware of Arendt’s claim that the infusion of politics into private life is a sign of a totalitarian regime as it (a) destroys the distinction of the public and the private, (b) depoliticizes the public realm, and (c) extends the dominion of the regime over the entire sphere of human life.24 Fifth, as a final point, Haug argues that Arendt has an aristocratic notion of education, citing a brief critical comment made by Arendt about the student movements in 1968 and a short rant about the “disgusting” role of the

46

Christian Lot

social sciences in higher education in a letter to Mary McCarthy from Dec 21, 1968.25 What Haug seems to be worried about is that a non-“elitist” and social-liberatory idea of education needs to take into account especially the sciences and engineering as driving social forces and liberatory instruments. It seems to me that Haug is not only hermeneutically insensitive to Arendt’s text, but also misunderstands Arendt’s American university experience here, insofar as Arendt’s point is not that the social sciences and engineering should be removed from higher education and moved to separate institutions; rather, the argument is that an education reduced to a social science worldview will overlook that education is related to political education in the sense that, for example, we ought to be truth oriented in order to provide the critical and human resources to live a human life and to become good citizens. Arendt explicitly says she is appalled by the tendency to reduce higher education to a service to the society; that is, she is critical of those who look only for the status quo.26 Moreover, her critique of the student movement that Haug cites in her essay27 does not mention (a) that in the same letter Arendt applauds de Gaulle’s (desperate) move to allow workers more participatory rights in managerial decisions in factories, (b) that she complains about the world powers’ “sick military armament politics,” and (c) that she bemoans the police violence against protesters.28 What Arendt fears is the modern technocratic idea of higher education, which leads to the consequence that the political process becomes subjected to technocratic, behaviorist, and determinist structures. Thus, even if I agree with Haug’s underlying point that Arendt’s anti-modernism can hardly be brought in line with Marxist progressivism, I contend that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. What Arendt really fears is the loss of judgment; that is, of the capacities of individuals to come to free and responsible positions based on experience, understanding, and thinking. We might add that in an age of fake news, political spectacles, post-democracy, fragmented social media spheres, increasing illiteracy among student generations, alternative truths, and looming fascisms, all of which are brought about by many visionless and narcissistically driven egos, we ought to pay more attention not only to the destructive consequences of capital, but also, and equally, to the waning ability of large parts of the population to come to reasonable positions—that is, to the increasing loss of political reason, participation, and action. Finally, let me briefly point out that Haug’s polemical charge against Arendt’s thought as being “aristocratic” is based on a shortsighted understanding of the concept of “aristocratic.” In her rejection of a concept of political action and freedom that is based on will and willing, which leads to an understanding of politics as ruling over others, Arendt points out the following:

On Arendt and Luxembur

47

In view of the extraordinary potential power inherent in the will, we tend to forget that it originally did not manifest itself as I-will-and-I-can, but on the contrary, as a conflict between the two; and it was this conflict that was unknown to antiquity. The conception of the I-will-and-I-can was of course very familiar to the ancients. I need only remind you how Plato insisted that only those who knew how to rule and obey themselves had the right to rule others, and to be free from any obligation to obey them. This self-control, or alternatively, the conviction that self-control alone justifies the exercise of authority, has remained the hallmark of the aristocratic outlook to this very day. (TWP, 231)

Accordingly, with a more sober concept of aristocratic thinking, Haug might come to the opposite conclusion, namely, that with the rejection of autonomous and sovereign political action in Arendt, a strikingly anti-aristocratic position has been reached. In sum, though it is certainly true that Arendt philosophy cannot be brought in line with Luxemburg’s Marxism, I propose we reject Haug’s overall take on Arendt as one-sided and not very helpful. The question is not whether Luxemburg’s political position can be replaced by Arendt’s worldview, but whether Arendt helps us better understand Luxemburg. Accordingly, let me move on and come to a discussion of this. REMINDER: HOW DOES ARENDT APPROACH HISTORICAL EVENTS? In this short section, I would like to offer some remarks about Arendt’s approach to historical events, such as the Hungarian Revolution and the phenomenon of the councils and democracy that underlie the 1956 essay dedicated to the “memory of Rosa Luxemburg.” This seems to be in order, particularly if we take into account the harsh critique that Arendt has received from historians and historically minded political theorists and anthropologists. For example, Michael McConkey criticizes Arendt for her unhistorical account of both the Hungarian Revolution and the role of the council system in it.29 I would like to remind us that Arendt does not read historical events as a historian and does not want to compete with historians for presenting the most professional narrative in order to understand more properly historical developments in a field of competing interpretations. She remained a phenomenologist in this regard; for her, an analysis of lived political experience reveals the potentialities that are contained in such an experience. As Arendt reminds us, “no theoretical consideration can replace political experience” (TWP, 140), which one commentator has properly called Arendt’s “theoretical unprejudiced.”30 Thus, Arendt does not read the experience of the Hungarian Revolution as a historical event alone; rather, she tries to interpret and

48

Christian Lot

better understand the philosophical-political aspects contained in and shining through the experience itself. Her method is based on disclosure. In this vein, Arendt’s argument about the quasi-natural emergence of councils in political action is based on the assumption that political action that is not based primarily on the struggle for social equality, but, instead, on the struggle for political freedom, must contain (i.e., “reveal”) basic democratic structures, namely, on the one hand, a public sphere in which plural people can meet and act together via public assemblies, and, on the other hand, the public act of thinking and judging, which is speech. As Arendt reminds us, thinking as such remains, even when conceived as a dialogue, private, secret, and hidden. In order to think politically, however, we need to speak in public and with each other. The “we” only shows up in the in-between, that is, in the political sphere. Political judgments cannot exist as political judgments in the private sphere, insofar as they can only be genuine political contributions when heard and acted upon in public.31 As Arendt puts it, “We first become aware of freedom and its opposite in our intercourse with others, not in intercourse with ourselves. People can only be free in relation to one another, and so only in the realm of politics and action can they experience freedom positively, which is more than not being forced” (TWB, 220). Moreover, political action is an embodied and, hence, a spatial process. Accordingly, for Arendt the basic democratic “rights”—such as the free assembly of the people and free speech—are not rights given to “a” people via abstract, top-down, established institutions and laws; rather, they emerge out of the process and experience of political action itself. They are essential to it, and we only know of this connection reflectively and theoretically, upon phenomenological analysis of political experience. The chief political freedoms, or the chief positive freedoms, are freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. By freedom of speech I understand here not merely the right to speak out freely in private without the government listening in on what I say (which, as you know, is the rule now in all countries under communist domination); this right belongs among the negative freedoms of being properly protected from public power. Freedom of speech means the right to speak and to be heard in public, and so long as man’s reason is not infallible, this freedom will remain the prerequisite for freedom of thought. Freedom of thought without freedom of speech is an illusion. Freedom of assembly, furthermore, is the prerequisite for freedom of action insofar as no man can act alone. (TWB, 351)

Two consequences of her thought are clear: first, it is clear that rights, such as the right to free speech and the right to publicly assemble, are imminently political rights and do not need a complicated liberal or legal framework to be justified. Politics is located above and before rights, as its transcendental

On Arendt and Luxembur

49

condition. If political freedom in her sense is to be established, then these are necessary conditions of such a freedom: “Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance” (TWB, 221). In this vein, Arendt’s enthusiastic support of the idea of council democracy and her attempt to draw an ontological connection between political action and the public sphere help us understand that true, that is, direct and non-liberal, democratic developments, can only emerge when political spatiality is established as a common good. Thus, democracy and capitalism, at least on this basic level, are absolutely incompatible, which is something Arendt realized early on. Why is this so? Democracy and capitalism are incompatible with each other since the accumulation of capital, which knows of no inner limit, presupposes the unlimited process of commodification, which, in turn, presupposes unlimited access to things that may be subjected to capital, unlimited privatization, and de-possession. If we assume that this can be extended in finito, this process of turning all kinds of things from things that are accessible to all into things that are only accessible privately (i.e., through money) would, in the long run, destroy every publicly shared space in which we can speak and act with each other. Put simply, privatized space is incompatible with the idea of the public sphere. Arguments for the compatibility of capital and true democracy should therefore be rejected. Just think of the Occupy Wall Street movement that discovered that nearly every corner, park, and sidewalk in Manhattan is privately owned and subjected to the world of capital accumulation and finance. The desire to assemble in public, to freely occupy space, and to establish a political sphere in which a young American generation could, perhaps, begin again, found its limits through a tightly policed and financially controlled system of private spaces in which trespassing laws, at least in principle, could override democracy and the assemblies. In addition, capitalism presupposes a world in which political action has been reduced to privatized elections in which voters do not act, but, instead, express their political positions through consumer choices in a secret process behind election boxes, voting machines, or, nowadays, from home via internet or mail. We can safely assume with Luxemburg and Arendt that this liberal idea of democratic representation is deeply a-political, whereas the idea of council democracy is posed as the alternative to existing liberal democracies.32 As Arendt puts it in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “in order to understand the council system, it is well to remember that it is as old as the party system itself; as such, it represents the only alternative to it, that is, the only alternative of democratic electoral representation to the one presented by the Continental multi-party system with its insistence on class interests on the one hand and ideology.”33

50

Christian Lot

As Arendt argues in On Revolution, voters in liberal democracies play the role of supporters (or, we may nowadays say cheerleaders), but governments act.34 Voters remain passive audiences of politics, reduced to media spectacles and election circuses, the alienation of which the early Marx also bemoaned. Privatized elections are, in the end, the expression of the deep suspicion of a liberal age that believes freedom means to be free from politics. The last remaining political freedoms of the people are hidden away behind walls, boxes, and computer screens. Instead, we should hold the position that “the” people can only be free when they appear in a space that puts them together. In such a space people exist as people. Political action is based on the desire to be free in politics, which, in turn, necessarily presupposes a public sphere in the form of both public acting with-each-other, as well as public speaking to-each-other (i.e., not politicians speaking to us). Those for whom the word “politics” conjures up the idea of freedom therefore cannot feel that the political is only the sum total of private interests and the balancing out of their conflicts; nor that the state’s attitude toward the entire population of its territory is the same as that of a paterfamilias toward the members of his family. In both instances, politics is incompatible with freedom. Freedom can be the meaning of politics only if the political designates a realm that is public and therefore not only distinguished from, but also opposed to the private realm and its interests. (TWB, 227)

This brings us immediately to Luxemburg, who, despite her Marxist economic framework and the goal of the social liberation of the masses,35 was well aware that social struggle cannot exist in the long run if it is not accompanied by the desire for political freedom and the desire to begin again. Both aspects are intertwined with each other, but nevertheless ontologically distinct. ARENDT AND LUXEMBURG A closer look at Luxemburg’s writings on the Russian Revolution shows at least three central aspects that we can use for a further analysis of the relation between Arendt and Luxemburg: political freedom, public happiness, and spontaneity. I will first briefly sketch out the most important aspects of Arendt’s concept of political freedom and then use these for a second reading of Luxemburg, which, in turn, will help us see more clearly where and why Frigga Haug’s critique falls short. In the history of early Marxism the role of spontaneity in social struggle was largely reduced to the question of spontaneous resistance, that is, to mass strikes, violence, and general strikes.36 In recent decades, however, partly

On Arendt and Luxembur

51

due to the reemergence of anarchist thought, the focus on movement and assembly politics, and decentralized forms of resistance that are no longer (necessarily) related to the state, the concept of spontaneity has regained some traction. Not surprisingly, Arendt’s concept of political action, though it seems to be in distance from anarchist thought because of its implicit republicanism, has gained some traction, too. Luxemburg’s concept of spontaneity is closely related to her critique of Lenin and of the central role of the party as the organizing spearhead of the spontaneous energy of the masses. For Lenin, class struggle is the process that leads from spontaneity and direct mass energy to directed mass energy in the form of class consciousness. Accordingly, the party’s main function is to give the energy of the masses its direction in the class struggle. It is easy to see that Luxemburg’s critique of Lenin’s “top-down” approach to mass struggle and proletarian liberation implies a critique of a concept of political action that is based on a strong notion of a centralized will, as well as on rigorous discipline on the part of workers and the party. This concept is based on a strong causal element in which something—here, the will of the party—brings about the action itself and then, as a consequence, the willed end or goal. We might call this, as something that presupposes first a principle, then the action itself, and finally the end, an externalized conception of action. Consequently, what Luxemburg really criticizes is an instrumental concept of action and revolution within which the action itself is reduced to a means toward an end. The performative aspect of political struggle, revolution, and mass action is therefore lost. In contrast, a performative concept of action implies that principle and action, as well as the end, are aspects of the performance itself and cannot be thought of as reified and external elements of it. Freedom, for Luxemburg, cannot be achieved through a blueprint in which the party rules over workers. As Arendt understands it, “real spontaneity . . . comes directly from action and is not influenced by interest or theory from outside the action” (TWB, 137). Not surprisingly, then, what Luxemburg pushes into the foreground is not will, discipline, or instrumentality; rather, she points to the spontaneity of mass action, the celebratory and “happy” character of political action, and the non-foreseeability of ends. We can easily see how these three moments support Arendt’s view of political freedom as something that can only emerge spontaneously and as something that is essentially non-instrumental.37 We can see that Luxemburg’s comments on mass strike and mass action seem to foreshadow Arendt’s concept of action and freedom, insofar as she rejects, on grounds of experience alone, that the mass strike is “an isolated act of will.”38 Indeed, uprisings can “break out ‘of themselves’”;39 revolutions and strikes cannot be made and are generally based on “spontaneous general shaking.”40 All of this, she further says, “can be achieved and come to fruition

52

Christian Lot

in no way but in the struggle, in the process of the revolution itself, through the actual school of experience.”41 We can see here that Luxemburg rejects a model of action that is based on sovereignty. It is the case not only that political agents give up their sovereignty when they enter the public sphere, but also that the entire movement gives up its sovereignty, insofar as all need to subject themselves to the “messy” character of the process itself in which the motives, as well as the outcome of the action, are entirely dependent on the experience itself and its inner principles that come out during the action, which cannot be first determined and then applied in advance to the action. Class struggle is “messy”: it is composed of “acts of experimental, often of spontaneous” acts,42 which is to say, “spontaneous activity, the free initiative.”43 In short, revolutionary action is not “rigid and schematic.”44 Luxemburg repeatedly points to the joyous and celebratory aspect of political protest, mass events, and revolutionary assemblies. Political equality is not an effect of action; instead, it is an intrinsic feature of sharing the same process. For Luxemburg, it is important that this equality, as one that we experience in action, comes with emotions such as joy and happiness, with singing together and feeling free. As she writes: Thus the colossal general strike in south Russia came into being in the summer of 1903. By many small channels of partial economic struggles and little “accidental” occurrences it flowed rapidly to a raging sea, and changed the entire south of the Tsarist empire for some weeks into a bizarre revolutionary workers’ republic. “Brotherly embraces, cries of delight and of enthusiasm, songs of freedom, merry laughter, humor and joy, were seen and heard in the crowd of many thousands of persons which surged through the town from morning till evening. The mood was exalted; one could almost believe that a new, better life was beginning on the earth. A most solemn and at the same time an idyllic, moving spectacle.” . . . So wrote at the time the correspondent of the Liberal Osvoboshdenye of Peter Struve.45

It is not surprising, then, that while Luxemburg criticizes the focus on “discipline” as something limiting in Lenin, she is also concerned with the mood and “positive spirit” that must be maintained in a long struggle. The faith in the success of the revolution cannot be brought about by party discipline alone, which seems to be modelled after military action; rather, it needs to be accompanied by positive emotions and joy. As she writes, “the ultracentralism that Lenin advocates seems to us, in its whole essence, to be imbued, not with a positive creative spirit, but with the sterile spirit of the night-watchman state.”46 Against this sterility of military style operations Luxemburg poses a different picture that looks more like an “ordered disorder” and contains elements such as “the living fluid of the popular mood,” the “ever-living influence of the mood and degree of political ripeness of the masses,” “delicate,

On Arendt and Luxembur

53

vibrant, sensitive political atmosphere,” “waves of popular feeling,” and “the pulse of popular life.”47 This “living moment of the masses” goes back to “the active, untrammeled, energetic political life.”48 Luxemburg is bothered not only by Lenin’s focus on discipline, but also by the lack of what Arendt calls “public happiness.” In Thought on Politics and Revolution Arendt comments on the student movements of 1968 and points out that, among other things, one of the discoveries of these movements was the “joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one’s own effort.”49 Despite Frigga Haug’s counterclaim, Luxemburg points to the inner non-instrumentality of political action in which action cannot be reduced to a means toward an end. More important is the intrinsic quality of political action. What Luxemburg has in mind in her critique of the Bolsheviks is that social struggle and its political success cannot be measured in terms of direct success or failure. Political actions can fail; they contain a risk, as Arendt repeatedly claims. However, the success or failure remains external to political action. Accordingly, the inner “virtuosity” and excellence of action is more important than the outcome. As Arendt explains: But now that the emphasis had shifted so decisively from action to willpower, the ideal of freedom ceased to be the virtuosity of acting in concert with others and became sovereignty, the independence from others and the ability, if necessary, to prevail against them. . . . What is so extraordinarily difficult to understand within this problematic relation is a simple fact, namely, that freedom is only given to men under the condition of nonsovereignty. Moreover, it is as unrealistic to deny freedom because of human nonsovereignty as it is dangerous to believe that one alone—as an individual or an organized group—can be free only if that one is sovereign. Even the sovereignty of a political body is always an illusion which, moreover, can be maintained only by means of violence.” (TWB, 232)

In a similar fashion, Luxemburg, quite ironically, makes fun of those who think about mass strikes, revolutionary masses, and movements on the streets in terms of order, strict leadership, and discipline. Those “lovers of ‘orderly and well-disciplined’ struggles, according to plan and scheme,” and those “who always ought to know better from afar ‘how it should have been done,’”50 do not understand that the sovereign position that they want to ascribe either to themselves as leaders or to the party as a whole needs to be given up once political action is conceived of as a deed, in which the outcome is uncertain. This risk, however, can never be totally eliminated, and historical experience shows that in most cases, at least after the great revolutions in the West, political movements that desire freedom have often failed. Finally, we need to come to the astonishing conclusion that Luxemburg implies, even if she does not develop it explicitly, a two-stage model of social

54

Christian Lot

and political action. As mentioned earlier, for Arendt, large-scale revolutionary movements and small-scale social struggles can contain both social as well as political elements, but one cannot be reduced to the other. In the same vein, Luxemburg, in her most famous passages, separates the political elements from simply being identical with social struggle. Consequently, the famous and often cited line about freedom should be read as the political condition of social liberation struggle.51 Political action as deed, as she underlines, “began, as speech was forbidden and rendered impossible,”52 which is to say, she claims the desire to move into the proletarian struggle cannot be reduced to the desire to reach social equality; rather, it is motivated and pushed forward by what she calls “building up” and what Arendt calls the “stage of foundation,” namely, the desire to reach political equality in political action, which can be done only in the public sphere that is shared equally by all and in which they are confronted with each other. CONCLUSION As we have seen, Arendt’s reading of Luxemburg, even if we take into account that she disconnects Luxemburg from the Marxist reception, points to the core of Luxemburg’s thinking about political action. Luxemburg points out that any new beginning cannot (a) be calculated or determined in advance, or (b) be disconnected from the living experience of the social and political struggle itself. Direct political action is here conceived of as a performative process in which the future is determined neither in advance as an end, nor as something that is external to the action itself. Rather, the new beginning, that which is coming, is part of the action itself. So, what Luxemburg calls “socialist democracy” is not an external result of revolutionary action, but emerges in the process of change:53 The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, an historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realization, as a result of the developments of living history, which—just like organic nature of which, in the last analysis, it forms a part—has the fine habit of always producing along with any real social need the means to its satisfaction, along with the task simultaneously the solution. However, if such is the case, then it is clear that socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force—against property, etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways. Only unobstructed, effervescing life falls into a thousand new forms and improvisations, brings to light creative force, itself corrects all mistaken attempts. The public life of countries with limited freedom is so poverty-stricken, so miserable, so rigid, so unfruitful,

On Arendt and Luxembur

55

precisely because, through the exclusion of democracy, it cuts off the living sources of all spiritual riches and progress.54

NOTES 1. Hannah Arendt, Wahrheit gibt es nur zu zweien. Briefe an die Freunde (München, Piper, 2013), 200. 2. Hannah Arendt, Thinking without a Banister: Essays in Understanding 1953– 1975, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2018), 105–56. (Hereafter, parenthetically cited as TWB) 3. For a more detailed biographical sketch of Blücher, see Reinhart Müller, “Hannah Arendt’s Wunderrabbi: Revision eines Lebenslaufes” in Gesellschaft, Gewalt, Vertrauen, ed. Ulrich Bielefeld (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012). 4. Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher, Briefe, ed. Lotte Kohler (München: Piper, 2013), 488. 5. Hannah Arendt, “The Heroine of Revolution,” The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1966. 6. Frank Deppe, “Hannah Arendt und das politische Denken im 20. Jahrhundert,” UTOPIE kreativ, 201/202 (2007): 694. See also Ottokar Luban, “Rosa Luxemburg’s Concept of Spontaneity and Creativity in Proletarian Mass Movements,” Theory and Practice, International Critical Thought 9 no. 4 (2019): 512. 7. For this, see Ernst Piper, Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Leben, (München: Blessing, 2018), 591–603. 8. Some ideas in this paper stem from a senior seminar on Arendt and Luxemburg that I had the privilege of teaching during the fall semester of 2019. I would like to thank especially the following seminar participants for their contributions and for pushing me toward excellence and a better understanding of the issues involved: Duncan Tarr, Dominick Violetta, Sasha Morgan, and John Henrikson. 9. Jacqueline Rose argues that Arendt’s focus on Luxemburg as a “political pariah,” which is rooted in her Jewish “homeless” background, overlooks her position as a female pariah. Rose proposes rereading the exchange between Lenin and Luxemburg from a feminist perspective. Jacqueline Rose, “Women at the Verge of Revolution,” in Women in Dark Times (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2014). See also Maria Tamboukou, “Imagining and Living the Revolution: an Arendtian Reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s Letters and Writings,” Feminist Review 106 (2014). Frank Deppe (2007) and Frigga Haug (2007) criticize Arendt for not analyzing Luxemburg’s theories in detail. This charge seems to be contextually insensitive, given that Arendt did not take on an academic position until late in life. Accordingly, and to our benefit, her thinking tends to be worked out in essays and lectures, instead of in painfully exact academic investigations. In addition, we should appreciate that Arendt turned to Marx and Luxemburg when the American political system was in large measure still characterized by a hysterical anti-communism, and any serious reflection on Marx and Marxism was, for Anglo-American academics, a “no go area.” 10. Piper, Ein Leben, 101.

56

Christian Lot

11. For this, see also Sidonia Blättler, “Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt: Against the Destruction of Political Spheres of Freedom,” Hypatia 20 no. 2 (2005): 89. 12. Rosa Luxemburg, The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson, eds. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 391. 13. For a critical and enlightening analysis of the ambivalence in Arendt’s philosophy related to inner and outer sovereignty, see Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen, “Banishing the Sovereign? Internal and External Sovereignty in Arendt,” Constellations 6, no. 2 (2009). 14. Hannah Arendt, Denktagebuch (München: Piper, 2003), 1:81. 15. Frigga Haug, Rosa Luxemburg und die Kunst der Politik (Berlin: Argument Verlag, 2007), 16. 16. She and her husband, Wolfgang Fritz Haug (who taught philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin), were for years influential Marxists in Berlin. Among other things, they founded the largest and most comprehensive multivolume dictionary and handbook yet to exist (Historisch Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, HKWM) and decades ago, the journal Das Argument, which took on academic and public issues from a (broadly construed) Marxist point of view, thereby stubbornly refusing Anglo-American, French, and German post-Marxist thinking. 17. Haug, Die Kunst der Politik, 182. 18. Ernst Vollrath, “Rosa Luxemburg’s Theory of Revolution,” Social Research 40 no. 1 (1973): 86. 19. Ibid., 84. 20. Haug, Die Kunst der Politik, 185, 187. 21. Ernst Vollrath, “Rosa Luxemburg’s Theory of Revolution,” Social Research 40 no. 1 (1973): 90. 22. Haug, Die Kunst der Politik, 187. 23. Ernst Piper, Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Leben, (München, Blessing, 2018), 479. 24. See Arendt, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” The Review of Politics 15 no. 3 (1953): 303–27. 25. Hannah Arendt, Wahrheit, 337. 26. Ibid., 339. Do I need to underline that Arendt comes here astonishingly close to Adorno? 27. Haug, Die Kunst der Politik, 188. 28. Regarding both b) and c) see Arendt, Wahrheit, 337. 29. He writes in regard to spontaneity: “In reality, it is not even historically accurate to say that the councils have always arisen spontaneously amid revolutions— embodying an historical discontinuity.” Mike McConkey, “On Arendt’s Vision of the European Council Phenomenon. Critique from an Historical Perspective,” Dialectical Anthropology 16 no. 1 (1991): 22; and in regard to the distinction between the social and the political, he charges Arendt with the following: “Arendt’s insistence that the councils are properly a-economic, and that they have always failed when they have tried to intervene into the economy, is contested by historical evidence at a variety of levels.” Ibid., 24. 30. Ernst Vollrath, “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking,” Social Research 44 no. 1 (1977): 161.

On Arendt and Luxembur

57

31. Of course, under dictatorial regimes or totalitarian systems political judgments can be pushed into the private realm or into the realm of secret groups; however, in these cases they are not genuinely political and, in addition, they are based on the desire to exist in public if the dictator or the totalitarian movement would not hinder the existence of the judgment in public. 32. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1958), 499. The idea of a council democracy in general and in Arendt in particular has found some traction in recent political thought; for this, see Shmuel Lederman, “Councils and Revolution: Participatory Democracy in Anarchist Thought and the New Social Movements,” Science & Society, 79 no. 2 (2015); James Muldoon’s “The Lost Treasure of Arendt’s Council System,” Critical Horizons 12 no. 3 (2011) and “Arendt’s Revolutionary Constitutionalism: Between Constituent Power and Constitutional Form,” Constellations 23 no. 4 (2016); Roland W. Schindler, “Erschöpfung der Demokratie? Erneuerung der Politik? Hannah Arendt über Parteidemokratie und Rätewesen,” UTOPIE kreativ 113 (2000); Brian Smith, “Anarcho_Republicanism? Arendt and the Federated Council System,” Science & Society 83 no. 1 (2019); John F. Sitton, “Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy,” Polity 20 no. 1 (1987); and Wolfhart Totschnig, “Arendt’s Argument for the Council System: A Defense,” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 1 no. 3 (2014). 33. Arendt, The Origins, 499. Needless to say, Arendt echoes the general anti-liberalism of the left, including Luxemburg, for whom parliamentary democracy (at least before World War II) was the result of class oppression. 34. Arendt, On Revolution, 272. 35. Vollrath points out that Luxemburg does not use the term “masses” in a negative sense; instead, she uses the term in the sense of the Roman populus (political community of men); for this, see Vollrath, Theory of Revolution, 97. Accordingly, mass strikes and revolution, for Luxemburg, need to go hand in hand, insofar as the proletarian strike is the first act that pushes them beyond their capitalist chains. Revolutions are spontaneous since they cannot be derived from causes. They are, in Arendt’s terms, new beginnings. 36. Alex Levant, “Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Rereading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson,” Critique 40 no. 3 (2012): 367. 37. “The relationship between politics and freedom is not a matter of free will or freedom of choice, the liberum arbitrium that decides between two given things, . . . Rather it is . . . the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before, which was not given, not even as an object of cognition or imagination, and which therefore could not be known. What guides this action is not a future aim that is conceived by the imagination and can then be seized by the will. The action is guided by something altogether different, which Montesquieu, in his analysis of forms of government, calls a principle. The principle inspires the action, but it cannot prescribe a particular result, as if it were a matter of carrying out a program; it does not manifest itself in any kind of results, but only in the performance of the act itself. In this performance, willing and acting are concurrent, they are one and the same; willing does not prepare for action, it is already the deed.” Arendt, TWB, 224.

58

Christian Lot

38. Luxemburg, Reader, 197. 39. Ibid., 199. 40. Ibid, 181. For historical comments on sovereignty in Marxism see Levant, Rethinking Spontaneity. 41. Luxemburg, Reader, 182. 42. Ibid., 255. 43. Ibid., 262. 44. Ibid., 300. 45. Ibid., 178. 46. Ibid., 255. 47. Ibid., 301. 48. Ibid., 303. 49. Hannah Arendt, Crises of the Republic, (San Diego: Harcourt, 1972), 202. She points out: “It turned out that acting is fun. This generation discovered what the eighteenth century had called ‘public happiness,’ which means that when man takes part in public life he opens up for himself a dimension of human experience that otherwise remains closed to him and that in some way constitutes a part of complete ‘happiness.’” Ibid., 203. 50. Luxemburg, Reader, 181. 51. “It is a well-known and indisputable fact that without a free and untrammelled press, without the unlimited right of association and assemblage, the rule of the broad mass of the people is entirely unthinkable. . . . Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party-however numerous they may be—is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of ‘justice’ but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when ‘freedom’ becomes a special privilege.” Luxemburg, Reader, 305. 52. Ibid., 179. 53. For this, see also Vollrath, Theory of Revolution, 102. 54. Luxemburg, Reader, 306.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arato, Andrew, and Jean Cohen. “Banishing the Sovereign? Internal and External Sovereignty in Arendt.” Constellations 6 no. 2 (2009): 307–29. Arendt, Hannah. “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government.” The Review of Politics 15 no. 3 (1953): 303–27. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1958. ———. “The Heroine of Revolution.” The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1966. ———. Crises of the Republic. San Diego: Harcourt 1972. ———. On Revolution. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. ———. Denktagebuch. 2 vols. München: Piper, 2003.

On Arendt and Luxembur

59

———. Wahrheit gibt es nur zu zweien. Briefe an die Freunde. München: Piper, 2013. ———. Thinking without a Banister. Essays in Understanding 1953–1975. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken Books, 2018. ———. The Modern Challenge to Tradition: Fragmente eines Buches. Vol. 6, Complete Works. Edited by Barbara Hahn and James McFarland. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018. Arendt, Hannah, and Heinrich Blücher. Briefe 1936–1968. Edited by Lotte Köhler. München: Piper 2013. Blättler, Sidonia. “Rosa Luxemburg and Hannah Arendt: Against the Destruction of Political Spheres of Freedom.” Hypatia 20 no. 2 (2005): 88–101. Deppe, Frank. “Hannah Arendt und das politische Denken im 20. Jahrhundert.” UTOPIE kreativ 201/202 (2007): 681–97. Haug, Frigga. Rosa Luxemburg und die Kunst der Politik. Berlin: Argument Verlag, 2007. Lederman, Shmuel. “Councils and Revolution: Participatory Democracy in Anarchist Thought and the New Social Movements.” Science & Society, 79 no. 2 (2015): 243–63. Levant, Alex. “Rethinking Spontaneity Beyond Classical Marxism: Rereading Luxemburg through Benjamin, Gramsci and Thompson.” Critique 40 no. 3 (2012): 367–87. Luban, Ottokar. “Rosa Luxemburg’s Concept of Spontaneity and Creativity in Proletarian Mass Movements.” Theory and Practice, International Critical Thought 9 no. 4 (2019): 511–23. Luxemburg, Rosa. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. Edited by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004. McConkey, Mike. “On Arendt’s Vision of the European Council Phenomenon. Critique from an Historical Perspective.” Dialectical Anthropology 16 no. 1 (1991): 15–31. Muldoon, James. “The Lost Treasure of Arendt’s Council System.” Critical Horizons 12 no. 3 (2011): 396–417. Müller, Reinhart. “Hannah Arendt’s ‘Wunderrabbi.’ Revision eines Lebenslaufes.” Gesellschaft, Gewalt, Vertrauen. Jan Philipp Reemtsma zum 60. Geburtstag. Edited by Ulrich Bielefeld. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012. Nettl, J. P. Rosa Luxemburg: The Biography. London: Verso, 2019. Piper, Ernst. Rosa Luxemburg. Ein Leben. München: Blessing, 2018. Rose, Jacqueline. “Women at the Verge of Revolution.” In Women in Dark Times, 29–66. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2014. Schindler, Roland W. “Erschöpfung der Demokratie? Erneuerung der Politik? Hannah Arendt über Parteidemokratie und Rätewesen.” UTOPIE kreativ 113 (2000): 264–75. Sitton, John F. “Hannah Arendt’s Argument for Council Democracy.” Polity 20 no. 1 (1987): 80–100. Smith, Brian. “Anarcho-Republicanism? Arendt and the Federated Council System.” Science & Society 83 no. 1 (2019) 87–116.

60

Christian Lot

Tamboukou, Maria. “Imagining and Living the Revolution: An Arendtian Reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s Letters and Writings.” Feminist Review 106 (2014): 27–42. Totschnig, Wolfhart, “Arendt’s Argument for the Council System: A Defense.” European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology 1 no. 3 (2014): 266–82. Vollrath, Ernst. “Rosa Luxemburg’s Theory of Revolution.” Social Research 40 no. 1 (1973): 83–109. Vollrath, Ernst. “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking.” Social Research 44 no. 1 (1977): 160–82.

PART TWO

Imagining a New Social World

61

Chapter Four

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the World Elena Pulcini

THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC HUBRIS OF HUMANITY In a world crossed by unprecedented and radical challenges and the collapse of consolidated certainties, there is only one indisputable reality: we are immersed in a process of global metamorphosis that leads us unprepared, as we will see, into a new era. A few years ago, not by chance, Ulrich Beck once again grasped the passage to yet another phase within that intricate tangle of events we call globalization, and proposed the concept of a “metamorphosis of the world.” Thereby, we were invited, in order to understand the era in which we live, to make a radical change of paradigm.1 Indeed, a metamorphosis is not a simple transformation that, while it creates innovative change, nevertheless leaves in place the basic, consolidated certainties on which we organize our lives and plan our futures. Rather, it involves the collapse of certainties on which we still rely—and on which we relied even in the “risk society” of the late 1900s2—and forces us to think what hitherto seemed unthinkable, as the shock of an unprecedented disorientation redesigns our place in the world.3 We need a new paradigm, that, I would like to add, is able to deal not only with the radical nature of the metamorphosis but also with its increasingly accelerated rhythms and the dizzying succession of events for which, each time, we find ourselves unprepared. That Beck had hit the mark was confirmed a few years after his book was published by the growing acceptance of a new word coined specifically to describe, not an epochal transition, such as that from pre-modernity to modernity, or from modernity to postmodernity, but the beginning of an actual 63

64

Elena Pulcin

geological “era.” Replacing none other than the Holocene, it has come to be known as the Anthropocene. In reality, the term already had a history of its own since it was introduced, in 2000, by the chemist and Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen. As he expressed it, this new era is “the age of man,” the phase in which, starting with the Industrial Revolution,4 human action has become the primary factor that conditions nature and life on the globe, leaving a crucial imprint on the ecosystem.5 And it is evidently a negative footprint, if it is true that it lies at the root of the set of phenomena—from climate change to resource erosion, from the loss of biodiversity to pollution from fossil fuels and plastic—that, according to what is now indisputable scientific data, bear witness to an unprecedented and radical ecological crisis. It is no coincidence that the word Anthropocene is used so widely today; with the ever greater visibility, extremity, and pervasiveness of phenomena that are increasingly difficult to ignore, we now seem to openly perceive the danger of the metamorphosis we are experiencing, wherein lies the indeed unthinkable risk of the destruction of the planet and the extinction of humanity itself. The popular use of this term should therefore be welcomed if it helps to defeat the stubborn indifference that has enclosed these evils inside a Pandora’s box for decades; evils which, despite, or perhaps because of, their enormity, have prevented us from seeing and understanding them. Yet, as some critics point out, in this sense, the concept of Anthropocene does not seem to be entirely satisfactory. In other words, on the one hand it appears too descriptive of phenomena about whose causes we do not question ourselves enough and, on the other hand, too holistic in its tracing of the origin of these phenomena to the action of a generic humanity, rid of all internal distinctions (e.g., of class) and purified of all hierarchies (e.g., between the elites and the people). The economist Jason Moore energetically draws attention to this last aspect, proposing to rename our era the “Capitalocene”;6 thus, he attributes the responsibility for the ecological crisis not to a humanity understood as an undifferentiated and homogeneous whole, but to a specific mode of production—capitalism—with all its endemic burdens of inequality and violence.7 Nevertheless, while Moore’s is clearly a Marxist position, he develops a heterodox version that rightly denounces not only the constitutive logic of the exploitation of human labor, but also the tendency toward the (free) appropriation of nature. In short, ever since the fifteenth century—and then, above all, through the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century—capitalism has operated as “a world-ecology” based on the dualism of man/nature, a way of organizing nature which it appropriates “cheaply” for the purpose of profit and wealth accumulation. Needless to say, this thesis is to be welcomed with interest not only for its theoretical fruitfulness, but also because,

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

65

by finally recognizing that Marx paid attention to the ecological problem, Moore gives a militant charge to the concept of world-ecology, and to its overcoming, which is objectively lacking in the Anthropocene concept, and which, indeed, is greatly needed. “The time has come,” says Moore, “for a conversation about how to forge a radical vision that takes as its premise the organic whole of life and biosphere, production, and reproduction.”8 To adopt this perspective is to go beyond the theory of the “metabolic fracture” with which, in his much-discussed Marx’s Ecology, John Foster alludes to the fracture, produced by capitalism, which interrupts the metabolism (the Marxian Stoffwechsel) between man and nature, resulting in a whirlpool of irremediable structural contradiction.9 According to Moore, it is, nevertheless, still too Cartesian a theory. He contrasts it with the idea that it is not only external nature that is under attack by capitalism but the whole of human (abstract social work) and extra-human nature (abstract social nature), which he calls oikeiosis, life. Without being able to enter into this debate, we can, however, note an element common to ecological Marxism, which attributes, without doubt, the origin of the ecological crisis and its incompatibility with life itself to the development of capitalism and its increasingly irrational compulsion for expansion and growth. So, while this j’accuse against capitalism is a convincing diagnosis, it is not yet sufficient. Indeed, some have objected that since development in socialist countries has led to the same pathological effects, we should perhaps try to go back to more general causes, such as the industrialization process.10 The problem, however, in my opinion, is much deeper, since the dualism between human being and nature was not introduced by capitalism, but by a Weltanschauung that went before it—of which capitalism is, so to speak, the most mature and harmful manifestation—namely, anthropocentrism. In short, the merit of the Capitalocene theorists’ proposal lies in showing the intrinsic limits of the concept of the Anthropocene, by pointing the finger of blame for events at a specific mode of production which is anything but “naturally” inscribed in our destiny. However, it is also true that this diagnosis, in the end, ignores (or neglects) an equally relevant aspect at the origin of the ecological crisis: namely, the existence of a vision of the world, based on the dualism of nature/culture, that dates from well before the birth of capitalism and feeds its dichotomous logic. Anthropocentrism is traced back by some to the Jewish-Christian tradition and in particular to Christianity, as it gives the human being, created in the image and likeness of God, an undisputed right of dominion over nature.11 Since then, with few exceptions (among the most relevant being Darwinism), it has taken on multiple, successive shapes from humanism to Descartesism, from mechanism to capitalism, from the tyranny of a technology indifferent to purposes and values to the current transhumanism, all of

66

Elena Pulcin

which, in their evident diversity, are united by the idea of the sovereignty of human being over the nonhuman world. It is such a universally known topos that it seems trivial to recall it, were it not for the fact that it has rarely been the subject of contestation and criticism; and also, perhaps, because it has provided the ground upon which the patriarchal culture has flourished, the culture which, from the very beginning, imposed its hegemony in the West, inspiring in modernity the myth of the sovereign and self-sufficient individual. What is certain is that the germ of the ecological crisis lurks in anthropocentrism and we, pleased with our hubris and fond of our achievements, have not taken note of it. WE ARE ALL GUILTY: FROM ALIENATION FROM THE EARTH TO THE DENIAL OF REALITY In an age-old scenario in which the anthropocentric presumption seems to prevail over the will to contest it, it is significant that a philosopher like Donna Haraway has recently come to denounce the anthropocentric perspective. Indeed, while in her Cyborg Manifesto,12 Haraway was certainly not suspicious of a naive essentialism or wary of flirting with nature, she now sees anthropocentrism as responsible for the human domination over the natural world that has led us to have to “survive in an infected planet.”13 With the theorists of the Anthropocene, Haraway shares the diagnosis concerning the priority and powerful influence of human beings on Earth. However, she denies any presumed inevitability or neutrality, which instead wheedles itself into the ambiguous crevices of the concept of the Anthropocene, and which results in a reaffirmation of the human being’s centrality and superiority. Therefore, Haraway suggests, it is necessary to create new synergies, alliances, and “kin” between the human and otherness, alliances that this time she no longer entrusts to the technological hybrid or the rarefied skies of the posthuman cyborg, but to contact with the “humid,” chthonic world of the earth and its bowels, in which the source of life lies, because “we are humus, not Homo, not Anthropos; we are compost, not posthuman.”14 Haraway summarizes her proposal in a term alternative to the Anthropocene: the Chthulucene. With its complex and imaginative etymology,15 it alludes to new reticular forms of interactions that connect us to other elements of the biosphere, such as the Earth to which, as humans, we belong. Moreover, the metaphor of the Earth is anything but new: as well as being central to what we can generically call classical ecological thought, from James Lovelock to Vandana Shiva,16 it takes on its own particular density in some voices of modern critical thought that trace the beginning of the pathologies of our world to the symbolic detachment from the earth. It may

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

67

seem rather surprising that Hannah Arendt opens her founding text, The Human Condition, by evoking the first launch of a man-made satellite into space (1957) and capturing the strange reaction of her peers, not of legitimate joy or pride in a great achievement, but “relief about ‘the first step toward escape from men’s imprisonment on the earth.’”17 The fact is that for Arendt, this event, which marks the beginning of the “flight from the earth into the universe”18 dictated by the desire to escape the human condition, together with the “flight into the self,” sums up the alienation of the modern world, so fraught with unprecedented risks19 that it can compromise the very permanence of life on earth.20 The problem of the detachment from the Earth, or rather from the “Terrestrial,” was recently reproposed by Bruno Latour, who attributes its genesis to modernity’s view from nowhere, which considers scientific only that which is observed from afar. The earth seen by Sirius replaces the earth seen from the inside, but the inevitable consequence is that “we have begun to see less and less of what is happening on Earth.”21 This means it is our progressive uprooting from the soil—which has reached its peak now in the global age—that makes us unable to see what is happening in our very own home: namely, the effects of our actions on nature, on one hand, and, on the other, nature’s reaction to our actions. Indeed, this, I would like to stress, is the disturbing truth that does not seem to emerge sufficiently from the concept of the Anthropocene, namely, the fact that nature reacts actively to our dominion over it with the power of a wounded entity, and becomes, says Latour, a “new political actor” that forcefully calls us to answer for our actions: “the massive event that we need to sum up and absorb in fact concerns the power to act of this Terrestrial, which is no longer the milieu or the background of human action.”22 In short, we must take note of a truth whose paradoxicality also partially explains our inability to recognize it; by virtue of that same process that made us the masters of nature, we have become its victims, potentially exposed to extinction. It is a truth that we can legitimately trace back to more than one cause, whether it is capitalism (and not only the neoliberal version thereof), the “Promethean unleashing” of a technology devoid of any limits, as Hans Jonas had already intuited in the 1900s, or the delusional, transhuman dream of concretely defeating death by manipulating the Homo sapiens’ genes to take him to the stellar heights of Homo Deus.23 While they are different and profoundly incisive, however, these causes are, in turn, attributable to a common matrix: our anthropocentric vocation. A rare and exemplary denunciation in the context of Western culture was made at the dawn of modernity by Montaigne, who offered a severe criticism of humanism to us in his extraordinary Essais, warning us of the fact that

68

Elena Pulcin

“presumption is our natural and original disease” and that “the most wretched and frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest.”24 However, what for Montaigne and the subsequent critics of anthropocentrism was a pure moral criticism, enclosed within the confines of a precious theoretical intuition, today takes on the explosive charge of a concrete, extreme, and pervasive problem. Indeed, today we are witnesses to the consequences of our presumption of sovereignty because, as Günther Anders declared in the last century in the face of the horror of Hiroshima and the nuclear risk,25 our Promethean hubris has gone beyond the permitted limits. Yet, while undoubtedly a global environmental risk, the atomic risk paradoxically seems to be more controllable and circumscribable than the ecological risk, if only because of the greater impact of the political decisions and nonproliferation agreements on the international scene. Global warming, on the other hand, to mention the very heart of the ecological challenge, cannot be circumscribed. What is more, as yet, it is not visible enough to guarantee compliance with the agreements between states, as shown by the failure of the various climate summits.26 In addition, the costs to global capitalism would be unsustainable and the scenario is too “catastrophic” to be able to set our imagination in motion. That is why we have come to what could be a point of no return. In a few decades we have managed to break the earth’s long-term balance; we have damaged a mechanism that had worked perfectly since the beginning: that is to say, the homeostatic capability to correct the effects of the series of changes introduced to the ecosystem by external interventions, and to restore the temporarily altered balance. It is a mechanism that, may I briefly mention, is guaranteed in the first place by the presence of biodiversity, which gives the ecosystem greater stability, allowing it to return to its original state after each alteration. Today this mechanism has been dangerously damaged since the limit within which it can work has been exceeded by the violation and senseless plundering of nature—pollution (from CO2 through pesticides to radioactive waste and plastic) and deforestation, intensive farming, and the multiplication of waste, the impoverishment of plant and animal species, the wastage of common goods, and erosion of resources. All of this has upset the delicate, homeostatic balance and the very laws of the biosphere, which, as the set of all the ecosystems, ensure life on earth. This is a crucial point on which I shall only briefly comment here. We need to rethink the concept of life in the Anthropocene no longer only in terms of bios, individual, unique and unrepeatable life, containing the source of freedom and dignity of the person, but also in the sense of zoé, of that life which we, within the natural cycle, share with the entire living world. Perhaps we should free the latter from the philosophical and anthropocentric suspicion that, beginning with Aristotle, has identified it mostly with the pure realm of

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

69

necessity and indifferentiation, and instead recover its intrinsic value of sharing between the human and nonhuman, opening up the bios itself to otherness and relationality. In short, today more than ever, faced with the risk of the “loss of the world” denounced by twentieth-century philosophy (from Arendt to Jonas), any oppositional vision between bios and zoé can and should be overcome. This would reenable the former to interact with the living, and recognize the latter as the generative symbolic place of an ethical consciousness that is not limited to the sphere of human relations.27 Now, to go back to the crisis of homeostasis: although the effects of this upheaval—such as the explosion of extreme atmospheric phenomena from droughts to floods, the increase in “ecological” migrants and global poverty, stifling, hot cities, the destruction of the landscape and beauty, the rise in serious diseases and the proliferation of global viruses—are increasingly visible and dramatic, the answer appears wholly inadequate. And here the problem gets complicated: it is not enough to blame the great powers, their atrociously instrumental logic, and hunger for profit. All this is undeniable, even if it does not fully explain that sadly unprecedented phenomenon of intergenerational selfishness; that is, it does not explain why some political leaders (from Trump to Bolsonaro) do not seem to care about the dire fate that will affect not only the generations of a distant future, but also their own children and grandchildren. It is true, however, that, apart from this non-negligible erring, the logic of power, be it political or economic, is in fact elementary and relatively simple to explain: it pursues the “Canettian” objective of survival,28 for which it is evidently willing to devour its very own children. Bruno Latour is right, then, when he sees the role of the elites as a determining factor in the lack of response to the ecological crisis.29 From the beginning, with the concealment of climate risk in the 1980s and the dismantling of the welfare state, and then with the 2015 Paris climate agreement, in which the member countries realized that the planet would not be able to support the development and lives that they expected because there was not enough “land” left, they took cover, initiating immunitarian policies (which would later be radicalized in slogans such as America First, Italians First, Amazonia to the Brazilians) thus putting an end to any idea of a shared world.30 However, I would like to emphasize that this operation could not have been successful without our complicity. The lies of power (whether economic or political) have now been exposed, not only by science and the enormous amount of information we have at our disposal thanks to planetary communication, but also by the increasing visibility of the negative effects of the ecological crisis on the climate, society, the landscape, and health. Yet, for the most part, we persist in our neglect and indifference, leaving, to put it in Foucault’s words, every area of “resistance” to power deserted. So

70

Elena Pulcin

why do we not mobilize in the face of increasingly lethal risks? Why do we not feel fear in the face of the devastating scenarios that even the mass media now present us cyclically, albeit neutralized by the asepticism of the images? The fact is that it is much more difficult to understand the reasons for this than to unravel the logic of power. I have tried elsewhere to propose the concept of denial, a defense mechanism that with Freud can lead to a split between the cognitive and emotional dimensions: we know, we know reality, but we don’t feel because we prevent it from affecting our emotions, consequently causing a sort of anesthesia of fear.31 As a result, as Günther Anders had already perfectly guessed, our psyche is unable to imagine the catastrophe and remains locked in a state of anxiety.32 And we can also hypothesize a more active variant of denial, which is self-deception: a sort of “wishful thinking” that consists not only of withdrawing from a reality that is unacceptable for the psyche, taking refuge in a sort of emotional indifference, but also of lying to ourselves in order to believe something that responds to our desires—that global warming does not exist (or is not serious), for example—in order to maintain the status quo and preserve our privileges and our lifestyle.33 This means that if it is true that not all of humanity is directly responsible for global warming and the degradation of the planet, as phenomena to be attributed primarily to the logic of power, it is also true that all of us become guilty the moment in which we deny reality in order to persist in a form of life in which nature and the entire living world have value only in so far as they satisfy our needs and ensure our alleged well-being, and the moment in which we do not notice, paradoxically, its toxic effects. FOR A GENERATIVE METAMORPHOSIS: VULNERABLE THEREFORE RESPONSIBLE It is therefore our obligation to respond to the destructive effects of our power, or rather, as Anders would say, to its perverse and self-destructive effects. And we must do so urgently, while taking very seriously the hitherto little acknowledged appeal of Pope Francis in his Laudato si’,34 moreover reaffirmed by the latest IPCC climate report, which has given us no more than ten years to reverse the course of things and save what can be saved, unless we harbor the mad dream, like Jeff Bezos, the president of Amazon, of migrating to another planet!35 The radicality of the degenerative metamorphosis must be opposed by the radicality of what I would like to call a generative metamorphosis, which imposes an interaction never seen before between forms of collective struggle and forms of individual action and transformation on which to base the possibility of an Arendtian “new beginning.”

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

71

The good news is that in the case of collective struggles, we have more realities, models, and processes to draw upon than we think or learn from global information. In fact, we are witnessing not only the proliferation of wide-ranging ecological and social movements, from the most famous Fridays for Future to Extinction Rebellion, through Buen vivir and Convivialism, but also more targeted forms of mobilization and struggle, such as opposition to the privatization of common goods and the claim of food sovereignty against the multinationals, the defense of green areas in cities, and the denunciation of speculation on waste. We can also see all these motions come together, albeit still weakly, in political parties which, in the democratic countries of the globe, seem to be gaining consensus. These political parties and movements, with their innovative and detailed programs, are capable of dealing with the complexity of the ecological perspective that is seeing the emergence, for the first time in history, of a connection between the different spheres of existence: just think of the effects of global warming on the economy and health, poverty and migrations, inequality and daily life, food, and common goods. In short, political subjectivities are being born that are capable of a holistic vision, determined to counter the damage produced by a predatory capitalism blind to everything except its own survival, and committed to putting pressure on institutional politics to finally implement the ecological transition, in other words, that Green New Deal which, while always liable to integrations, can no longer be postponed.36 It is clear that the effectiveness of collective struggles depends on the support and participation of individuals who are also called to take up new forms of engagement, able to lead to individual practices and virtuous behaviors with radical lifestyle effects (from critical consumption to the fight against the culture of waste).37 In short—I would like to emphasize—it is in the individual response to the crisis that we can see the truly unprecedented and revolutionary aspect of the ecological struggle with respect to previous movements, such as the class struggles of the last century. The bet on generative metamorphosis is being played on this response, that is, on the ability of subjects to make a self-transformation, which is the prelude to a new ethical awareness and new forms of life that will be entrusted with the necessary paradigm shift. Unfortunately, however, the news in this case is not as good. Perhaps because it is more than a simple transformation, it is a metamorphosis of the Self that implies a real conversion: a sort of inverted Platonic periagogé, which pushes us to turn our gaze inward, to the earth, the nature with which that bond needs to be reconstructed, the “kin” with whom we have broken off relations since we reduced nature to a pure “extension of ourselves and our desires.”38 In other words, it is a conversion from anthropocentrism

72

Elena Pulcin

to ecology, which, to quote Latour again, “is not the name of a party, or even of something to worry about; it is a call for a change of direction: ‘Toward the Terrestrial!’”39 I should specify that here ecology is seen as a perspective that goes beyond environmentalism, the latter continuing to consider the environment as the home of human being which must therefore be preserved and cared for for humankind. It is an appeal that we cannot escape, Peter Sloterdijk warns us, as, in the face of “global catastrophe,” we are called to respond to an unprecedented and binding imperative that repeats to us, “You must change your life.”40 Perhaps Sloterdijk’s “ascetic” subject is still too compromised by the anthropocentric vision of a sovereign subject capable of self-discipline. However, we can draw on other proposals that are available (and this is another piece of good news) and appear much more in tune with an ecological vision. One such vision is the posthuman paradigm, already encountered in Haraway (to be carefully distinguished from “transhumanism”) which hopes to overcome what Roberto Marchesini defines as “ontological anthropocentrism,” that is, “the humanistic claim of man as an isolated universe,”41 and proposes the idea of the human being as a “hybrid fruit,” characterized by openness to nonhuman otherness. Another is Edgar Morin’s theory of the “ecological subject,” which boldly attributes the quality of subject not only to human beings but also to every living being, so as to rethink the human condition without separating it from the context of natural history and planetary ecology.42 We can also underline the range of critical perspectives of modernity united, in their heterogeneity, by their emphasis on the idea of relationship, such as the image of a relational subject featured in philosophies of otherness (Ricoeur, Lévinas) up to contemporary feminism; or the discovery, from psychology to neuroscience, of empathy and the biological basis of cooperation, up to the fascinating discovery of the relational ontology that is revealed to us by the “secret life of plants.”43 But the question is: What can push us to make these perspectives our own? What can motivate us to recognize ourselves—by breaking the wall of selfishness and indifference, fear and denial—in a different form of life and co-existence? An answer comes indirectly from the Anthropocene theorist, Paul Crutzen, in a passage in which he reaffirms the granitic persistence of the hegemonic power of humanity on Earth, unless certain events occur: “Without major catastrophes like an enormous volcanic eruption, an unexpected epidemic, a large-scale nuclear war, an asteroid impact, a new ice age, or continued plundering of Earth’s resources by partially still primitive technology . . . mankind will remain a major geological force for many millennia, maybe millions of years, to come”44 (my italics). Only one or more catastrophic events could perhaps remove humanity from its dominant position, thereby (we hope) opening a door to other and unprecedented paths. Indeed,

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

73

etymologically, “catastrophe” means radical change (tragic and mournful), reversal of the existent; and it is first of all the experience of loss that throws us into another universe, unpredictable, and hitherto unsuspected. In short, it is the experience and discovery of vulnerability.45 This discovery has just befallen us with the sudden COVID-19 pandemic, the first truly planetary effect—as now confirmed by scientific data—of the plundering and violation to which we subject nature, whether it is the “spillover” due to deforestation, or pollution produced by nitrogen dioxide/NO2 and MP10 microparticles. We will have to reflect for a long time on this experience, which is a sort of “dress rehearsal” for what awaits us in an increasingly less distant future. However, the inevitable question now concerns our ability to learn from the experience of vulnerability. Perceiving ourselves as vulnerable means inflicting a wound, a vulnus, on the hubris of the anthropocentric-patriarchal subject by removing him from his sovereign position. It means encouraging the awakening of what I like to call empathic passions, removed and sacrificed to the one-sided logic of selfishness and self-interest. And, undoubtedly, it allows us to recognize the challenges we face, so as to break the denial by letting a just fear emerge of the real dangers that today threaten humanity and the living world. In short, it is a matter of starting from the awareness of the ontological condition of human vulnerability, not only to awaken extinguished passions but also to open a passage to the blossoming of new passions, such as the love for the world whose urgency Arendt had already sensed in the twentieth century: essential, motivational assumptions to rebuild the alliance with nature and to access what we can define with Hans Jonas an ethics of responsibility and care. Because there is no doubt we are part of nature, and we must not only come to terms with this but also grasp its promises by taking leave of an obsolete anthropocentrism; at the same time, we are also the only ones who have the task of assuming responsibility toward the living world. And perhaps this is the heart of the only (and new) humanism that is worth promoting, one which disposes us, as subjects in relation, to care for the world and pushes us to invest our energies and passions in the unprecedented—and rewarding— task of generating the future. NOTES 1. Ulrich Beck, The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change is Transforming Our Concept of the World (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016). 2. Ulrich Beck, Risikogesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986). 3. Here are some definitions that underline the radical nature of the transformation expressed by the word “metamorphosis.” Cambridge Dictionary: “a complete

74

Elena Pulcin

change of character, appearance or condition”; Oxford Dictionary: “metamorphosis (from something) (into something) (formal), a process in which somebody/something changes completely into something different”; Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries: “a process in which someone or something changes completely into something different.” 4. But there are different hypotheses on the date of origin of the Anthropocene. 5. Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” IGBP Newsletter 41 (2000): 16–18. Among the ever more numerous recent texts on this theme, see Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (Cambridge; Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2017); and Gianfranco Pellegrino and Marcello Di Paola, Nell’antropocene (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2018). 6. Jason W. Moore, ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016). 7. More than forty years ago, André Gorz grasped the intrinsic link between the environmental crisis and capitalism, in Ecologie et liberté (Paris: Galilée, 1977). 8. Jason Moore, “The Capitalocene II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45 no. 2 (2018): 237−79. 9. John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000); see also Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017). 10. See Saral Sarkar, Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism? (London and New York: Zed Books, 1999). 11. See Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (1967). 12. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1991). 13. Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). 14. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 55. 15. Partly inspired by the fantastic narrative of Howard P. Lovecraft. 16. James Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Of work by Vandana Shiva I will just mention Il bene comune della terra (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006). 17. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 1. 18. Arendt, The Human Condition, 6. 19. From the development of technology, with automation and biotechnologies, to the atomic threat; see Arendt, The Human Condition, the entire “Prologue.” 20. “The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition, and earthly nature, for all we know, may be unique in the universe in providing human beings with a habitat in which they can move and breathe without effort and without artifice.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 2. 21. Bruno Latour, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (Cambridge and Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018), 70. 22. Latour, Down to Earth, 40−41.

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

75

23. Yuval Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London: Random House, 2017). 24. Michel de Montaigne, “Apology for Raimond Sebond,” in Essais (1588), http:​ //​www​.sophia​-project​.org​/uploads​/1​/3​/9​/5​/13955288​/montaigne​_sebond​.pdf. 25. Günther Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Mensche (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1956). 26. Including the 2015 Paris summit, due to the fact that it does not foresee sanctions and that it admits defections (as confirmed by Trump’s exit some years ago). 27. On this issue, which I believe to be crucial, I limit myself to pointing out Julia Kristeva, Hannah Arendt (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). On Arendt’s overcoming of the bios/zoé dualism and the necessary sharing of bios and zoé and the discovery of Life (zōé) in life (bios), see Raimon Pannikkar, “Mysticism, Fullness of Life,” in Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, Part 1 (New York: Orbis Books, 2014). 28. Elias Canetti, Masse und Macht (Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2017). 29. Latour, Down to Earth. 30. Latour, Down to Earth, 21 ff. 31. It is interesting to note that, in the context of the renewed interest on the part of literature in the ecological crisis (on which see also the beautiful book by Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), this diagnosis was recently reproposed by Jonathan S. Foer, who emphasizes the split between knowing and perceiving: “We are aware of the existential stakes and the urgency, but even when we know that a war for our survival is raging, we don’t feel immersed in it.” We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 11; see also Jonathan Franzen, “What If We Stopped Pretending?” New Yorker, September 8, 2019. 32. Anders, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. 33. On these issues, see my book Care of the World: Fear, Responsibility and Justice in the Global Age (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), Part 2, ch. 3. 34. Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (Cinisello Balsamo, Edizioni San Paolo srl, 2015). 35. Against this perspective Arendt already wrote: “The most radical change in the human condition we can imagine would be an emigration of men from the earth to some other planet. Such an event, no longer totally impossible, would imply that man would have to live under man-made conditions, radically different from those the earth offers him. Neither labor nor work nor action nor, indeed, thought as we know it would then make sense any longer.” The Human Condition, 10. 36. Jeremy Rifkin, The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019). 37. On the “virtuous” character, see the works of Dale Jamieson, of which I will just mention Ethics and Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 38. Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam, Love in the Anthropocene (New York: OR Books, 2015), 207. 39. Latour, Down to Earth, 58. 40. Peter Sloterdijk, Du musst dein Leben ändern (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009).

76

Elena Pulcin

41. Roberto Marchesini, Post-human. Verso nuovi modelli di esistenza (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002), 12. 42. See Sergio Manghi, Il soggetto ecologico di Edgar Morin (Trento: Erickson, 2009). 43. See Stefano Mancuso, Plant Revolution (Florence: Giunti, 2017). 44. Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The Anthropocene,” IGBP (The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme) Newsletter 41 (2000): 18. 45. A theme of great importance proposed in particular by the philosophies of otherness (from Lévinas to Ricoeur to Jonas), the enhancement of vulnerability is now experiencing a renewed interest especially on the part of feminist thought (from Nussbaum to Kittay to Butler). Among the works I have dedicated to this topic, I refer to my article “Between Vulnerability and Contamination: Rethinking the Self in the Global Age,” Genero y Direito Centro de Ciências Jurídicas—Universidade Federal da Paraíba 5 no. 3 (2016): 30−48.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anders, Günther. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Munich: C.H. Beck, 1956. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Beck, Ulrich. The Metamorphosis of the World: How Climate Change Is Transforming Our Concept of the World. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016. Canetti, Elias. Masse und Macht. Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2017. Crutzen, Paul J., and Eugene F. Stoermer, “The ‘Anthropocene,’” IGBP Newsletter 41, 2000: 16–18. Foer, Jonathan S. We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Franzen, Jonathan. “What If We Stopped Pretending?” New Yorker, September 8, 2019. Ghosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Gorz, André. Ecologie et liberté. Paris: Galilée, 1977. Harari, Yuval. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London: Random House, 2017. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books, 1991. ———. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Jamieson, Dale. Ethics and Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Jamieson, Dale, and Bonnie Nadzam. Love in the Anthropocene. New York: OR Books, 2015. Kristeva, Julia. Hannah Arendt: Life Is a Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.

The Ecological Challenge and the Metamorphosis of the Worl

77

Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge and Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018. ———. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge; Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2017. Lovelock, James. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Marchesini, Roberto. Post-human: Verso nuovi modelli di esistenza. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002. Montaigne, Michel de. Apology for Raimond Sebond. Id, Essais 1588. Moore, Jason. “The Capitalocene II: Accumulation by Appropriation and the Centrality of Unpaid Work/Energy,” Journal of Peasant Studies 45 no. 2 (2018): 237−79. Moore, Jason W. ed., Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016. Pannikkar, Raimon. “Mysticism, Fullness of Life,” in Opera Omnia, Vol. 1, Part one, New York: Orbis Books, 2014. Pellegrino, Gianfranco, and Nell Marcello Di Paola. Antropocene. Rome: Derive Approdi, 2018. Pope Francis, Laudato si’. Cinisello Balsamo, Edizioni San Paolo srl, 2015. Pulcini, Elena, “Between Vulnerability and Contamination. Rethinking the Self in the Global Age,” Genero y Direito Centro de Ciências Jurídicas—Universidade Federal da Paraíba 5 no. 3 (2016): 30−48. ———. Care of the World: Fear, Responsibility and Justice in the Global Age. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012. Rifkin, Jeremy. The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019. Saito, Kohei. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Sarkar, Saral. Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism? London and New York: Zed Books, 1999. Shiva, Vandana. Il bene comune della terra. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006. Sloterdijk, Peter. Du musst dein Leben ändern. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009. Stefano, Mancuso. Plant Revolution. Florence: Giunti, 2017. White, Lynn Jr., “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (1967).

Chapter Five

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisis Listening to the World’s Expressions Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor

CRISIS Few people today would deny that our world is in crisis. As we write this essay in late 2020, the world is in the grip of a global pandemic the magnitude of which we’ve not seen for several generations, the United States is being rocked by waves of political protests over the killing of unarmed African Americans by police officers, the American West is ablaze with fires caused by a confluence of bad luck, poor planning, explosive population growth, and climate change, and we are facing what many believe will be the most consequential election of our lifetime. While it is true that every generation feels, to some degree, as if it is living at the end of the world—or, at least, the end of a world—it is hard to deny that the defining characteristic of the present age appears to be an ongoing state of crisis. One of the ways in which this plight is most evident is in the various problems grouped under the banner of “the environmental crisis.” In some ways, however, confining a diagnosis to the event of environmental catastrophe itself is inadequate, as there is a litany of antecedent and connected crises; it includes problems of objectifying scientific thinking, the drive for competition and warfare, and the notion of human superiority. French philosopher Michel Serres takes up these interrelated problems in his works Biogea, The Natural Contract, Habiter, Malfeasance, and Parasite. And long before headlines regarding climate change and associated natural disasters—heat waves, droughts, floods, and megafires—became daily news items, Serres 79

80

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

was one of the first philosophers not only to diagnose the climate crisis but also to suggest philosophical pathways and solutions to engage this unprecedented situation.1 His book The Natural Contract, published in 1990, is a prime example of this. It begins with an analysis of Francisco Goya’s painting Fight with Cudgels, which depicts two armed men struggling in a desolate landscape.2 While the two combatants fight for dominance, they appear to be sunk to their knees in the mud churned up by their struggle.3 To Serres, the scene is significant because it makes evident that the struggle between the human combatants takes place in a manner that overlooks a third, common adversary: “Aren’t we forgetting the world of things themselves, the sand, the water, the mud, the reeds of the marsh? In what quicksand are we, active adversaries and sick voyeurs, floundering side by side?”4 Drawing a comparison between the two duelists and our contemporary condition, Serres argues that, while we have long been able to “forget” the natural background or “stage set” of our lives,5 the climate crisis we have brought about will soon thrust this “décor” onto the foreground and disrupt our lives as we know them. Yet quicksand is swallowing the duelists; the river is threatening the fighter: earth, waters, and climate, the mute world, the voiceless things once placed as a décor surrounding the usual spectacles, all those things that never interested anyone, from now on thrust themselves brutally and without warning into our schemes and maneuvers. They burst in on our culture, which had never formed anything but a local, vague, and cosmetic idea of them: nature.6

Ultimately, as anticipated in Goya’s painting, the background condition— nature—wins out, and we are “conquered, the world is finally conquering us. Its weakness forces strength to exhaust itself and thus our own strength to become gentler.”7 The culprit that has led us to this predicament, is, as Serres sees it, our structural mastery and extortion of nature, which has now come back to haunt us. The fact that Serres was able to foresee and diagnose our ecological predicament is in many ways traceable to his distinctive style of philosophy, a style that set him apart from his contemporaries, even while it remained acutely aware of and constantly in dialogue with the world, the background condition, out of which philosophy emerges. It is, perhaps, for this reason that Serres’s attention is less focused on the so-called “internalities” and footnote culture (in his case) of continental academics than on the wider conversation that philosophy ought to have with the world. And, if phenomenology asks us to turn to the “things themselves,” then it is in this very dialogue with the world and his assessment of the emerging ecological crisis that Serres proves

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

81

to be, arguably, more of a phenomenologist pur sang than those academic phenomenologists who merely focus on the structures of consciousness. The crisis that Serres so astutely diagnosed is not without hope for renewal. “Crisis,” he notes, comes to us from the Greek κρίνω (krino), meaning “to judge”: “a fork in the road,” “a choice,” and ultimately the opportunity to come up with something new.8 For Serres, every crisis is both a threat and an opportunity, a danger to stability and an opening for either renewal or innovation. And so, indebted to Serres, we will follow his assessment of our crisis, tracing the emergent mastery and extortion of nature at the heart of this crisis, while showing, simultaneously, where and how opportunities for connection and renewal may be found. DISCONNECT OR RUPTURE The cause of the “ecological crisis” is a disconnect or rupture that can be characterized in a number of ways, and Serres himself speaks of it differently in different books. Nevertheless, it is clear that while, in one sense, humans are fully “natural” beings (i.e., evolved on this planet among other beings with similar origins), in another sense, humans have become fundamentally alienated from nature. This disconnection or alienation takes a variety of forms, but one of the most fundamental and difficult to avoid is rooted in what has traditionally been the distinguishing mark of our humanity: language. All too often, when we turn to the world we do so in order to use it for our own ends, mark it with our own signs, or reduce it to our own terms in one way or another. In one sense, this is inevitable since humans, as zoion logon echon, are fundamentally linguistic beings. But as Serres points out in a variety of creative arguments, the word is not the thing, and our fascination with the word and its significance or symbolism can serve to occlude the thing itself. His concern is that when philosophy “comes across an object, [it changes] it, by sleight of hand, into a relationship, language or representation.”9 Serres, we will see, wants to get as close as possible to the thing itself. Might there be ways that we can reduce the disconnect between nature and our description of it, between what the world “says,” what we hear, and what we consequently think or say about it? When we turn to the world, how can we stop ourselves from receiving it, listening to it, and hearing it in our own all-too-human terms? How can we listen, really listen, to the world itself, as it is in itself? While it may be that we can never “speak” the language of the nonhuman world “natively,” perhaps we can learn to translate or understand the saying of the world in a less abusive and distorting way. If, as Paul Ricoeur says, translation is always a “double betrayal,” perhaps we can adjust things so

82

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

that the betrayal is not so one-sided.10 This is an essential task, because nothing less than a more peaceful and sustainable way of being in, and with, the world is at stake. THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF SILENCE An absolute precondition for hearing what the world has to say is silence. We cannot hear until we become quiet ourselves. What makes for advancement in philosophy and also in science, is inventing concepts, and this invention always takes place in solitude, independence, and freedom, indeed, in silence. We have a surfeit of colloquia these days; what comes out of them? Collective repetitions. On the other hand, we are cruelly deprived of convents and quiet cells and the taciturn rules of the cenobites and anchorites.11

For Serres, silence plays a crucial role in turning us around, in serving as a transformative medium, in both a literal and metaphorical sense. In a literal sense, silence allows us to seek a retreat away from the business and busyness of the world and its cacophony of human voices in order to efface ourselves and mute our own anthropocentric language. In Biogea, for instance, Serres shows us through his autobiographical descriptions how he falls literally “silent” on the Lukla path to Mount Everest as the winds whistle, jackals chatter, wolves howl, and darkness closes in upon him.12 Silence here is to be grasped as a transformative medium, not as an end in itself. In this regard, it is fitting that Serres has been described as a “Master of Silence,” a term applicable not only to his inclusion of autobiographical accounts of silence in his works, but also to his own literary practice, which is steeped in silence and darkness.13 Still, in today’s technological world, merely ceasing to speak does not bring us silence; we are still awash in a background of noise. Thus, in a metaphorical sense, Serres directs us toward silence as a transformative practice that helps to efface our human, anthropocentric, possessive language, and reorient and attune it toward what he calls “the said of things” (earthquakes, storms, floods, mountains) and the “said of the living” (plants, animals). Thus, structurally, the motif of silence functions as a linchpin to reinforce a new beginning, an emerging construction of the cultural-natural space of our language. Interestingly, Serres’s appeal to silence resonates with another key thinker on language and communication in our current age: Luce Irigaray. In a world where language is used to name things and master them, silence embodies the renunciation of mastery and signifies the willingness to listen and speak from a different language connected with a “still-unknown

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

83

world.”14 Irigaray, like Serres, seeks to emphasize the activity of silence and how holding ourselves out in silence is an a priori condition for the manifestation of the other: Thus silence will no longer be that which has not yet come to language, that which is still lacking worlds or a sort of ineffability that does not merit interest from language. Silence is the speaking of the threshold. If this silence does not remain present and active, the whole of discourse loses its most important function: communicating and not merely transmitting information.15

Thus, for Irigaray, silence serves as a place of hospitality and needs to be kept open to make language truly communicative; similarly, for Serres, the attunement toward silence evokes the movement that struggles against current language as much as it seeks to reinvent a language that converses and taps into the communicating realm of reality with more receptive, holistic connections. In this turn to silence, Serres is also attuned to the fact that certain “older” or indigenous forms of language or dialect have become “silent” or have been misinterpreted.16 This not only forecloses opportunities of complex, synergistic interactions between language, perception, nature, and environment, but also makes way for the misuse of linguistic terms, with disturbing effects. A point in case is the term “arroyo”: Robert Mugerauer has shown how misinterpretation of the term led colonists in the American Southwest to believe falsely that “arroyos”—watercourses with intermittent flows that could pass large volumes of water after heavy rains—were similar to any creeks in the American Northeast. The misperception resulted in devastating floods in the towns built along these so-called “arroyos.”17 EXPRESSIVE CONTENT Once we are silent, we can begin to hear what the world has to say. However, the first thing we realize is that the world does not “speak” in the natural languages of humans. As poet Denise Levertov admonishes us, “But how naive, / to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves.” She goes on to remind us that we are spoken to in “myriad musics, in signs and portents.”18 The problem is that we don’t recognize this as meaningful because we have lost whatever fluency we once had with the more-than-human world. Levertov suggests that the world does express itself. We simply need to get past the idea that “expressive content” is only communicated in the natural language of humans. Serres also argues that living and nonliving things express themselves— “everything speaks.”19 In this approach to expressive content, Serres takes an

84

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

important step beyond Heidegger’s influential philosophy of language. In his Letter on Humanism, Heidegger claims that “language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.”20 He privileges the human being as standing within the “clearing-concealing advent of Being itself,”21 while arguing that plants and animals are separated from our way of being by an “abyss.” Heidegger’s position, while helpful in decentering the human being from “owning” Being, and critiquing the fact that language has been subject to our own willing and, accordingly, has been utilized “as an instrument of domination over beings,”22 in the end, still prioritizes the human as the “shepherd of Being,” and dismisses “language [as] the expression of [other] living thing[s].”23 In contrast, while Serres will not deny our specific human linguistic, symbolic capacities, he highlights the nonhierarchical, interrelated nature of a reality which is always becoming (rather than being) and which emits and expresses itself along various intersecting tiers. Like Heidegger then, Serres moves away from a human viewpoint of a domineering language; but beyond Heidegger, Serres seeks to truly listen to the world’s variegated, yet intertwined, expressions in a nonhierarchical fashion. There are, Serres writes, four different kinds of operations: all (living and nonliving things) “receive, transmit, store and process information.”24 Thus, Serres’s vision of this expression is based on this ontological view of the world, which sees everything as engaged in processing information. Additionally, things for Serres are always interconnected, communicating, in fluid motion, and in chaotic, chance encounters with each other: “caused, causing, all things in the world ensue from each other, chained together. Whether fluid or air—even solids communicate—things respire together, they conspire with different breaths, but in a constant and total circulation that’s chancy, torn, chaotic and consenting.”25 This means that expressive content, for Serres, will always speak to the fourfold pattern of processing information, as well as to the communicative nature of things. In these co-emergent interactions, Serres stresses both the role of chance and the emergence of patterns in the form of “music, waves, codes.”26 And it is worthwhile to note that since the emergence of expression is born out of commotion and turbulence, our own human language emerges similarly from what we may call embodied motion, or e-motion.27 In what follows, we explore, with Serres, alternative forms of “expressive content”—not under the illusion that we can develop some kind of trans-species or trans-entity Esperanto, but, rather, with the conviction that we can come to hear and understand the world differently by listening to what it has to “say” to us in different registers. We argue that these forms of expressive content do not stand alone or simply disperse; they are part of a holistic reattuning of language along the lines of rhythm, voice, vocabulary, and tonality, that, although diverse, are still unified around the things that are.

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

85

SCIENCE According to Serres, the disconnect between us and things has been the following: “For thousands of years, we have been licking our things with tongues, covering and daubing so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions.”28 One of the culprits for this distantation has been the way Western science has developed, as it has been based, from the beginning, on the objectification of nature, analytic thinking, and competition. Serres refers to the catastrophe of the nuclear bomb—Hiroshima—to exemplify a devastating outcome of Western science, which he traces back to the scientific rat race based on petty feuds and “mere competition” that seeks “to outstrip the others for some mediocre medal.”29 Science does not simply observe and collect, it also transforms the world: “The very existence of the sciences changes the world from which they came, changes the world into which they go; through which they pass, and from which they come. Application is not only a return of information onto the observable from which it comes. It is the changing of things by the very presence and activity of knowledge.”30 He cites various scientists who have been both brilliant and problematic, for example, the nuclear scientist Ettore Majorana, who anticipated the danger of nuclear war,31 and Archimedes, who designed brilliant yet dangerous warfare.32 A true example of the “deeper” thinker-scientist he admires is Empedocles, who, in Serres’s words, reunites “wisdom and knowledge”33 and discerns in the universe ontological, scientific, and human-emotional forces (love and hate) that can explain the dynamic forces on our planet and in our lives. As Serres writes: “How to speak in several voices, that of things, that of knowledge, that of emotions, of each and everyone, that of humanity? Will we, one day, by dint of listening to the voices of the Biogea, say this language?”34 To think like the Biogea is to think through interconnected earth and life sciences that no longer put life at risk through traditional, rationalizing, objectifying sciences (such as atomic science), but that think holistically and rigorously about the role and commitment to our earth, thus avoiding major, human-imposed disasters that risk all. For Serres, the goal is to connect, as an intermediary such as Hermes,35 the two “shores” of the sciences and the humanities; accordingly Serres’s cultural ideal is to seek cross-fertilization between “science and humanities, monotheism and polytheism—with no reciprocal hatred, for a peacemaking that I wish for and practice.”36 The aim is to think unity and commonality rather than division and fragmentation:37

86

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

“The contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of love and hate are at the same time human, living, inert and global.”38 While the term “interface” between so-called hard and human sciences seems to indicate facile terrain, for Serres such terrain is uncontrollable, complex, and fractal, which he compares to the Northwestern passage, with its “jagged shore, sprinkled with ice, and variable.”39 Key to exploring this terrain is to think relationally—abandoning thought that is built around substantives and verbs and moving toward prepositional abstract thought, since relations are “ways of moving from place to place, or of wandering.”40 In his search for patterns produced by nature yet made accessible through scientific naming, Serres points to DNA coding to address a code “that corresponds so well to my body that it constituted it and that no other code corresponds to it.”41 For instance, as he tries to explain his “proper name” (beyond the convention of being called Michel Serres), Serres says, “the coding of my DNA says my true proper name.”42 This means that in addition to our human spoken world of language there is another tier, a meaningful physical-scientific pattern of coding. Write, if you can, the very number of my DNA, shorter than was believed not long ago, plus the combinations among the genes that contributed to constructing the hundreds of thousands of molecules each cell consists of, to differentiating these same cells by families, and lastly to specifying the colour of my eyes, the height of my stature, a certain programme of health, an original relation to the environment, etc. This is my name. My signature would exceed in length the volume of this book, for the combinatorial explosion launched by these numbers gives it an extension that would fill several works or, in a line, a vast distance.43

Rather than denying the connection between numbers and reality (“the real comes from this exact coding”),44 Serres points to a mesmerizing correspondence between the two: the sheer inaccessibility of the number of biological numerals hereby indicated “forbids being able to deconstruct or appropriate it.”45 Moreover, this form of biological coding is not in competition with human spoken language. As Serres writes in Hominescence: “The plurality of languages and multiculturalism cohabit with the diversity of living things, a diversity as sparkling in its variation of individual bodies as in its chain links of DNA, in which the diversity of languages is reproduced, as though in images, in and by an alphabet of simple elements.”46 Thus, for Serres, science is a helpful tool to reach toward things in their diversity—similar to other (spoken and written) languages—but it is also subject to the constructive nature of this alternative alphabet. More than anything, this scientific language will not only uncover, therefore, a reflection of

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

87

a material determinism, but, similar to the way in which we grasp the function of language, will also remain a language in development, touching upon the diversity and complexity of living and living together in mutual expressions. MUSIC Music, for Serres, offers another mode of expressive content. In this view, music expresses the a priori possibility for agreement and collectivity; music is seen as an exemplary mode of being in sync with the universal language of the Biogea; and, finally, listening to music is an entry way into the meaning of knowledge and beauty. In seeking to grasp the expression of the world, Serres turns to music as an avenue to understand how the world may express itself as an interwoven whole. Music, in doing away with what Serres calls the “individual pebbles” of beings, crosses the edges of our own sounds. Music, in co-sounding, turns around chords, tuning, accords—and thereby fosters agreements. While Heidegger emphasizes our immersion in the world in music-like attunements, Serres pushes the notion of music itself as a way of grasping the world’s expressive content and particularly the world’s relational way of sounding together. Both for living and nonliving things, there is consonance, sounding-together: “Before exchanging a single word, before agreeing on the code, we must at least emit a sound together.”47 On a primary ontological level, as motion and flux shake the world, individual sounds emerge. It is only by modifying the so-called individual “thorny edges of the sound,” Serres argues, that things can come to approach each other, establish chords, harmonies: “Being in tune musically and sonorously, the accord is the archaic accord of nuptial agreements [accordailles]. Together. A vibration in several voices. Coming together [jouissance].”48 Music’s chords offer a way to bracket individualized sounds to enable harmonic simultaneous layering. Beyond “meaning” or “representation,” music’s tonality stands central. Its consonant vibration tied together by a variety of voices thus paves the way, first, for the notion of soundingtogether, and, second, for the notion of a collective, an agreement at the heart of our world. Thus, Serres sees music as “the universal language of a buried contract.”49 Such music is heard in the elements: for instance, in the audible fluctuations of the wind. So understood, music allows Serres to make inferences about the emergence of human vocalization and language: “Thanks to the wind and through it, I think I understand how language begins. We too start from the commotion triggered by an emotion in the groin and translate it

88

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

by means of vocalizations, laments and cries into disjointed waves and jerky rhythms accompanied by showers of sobs.”50 Serres proposes we see the world—all its living and nonliving beings emerging together—in terms of a musical score: a score of musical symbols that reference the pitches, rhythms, or chords of the world’s varieties co-emerging and co-sounding together: a score, for instance, that contains “fluctuations of the wind,” “grapeshot of the ice on a tent canvas, the howlings of the pack and the yaps of the jackals.”51 Serres, as philosopher, thus emulates the abilities of a composer such as Messiaen, composing musical scores that may allow one “to hear better by reproducing it.”52 Again, the emphasis that Serres places on the notion of hearing here is characteristic of his idea that, beyond our usual systems of language, we would do well to engage in a transformative practice of silence and listen better; interestingly, it is through the practice of composing musical scores that a new and deeper way of listening may occur. Finally, Serres views listening to music as a way to enter a deeper world: listening to music can offer access to viewing the world in terms of “knowledge, beauty, love, or despair.”53 Beyond representation, listening to music can offer calm, and can offer peace, as exemplified in Serres’s words on listening to a prelude by Chopin: “No more war, no more sorrow, no more hatred, no more lowland, no more sweat or floods, no more breakdowns, no more cables that break, no more tears, except for those, new, unforeseeable, caused to stream by joy. Cataracts. And if pain remained, a magic ingredient made it shine, incandescent, and transparent, burn.”54 Music offers the possibility of what he calls in The Parasite a “sonorous utopia,” a way to think peace and calm beyond the fractures and war that are our current lives. Thus, as much as music offers us a way to think through the universal language of a buried contract, at the same time, it can also carve a way to a new sense of belonging and dwelling, peacefully, together in diversity. Notably, belonging here does not necessarily mean the absence of suffering: music, in all its complexity, can still include pain and despair, but they are no longer stifling and burdening—rather transformatively clear and illuminating.55 THE BODY Some of Serres’s most emphatic critiques of language come to us in The Five Senses. Here, language is accused of nothing less than a lack of fidelity to the world. Reality is a complex, folded, undulating, textured, chiaroscuroed landscape, which reason and language, left unchecked, seek to reduce to a clear, static, geometric plane in which “man is the measure of all things.” Even in

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

89

cases in which the clamor of speech—the din of social discourse, the noise humans impose on the landscape—is not an immediate problem, that is to say, even when a person is alone, language itself can undermine our primary, sensuous experience of, and engagement with, the world. The mouth that speaks, the mouth of language or discourse, “excludes” the mouth that tastes; the former anaesthetizes, the latter aesthetizes.56 But, if language “betrays,” at least in some sense, the reality of the world, what might be more faithful to it? Serres sees the body as one possibility. His repeated refrain in The Five Senses consists of variations on the empiricist’s rallying cry: nihil est in intellectu quod non sit prius in sensu. How does the body receive expressive content from the world? To understand this, we need to understand Serres’s distinction between “the hard” (le dur) and “the soft” (le doux). The hard is Serres’s term for the given, the reality to which we must accommodate ourselves, that which is imposed on us. It travels, we suspect, under different names: the given, nature, wildness, and so on. The soft, in contrast, is reality under the aspect of our reception, that which we bend to accommodate us, reality as we interpret it. It is easy, and tempting, to read this as a return to dualism, a rejection of the phenomenological insight that the world is co-constituted by the intending of the object by the subject. This, however, would be a distortion of Serres’s position. The hard and the soft do not represent two different substances or two different worlds. There is no (purely) hard or (purely) soft reality; there is only one world, which is a mixed affair.57 The point of Serres’s distinction is not metaphysical but didactic. He exhorts us to remember hard reality and appreciate its significance and its value: “We must identify the given which resists being named by language and which is still without concept.”58 If this is a return to “the things themselves,” it is not the phenomenological return to the experience of meaningful objects, but, rather, a world of objects and entities and processes independent of (human) meaning, a world that is inhuman and indifferent, a world that resists us, our words, our categories, a wildness that refuses to be domesticated. But the resistance of hard reality does not mean it is beyond our experience or that we cannot have a relationship with it. Again, reality is a mixed affair. The inhuman indifference of the world described by science and the threat of reality “red in tooth and claw” exist alongside our experience of the world as a home and reality as joyful.59 The body, it turns out, plays a special role in mediating between the hard and the soft. It is a “black box,” a mysterious site that functions to soften the hard: “Before the box, the hard; after it, the soft.”60 The body is where the hard (the given, the things themselves, nature) and the soft (language, culture) intersect and interact, co-emerging as mixed reality. For example, the raw material of hard reality (e.g., copper, steel, iron) becomes, through human manipulation, a softer expression of some particular culture or tradition

90

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

(e.g., the Statue of Liberty). Moreover, the flow of reality through the black box can move in either direction, softening or hardening—although Serres suggests that softening is much easier and much more common.61 This is because humans are softening agents; our fundamentally linguistic way of being-in-the-world tends to soften. The world shows itself and we give an account of it, describing it in terms that are useful to us, whether scientific, economic, practical, poetic, or otherwise. And, even before that overt operation, we receive the world not as it is, but under a certain aspect, as something.62 However, when we silence ourselves and open ourselves to what reality gives us, we encounter it in terms that allow it to be itself. In such cases, rather than changing reality so that it makes sense in terms of our systems of categorization, we change ourselves so that we can receive it in its uncategorizable uniqueness: “The given approaches me quietly. I listen. My ear grows to fit [what the world has to say].”63 Silence. Observation. Welcome. These are the watchwords of Serres’s idiosyncratic “hermeneutic empiricism,” which articulates the way in which the body receives and creates meaning.64 Thus, we can say that the body receives the expressive content of the world through its primary, sensuous engagement with it. It exposes us to the hard, wild givenness of things. It “hears” what the world has to “say” in its own tongue. True, we end up softening reality to some extent, translating it into terms we can fathom, at least partially, and appreciate. We cannot escape what we are: zoion logon echon, the animal that speaks (here emphasizing Heidegger’s preference for reading Logos in terms of speech or discourse). Nevertheless, the body cleaves more closely to the given than the word; soma is more faithful to hard reality than Logos. And the fact that the latter has proven so useful and productive should not blind us to the insight and wisdom of the former. A NEW POETICS Finally—and perhaps most provocatively—Serres does seem to suggest that language itself, the hallmark of “the soft,” can be repurposed or used more responsibly in order to connect us to “the hard.” This seems surprising because he dedicates so many pages to pointing out the ways in which language separates us from hard reality. Nevertheless, a closer reading of his work reveals that Serres sees new possibilities for creating or recreating a language (soft) that would be faithful to the given (hard). Toward the end of The Five Senses, he observes that today language itself is in a kind of decline. This ebb has taken place because science, and with it data, has displaced and replaced the language we once used to relate to the

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

91

world: “Language has taken the place of the given [whence Serres’s critique of language], [and now] science is taking that of language.”65 Where once we were the animals that possessed language, now we are animals that possess (and are possessed by) science—and to a degree that has affected the very “process of hominization.”66 As science displaces language, the latter becomes ill-appreciated and people become less skilled in its use. For example, Serres observes that what we think of as “ineffable” may well be quite “effable.”67 In certain cases, the problem lies not with the inexpressible mysteries of reality, but with our juvenile vocabulary.68 We no longer think of language as an essential tool for describing or understanding reality, in part because for many of us our command of language has become ever more inadequate to reality. And by way of compensation, we end up ceding description to measurements and experiments, and ceding understanding to formulae.69 As we saw above, it is not that science is essentially problematic, but, rather, that a certain type of scientific overreach both obscures the fullness of the world and gives rise to new crises. True wisdom mixes knowledge with restraint—a “pacified knowledge.”70 Humans became human by speaking; but “this stable period of hominization . . . is drawing to an end. Tomorrow, we speaking beasts will no longer see the world or the powers at work in it in the same way.”71 In an important sense, “water”—or eau, or agua—is not the same thing as H2O; and we abandon or lose the former out of a fascination with the precision of the latter. We shall no longer find, in the woods, what our fathers and mothers meant by “grass” or “insect.” . . . Science has not only changed the depth of the world or the relationships between men . . . but has also derealized [déréalisant] the things designated by language: we can no longer speak. We would have difficulty in finding matter where we speak of particles and nuclei, in finding life where we speak of acids or enzymes.72

But while the decline of language in the face of science and data certainly has its complications, Serres detects an exciting potential for renewal as well: “This brutal diminution of the world, this loss or death have given us a fleeting glimpse of the world and each other, as they could doubtless have been seen before language was incarnated in us. Between two reigns, a rapid lightning flash illuminating the five senses.”73 The decline of language (still incomplete) and the rise of data (still incomplete) give us a moment or window in which we can again see the world, no longer obscured by the softening of language and not yet obscured by the abstraction of data. In this moment the world of hard reality, experienced by our five senses, is briefly illuminated; and we have the opportunity to take up language again and use it otherwise. Now the adventure of philosophy can begin again, starting from

92

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

the place—that is, the real—that originally gave it life. Thus, what looks to some like the death of language, Serres chooses to see as the possibility of its rebirth. What, exactly, would this look like? Serres’s own “poetic” philosophy? Perhaps. Bruno Latour asks Serres about his break with traditional philosophical methods and forms of expression: “This time machine, this freedom of movement, is at the bottom of the accusations of ‘poetry’ leveled at your books, harmful accusations that I know exasperate you.” To which Serres responds, “What a sign of the times, when, to cruelly criticize a book one says that it is only poetry! Poetry comes from the Greek, meaning ‘invention,’ ‘creation’—so all is well, thank you.”74 However, the existence of other examples lends credence to Serres’s account, and suggests that his desire to foster conversations and translations between science, empiricism, and poetry are perhaps not quite as idiosyncratic as they first seem. Consider the work of Henry David Thoreau, which combines a mystical and poetic side—evident in his own distinctive take on transcendentalism—with a keen empiricism and scientific habit of observation.75 Thoreau’s goal was to get to something very like hard reality, which he tended to describe in terms of wildness: Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin.76

Like Serres, Thoreau loved both poetry and science; and unlike most contemporary philosophers, he thought of these modes of expression as complementary rather than competitive in developing and enriching his understanding of the world. In much of his later work, Thoreau uses language to bring him closer to hard reality rather than idealizing reality with poetry or quantifying it with formulae. His poeticisms, at least in his mature work as a naturalist, ultimately depart from Emerson’s brand of transcendentalist idealism; and his science is never abstract or reductive. His poetry and prose alike are rooted in the soil of Concord and in his active, embodied experience of particular material places around it. His empirical and scientific turn keep his “mysticism” rooted firmly in this world. Conversely, his science eschews generalization and abstraction. It is an embodied, empirical, local affair. In fact, he ultimately resigned his prestigious election to membership in the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, in part because he sensed that his own commitment to science and his own method for pursuing it were at

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

93

odds with prevailing academic norms.77 For Thoreau, “fact” and “theory” are entangled with each other: “a ‘fact’ is always a bundle of relations.”78 Serres dreams of listening to “things freed of these packages [i.e., names, words, concepts, theories], the way they presented themselves before finding themselves named”; he finds a kindred spirit in Thoreau, who aims to recover “the language which all things and events speak, without metaphor.”79 CONCLUDING NOTES: REBIRTH AND ESTABLISHING BRIDGES TO NEW WORLDS AND NEW FUTURES Surveying the array of crises with which we are confronted, it would be easy to come to pessimistic conclusions about the fate of humanity and the future of the world: accelerating anthropogenic climate change, a significant global pandemic, bigotries both social and structural, widening economic inequality, and resurgent authoritarianism are all underway in the twenty-first century. Just as Nietzsche diagnosed the crises of his culture in the nineteenth century, Serres was a skilled diagnostician of crises in his own time. But, again like Nietzsche, he did not see these crises only as failures or calamities, but also as opportunities to choose a different future. He sees anthropogenic climate change, like the advent of nuclear weapons, as a truly novel, epoch-defining crisis, a challenge that requires, at a fundamental level, a rethinking of our relationship with the more-than-human world (living and nonliving). And his thinking is not oriented toward a return to some supposedly Edenic past. He wryly mocks those who nostalgically claim, “C’était mieux avant!” (“It was better before!”).80 Serres himself is oriented, optimistically, toward the future. The challenge or threat of climate change is thus also the opportunity to imagine new structures of peaceful co-emergence and coexistence with the rest of the world. And the first step in that process is to experiment with alternative modes of expressive content (a reconfigured science, music, body, and a new poetics) that will allow us to hear the world and relate to it in new ways.81 At stake is nothing less than the possibility of reinvention, or rebirth into a more peaceful way of living, feeling, and acting in the world.82 NOTES 1. In some sense Serres must be seen as the philosophical “first responder” in recognizing the environmental crisis as a global phenomenon. As Baird Callicott writes, “Just as Naess, Routley, Rolston, and I [Callicott] are widely acknowledged to be the founders of environmental ethics, Serres and Jamieson should be widely

94

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

acknowledged to be the founders of climate ethics.” J. Baird Callicott, Thinking like a Planet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 269. Developing this thought, we might say that Serres was one of the first to think an “ethics of the Anthropocene,” insofar as climate change is arguably the marker par excellence of the Anthropocene. 2. The Spanish title is Riña a garrotazos or Duelo a garrotazos (Museo del Prado, Madrid). 3. In fact, it is not clear that this effect was actually Goya’s intention. The Duelo is one of the so-called “Black Paintings” Goya painted directly onto the walls of his home between 1820 and 1823. The combatants may have originally been struggling in a field of high grass, which was distorted in the process of transferring the painting to canvas. 4. Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 2. 5. Ibid., 11. 6. Ibid., 3. 7. Ibid., 11. 8. Michel Serres, Times of Crisis, trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), x–xiii. 9. Michel Serres, The Five Senses, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley (London: Continuum, 1985), 41. 10. See Paul Ricoeur, On Translation (London: Routledge, 2006). The point is that translation both betrays the original language or saying by distorting it, and betrays the target language by implying that translation or meaning has been accurately transmitted from the original language to the target language. But while translation is always a betrayal, some translations are more abusive to the original language or more abusive to the target language. The goal with respect to “communication” between humans and the world should be to make sure that our translations are not unnecessarily unfaithful to what the world says. 11. Michel Serres and Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 37. 12. Michel Serres, Biogea, trans. Randolph Burkes (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2012). 13. By immersing yourself in silence and darkness (and reorganizing your life accordingly), Serres argues “you will quickly see yourself re-exercise a perception of wealth that we had lost.” Guitta Pessis-Pasternak in an interview with Michel Serres, “Michel Serres, Master of Silence,” May 13, 1985, Le Monde, https:​//​www​.lemonde​ .fr​/archives​/article​/1985​/05​/13​/michel​-serres​-maitre​-de​-silence​_2745120​_1819218​ .html; (translation my own). 14. Luce Irigaray, Sharing the World (London: Continuum, 2008), 6. 15. Ibid., 5. 16. Serres, Biogea, 12. 17. Robert Mugerauer, “Language and the Emergence of Environment,” in Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World, ed. David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 2000) 57. 18. Denise Levertov, “Immersion” in This Great Unknowing: Last Poems (New York: New Directions, 1999), 53. Here Levertov is thinking of the variety of ways in

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

95

which God speaks to us; however, her poem instructs us whether we are believers or not: Why expect the world to speak in anything like natural human languages? 19. Serres, Biogea, 119. 20. Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), rev. and ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 217. 21. Ibid., 230. 22. Ibid., 223. 23. Ibid., 230. 24. Serres, Biogea, 196; Michel Serres, Sven Ortoli, Martin Legros, and Olivier Marboeuf, Pantopie de Hermès à petite poucette: entretiens avec Martin Legros et Sven Ortoli (Paris: Editions Le Pommier, 2014), 149. 25. Serres, Biogea, 129. 26. Ibid. 27. Part of this section echoes ideas on Serres in the chapter “Philosophizing Extinction: On the Loss of World, and the Possibility of Rebirth through Languages of the Sea,” in Contesting Extinctions: Critical Relationality, Regenerative Futures (forthcoming). 28. Serres, Biogea, 38–39. For an extended analysis of the ways in which humans “mark” the world in appropriating it, see Michel Serres, Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 29. Serres, Biogea, 59. In fact, Serres traces his own abandonment of his training in the sciences to “specific feelings about war and violence, out of a sort of conscientious objection.” Serres and Latour, Conversations, 6. 30. Michel Serres, The Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 213. 31. Serres, Biogea 56­–60. Serres compares his own academic abandonment of science to that of Ettore Majorana, with a similar skepticism about the relationship between science and violence: “I’m tempted to say that, on his own scale, he resigned from physics in the same way that I resigned from the scientific and military schools.” Serres and Latour, Conversations, 16. Speaking to the philosophically most influential thinker to bring him to acknowledge the relationship between science and violence, he cites the import of Simone Weil: “Simone Weil analyzes the relations between science and society in other books; indeed, she was the only philosopher who really influenced me, in the sense you give that word.” Serres and Latour, Conversations, 18. 32. Serres, Biogea, 62–68. 33. Ibid., 76. 34. Ibid., 79. 35. Serres and Latour, Conversations, 65. 36. Ibid., 28. 37. Serres, Biogea, 71, 75. 38. Ibid., 71. 39. Serres and Latour, Conversations, 70.

96

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

40. Ibid., 103. 41. Michel Serres, Hominescence (London: Bloomsbury, 2019) 67–68. 42. Serres, Biogea, 40. 43. Serres, Hominescence, 67. 44. Ibid., 68. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 123. 47. Serres, The Parasite,134 48. Ibid., 134. 49. Ibid. 50. Serres, Biogea, 111. 51. Ibid., 116. 52. Ibid., 110. 53. Ibid., 146–47. 54. Ibid., 141. 55. A contemporary piece of digital music that resonates greatly with Serres’s ideas on the power of music is Biberkopf’s musical composition “Ecologies,” which, as Wharton explains, combines “field recordings, chops of club music, digital shards, ambient drones, and short vocal utterances.” For instance, as Wharton writes: “The guttural grime on ‘Age of Aquarius’ is transfigured by distant scenic sounds, which in turn shift gears in relation to distorted, intrusive voices.” Similar to Serres’s continued emphasis on how a musical score brings out relationships, this contemporary piece equally privileges “relations and interactions” (thus: ecologies) over individual components or elements. The result is a trancelike yet active dynamic confluence of seemingly unrelated musical sounds that bring elements, such as water, to “speak” and reverberate in an innovative, unified way. Stephan Wharton, “J. G. Biberkopf Ecologies [Knives; 2015],” https:​//​www​.tinymixtapes​.com​/music​-review​/j​-g​-biberkopf​ -ecologies. Accessed September 23, 2020. 56. See Serres, The Five Senses, 73, 153. The “first cogito” of embodiment precedes the “second cogito” of Descartes. Ibid., 18, 58, etc. 57. The subtitle of The Five Senses, one of the clearest of Serres’s accounts of hard and the soft, is “philosophie des corps mêlés” (that is, a philosophy of mixed, or blended, bodies). And, in chapter 2, we find: “Hardness in softness and softness in hardness, a transitional threshold. My language, so soft to hear yet so hard and fast in its rules, prevents me from calling it either hard or soft.” Serres, The Five Senses, 129. 58. Serres, The Five Senses, 114. “I merely ask that we remember hardness.” Ibid., 112. 59. One of the provocative enigmas of The Five Senses—a book that is divided into five chapters and which, therefore, the reader would expect to take up touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight—is that Serres treats taste and smell together in chapter three (“Tables”) and thereby frees up the final chapter for joy. 60. Serres, The Five Senses, 129. 61. For example, when the sculptor has an idea and follows through in the act of creation, an idea (soft) achieves a degree of hardness.

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

97

62. To point this out, we think, is not necessarily to repudiate the phenomenological, or even the hermeneutic, project. It may well be the case that we have always already constituted and interpreted the reality we experience. Serres himself acknowledges that observation, which he associates with a receptive, non-dominating relation to the world, cannot be fully disassociated from interpretation, which “imposes,” as it were, a particular point of view on things. Serres, The Five Senses, 103. Nevertheless, even in that case, Serres’s exhortation to “remember the hard” that?the exceeds and resists our categories and interpretations remains salutary. Moreover, there are entire traditions of Taoist and Buddhist philosophy that do entertain the possibility of experiencing reality “raw,” as it were, pre-linguistically. 63. Serres, The Five Senses, 87. 64. For more on Serres as an idiosyncratic hermeneut, see Brian Treanor, “Mind the Gap: The Challenge of Matter,” in Carnal Hermeneutics, eds. Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015). 65. Serres, The Five Senses, 333 (see also 339). 66. Serres, The Five Senses, 337. On the degree to which technology has altered the process of hominization, consider Serres’s account of “exo-Darwinian evolution” in Michel Serres, Variations on the Body, trans. Randolph Burks (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2011), 118–21. 67. Cf. Samuel Beckett, Watt (New York: Grove, 2009), 50. 68. See Michel Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser with William Paulson (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 72. Or, elsewhere: “Our peasant ancestors, whose letters we sometimes discover, expressed themselves with greater eloquence and clarity than the dominant class of the day.” Serres, The Five Senses, 340. 69. This trend has, however, been resisted by a counter-force in various forms of anti-scientific skepticism (e.g., deniers of anthropogenic climate change, anti-vaxxers, etc.). Nevertheless, general scientific illiteracy can, and does, exist alongside the assumption that science is the final arbiter of the true and the real. 70. Serres, The Troubadour of Knowledge, 135. For similar themes, see 118– 25 passim. 71. Serres, The Five Senses, 340. 72. Ibid., 342. 73. Ibid., 340. 74. Serres and Latour, Conversations, 44. Serres says of addressing a new situation in his own work, “it was necessary to find a new language.” Ibid., 72. 75. “I am a mystic—a transcendentalist—and a natural philosopher to boot.” Laura Dassow-Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 307. 76. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 97–98. 77. Dassow-Walls, A Life, 307. He lamented, for example, the “inhumanity of science.” Ibid., 345. 78. David M. Robinson, Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 109.

98

Marjolein Oele and Brian Treano

79. Serres, Biogea, 38; and Thoreau, Walden, 111. 80. Michel Serres, C’était mieux avant! (Paris: Pommier, 2017). 81. In addition to the examples provided in section 4, another contemporary illustration of such experimentation is the production of futuristic climate maps by the Rhodium group, which provide empirical imaginations upon various climate change scenarios affecting the United States in terms of agriculture and habitability. The combination of cultural imagination based on scientific data proves the power of the possibility of expressive content guiding new futures. See: https:​//​projects​.propublica​ .org​/climate​-migration​/ Accessed September 27, 2020. 82. We would like to express special thanks to Daniel O’Connell for his helpful suggestions and edits on an earlier version of this chapter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckett, Samuel. Watt. New York: Grove, 2009. Callicott, J. Baird. Thinking like a Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Dassow-Walls, Laura. Henry David Thoreau: A Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Irigaray, Luce. Sharing the World. London: Continuum, 2008. Levertov, Denise, and Paul A. Lacey. This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. New York: New Directions Books, 1999. Pessis-Pasternak, Guitta, “Michel Serres, Master of Silence,” May 13, 1985, Le Monde, https:​//​www​.lemonde​.fr​/archives​/article​/1985​/05​/13​/michel​-serres​-maitre​ -de​-silence​_2745120​_1819218​.html. Ricoeur, Paul. On Translation. London: Routledge, 2006. Robinson, David M. Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Seamon, David, and Robert Mugerauer. Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. Dordrecht, Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1985. Serres, Michel, Biogea, trans. Randolph Burkes. Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2012. ———. Hominescence. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. ———. Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. ———. The Five Senses, trans. Margaret Sankey and Peter Cowley. London: Continuum, 1985. ———. Times of Crisis, trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. ———. The Natural Contract. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. ———. The Parasite, trans. Lawrence R. Schehr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ———. The Troubadour of Knowledge, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser with William Paulson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Michel Serres and Ecological Crisi

99

———. Variations on the Body, trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal, 2011. Serres, Michel, and Bruno Latour. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Serres, Michel, Sven Ortoli, Martin Legros, and Olivier Marboeuf, Pantopie de Hermès à petite poucette: entretiens avec Martin Legros et Sven Ortoli. Paris: Editions Le Pommier, 2014. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Treanor, Brian. “Mind the Gap: The Challenge of Matter,” in Carnal Hermeneutics, eds. Richard Kearney and Brian Treanor. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Wharton, Stephan. “J. G. Biberkopf Ecologies [Knives; 2015],” https:​//​www​.tinymixtapes​.com​/music​-review​/j​-g​-biberkopf​-ecologies. Accessed September 23, 2020.

Chapter Six

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Till Ryan J. Johnson‌‌‌‌‌‌

AN ANTIGONAL LINE This paper draws an antigonal line leading from Sophocles’s Antigone to the lynching of Emmett Till.1 Drawing this line is an attempt to celebrate and honor that spirit of defiance in the name of loving the dead and memorializing loss. In particular, it takes up that portion of the line that centers on lynching. An overarching goal is thus to argue that lynching and its afterlives deserve more philosophical attention than they have received, especially from American philosophers. It is long past time that philosophers take on lynching as a meaningful while volatile topic, especially insofar as it makes claims on the racial identities of the philosophers doing so.2 But rather than addressing lynching in general, this paper looks at one particular point on this line: the lynching of Emmett Till and the defiant mourning of his mother, Mamie Bradley.3 Doing so is meant to invite others to locate other points on this antigonal line.4 Upon sketching Sophocles’s play and Till’s murder, I consider some of the key features of Hegel’s influential interpretation.5 While philosophy has been mostly silent on lynching, Hegel’s Phenomenology provides essential, while problematic, material for initiating a philosophical approach to this neglected topic. Building on Hegel’s reading, I next consider the nature of “white law and order” and its complicity in extrajudicial murder and terror. Then I turn to Black mourning, where I explore what Fred Moten calls Mamie Bradley’s “Black Mo’nin”—her antigonal refusal of the white drive to annihilate Black life—and consider her as a practitioner of Christina Sharpe’s notion of “wake work.”6 I then turn to an artistic intervention in lynching photography to take 101

102

Ryan J. Johnson

up Sharpe’s challenge for how to respectfully engage lynching given different racial identities. Finally, I conclude by sketching an opening for a possible next antigonal point: the work of Ida B. Wells. A PLAY, A MURDER, AND A SILENCE Sophocles’s Antigone Though written first, Antigone is dramaturgically the third of Sophocles’s Theban Plays. Long ago, Oedipus abdicated the throne upon realizing he had killed his father and married his mother, Jocasta, leaving Creon, Jocasta’s brother, to rule during the subsequent civil war. Antigone thus opens with Oedipus’s sons, the brothers Eteocles and Polyneices, having killed each other while vying for the Theban throne. Creon decides that only Eteocles, the defender of Thebes, will receive state funeral honors. Polyneices, the rebel, will remain unburied and disrespected, as vultures will tear him apart. The play opens on a secret meeting in front of the royal palace, where Antigone tells her sister Ismene that she will defy Creon and bury Polyneices. Ismene tries to dissuade Antigone, calling it mad, but nothing can stop her. The sun is about to rise. Later, inside the palace, Creon is seeking the support of the chorus of Theban elders when a sentry enters and reports that Polyneices has been buried, and Antigone has been caught in the defiant act. When Creon questions her, Ismene tries to falsely confess, but Antigone insists she has acted alone, refusing to deny what she has done. She could have done no other. After Creon imprisons them, his son, Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, tries but fails to persuade his father to spare Antigone. When Creon threatens to execute Antigone in front of his son, Haemon leaves, vowing never to return. Creon decides to spare Ismene but bury Antigone alive in a cave. When the blind prophet Tiresias foresees that Greece will despise Creon and the gods will scorn Thebes for his stubborn fury, the chorus begs Creon to concede. Though eventually Creon relents, on his arrival at the cave, he finds Haemon lamenting Antigone, who has hanged herself. In a rage, Haemon tries to stab Creon and then stabs himself. When Haemon’s mother, Eurydice, learns of this, she kills herself, a final curse upon Creon. The play concludes with Creon carrying Haemon’s body in his arms, realizing he has brought it all upon himself.

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

103

The Murder of Emmett Till Like Antigone, Emmett Till was lynched in the wake of a civil war.7 Though nearly a hundred years from its end, slavery lived on in the United States under a different name. In this wake of civil war, Emmett Louis Till was born and raised in Chicago. During the summer vacation in 1955, the fourteen-year-old Till visited his relatives in the Mississippi Delta, where he fished and worked on his great-uncle’s farm. One day, he and his cousins visited a rural grocery store, where Till encountered a young white woman named Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store owner. What exactly happened in the few minutes they were inside the store is unknown, but it changed American history. Some say Till flirted with Bryant, others that he wolf-whistled at her, though it seems most likely that he did nothing more than be a smiling young Black child whose only crime was speaking to a white lady in the Jim Crow South. Whatever happened, white people perceived Till to have violated the white social code for Black men interacting with white women. Four nights later, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, abducted Emmett, brutally beat him, shot him in the head, tied his body to a cotton gin fan with barbed wire, and sank his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till’s body was discovered and retrieved. One month later, an all-white, all-male jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty of murder; they later escaped indictment for kidnapping. Though white authorities rushed to bury the body in Mississippi, Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, demanded that it be returned to Chicago, where she would hold a public funeral with an open casket so the world would see the evidence of white brutality. Tens of thousands viewed the battered face and a Black mother openly mourning the loss of her son. Images of the corpse were published in Black periodicals. This single Black mother’s defiant mourning sparked a major phase of the Civil Rights Movement. That December, Rosa Parks initiated the Montgomery bus boycott when she refused to give up her seat, later citing Till’s death as the inspiration. Philosophy’s Silence From Antigone’s defiant burial to the public mourning of Emmett Till, there is an antigonal line marked by defiance, commitment, and resistance.8 Bringing together the drama Antigone and the actual murder of this young Black man creates what I hope is a generative yet respectful and sensitive tension that might finally draw philosophers’ attention to a topic they have almost entirely ignored: lynching.9 In one sense, it seems shocking that the discipline has not addressed this complicated, sensitive, and volatile topic, at least until one recalls the

104

Ryan J. Johnson

ubiquitous whiteness of philosophy (as if one could forget). If I can speculate as to what philosophy, as a discipline, might say, I might imagine how a consequentialist, virtue ethicist, or deontologist might respond, though such moral theories have almost nothing interesting or helpful to say about lynching. Marx might be a little better, and psychoanalysis too, but I argue that Hegel provides much more insightful, albeit problematic, resources for philosophically considering lynching. HEGEL’S LOVE OF ANTIGONE Just listen to Hegel gush in his lectures on the history of philosophy: “the angelic Antigone, the most magnificent figure that will ever appear on earth.”10 Rather than Socrates or Jesus, Antigone is the heroine of the Phenomenology, if not of all Hegelian philosophy. “She is the force of the negative,” J. M. Bernstein says.11 There is no doubt—Hegel adored Antigone. Hegel’s reading turns on a distinction between the ethical world and ethical action. Phenomenologically, clearly not chronologically, the Greek ethical world followed Kantian morality. Hegel’s argument is that Kant’s moral law, in itself, allows for the universalization of both a maxim and its opposite. The Categorical Imperative generates both a duty to kidnap and not to kidnap. What separates one maxim from its opposite, Hegel shows, is social context, not innate reason. What Kant misses is the “we” that is prior to and defining of the “I.” The Greek ethical world in which Antigone acts is the sublation of Kant’s alienated moral subject. The Greek ethical world, however, is an abstract romanticization of Greek society rooted in post-Kantian fetishizations of history. Such a fantasy casts the Greek world as impervious to, because beyond, individual actions. As Hegel writes, “singular individual [dieser Einzelne] counts only as the non-actual shade [unwikrlich Shatten].—As yet, no deed has been committed.”12 Hegel’s contemporaries, such as Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin, painted an idealized picture of the Greeks living in harmony and beauty, an anesthetization of existence.13 The beauty of Greek ethical life is rooted in the social incorporation of the two-gender divisions (supposedly) found in nature. “It is nature,” writes Hegel, “that assigns one sex to one law [human] and the other to the other law [divine].”14 Following nature’s determinations, universality, consciousness, and politics formed the domain of men, while individuality, unconsciousness, and the family formed the domain of women. The Greek ethical world thereby formed a perfectly harmonious social whole—men guarded civil law, women divine law—“an undefiled world in its stable existence, a world unpolluted by any division.”15 Translated into social order, the immediate, natural male/

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

105

female compatibility gave Greek life a sheen of beauty, purity, and tranquility, as if Thebes were a living, holistic work of art. As seductive as this seems, Hegel’s point is that it is all fantasy—German Idealists and Romantics seduced by their own Grecophilic projection. Greek Sittlichkeit was tragic, for Hegel, not tranquil. Rather than nostalgia for a lost society, the cause of its bloody collapse was its putative perfection. What brought it all crashing down was individual action. Since acting is, for Hegel, negating, it is an individual, in part, that tears apart supposedly tranquil wholes. Prior to Antigone’s act, the Greek peoples were synonymous with their social roles, wholly determined by the position in the family or state. Yet when Antigone buries Polyneices, in defiance of Creon’s prohibition, she simultaneously fulfills her divine or familial role as sister and negates the human law of the state.16 Antigone’s transgressive act is the negative force that destroys the beautiful harmony. It is, for Hegel, the first claim of individuality in the history of Spirit. Though Greek ethical life lacked the conceptual framework for individuality, conscience, civil disobedience, etc., the dramatic form allows for the introduction of reflectivity. Even if Antigone’s act is, at first, immediate and unconscious, simply following her role-bound duty, when she buries Polyneices a second time, she willfully and knowingly isolates herself from the whole.17 When Creon confronts Antigone, she never flinches, insisting, “I say I did it and I don’t deny it.”18 Death means nothing and everything to her. By claiming her deed as her own and accepting the guilt and punishment that follow, Antigone individualizes herself. This is ethical action, and it bears the mark of criminality. As Hegel says, “ethical action has the moment of crime in itself because it does not sublate the natural distribution of the two laws to the two sexes” but instead disrupts them—Antigone defies Creon and publicly proclaims exactly that.19 “Through the deed, [Antigone] abandons the determinateness of ethical life, of being the simple certainty of immediate truth, and it posits a separation of itself within itself as that between what is active and what is for it the negative actuality confronting it.”20 What is most important here, for Hegel, is that Antigone’s transgression becomes the paradigm for all action. And if Antigone is the actual, embodied negation of Thebes, then negation is the defining feature of acting. Even more, individuality emerges through the negation of that social whole. What Hegel cherishes in Antigone is that action and individuality are necessarily transgressive—that to act means to refuse accepted traditions, customs, laws, etc. On Hegel’s reading, all meaningful action is rooted in Antigone’s defiant burial; all signs of individuality come from a woman’s refusal; all significant deeds trace to the work of mourning, memory, and memorialization.

106

Ryan J. Johnson

But what makes Antigone’s act ethical? It stems from what Hegel deems the ethical function of the family: caring for the dead. Individuality and action are, for Hegel, what is at stake in burial and mourning. He even argues that the duty to bury the dead is the site for the emergence of a need to recognize individuality. Given that the Greek ethical world lacked categories for comprehending individuality beyond social roles, individuation could only come posthumously. While alive, Greeks were just brothers, soldiers, and kings—whatever role the family or state determined them to be. In death, however, one can become an individual, exceed a role through that role. This becomes especially clear in sacrificing oneself (the individual) for the state (the universal). Here Hegel is thinking of war: “in war this negative essence [individuality] otherwise brings itself to the forefront as what sustains the whole.”21 Families raise children so that they can serve the state, which is why sacrifice is the ultimate fulfillment of one’s role in society. To sacrifice oneself for the sake of the community is to submit oneself to the whole. Antigone is important for this story because it forefronts the lack of individuality in Greece. Her transgressive mourning stakes a claim that Polyneices is not just another soldier, but her brother, a singular individual, more than what the state says he is. Moreover, Antigone’s burial not only recognizes his individuality, but Antigone herself becomes an individual. As Bernstein says, “in her taking on the burden of Polyneices’ singular individuality, she herself becomes a singular individual”—two negations of the ethical world.22 More than a sister or aunt, she becomes “the angelic Antigone, the most magnificent figure that will ever appear on earth.”23 Antigone is also more widely significant because, through her disobedience, she pushes Thebes to shed its unthinking incorporation of nature—gender divisions—and transform a natural event—death—by giving it spiritual or cultural meaning. Through burial, the community extends itself beyond the present, beyond the living. Burial gives Thebes, or any people, a history through which it can understand, shape, and preserve itself. A community without ancestors, without sacrifices, without memorialization, is no community at all. “The cemetery,” said Mrs. Till-Mobley, “is for the living, after all, not the dead.”24 Mourning and grieving the dead, Hegel said, is the role of the family. When Creon accuses Antigone of honoring a traitor, and she defends herself by naming it an act of love, he responds: “Then go down there, if you must love, and love the dead.”25 Antigone, the sister, performs the work of memory, loving the dead, and dies herself, but she brings the supposed harmonious Greek world crashing down with her.

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

107

Antigone’s Scream As much as Hegel loved Antigone, I wonder: Could he hear Antigone scream?26 When she saw Polyneices’s corpse unburied, when she was seized by Creon’s sentry, when she was buried alive in the cave—did he hear her “cry of a bitter bird”?27 According to some witnesses, Emmett Till screamed, and we know his mother wailed when she saw his battered corpse, when she viewed his coffin, when she buried her son. It makes me wonder: Can Hegel hear these screams? And even if he could, how would he respond?28 Though Hegel spoke of “chopping off a head of cabbage,” I am not sure he could hear the cries of that “strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.”29 Hegel never shied away from confronting the ways in which ugliness and violence are intrinsic, unavoidable features of human history. Just think of his detailed discussions about slavery and domination, the reign of terror and guillotined heads of cabbage, and the slaughter bench of history. But what would he say about the racial terrorism that is lynching?30 How does or might such collective, ritual violence shape the movement of spirit? Given that Hegel was fascinated by the ways that history generated what came after, might Hegel read lynching as a sort of afterlife of slavery? It is no surprise that Ashraf H. A. Rushdy frames it in a very Hegelian way: “lynching is not an aberration in American history . . . but a result of the fundamental contradictions that faced the nation at its origins.”31 In short, what role might lynching play in Hegel’s phenomenology and its aftermath? But hold on. I, a white man, must be thoughtful and circumspect here. Citing lynching and its horrors risks a white voyeurism, and speaking in too much gory detail could exacerbate Black suffering. So I must be very careful here. To guide me as I now turn to Mamie Bradley’s antigonal act, I seek to humbly learn from Saidiya Hartman. Here she explains why she cites the violence done to Frederick Douglass’s Aunt Hester in the opening of her Scenes of Subjection: to call attention to the ease with which such scenes are usually reiterated, the casualness with which they are circulated, and the consequences of this routine display of the slave’s [or lynching victim’s] ravaged body. Rather than inciting indignation, too often they [these scenes] immure us to pain by virtue of their familiarity—the oft-repeated or restored character of these accounts and our distance from them are signaled by the theatrical language usually resorted to in describing these instances—and especially because they reinforce the spectacular character of Black suffering.32

Following Hartman’s judicious and sensitive caution when speaking of Black suffering, in this paper I introduce the scenes of Black suffering only to locate the limits of Hegel’s account and to call out philosophy’s silence on lynching.

108

Ryan J. Johnson

WHITE LAW AND ORDER As Antigone turns on the conflict between human law and divine or familial life, the lynching of Emmett Till involves the conflict of white law and Black life. Evoking the fantastical harmony of Greek ethical life, white law is rooted in the imaginary beauty in the antebellum myth of a harmonious culture of chivalric masters and dignified, chaste mistresses. This is why Billie Holiday sings of the “pastoral scene of the gallant south” and “scent of magnolias sweet and fresh.” White law and order incorporated a false natural division, though (unlike the Greeks) more racial rather than gendered. In this white cultural life, law and order spans both judicial and the extrajudicial violence. As Frederick Douglass points out, lynching is the natural, not the aberration, of a white supremacist society.33 Or, as Mills might put it, lynching is constitutive of the American racial contract. Lynching, in short, is essential to white law and order because the coherence of the white state requires the extralegal, antiblack viciousness. Typically, lynching is defined as extrajudicial, even lawless. While generally true, one should view such extrajudiciality less as outside the law and more as a necessary, even constitutive, component of it, not unlike the way that the sovereign is outside yet constitutive of law.34 Lynching is part of the white order, even if “outside” the law—another sort of wretched harmony. White law is the genetic condition of the mob, and the immediate genetic condition of the mob that killed Emmett Till was the white Citizens’ Councils. Citizens’ Councils emerged in response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision as an institutional way to maintain white supremacy and segregation.35 Without the secrecy of the Ku Klux Klan, they pursued “the agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club,” using violence and intimidation to counter civil rights and economically and socially oppress blacks36 Suits replaced hoods, but the project was the same. Citizens’ Councils were thus a new form of institutional support for lynching. While “perhaps the Citizens’ Council did not itself order or commit acts of terrorism, violence, and murder,” writes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), “it did create ‘the atmosphere in which it was possible for the Chicago boy, Emmett Till, to be murdered and for the perpetrators of the crime to escape justice.’ The power of the Council surely encouraged terrorists to believe they could act without fear of punishment.”37 White law and order extends from the Citizens’ Councils, as well as the Federal Government and US Constitution, down to the two-man mob of Bryant and Milam.38

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

109

Almost every level of white social life—including police, judges, politicians, business owners—joined lynch mobs or did little to nothing to slow or stop them. Lynchers were almost never indicted, tried, or punished. Though lynch mobs were extrajudicial, they were only possible because of the state endorsement of white civic law. As James Baldwin notices: A mob cannot afford to doubt: That the Jews killed Christ or that n-words want to rape their sisters or that anyone who fails to make it in the land of the free and the home of the brave deserves to be wretched. But these ideas do not come from the mob. They come from the state, which creates and manipulates the mob. The idea of Black persons as property, for example, does not come from the people, who knew better, who thought nothing of intermarriage until they were penalized for it; this idea comes from the architects of the American State.39

The state’s complicity in the lynch mob that murdered Emmett Till was obvious. Simply read the last words the defense lawyers said to the jury: “every last Anglo-Saxon one of you have the courage to free these men.”40 “Anglo-Saxon,” of course, is just another way of saying “white.” Such allwhite and all-male juries, judges, lawyers, law enforcements, and lynchers compose and are composed by white law and order. Lynching was essential to white social life because it required all white eyes to constantly look for transgressions, as when a Black teenager from Chicago was viewed to have violated white law. When these transgressions occur, which are really anything deemed offensive to white eyes, white social life transforms into extreme expressions of brutal violence. One reason for this transformation is the fantasy of Black savagery and animality in white social life. To white eyes, Black people, Charles Mills writes, are seen as “carrying the state of nature around with them, incarnating wildness and wilderness in their person” placing them “at the center of a mobile free-fire zone in which citizen-to-citizen/white-on-white and juridical constraints do not obtain.”41 Lynching was just one brutal consequence of white fear, fantasy, paranoia, and law. Since all of American culture and the whole of white social life are at stake in a purported Black-on-white crime, all the vengeance and force of white law and order are called upon to exterminate it. This meant, in Till’s case, brutalizing and murdering a fourteen-year-old child. For Ersula J. Ore, such a social order is distinctly American: There is only one tradition that describes the conscious choice to profile a Black boy to death as chivalrous, only one tradition that posits the conscious eradication of Black life as an unfortunate, but nonetheless ugly, consequence of supposed Black delinquency, and only one tradition that uses racial terror as

110

Ryan J. Johnson

a means of policing the boundaries between America’s white “us” and its Black “them”: that tradition . . . is Lynching.42

Even worse than Black-on-white crimes are alleged Black male crimes against white women. As was the case with Carolyn Bryant, it happens whenever white people say it does. Whatever really happened in that grocery store—a flirtation, a touch of her waist, “saucy” language, or most likely nothing at all—it set off what Mills calls an “ontological shudder . . . sent through the system of the white polity, calling forth . . . the white terror to make sure that the foundations of the moral and political universe stay in place.”43 This ontological shudder shook the entire white world. Before an accusation, lynchers were often average citizens or community leaders, as was the case with Citizens’ Councils. Roy Bryant was the owner of a grocery store that catered to the local Black community, and Milam regularly employed Black men in his trucking company. Both claimed to get along well with their Black neighbors, that is, as long as they “stayed in their place.”44 But when rumors spread of a Black teen from Chicago breaking the white social order, an ontological shudder sparked a lynch mob. At a single word from a white woman, the mob would form and set out to track, trap, and consume its prey. Importantly, its prey could be every and any Black body the mob came across, for once the hunting pack formed, every Black person became the mythical Black beast or sex-crazed Negro.45 What a terrifying dialectic of civilized barbarity or barbarous civility, wherein average white citizens swung from selling candy to Black children to beating them to death, shooting them in the head, and sinking their bodies in the river. Given this white social order, it was no surprise that the all-white, all-male jury took only an hour to deem Bryant and Milam “not guilty,” and it only took that long because the sheriff told them to make a show of it. After just eight minutes, the jury asked the bailiff for some Coca-Colas. “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop,” one juror admitted, “it wouldn’t have taken that long.”46 It is also no surprise that four months after their acquittal, Look magazine published an article called “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi” in which Bryant and Milam basically confessed to the charges. But since they had already been acquitted, the double jeopardy clause ensured they could get away with murder. The magazine even paid them thousands of dollars.47 Of the estimated five thousand racial terror lynchings in the United States from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, very few lynchers were ever brought to court, and almost none held accountable. This includes Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam.48 Deputized to police racial boundaries, lynchers like Bryant and Milam were essential to sustaining white social life. Not only was their violence deemed an expression of national loyalty and white identity,

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

111

they were honored as defenders of white society. Bryant and Milam were easily exonerated because white law requires the continual annihilation of Black life for its existence, protection, and preservation; they were fulfilling their role-bound duties in white social life. BLACK MOURNING But white law and order is an unstable fantasy, naturally entailing its failure and transgression due, partly, to its rapacious, insatiable need to ritually annihilate Black life. In defiance of this defensive fantasy of social life, Black mourning is a transgressive act that forms a series of points on an antigonal line that immanently disrupts and eventually destroys white law and order. If Hegel is right—if all meaningful action is rooted in Antigone’s defiant burial, if all individuality comes from a woman’s refusal, if all significant deeds trace to such work of mourning, memory, and memorialization—then Mrs. Mamie Bradley is perhaps the sharpest point on this antigonal line of dazzling, brave, and bold Black women. Like Antigone, Mrs. Bradley was undoubtedly “fierce.”49 Mamie’s Mo’nin In the three hours after the discovery of Emmett’s body in the Tallahatchie River, the Mississippi police rushed to bury his corpse. Without an autopsy, without embalming, a grave was dug and a coffin readied with such haste that local newspapers mistakenly reported the burial had been performed.50 Sheriff H. C. Strider did not want others to see the evidence of such antiblack brutality, but Emmett’s mother would have none of it. She was an indomitable force who brought a national reckoning. This was her first defiance (Hegel would call it “negation”) of white social life. When she first heard of her son’s death, Mrs. Bradley did not break down. While others collapsed around her, she felt gripped by her duty, as if she “suddenly divided into two different people . . . One was handling the telephone. The other was standing off telling the other what to do.”51 Without hesitation, she grasped her task immediately (though without immediacy). There was work to do; tears would have to wait. In an almost exact inversion of Creon’s edict, Mrs. Bradley’s antigonal action was not to illegally bury her son, but to refuse one kind of burial—a white Mississippi cover-up—so she could have a second burial—an open viewing of the gruesome effects of antiblack violence in front of the grieving face of a Black mother mourning. This was her second defiance.

112

Ryan J. Johnson

Mrs. Bradley finally broke down when the casket arrived at the Chicago Central Street Train Station. When she saw the box come out of the baggage car, she collapsed, crying out, “My darling, my darling. I would have gone through a world of fire to get to you,” assuring him that he “didn’t die for nothing.”52 The words, Fred Moten suggests, do not matter as much as the wordless moan of mourning, evoking a “primal . . . phonic materiality always tied to the ongoing loss or impossible recovery of the maternal.”53 This was the transformation of defiance into mourning, or what Moten calls Mamie’s “Black Mo’nin.”54 And it was caught on camera. The site of her third defiance was A. A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home. While the mortician tried to stop her, Mrs. Bradley demanded to see her son’s battered face for herself. When she returned, she ordered the mortician not to touch the face. (What might Levinas say?) That very evening, there would be an open casket and she wanted everyone to see what they had done to her son. A few hours later, upward of fifty thousand people viewed Emmett’s corpse through a glass window in the casket, framed by photos of happy family scenes and the smiling young man. Moten calls this the “drama of life in the photograph of the dead.”55 This is when Jet magazine photographer David Jackson captured the images that would force the white world to begin to admit its violent history of lynching and to make Mrs. Bradley the individual who would become the paradigm of Black mourning. It was the second time Mamie’s Mo’nin was photographed. The casket was then moved to Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, where, over several days, almost 600,000 witnessed the evidence of the brutality of white law and order. During the funeral, and when the casket was buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, the bereaved mother continued a public, unreserved mo’nin at the loss of her beloved, which was again captured on film.56 As Moten says, the “shout that structures and ruptures the photograph of Emmett Till with a piercing historicality, that resingularizes and reconstructs his broken body, emerges from love, from a love of the world, from a specific political intention.”57 Like Antigone, Mamie Bradley performed her love of the dead, in direct defiance of white social order, in her role as a Black mother. Through it all, Mrs. Bradley knew that Jet and other Black publications, not the white mainstream media, would spread scenes of her mourning moan.58 For the goal was not simply to evoke shame in white people’s awareness, or even sympathy. The goal was to move Black people, to prove the value of Black life, through the public and political mourning of one Black child and the mo’nin of one Black mother. Mrs. Bradley transformed her private grief into a singularized expression of collective lament, rage, and refusal—she made the world reckon with the undeniable evidence of white violence and galvanized the model for Black action as transgression against

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

113

the white social world. Mamie Bradley’s defiant mourning became the paradigm through which others might mourn, love, and defy. One Black mother became “Everymother.”59 Mamie’s I became the Black maternal We. In a significant way, it worked. Emmett Till’s funeral was the largest civil rights demonstration up to that point in time and fomented a seismic shift in the dominant social order. Mo’nin the name and face of her Black son, one Black mother turned an act of remembrance into a transformative act of defiance.60 When Roy Bryant later complained, “Emmett Till is dead. I don’t know why he can’t just stay dead,” we know the answer: Because of Mamie’s Mo’nin.61 “Although I have lived much of my life without Emmett,” she wrote, “I have lived my entire life because of him.”62 Through one Black mother’s lament, other Black mothers, grandmothers, fathers, wives, and more could locate and articulate their own grief and loss, as well as the thousands and thousands of Black lives lost in the water or the fire. Showing His Face, Saying His Name I can be more specific about the logic of mourning as defiance: Mourning is a refusal of annihilation by loving the dead. Hegel identifies this as the purpose of the family, as the elevating of the dead beyond mere natural disintegration: The blood-relationship [Blutsverwandtschaft]] therefore supplements the abstract natural movement by adding to it the movement of consciousness, by interrupting nature’s work, and by wresting the blood-relation from destruction . . . the blood-relationship takes upon itself the deed of destruction [die Tat der Zerstörung].63 Yet while Hegel speaks of saving the dead from nature, Black mourning involves saving the dead from white law and order. Etymologically, to be annihilated means to be rendered nothing (nihil), akin to the German vernichten (often associated with the Holocaust), a combination of the prefix ver- (which can mean pushing to the extreme such that it becomes its opposite) and Nichts (“nothing”). Annihilation and vernichten mean complete negation, without remainder. But as Hegel, of all people, shows, there is always a remainder, there are always remains. The mourning of Emmett Till was a rejection of many forms of annihilation, of which three follow. As seen in earlier “spectacle lynchings,” there was an expressed white will to annihilate through overkilling.64 Overkilling is excessive postmortem mutilation.65 For example, in addition to bludgeoning, lynchers would exact further violence on the already dead body, such as dragging it with a car, filling it with bullets, dismembering or disemboweling it, or setting it afire. Bryant and Milam overkilled Emmett Till by beating him for hours, shooting

114

Ryan J. Johnson

him in the head, and strangling him with barbed wire, all before trying to erase their annihilation by sinking his corpse in a river with a heavy cotton gin fan. Unlike spectacle lynchings, this murder involved an extra attempt to annihilate when Sheriff Strider tried to bury the body as quickly as possible.66 Closely connected is another form of annihilation: the myth of the so-called “Black beast rapist.”67 According to the white social fantasy, the South was full of Black brutes who craved to deflower innocent white maidens, as one sees in the words of the former president of the University of North Carolina: “When a knock is heard at the door [the white woman] shudders with nameless horror. The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance.”68 In Bryant and Milam’s murder trial, their attorneys’ defense strategy was to cast Emmett as just such a brute, set upon corrupting an innocent southern belle. Carolyn Bryant’s testimony played right into this.69 A third form of annihilation also appeared in the murder trial of Bryant and Milam: the identity of the corpse. While there was never any question about the identity of Polyneices’s body, Emmett Till’s face was so battered that it was almost unrecognizable, making the work of recognizing individuality even more important than it was in Antigone. On the day Emmett Till was buried in Chicago, Tallahatchie County Sheriff Strider, who had found the corpse in the river, announced that he did not believe it belonged to the Chicago teen. Contrary to his earlier statements, Strider said the body might be that of an adult, so Emmett Till could still be alive.70 The Sheriff even suggested that the corpse found in the river, tied to the gin fan by barbed wire, was staged by the NAACP in order to stir up racial conflict.71 Though it now sounds ridiculous, one jury member later admitted that the identity of the corpse (or alleged lack thereof) was one of the main reasons for the jury’s acquittal verdict.72 Because they were sanctioned by white law, these three forms of annihilation paved a path to the exoneration of the lynchers. The mourning of Emmett Till, embodied by Mamie’s mo’nin, refused these forms of annihilation through public acts of grieving that recognized his individuality. With her defiant mourning, Mrs. Bradley refused the annihilation of her son and thereby raised his individuality for the world to see. As Hegel might put it, she negated the negation of her son. In doing so, moreover, her own individuality emerged. She went from a single mother in Chicago to Mrs. Mamie Bradley, the face and force of a movement. What Hegel cherished in Antigone is that action and individuality are necessarily transgressive, that to act means to refuse accepted traditions, customs, and laws, and this is precisely what Mamie did. As Hegel rooted all meaningful action in Antigone’s

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

115

defiant burial, all signs of individuality in a woman’s refusal, all significant deeds in the work of mourning, memory, and memorialization, Mrs. Mamie Bradley’s act became the antigonal point that transformed Black life, death, and the power to love the lost. Wake Work In the aftermath of Antigone’s defiance, only Creon survived. Antigone and everyone else were dead. In the wake of Emmett Till’s murder, Mamie Bradley survived, long after almost everyone else from the lynching and trial died. Judge Swango died in 1970, Milam in 1980, and Bryant in 1994.73 As of 2022, only Carolyn Bryant, the white woman at the heart of it all, was still alive, residing in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina. Mrs. Bradley lived until she was eighty-one, performing what can be seen as Christina Sharpe’s sense of “wake work.” Brilliantly evoking the polysemy of “wake” (as a funeral, a ship’s path, the recoil of a bullet, awakening, wakefulness), Sharpe says, The wake is keeping track of the ship, keeping watch for the dead. It was a way for me to think about the persistence of Black death—what Saidiya Hartman calls the “afterlife of slavery”—and the persistence of Black life, the ways in which Black people nonetheless make spaces of joy. Wake work is the work that we Black people do in the face of our ongoing death, and the ways we insist life into the present.74

As wrenching as it is, wake work insists on tarrying in the wake of slavery, segregation, loss, and death because Black life is so beautiful, creative, tender, infinitely worthwhile. “In the midst of so much death and the face of Black life as proximate to death,” Sharpe asks, “how do we attend to physical, social, and figurative death and also to the largeness that is Black life, Black life insisted from death?”75 Wake work is her response: a conceptual analytic or “mode of inhabiting and rupturing” an antiblack episteme in the name of Black life.76 Sharpe distinguishes wake work from traditional mourning in a way, I suggest, that Mrs. Bradley’s mo’nin embodied and practiced.77 Wake work “troubles mourning,” Sharpe says, in the sense that traditional mourning is restricted to a very circumscribed, often singular, loss, and thus cannot handle the “interminable event” called antiblackness.78 The trouble with mourning is that it seems ill equipped to handle a violence that is mundane, normalized, and commonplace. Wake work is a mode of mourning that which happens constantly, every day, everywhere—what she calls the “quotidian atrocity” or “total climate” that leads from what Dionne Brand calls the “door of no

116

Ryan J. Johnson

return” to the present.79 Even given Mrs. Bradley’s Christian, Civil Rights hopefulness, Mamie’s mo’nin seems a form of wake work. Mrs. Bradley did, after all, transform her personal grief into a collective lament for all those who suffer yet simultaneously insist on Black life in a ubiquitously antiblack world. Citing Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers as fellow wake workers, Mrs. Bradley said, “I was determined to work until my dying day to search for answers and to make sure the story of Emmett Louis Till would never be buried,” not just for her and her son but for every Black mother and child.80 In Antigone’s wake, amid the ongoing antiblack world, Mamie defiantly lived a life of lamentation, of rending and mending, of defiantly tarrying with what remains of absolute and irrecoverable loss. Might I even define our antigonal line itself as a variation on wake work, while attentively attending to differences in racial subject positions? Throughout her life, Mrs. Bradley remained fully committed to telling the world about her son—and not just the brutal death he suffered at the hands of white law and order, but about his smile and about the creative force of all Black children. She wrote, “my story involves tragic loss. The worst experience a mother could ever have. But there is also the celebration of life, the lessons of a lifetime.”81 Out of personal tragedy, Mrs. Bradley began a life of ardent activism immediately after the trial. For many months, she spoke at rally after rally for the NAACP, sparking one of their largest fundraising campaigns ever (donations had dwindled after desegregation). “In the process,” she wrote, “I was finding my voice and finding some meaning. It was cathartic.”82 Those rallies kept her sane, even as she regularly received threats by mail or over the phone. Though miscommunication with Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, led to a split with the organization, Mrs. Bradley was a sought-after, untiring speaker for nearly fifty years. In addition to speaking at rallies, she felt called to become an educator. In 1960 she graduated from Chicago Teachers College and in 1976 earned a master’s degree in educational administration from Loyola Chicago.83 For almost twenty-five years, she taught in Chicago Public Schools, and was especially dedicated to help children living in poverty. She founded, for example, “The Emmett Till Players,” composed primarily of children outside of school who she taught to memorize and perform speeches by Black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.84 Even as public interest in her son’s death dwindled and she was disappointed by years of broken promises, she never wavered in her devotion to, as Sharpe might put it, “Black life lived in, as, under, and despite Black death.”85 Thanking an audience after a performance of the play The State of Mississippi v. Emmett Till, she still urged them on a decade later, telling them “the work was not over . . . There was so much still to be done to prevent that kind of horror from ever happening to even one more child.”86

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

117

Mrs. Mamie Till-Mobley died on January 6, 2003. The next day, she was scheduled to speak at the Ebenezer Baptist Church about an exhibition called “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America.”87 Her kidneys were failing, but she was determined to be at the church, so she requested accelerated dialysis. But she never made it to Atlanta. Today she is buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in a plot near her son. As Mrs. Bradley committed her life to working in the wake of her son’s murder and ongoing antiblackness, it falls to the rest of us still living to tarry in her wake and the countless other murdered, lost, and forgotten Black lives. This includes not only the names we should all know—Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair (killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing), Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice—but also the countless others annihilated and actively being annihilated by interminable structural antiblackness. Emmett Till died in the wake of many wakes, as did his mother, and so do we. Wake work never ends because the dead never die. ERASED LYNCHINGS Always heeding Hartman’s caution with citing Black suffering, I have not dwelt long with the grisly details of Emmett Till’s lynchings. They are, after all, plain to see in the Jet photographs. And I, as a white American man even cautiously approaching such a fraught topic, am always in danger of unjustly claiming an intimacy (e.g., I have no right to refer to Emmett Till by his now well-known nickname) or pretending an understanding inaccessible to me, as well as exploiting Black suffering for my own scholarly ends. This is a real danger, one to which I seek to remain humble, attentive, and respectful.88 In light of this danger, I constantly seek to learn from Black wisdom and experience in order to best discern how I can do the unending work of dismantling whiteness within and around me. To close out the body of this paper, I consider Christina Sharpe’s powerful question: “What if white people took it almost as a duty to look into the white faces appearing in lynching photos, to trace down their names, to discover the scene prior to the lynching, and to see themselves in them?”89 I thus take up Sharpe’s question (perhaps more of a challenge) and ask other white people to do it too. I listen to Sharpe; I look again at those horrific images of lynching, but this time without simply identifying with the violated Black bodies.90 When white people and Black people regard lynching, they see something different, as they must. One of whiteness’ sordid defense mechanisms is the ease with which it can appropriate the suffering of others. This applies especially when considering lynching. When I look at those almost unbearable photos, I wince not only at the mutilated Black bodies but

118

Ryan J. Johnson

also at the reprehensible white people, the ones who lived on. As painful, shameful, and uncomfortable as it is, when I look at images of lynching, I must recognize myself in the smiling, shouting, or bored white faces. For to be white today, is to live in that lineage and to benefit from it. Maybe this is the echo of Antigone’s claim, or maybe it is part of an Oedipal curse, but if white people do not see themselves in the white lynchers of their past, then they are doomed to become them, to repeat the old violence in a new key, to become their fathers and perpetuate whiteness with their mothers. I thus respond to Sharpe’s challenge with a question and an image. First the question: When will we no longer need Antigone? One answer might be: When Emmett Till’s story, or countless lynchings and other white violence enacted on non-white bodies, take its place; when we make the atrocities (rather than just the glories) of our past into our founding tales.91 I have no idea if this is possible. But we keep reading and staging Antigone, and we keep forgetting and ignoring Emmett Till and the countless, often unnamed, other Black lives lost along the way. To help address this forgetting, I turn to the work of the American artist Ken Gonzales-Day, from his “Erased Lynchings” series, which uses many of the images seen in the exhibition at which Mrs. Bradley was scheduled to speak on the day she died.92 If you are able, please seek out Gonzales-Day’s offering. Many are easily found with a simple internet word search. Select one image from the “Erased Lynchings” series and try to tarry with it. What do you see? What do you feel? I see that the mutilated bodies have been removed yet still haunt the scene. I see that remaining white people do not (could not) know that the target of their violence had been removed. I see that their white bodies, expressions, and dispositions still revolve around the violence that has gathered them together. By removing the corpse and the corresponding tools of lynching, Gonzalez-Day leaves behind just the white faces. This is how I take up Sharpe’s challenge. When regarding the lynching of Emmett Till, I strive to do the same. As much as everyone surely winces in empathy at the horrors wrecked upon that Black child, it is deeply problematic when white people thoughtlessly identify with his suffering. White people cannot merely scoff at or condemn the Bryants, Milams, or other white perpetrators, pretending to think they are wholly separate from, better than, and free of them. If I heed Sharpe’s challenge correctly, I should instead see myself in the Bryants and Milams. To be clear, the point is not simply to feel debilitated, to feel self-loathing due to the overwhelming guilt and shame that come with seeing oneself in the white faces of a lynch mob (though those affects seem necessary), but to figure out the full breadth and complexity of one’s self-relation given that contemporary white-subject positions trace to those white faces. In this sense, I am rejecting the dangerous teleological relief that comes with the illusion

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

119

that a better future will unburden us of past atrocities, and instead call to determine how must one become disposed to oneself, as Nietzsche might put it, to unavoidably live the aftermath of such American atrocities.93 CONCLUSION: IDA B. WELLS Drawing this antigonal line is, of course, rough and imperfect. I have tried my best, but know well that good intentions can be an impotent cover for recklessness. I take full responsibility for its failures and shortcomings. If nothing else, I hope this paper is seen as a celebration of the beauty and brilliance of Black people amid the ongoing antiblackness within the discipline of philosophy. To whatever extent this works, I hope it is also seen as an invitation for others to fill in, far better than I can, more points on this antigonal lineage. To get things started, I conclude by suggesting a name for the next antigonal point: Ida B. Wells. When both of her parents died from yellow fever, a sixteen-year-old Wells was forced to care for her seven younger siblings. This unanticipated need to tend for her family forged in Wells what became a lifelong militant defense of Black life and a profound refusal of the erasure of Black death. Wells did not arrive at her antilynching work right away. Initially, “I had accepted the idea,” she wrote, “that although lynching was irregular and contrary to law and order, unreasoning anger over the terrible crime of rape led to the lynching.”94 Everything changed in 1892, when her friend Thomas Moss, and two of his workers, were lynched.95 Moss was a Memphis Black grocer who formed the collective People’s Grocery Company, catering to primarily Black clientele. He had dedicated himself to cultivating the virtues heralded by Booker T. Washington such as education, cleanliness, an upright moral character, industriousness, and modesty. According to Washington’s measurement, Moss had long proven his merit. White respect should have been obvious. But it was not. The reason, according to white social order, is that the “elevation of educated African Americans,” Linda McMurry says, “meant the degradation of poor, ignorant whites.”96 Wells thus recognized what Booker T. Washington did (perhaps could) not: The harder Black people worked to pull themselves up from slavery, the more lynchings there were. Thus when Moss “was murdered with no more consideration than if he had been a dog,” Wells wrote, her eyes were opened to “what lynching really was . . . An excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus to ‘keep the [N-word] down.’”97 This is the spark for Wells’s antigonal life. She realized the wake in which she lived and never left, “investigating every lynching I read about.”98

120

Ryan J. Johnson

If I may adapt Sharpe words, Wells belongs on this antigonal line because she articulates a lifelong and unending commitment to Black life “lived in, as, under, and despite Black death.”99 Though she “was not the first to expose rape as a mythical cause of mob action,” Wells “became the loudest and most persistent voice for truth.”100 Her 1892 editorial for the Memphis Free Speech shows this unflinching commitment to Black life in the wake of Black death: “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will over-reach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.”101 Once white Southern men read this, they promised to lynch the “man” who wrote it. But as Creon first thought a man had buried Polyneices, rather than Antigone, white Southern men assumed a man had written this op-ed. Despite the threats and violence, she would not, could not, be stopped, even being so bold as to threaten white men! Speaking across the continent and Europe, Wells wrote and spoke against white mendacity with unrelenting courage, she defied white law order, she risked everything—and she did so by seeking to honor every annihilated Black life she could name. Like Antigone, Wells called out the racist lies and white paranoia by fearlessly telling the truth, by remaining committed to the prophetic role of speaking truth to power, by openly accepted the consequences. “I felt,” wrote Wells, “that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.”102 Though she was run out of the South, though her whole life was continually threatened by the white social order, though she was slandered because she was a woman, she refused to bend. Perhaps nothing expresses this more vividly than when she physically fought a white train conductor, locking her feet to the seat and biting his arm, when he and several white men tried to remove her from the whites-only car; she later sued (and won) a suit against the train company (though courts overturned it). It seems perfectly plausible to imagine seeing Antigone’s words come out of Wells’s pen: “I say I did it and I don’t deny it.”103 There it is—a possible opening to the next antigonal point. Thinking still of Fred Moten (I cannot stop), this conclusion may be like an anacrusis.104 The word comes from the Greek anakrousis, meaning “a pushing back” of a ship. The seafaring Greeks would start a poem with an unaccented first syllable— the pushing a ship back from the dock, thereby starting a voyage across the sea. In music, it is called the “upbeat,” an unstressed lead-in motif that comes before the first downbeat. An anacrusis is a way of weighting or priming that first downbeat, thus accenting the meters that follow. I end on the upbeat then,

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

121

hoping someone else will follow with the next downbeat on the next phrase in an unfinished antigonal line. NOTES 1. I want to thank the brilliant Andrés Fabián Hanao Castro and the “Antigone Reading Group” he organized at Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute in Spring 2020. My idea for this paper emerged during those amazing discussions. Andrés himself explores similar themes, and so many more, in his fabulous book: Antigone in the Americas: Democracy, Sexuality, and Death in the Settler Colonial Present (Albany: SUNY Press, 2021). 2. There is good reason to call lynching a distinctly American phenomenon. See the second essay in Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (New York: Basic Civitas, 1998); Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, American Lynching (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), lx–xiii. The few philosophers who have spoken of lynching are more interdisciplinary, such as James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011); Grégoire Chamayou, Manhunts: A Philosophical History, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Trudier Harris-Lopez, “Lynching and Burning Rituals in African-American Literature” in A Companion to African American Philosophy, ed. Tommy K. Lott and John P. Pittman (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 413–18; Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009); John Pittman, “Nietzsche, Ressentiment, and Lynching,” in Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought, ed. Jacqueline Scott and A. Todd Franklin (AlbanyY: SUNY Press, 2006), 33–49. 3. Born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan, she became, through marriages, Mrs. Till, Mrs. Bradley, and finally Mrs. Till-Mobley. Since I am addressing mostly what happens when she was Mrs. Bradley, I will typically use this name. 4. Perhaps antigonal points are variations on Hegel’s notion of “nodes [Knoten]”: “However much, therefore, one of the previous series in its forward movement through the nodes [of the whole series] marked a regression within the series but then again continued out of those regressions in a single longitude, still henceforth, it is, as it were, broken at these nodes, these universal moments, and it falls apart into many lines, which, gathered together into one coil, at the same time symmetrically unite themselves so that the same differences, within which each moment itself gave itself a shape, all meet together.” G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. and ed. Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), §68. 5. This paper is a variation on what Fred Moten calls an “appositional encounter”: “an investigation, which is to say a remixing, of prior tracks and the laying down of some new ones; some movement, down and across ruptured, restricted avenues, nowhere, no place, but not there; some eccentric avenue given and made in being broken in and into and down, uptown, Los Angeles, Arkansas. Movement like this isn’t parallel but off and out; tangent as much as crossing; asymptotic, appositional

122

Ryan J. Johnson

encounter. As soon as we call this line we’re on derailment we’ll begin to study how all this out root goes.” Fred Moten, Black and Blur (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 296 n. 30. 6. Following W. E. B. Du Bois’s case for capitalizing “Negro,” I capitalize “Black,” even when a quoted author does not originally do so. See: https:​//​www​.brookings​.edu​ /research​/brookingscapitalizesblack​/. 7. Gratitude to Logan Scime’s noticing this parallel. Mr. Scime was a philosophy student in the Winter 2022 “Seminar on Continental Philosophy” at the University of Toronto. 8. Although Antigone says she would not, were she a mother, have defied Crone to bury her child, I do not find this contrary to my aims. Oedipal relations, after all, were far trickier than that. Polyneices was not simply a brother, but also a nephew, as he was also her uncle (Sophocles, Antigone, 505–10). For more on this, see Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). 9. In a sense, I am trying to do for philosophy what Mark Twain did in 1901. Twain wrote an essay called “The United States of Lyncherdom,” which was meant to become the introduction to a proposed, multivolume history of lynching. See Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, American Lynching, ix. 10. G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in 20 Bänden mit Registerband: 18: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Surkampf Verlag, 1986), 509. My translation of “die himmlische Antigone, die herrlichste Gestalt, die je auf Erden erscheinen.” 11. J. M. Bernstein, “‘the celestial Antigone, the resplendent figure that ever appeared on earth’: Hegel’s Feminism” in Feminist Readings of Antigone, ed. Fanny Söderbäck (New York: SUNY 2010), 111. 12. Hegel, Phenomenology, §463. 13. A component of this aesthetic image is the purity exhibited by the supposedly white ancient statuary and architecture. Somewhat willfully, the Germans ignored the archaeological evidence that the Greeks painted their statuary in bright, gaudy colors. Emphasizing their false whiteness and purity helped justify unfounded claims of ancient white supremacy. See Nell Irvin Painter, History of White People (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), Chapter 5. “The White Beauty Ideal as Science.” 14. Hegel, Phenomenology, §464. 15. Hegel, Phenomenology, §462. 16. Though one might point out that calling the prohibition “Creon’s” entails a kind of individuality, it derives from his role, not from anything outside his position as king. 17. Admittedly, it is not certain that she performed both burials. 18. Sophocles, Antigone in Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, 3rd Edition, ed. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 443. 19. Hegel, Phenomenology, §467 20. Hegel, Phenomenology, §467

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

123

21. Hegel, Phenomenology, §474. 22. Bernstein, “‘the celestial Antigone,’” 126. 23. G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in 20 Bänden mit Registerband: 18: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Surkampf Verlag, 1986), 509. My translation of “die himmlische Antigone, die herrlichste Gestalt, die je auf Erden erscheinen.” 24. Mamie Till-Mobley and Christopher Benson, The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America (New York: Random House, 2003), 283 25. Sophocles, Antigone, 524–25. 26. Jennifer Ann Bates offers an answer to this in her notion of “speculative moral receptivity.” See Bates, “Broken at the Nodes: Ekphrastic Crisis and Speculative Moral Receptivity in Hegel’s Religious Phenomenology and Shakespeare’s ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’” in Hegel’s Heritage, ed. Kaveh Boveiri (Quebec City: University of Laval press, 2022), 165–78. 27. Sophocles, Antigone, 427. 28. Emmett Till’s mother said she often “thought about Emmett in that Shed, how no one had answered his call.” Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 283 29. Hegel, Phenomenology, §590. 30. For Hegel on the reign of terror, see Rebecca Comay, Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011). 31. Rushdy, American Lynching, xii; emphasis added. 32. Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3. At the same time, this reluctance, Fred Moten notes, can actually entail the reproduction of the suffering: “The decision not to reproduce the account of Aunt Hester’s beating is, in some sense, illusory. First, it is reproduced in her reference to and refusal of it; second, the beating is reproduced in every scene of subjection the book goes on to read.” Fred Moten, In the Break, 4. 33. Frederick Douglass, “The Lesson of the Hour” (1894), in David B. Chesebrough, Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 134–43, 141. 34. “popular sovereignty is the principle, lynching the practice.” Rushdy, American Lynching, 1. See also Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). 35. For a focus on Citizens’ Councils in Mississippi, see Stephanie R. Rolph, Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954–1989 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018) 36.36. Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 34–35 37. Timothy B. Tyson, The Blood of Emmett Till (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 101. Tyson also notes that one of the main figures in the Council regretted that Milam and Bryant were not more violent, saying it was too bad that the murders did not cut up the body more so that it would have sunk more easily and thus never been

124

Ryan J. Johnson

discovered. See Philip Luce, “The Mississippi White Citizens’ Council: 1954–1959,” Master’s Thesis, Ohio State University, 1960, 32, n 6. 38. Rushdy argues that the Revolutionary formulation of “the people” was a way to paint a mob as a form of popular sovereignty. Rushdy, American Lynching, 26–27. 39. James Baldwin, Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfictions, 1948–1985 (Boston: Beacon Press, 2021), 11; emphasis added. 40. Cited in Anderson, Emmett Till, 151. When asked to intervene in the murder, the US Justice Department and the J. Edgar Hoover–led FBI excused themselves from investigations by citing lack of jurisdiction. Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: The Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 50. 41. Mills, Racial Contract, 87. At the heart of this is the eugenicist fear of “mongrelization,” as seen in the 1924 Racial Integrity act. See Richard Sherman, “‘The Last Stand’: The Fight for Racial Integrity in Virginia in the 1920s,” The Journal of Southern History 54, no. 1 (1988): 69–92. To add to Mill’s point, white people carry around with them a right to what Shannon Sullivan calls “ontological expansiveness,” a sort of social-ethical-political manifest destiny. Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 10. 42. Ersula J. Ore, Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2019), 10. 43. Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 86. 44. For another example, see the shocking logic in one Georgia lyncher’s explanation in Hadley Cantril, The Psychology of Social Movements (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 115. 45. See Grégoire Chamayou, Manhunts: A Philosophical History, trans. Steven Rendall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 46. Quoted in Anderson, Emmett Till, 157. 47. Dave Tell reveals some inconsistencies and untruths in Huie’s account, including excising two other men involved in the beating and murder. Dave Tell, Remembering Emmett Till (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 149–50. 48. The NAACP estimates that from “1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S.,” while the Equal Justice Initiative arrives at slightly different numbers. “The History of Lynching in America,” See https:​//​naacp​.org​/find​-resources​/history​ -explained​ /history​ -lynching​ -america; and “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, Third Edition,” https:​//​lynchinginamerica​.eji​.org​/report​/ 49. Sophocles, Antigone, (471). 50. Anderson, Emmett Till, 48–49. 51. Anderson, Emmett Till, 47. 52. Anderson, Emmett Till, 54. 53. Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 38. 54. For Mamie Bradley “the discovery of a photograph in the fullness of its multiple sensuality moves in the drive for a universality to come, one called by what is in and around the photograph—Black mo’nin.’” Moten, “Black Mo’nin,” 69.

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

125

55. Fred Moten, “Black Mo’nin,” Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 59–76, 69. 56. There is some historical sedimentation here. “The sulks” was a term that stigmatized enslaved wet nurses and mothers who openly grieved. “When confronted with enslaved women’s emotional responses to losing or being separated from their children, white southerners construed their grief as ‘the sulks,’ or even a form of madness—‘vices,’ flaws, or pathological conditions—that made such women less valuable and less desirable in the slave market.” Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 121. 57. Moten, “Black Mo’nin,” 71. 58. Moten is attentive as always to the questions of materiality here—the photograph and exclusion of sound framing the image. Hence his question: “how to listen to (and touch, taste, and smell) a photograph or a performance, how to attune oneself to a moan or shout that animates the photograph with an intentionality of the outside.” Moten, “Black Mo’nin,” 71. 59. Christopher Benson, “Afterward,” in Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 285. 60. Importantly, she fought to abolish the death penalty. 61. Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 261. Unbeknownst to Bryant, Mrs. Till-Mobley was listening in on the call, learning firsthand the vulgar, hateful things he still said, shocked to hear him say that “Emmett Till had ruined his life. His life?” Bryant said that he regretted nothing and that, if “he had it to do all over again, he would.” 62. Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 282. 63. Hegel, Phenomenology, 451. 64. See Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 65. See Leon F. Litwack, “Hellhounds,” in Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, ed. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 123–28. 66. Dave Tell ruminates on the themes of forgetting in both the Greek mythic River Lethe and Southern rivers, a common site for the disposal of lynched corpses. Many joked that the river in which Till was sunk and discovered was already overstuffed with Black bodies. Tell, Remembering, 90–91. 67. Early literary depictions of this figure are found in Thomas Nelson Page’s books, such as The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904), or Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989). Most famous might be Thomas Dixon’s The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865–1900 (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), and The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905). 68. George T. Winston, “The Relation of the Whites to the Negroes,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 1901, Vol. 18, America’s

126

Ryan J. Johnson

Race Problems. Addresses at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, April 12–13, 1901), 105–18. 69. Her testimony during the trial differed from her previous accounts. Tim Tyson says that, during her interviews with Bryant, she recanted, though her daughter denied this happened. 70. After the murder trial, rumors of Emmett Till sightings popped up around the country, though they all were retracted when questioned. See Anderson, Emmett Till, 174. It is also interesting to note that Emmett Till was, like Polyneices, buried twice—once in 1955 and once again in 2004, after the corpse was exhumed when the Department of Justice reopened the case in order to determine, once and for all, that it was indeed Emmett Till’s body. 71. There are problematic resonances between the trial of Emmett Till and the death of his father, Louis Till. Emmett’s father and Fred A. McMurray were accused of raping two women while in Italy during World War II, hastily found guilty, and quickly executed. During the kidnapping trial of Bryant and Milam, Louis’s confidential military record was mysteriously declassified and leaked. According to John Edgar Wideman, both rape victims at Louis and McMurray’s trial said they could not identify their assailants, nor could they identify Louis and McMurray. Louis was also accused and convicted of the murder of an Italian woman that allegedly occurred that same night, even though one witness swore first that the killer was white. In the end, they were hanged “on the basis of being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.” John Edgar Wideman, Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File (Scribner, 2016), 106. 72. Tyson, Blood, 180. 73. After the trial, Bryant’s and Milam’s lives crumbled. They were left impoverished and divorced. Milam died of cancer, and in a perverse resonance with Oedipus, Bryant went blind. 74. “‘What Does It Mean To Be Black and Look at This?’ A Scholar Reflects on the Dana Schutz Controversy” Interview with Christina Sharpe by Siddhartha Mitter, Hyperallergic, March 24, 2017, https:​//​hyperallergic​.com​/368012​/what​-does​-it​-mean​ -to​-be​-black​-and​-look​-at​-this​-a​-scholar​-reflects​-on​-the​-dana​-schutz​-controversy​/ 75. Sharpe, In the Wake, 17. 76. Ibid. 77. See also the discussion of Moten and Sharpe on mo’nin and wake work in Hanao Castro’s fabulous Antigone in the Americas, 181–94. 78. Sharpe, In the Wake, 17. 79. Sharpe, In the Wake, 17, 21. Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001). 80. Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 281. 81. Ibid., 268. 82. Ibid., 196. 83. Ibid., 246. 84. Ibid., 247. 85. Sharpe, In the Wake, 20. 86. Till-Mobley and Benson, The Death of Innocence, 267.

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

127

87. Ibid., 286. 88. Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket” is a clear example of not respecting the limitations of one’s subject position, and instead ontologically expanding, as Shannon Sullivan might say, with abandon. 89. A paraphrase from Christina Sharpe, “Ordinary Notes: On the (Un)Making of Black Meaning” (Zoom Talk, Syracuse Symposium: Conventions, 2021–2022, Dec. 1, 2021). 90. For a variation on this, see REDACTED, “Eternal Recurrence and Histories of Racism” in Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice, ed. Abraham Jacob Greenstine, Ryan J. Johnson, and Dave Mesing (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). 91. I take it that the “National Memorial for Peace and Justice” is meant to do just this. 92. Ken Gonzales-Day, “Erased Lynchings,” Ken Gonzales-Day, October 9, 2022, October 2, 2022, https:​//​kengonzalesday​.com​/projects​/erased​-lynchings​/. Another recent example of this is director and producer Christine Turner’s Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, Documentary Short, Firelight Films in association with MTV Documentary Films, 2021. 93. I borrow this phrase from Guy Lancaster, American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2021). 94. Wells, Crusade for Justice, 64. 95. Ibid. 96. Ibid., 144. 97. Edwards, To Keep the Waters Troubled, 135; Wells, Crusade for Justice, 64. 98. Wells, Crusade for Justice, 64. 99. Sharpe, In the Wake, 20. 100. Edwards, To Keep the Waters Troubled, 146. 101. Wells, Southern Horrors, missing page number 102. Christopher Waldrep, ed. Lynching in America: A History in Documents (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 131. 103. Sophocles, Antigone in Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, 3rd Edition, ed. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 443. 104. Moten, In the Break, 22.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Anderson, Devery S. Emmett Till: The Murder that Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015. America’s Race Problems. Addresses at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, April 12–13, 1901.

128

Ryan J. Johnson

Baldwin, James. Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfictions, 1948–1985. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021. Bates, Jennifer Ann. “Broken at the Nodes: Ekphrastic Crisis and Speculative Moral Receptivity in Hegel’s Religious Phenomenology and Shakespeare’s ‘The Rape of Lucrece,’” in Hegel’s Heritage, ed. Kaveh Boveiri (Quebec City: University of Laval press, 2022), 165–78. Bernstein, J. M. “Hegel’s Feminism” in Feminist Readings of Antigone, ed. Fanny Söderbäck. Albanyk: SUNY Press 2010. Brand, Dionne. A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001. Butler, Judith. Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Cantril, Hadley. The Psychology of Social Movements. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002. Castro, Andrés Fabián Hanao. Antigone in the Americas: Democracy, Sexuality, and Death in the Settler Colonial Present. Albany: SUNY Press, 2021. Chamayou, Grégoire. Manhunts: A Philosophical History, trans. Steven Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Chesebrough, David B. 1998. Frederick Douglass: Oratory from Slavery. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. Comay, Rebecca. Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2011. Dixon, Thomas. The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1905. ———. The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden, 1865–1900. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902. Equal Justice Initiative. 2017 “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, Third Edition,” https:​//​lynchinginamerica​.eji​.org​/report​/. Feimster, Crystal N. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2009. Gonzales-Day, Ken. “Erased Lynchings,” Ken Gonzales-Day, October 9, 2022, October 2, 2022, https:​//​kengonzalesday​.com​/projects​/erased​-lynchings​/. Greenstine, Abraham Jacob, Ryan J. Johnson, and David Mesing, eds. Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming. Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. and ed. Pinkard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. ———. Werke in 20 Bänden mit Registerband: 18: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie I, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt: Surkampf Verlag, 1986.

Hegel, Antigone, and the Lynching of Emmett Til

129

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Lancaster, Guy. American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2021. Lott, Tommy Lee, and John P. Pittman. 2003. A Companion to African-American Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Luce, Philip. “The Mississippi White Citizens’ Council: 1954–1959,” master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1960. Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Mitter, Siddhartha and Sharpe, Christina. “A Scholar Reflects on the Dana Schutz Controversy” Interview with Christina Sharpe by Siddhartha Mitter, Hyperallergic, March 24, 2017, https:​//​hyperallergic​.com​/368012​/what​-does​-it​-mean​-to​-be​-black​ -and​-look​-at​-this​-a​-scholar​-reflects​-on​-the​-dana​-schutz​-controversy​/. Moten, Fred. Black and Blur. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. ———. “Black Mo’nin,” Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. ———. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. NAACP, 2023. https:​//​naacp​.org​/find​-resources​/history​-explained​/history​-lynching​ -america. Ore, Ersula J. Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Page, Thomas Nelson. Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. ———. The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904. Painter, Nell Irvin. History of White People. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. Patterson, Orlando. Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries. New York: Basic Civitas, 1998. Payne, Charles M. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Rolph, Stephanie R. Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954–1989. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018. Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. American Lynching. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy., and Philippe I. Bourgois. 2004. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. Scott, Jacqueline., and A. Todd Franklin. 2006. Critical Affinities: Nietzsche and African American Thought. Albany: SUNY Press. Sharpe, Christina. “Ordinary Notes: On the (Un)Making of Black Meaning.” Zoom Talk, Syracuse Symposium: Conventions, 2021–2022, Dec. 1, 2021. Sherman, Richard. “‘The Last Stand’: The Fight for Racial Integrity in Virginia in the 1920s,” The Journal of Southern History 54, no. 1 (1988). Sophocles. Antigone in Sophocles I: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, 3rd Edition, ed. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

130

Ryan J. Johnson

Sullivan, Shannon. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. Tell, Dave. Remembering Emmett Till. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Till-Mobley, Mamie, and Christopher Benson. The Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America. New York: Random House, 2003. Turner, Christine. Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, Documentary Short, Firelight Films in association with MTV Documentary Films, 2021. Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. Waldrep, Christopher, ed. Lynching in America: A History in Documents. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Winston, George T. “The Relation of the Whites to the Negroes,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 1901, Vol. 18. Wideman, John Edgar. Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File. Scribner, 2016. Wood, Amy Louise. Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Chapter Seven

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Community Gerda Walther and the Possibilities of Personal Freedom Antonio Calcagno

In her Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften [On the Ontology of Social Communities], Gerda Walther explores the lived experience and the sense of community.1 One finds, among the interesting aspects of community she discusses, a section of text devoted to the possibility of an inauthentic or non-genuine (unecht) lived experience of community and its effect on the execution of social acts, in particular, acts carried out in the name of others or on account of the sense or meaning of the community. She claims inauthentic communal experiences can help us understand how and why individuals and collectivities sometimes fail to live out their respective communal intentions, both good and bad, as a community. At the heart of Walther’s phenomenological description of inauthentic communal experiences is the relation between an individual and the collectivity, as well as the community-actors’ failure to perceive and live up to certain realities and intentions. For example, an individual member’s own intentions may come into conflict with the community’s intentions, or a community may come into conflict with itself over a conflicted sense or idea of itself. Walther’s analysis certainly helps us understand why individuals and communities sometimes face conflict and collapse. But her insight also presents problems for her own account of social drives and intense forms of community in which individual members’ egos fuse to form a collective, superindividual person. In the case of the former, the force of a social drive may 131

132

Antonio Calcagn

blind one to the possible inauthenticity of communal relationship, thereby affecting one’s ability to perform authentically specific social acts. In the case of the latter, the intensity of the fusional form of community makes it impossible to see a potential conflict between individual and community; the inauthentic relationship between individuals and the community is not evident as all members are taken up as a collective unity at once and in the same moment, subsumed into a collective person, thereby obscuring the ability of an individual to see possible conflicts with and within this collectivity: in the fusional moments there is no distance between members of the community and between the community and itself. I argue here that Walther’s project to give community a partial foundation in a social drive and her defense of an intense form of fusional community in which individuals join with one another to form a superindividual reality present obstacles for recognizing inauthentic or ungenuine community and social acts. Social drive and fusional community can create a certain blindness, which unintentionally leads individuals into forms of inauthentic collective action that may be noxious, harmful, or severely unethical. However, by turning to Walther’s later work, Phenomenology of Mysticism, one can find a possible solution to the foregoing dilemma. Walther’s later, robust account of individual freedom makes room for a self that is always aware of its freedom, and though pushed by a social drive and the warm, overwhelming feeling of fusional community, it can nonetheless choose to resist possible inauthentic forms of community and social acts. GERDA WALTHER’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF COMMUNITY Gerda Walther’s Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften was first published in 1923 in Edmund Husserl’s Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. The work was originally presented as Walther’s doctoral dissertation under Alexander Pfänder at Munich. A onetime Marxist and devoted socialist, Walther was deeply interested in the life and action of collectives and groups and saw them as key elements of political reform and change. By the time she arrived in Freiburg to study with Husserl, a rich body of sociological and phenomenological literature on community had already appeared, including the monumental works of thinkers like Ferdinand Tönnies,2 Georg Simmel,3 Alexander Pfänder,4 Max Scheler,5 and Edith Stein.6 Although Walther draws on the research available to her, she knits together a formidable social ontology distinguished from other accounts by her analyses of habit and passive structures that help fortify the experience and sense of community (OSG, 36; 38–44), the unconscious (OSG, 127),

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

133

affectivity (OSG, 33), and the role of empathy (OSG, 85) in the building of community. For Walther, community is an intentional form of social life. She claims there is a difference between those who interact socially with one another, for example, at work or in an institutional setting, and those who share an interaction in which they intentionally live the “same psycho-spiritual life”: this shared life has the same content, which is lived in the same way and in the same sense (OSG, 22). Social interactions may be driven by a goal or objective that lies outside the life of the members working or acting to achieve it. For example, workers employed at an educational institution may interact socially to better carry out the work of the institution, but they do not necessarily share a common psycho-spiritual life marked by the same content lived in the same way and sense (OSG, 30–31). By contrast, the members of a social group share deeply in the lives of one another and the life they share is communal. What is common between the members is marked by a similitude of content lived and experienced in the same way and sense. For example, a religious community of believers or political party members may be united by a similar cause or concern; they experience a sharing of the same psycho-spiritual life, content, sense, and ways of living and this unites their lives. Walther identifies only this second form of interaction as properly communal, that is, it is marked by a shared psycho-spiritual life that has the same content, is lived in the same way, and is lived in the same sense. The sociality of community is marked by unity and by identity—understood as identical content lived in the same sense and way. The communal life is intentional, that is, we are conscious of and live the sense or meaning of its structure (OSG, 24). Walther gives an example of children who play an imaginary game; they live in the temple of a fairy and serve the fairy (OSG, 25). The children experience the same object, namely, the abode of the fairy, and they experience the same psycho-spiritual engagement of that life in the fairy’s abode as this is what animates and makes possible their play. As they play together, the children live a communal psycho-spiritual bond that has the same content and that is lived in the same way and sense.7 Walther goes on to qualify what she means when she describes members of a community sharing the same intentional content and psycho-spiritual life. Community is marked by a knowledge of their social bond and a recognition that community is motivated, that is, the members are motivated to be in a community (OSG, 28–29). In motivated acts, phenomenologically understood, one may feel an affective attraction to be part of a community, for example, the pleasure of togetherness, but one must also rationally assent to being part of the community. Feeling alone is not sufficient for the constitution of the communal bond. One must freely will to be part of it. Walther

134

Antonio Calcagn

is fully aware that historical circumstances may create the conditions around which a community may be formed, but it is the shared inner life of that community, as it grows in intensity, that may create and produce objects or expressions of its life, for example, art and/or aesthetic objects that reflect the life of that community (OSG, 29). In addition to knowledge and motivation, communal sociality is marked by a sense of belonging, which is described as an inner feeling of oneness or unity (“inneren Einigung”) (OSG, 33). Walther claims that the feeling of inner oneness or unity is the essential characteristic of the lived experience of community (OSG, 34–36). This inner oneness manifests itself in various aspects. One may be overwhelmed, she says, with a feeling of warmth, which is not necessarily consciously willed; rather, it comes from the “back” of consciousness, from an unconscious source, a source of which we are not fully aware (OSG, 36). This feeling floods us and is the affect of the achievement of sensing the experience of community’s inner oneness. She describes the achievement of community as a peaceful resting-in-one-another (“Ruhens-in-einander”) and as a unity in which Is find reciprocal approval and completion (OSG, 36). The feeling of community endures as long as the feeling of resting in one another persists. Drawing on the work of her teacher Alexander Pfänder, Walther claims the inner oneness of community can be so intense that the one fuses or literally melts into the other (“Einheit mit ihm zu verschmelzen”) (OSG, 35). In her treatment of inner oneness or unity of belonging, Walther highlights a distinction: it is persons who experience the intense feeling of community rather than selves or individuals. Although she does not clarify what she means by person in her treatise on community, she takes up the definition of the uniquely personal, what she calls the Grundwesen, or fundamental essence, in her Phenomenology of Mysticism. It is clear, however, that community is a deeply personal and personalizing structure as the psycho-spiritual dimension of humanity comes to full expression. It should be remarked here that Walther’s account of the inner oneness of belonging typical of community is unique. Her teacher Edith Stein, for example, rejects this possibility of inner oneness, arguing that community is a lived experience of togetherness that only the singular individual can experience: the possibility of fusion is denied, for one always remains an individual experiencing a communal reality. The individual always remains foundational for Stein, as it does for Husserl.8 Scheler, who does maintain the possibility of a Gesamtperson or collective person, never speaks of the intense fusion or completion and approval that Walther discusses.9

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

135

GENUINE AND UNGENUINE COMMUNITY IN WALTHER In a curious section of her treatise, Walther pauses to reflect on possible inauthentic or ungenuine forms of community. She reminds her readers that a real form of community is constituted by the living of an inner unity. This inner unity is personal and is a condition for the unfolding of a community and the person. She remarks, “Only when a personality finds or forms the community required by its basic being can it develop fully.”10 The possibility of inauthentic community comes to manifest itself in communal social acts. Whereas genuine communal social acts come to be expressed as actions undertaken “in the name of” or “for the sense/meaning” of the community, inauthentic ones are lived solely by individuals and/or observers. Walther is well-aware of the danger, or tragedy, and possible evil that can ensue from ungenuine communities (OSG, 107–9). Drawing from Pfänder, she describes three possible forms of ungenuine community, in which a deformed configuration of communal sociality appears. First, the conflict between the intentions of the private individual and those of the community may be a source of inauthentic community. In this case, the interests of the private individual may trump, or be confused with, those of the community, and a conflict or “contradiction” between the individual subject and the collective objective “being and essence” of the community appears (OSG, 109). For example, rather than thinking about what is right for the community, the individual member opts to act only in his or her own self-interest, thereby negating the genuine possibility of acting in the “name” or “sense” of the community (OSG, 109). Walther here draws also on the writings of Adolf Reinach and his view of performative contracts in which one may agree to the terms of a contract, supposedly in the name of the group, but, in actuality, act only on behalf of one’s own interests and intentions (OSG, 109). Here, the private person, the subject, ignores or contradicts the communal will. In a side note, Walther remarks that, historically, it has been tragic when leaders falsely put their own interests above those of their communities, for which they claim to act (OSG, 110). Two other forms of ungenuine lived experiences of community are discussed by Walther, namely, in terms of one, the empirical being and behavior, and, two, the idea/essential being of the community. These two forms are connected and not always easily distinguishable from each other (OSG, 110–11). In the case of the former, a lived experience of community may be judged as inauthentic, following Max Weber’s account, if there is a clear break with a tradition or moral comportment (“Tradition und Sitte”) of behavior and comportment of community. For example, leaders who choose to act by following

136

Antonio Calcagn

their own intentions and understandings, outside the traditional normal and ethical codes of a community, do not act in the name of or in the sense of the community. The conflict between what is historically and empirically traditional and ethical about the being of the community is compromised by an individual (OSG, 110). In the case of the latter, it is the idea or essence of the community that is contradicted by an individual member. Here, an individual member violates the lived sense or meaning of the inner oneness that typifies the community and grounds its social acts; the individual’s actions do not “correspond” to the idea of what the community is and understands itself to be (OSG, 110). In both cases, a conflict or “split” occurs between individual members and the group (OSG, 110–11). Interesting in Walther’s analysis of inauthentic community is the idea of a conflict, contradiction, or split between individual members and the community. Inauthentic community comes to appear primarily in and through social acts, and what is not fulfilled or achieved in such social acts is a correspondence between intention and the fulfillment of the intention, on the part of individuals and groups. One is reminded, here, of Husserl’s claim in the Logical Investigations that the achievement of sense occurs when there is a correspondence between the meaning intention and meaning fulfillment. Curious in Walther’s analysis, however, is her emphasis on individuals—for example, the private individual or the leader—that break with community intentions, traditions, and the community’s idea or essence. In her discussion of unethical community, Walther does not focus on examples in which communities themselves, though they live an inner bond of unity or oneness, may suffer mass deception and delusions (OSG, 110–15); rather, her descriptions are framed as conflicts of wills and interests between individual members and a communal group. But what happens if a collectivity itself is deceived, misperceives, or misjudges? Can communal delusions and deceptions exist? For example, can a collectivity that somehow sees and lives itself as a community recognize at one point that the sense and understanding of intentions that ground its sociality of inner oneness may be wrong, unethical, or misguided? We see this problem arise in political communities that have once been unified, that have acted in the name or sense of shared intentions, which, over time, have revealed themselves to be false, unethical, unjust, or even cruel and violent. With the realization that the motivation for their inner oneness is not true, these communities recognize they can no longer subsist in their current form. In such cases, it is not the conflict between the individual and community that is at stake, but the very sense of the inner oneness typical of community. Here, one sees mass communal deception or delusion playing itself out.

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

137

SOCIAL DRIVE AND FUSIONAL COMMUNITY: LIMITS AND CHALLENGES Though Walther focuses her limited account of inauthentic or ungenuine community on the conflicts and contradictions between individual members and the communal group, this in no way discredits her analysis, for the results of her analysis still obtain, albeit as a description of parts of a larger phenomenon. But if we probe her rich insights, we also find in Walther’s own writings intimations of the foregoing problem of communal deception and delusion. In particular, the case of social drive and the fusional intensity of the inner oneness of community challenge her own account of inauthentic community. In a manuscript titled “The Social Drives: Noesis and Noema,” Walther explores other forms of sociality, for example, a sociality formed by natural drives.11 In this text, she ponders, along with Aristotle and Marx, whether humans, like other animals, have a natural drive to be social and create different forms of sociality. Walther describes the drive as a “pressure to join or unify with other human beings” and claims this drive, in part, conditions social communities. According to Walther, they condition three unique forms of human sociality: the personal, the sociality motivated by shared interests, and humanity in general. Personal or communal forms of sociality are here described in more intimate forms, namely, friendships, marital relations, and family relations. In addition to personal forms of sociality, there are societal types conditioned by the social drives, for example, certain work or professional groups. They are distinguished from personal, intimate forms of sociality because these societal forms are organized around a certain individual characteristic or interest. Finally, following a certain stream of Marxian thought, Walther claims that social drives make possible, in part, the existence of a social group she calls humanity. Similar to the idea of a species-being, Walther’s conception of a larger, collective sociality called “humanity in general” is not only constituted by a motivated and rational intentionality, but is also deeply rooted in natural drives to socialize and be social: our humanity in general pushes us to interact with one another. Walther’s positing of social drives lays the groundwork for a conditioning force or pressure that drives humans to be social with one another. The pressurizing compulsion of drives exerts a force on human thinking and consciousness—we are not only motivated towards community but also driven to it. If we consider the addition of social drive to Walther’s account of community, we add a dimension of social life and reality that is not subject to the power of spirit—that is, to will and reason—thereby challenging the idea of a willed and rational intention that lies at the core of the inner oneness of community. If Freud is right when he claims that drives have both constructive

138

Antonio Calcagn

and destructive ends (Eros and Thanatos), social drives could equally pressure and condition genuine and ungenuine forms of community, that is, the essential core of community, understood as inner oneness or unification, could have both constructive and destructive ends. Social drives, then, must be understood not only to condition the “background” and “feelings” of community but also to drive inauthentic forms of community, for example, communities that may be motivated by their own self-destruction. We need only turn to the work of Nietzsche and Freud to find examples of the destructive sides of society and community that have played themselves out historically in the west, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Another important aspect of Walther’s analysis of communal sociality that conflicts in part with her analysis of ungenuine community lies in her very discussion of intense, fusional communities in which individual members’ subjectivities fuse into a collective reality. As we saw above, community is defined as an inner unification or oneness in which individuals share the same content, sense, and even feeling. It should be remarked here that it is only the most intense forms of community that are fusional. Walther distinguishes various types of social communities in which one lives the sense of unification specified above. In so doing, she also specifies the forms of the inner oneness that distinguish different possible forms of community. The unity may be ordered according to three specific hierarchical relations between members of a community: one or more members may be superior to others; one or more members may be inferior to others; and the members may be equal to one another (OSG, 52). The hierarchy of relations among members, Walther observes, can be structured according to different circumstances and realties. First, the hierarchy or relation may be conditioned by the object of the community, for example, certain norms or the sense and/or purpose of the community. A religious community, for example, may have within it different hierarchies of relations, depending on one’s function in the community (OSG, 52); and all members, for example, stand in a lower relation to God, who is the leader of the religious community. Second, members may stand in different relationships with one another and in relation to the whole community. There are differences, between, for example, leaders and members, functionaries or executive members of the community and the general membership, and in the way that different members are classified or characterized by the community itself (OSG, 52). Third, there are economic and historical factors that will determine a hierarchy of communal relations. Here, Walther, of course, refers to the Marxian insight of members of a class having different functions and roles, for example, the proletariat (OSG, 53). In order for a hierarchy of relations to exist in a community, Walther maintains, following Pfänder, that a certain distance between members is required (OSG, 55). But this distance is described in terms of the distance or separation one

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

139

experiences between objects in a lived stream of experience or between distinct moments of consciousness (OSG, 55). The distinction between members of a community, like the distance and distinction between objects in a stream of lived experience (Erlebnisström), in no way compromises the fact that the whole of the experience remains communal: it must be seen as a relation of parts and wholes—a point Husserl defends in his Third Logical Investigation. Key for the lived experience of community is its duration. Though community may consist of diverse types of relations that position members in different relations with one another, Walther claims that one of the important conditions for personal community is that members share a common human and personal constitution: community is possible between persons because they are all human persons. Following Pfänder, Walther claims the fact that all community members are constituted as embodied psyches allows members to share the warm feelings typically associated with inner oneness. It also allows them to experience and live the content and sense of the communal experience (OSG, 62–64). Also important is the Pfänderian idea that all human beings have a spirit or a fundamental essence (Grundwesen) marked by rationality, freedom, and personhood. Our shared fundamental essence allows us to experience the depth of community, as well as the depth of each other’s inner life and soul. In fact, the most intensive forms of community require that growing together of a person’s fundamental essence, and it need not always be conscious.12 Furthermore, a community must have a life, which is marked by the inner oneness or unity of the community itself (community-for-itself), as well as its external expression (community-in-itself). The latter is typified by the social acts we discussed above, as well as the specific relation in which one finds next to oneself the “other who also” (Menschen, die auch) (OSG, 69). Here, the external life of the community is marked by its members grasping that they act and live with others who also live and act in the same way. The shared interaction between members is grasped by the collective sense of “others, who also” carry out the same actions and live the same life. The intensity of unity or oneness of communal life may be experienced in two ways. Lesser forms of unity in which one may understand or grasp the communal feeling of a group may be acquired through empathy: one experiences the same experience as others, and by analogically comparing one’s feelings with those of others, one understands that the feeling is shared. But more intense feelings of community require that one feels the other as “we”—it is not simply the same content that is being experienced, it is the deep interpersonal unity of a community. In such experiences of the “we,” which Scheler calls the Gesamtperson or the collective person, individuals are taken up into a super-collectivity. This, for Walther, is the most intense form of community (OSG, 75–80). In empathy, the collectivity is experienced

140

Antonio Calcagn

from the vantage point of the individual member, whereas in intense forms of community, as Walther describes it, the individual is no longer the experiencer: a we experiences the same content and lives the same collective life. What are the implications of the Waltherian “we” of community for her idea of inauthentic community? The inner unity of community is so encompassing and intense that it becomes difficult to see the conflict between individuals and the ideas or sense of the community, or the contradictions within the community and its own traditions and sense or idea of itself. One can be so absorbed by the moments of the life of that community that one becomes fully absorbed and structured by the community, thereby leaving no room to see any possible conflicts or contradictions. For example, one can be so preoccupied with the life of a political party that one does not see the internal contradictions, to borrow from Marx and Gramsci, of the inconsistencies and failures of the party to live up to its own ideals and principles. One simply lives the now of the life of that personal community, often with disastrous results. In order for Walther’s account of inauthentic community to obtain, it requires the distance she and Pfänder describe, mentioned earlier in this essay, but the intense forms of community eliminate the gaps and distinctions that help distinguish individual members from one another and the community from itself, thereby making it harder for those who experience the intense we of community to be aware of possible forms of inauthenticity in the life of the community. RESISTANCE TO AND OVERCOMING OF INAUTHENTICITY THROUGH PERSONHOOD? In her discussion of social drives and intense forms of community, Gerda Walther compromises the ability of the individual ego and/or the communal collectivity from experiencing the contradictions and disjunctions that typify inauthentic or ungenuine community. If community is conditioned by social drives, and Walther never explicitly explains how exactly or how intensely this is the case, one wonders whether drives could exert so strong a pressure on individuals and groups that they may not be able to see whether there is a conflict between the drives and desires of the private person and the community, or whether there is an inconsistency within the community’s own living out of its idea of itself. Drives push and pressure, and they often create a force that both will and reason—the marks of spirit and the fundamental essence—struggle to control. Drives can theoretically push us to form community and they may keep us in it, even though the community itself may be inauthentically constituted. Furthermore, it would be difficult for an intense, fusional model of community in which a communal, collective life

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

141

(Gesamtleben) is shared, and in which the oneness of sense and content are lived as a we, to experience its own inauthenticity, as distance between members is necessary to see the contradictions. The reference to tradition, as discussed earlier, however, leaves a temporal space in which one could observe the life of the community in and through different moments of its history. A historical examination of the fusional moments could reveal lapses in consistency regarding shared members’ experience of a communal sense and ideal. But in the moment, such inauthenticity would be hard to perceive, ultimately creating the real possibility that a community could be swept up in its own unification while negating a possible inauthentic moment of communal life. Retrospectively, however, through some historical reflection, a community could learn from its own failure to live up to its ideals. But Walther also gives us another resource for resisting the possible inauthenticity of a community, namely, personal freedom. Her discussion of the fundamental essence and personhood in her treatise on community is taken up once again in her Phenomenology of Mysticism.13 We saw earlier how community is conditioned or made possible by the shared personal humanity of community members, who are embodied unities of psyche and spirit. This view of the person is developed by Walther in her essays on mysticism. In the opening pages of her work on mysticism, Walther justifies the real possibility of human freedom. As one makes the move from the natural attitude to the phenomenological one, which is willed stance, one notes that consciousness is structured in a unique way. Phenomenologically speaking, consciousness is marked by a flow or stream of lived experience, which has content. This flow of objects is temporal and spatial, and it moves around a zero point of orientation of the I. When one brackets one’s natural attitude and assumes the phenomenological stance, one becomes aware of one’s own consciousness and a zero point of orientation or a pure I around which consciousness appears to move. The I can consciously see that there is a foreground and background. To borrow Husserl’s language, there is a horizon of consciousness. This consciousness also has specific content, and the I can pause to examine the content to try and understand what is presenting itself to consciousness. Fascinating for Walther is the fact that the I can select which content it will focus on while ignoring the rest. This capacity to select content, to direct consciousness from the zero point of orientation, is the manifestation of freedom (Keim der Freiheit).14 In keeping with all phenomenological investigations, Walther asserts three important givens: the real existence of consciousness with its specific content, the existence and activity of an orienting pure I, and the capacity of this I to make free choices (the I can move—Ich kann).

142

Antonio Calcagn

Walther further develops her discussion of freedom in her analysis of telepathy, which she understands to be a social experience in which one not only enters into the mind of the other and understands what is being experienced, as in empathy, but also lives the very same experience of the other as one’s own. Here you have a fusion of the content of experience but also the lived experience of the person, as person, undergoing the experience. Walther views the person as permeable, able to telepathically receive and experience the life of another person, not as mere presentification of another’s experience (as in empathy), but as the very life of the person him- or herself. She describes how, after fighting with a friend, L., she returns to her apartment and begins to read her book. While reading, she feels herself being solicited by something from the “outside,” and she cannot return to her book. Something unsettles her. She lies down and closes her eyes in order to rest and regain her concentration. She then experiences her friend and his apartment; she feels his feelings and thoughts. Her own I has been set apart, and she lives the experience of her friend.15 Walther notes that telepathic experiences, unlike empathetic ones, not only displace the I, but also show that others can live intimately within my interiority. Telepathic experiences do not seem to be I-dependent: the other comes to live in us, displacing our I, thereby challenging the centrality of the individuating I as the source of all phenomenological experience. Marina Pia Pellegrino notes: From the beginning, the experience of telepathy is saturated by this aura that stems from the transmitter. Walther returns to the image of the ancient lamp, the image to which she compared the human person. The I-center is similar to a wick that burns and floats upon a combustible liquid (Flüssigkeit), which in ancient times was oil and which can be said to be like an embedment or the subconscious. All is surrounded by a container (namely, the lamp), strictly understood, to which the body is compared. By drawing upon reported experiences of telepathy, Walther observes that we are each a different lamp with our own wicks that burn our own flames (our I-centers). However, the oil in the lamps seems to be able to flow from lamp to lamp, which means that each wick can be fed simultaneously by the oil of another person. The two lamps remain distinct. Often, the oils may not mix, and even in cases where the oils do mix, an individual wick may decide to withdraw from the oil of the other and burn one’s own oil. Walther affirms, based on her studies, that one is able to preserve one’s own freedom within the lived experience of telepathy insofar as that one is able to shake oneself off or even take one’s own position vis-à-vis the lived experience of the other. Telepathic union, then, is achieved only in embedment and not in the I-center.16

These two robust, Waltherian descriptions manifest both the freedom of the ego to move and direct consciousness, as well as its freedom to enter into

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

143

the life of another while not losing it’s own sense of self or person. It is perhaps this idea of freedom, marked by an ability to direct and choose how consciousness positions itself vis-à-vis what it experiences (objects) and with whom it enters into social relations, that is important for our discussion. If we are constituted as consciously free and with freedom to act, then, even with social drives and in fusional moments of intense community, we can find the seeds of a self-awareness that could, perhaps, freely alert us to probable inconsistencies in our own drives and compulsions, as well as in the fusional moments of community. Our awareness of our freedom can intercede to make us aware of possible impending contradictions or inconsistencies that mark inauthentic or ungenuine community. The freedom of consciousness, whether in individual, private experience or in collective experience, can direct us toward critically assessing our drives and fusional moments of community, alerting us, to the point we even resist the possible pitfall of an inauthentic experience of community. The freedom Walther describes helps individuate an ego, constituting an I that has in some sense an irreducibility that cannot be freely absorbed unless it so chooses or gives its assent at some basic level. We must remember, however, that this freedom has to be activated, consciously or subconsciously, and is not automatic. In the end, there may be intense moments of community or drives that push us and overwhelm us, that lead us to live inauthentic experiences of communal belonging, but there is also the hope of resistance and change offered by our constitution as persons endowed with personal freedom. We can become aware of the traps and shortcomings of an inauthentic form of communal life and respond accordingly, or we can even choose, perhaps, to freely reject entering into an inauthentic form of communal sociality. NOTES 1. Gerda Walther, “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften),” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, ed. Edmund Husserl (Halle: Niemeyer, 1923), 6: 2–158. Hereafter parenthetically cited as OSG. 2. See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. Jose Harris and trans. Margaret Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 3. Georg Simmel, “Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne,” in Ders., Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908) (Berlin: 5. Auflage 1968), 483–93; Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971). 4. Alexander Pfänder, Phenomenology of Willing and Motivation, trans. Herbert Spiegelberg (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967). Walther had access

144

Antonio Calcagn

to many of Pfänder’s lecture notes and unpublished manuscripts, which she cites in her works. 5. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973); The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954). 6. Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989); Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. Mary Catherine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki (Washington, DC: ICS Publication, 2000). 7. “Der Inhalt dieser gleichen Intention ist aber der gleiche, nämlich ein und dieselbe Fee. Damit ist aber nun andererseits nicht gesagt, daß die Intention auf denselben Gegenstand bei den verschiedenen Mitgliedern, die Art also, wie sie ihn intendieren (meinen, denken, sich vorstellen usw.), genau gleich sein müßte. Das Noema (die Vorstellung, Bedeutung, Meinung usw.), durch das hindurch derselbe intendierte Gegenstand, also der gemeinsame Inhalt des Seelenslebens der Mitglieder, vermeint wird, braucht vielmehr durchaus nicht bei allen gleich oder gar identitisch zu sein. Nur der Gegenstand selbst, auf den das Noema hinzielt, muß derselbe sein, wenn er auch—innerhalb gewisser Grenzen (s. u.)—vedchieden vermeint wird. . . . Notwendig für die Gemeinschaft ist also auf der gegenständlichen Seite im weitesten Sinne nur die gleiche Intention auf ein identisches Objekt im weitesten Sinne, wobei aber über Vorstellungs- und Seinsweise dieses Objektes noch gar nichts gesagt ist. (Es kann ein reales, irreales oder ein fiktives Gebilde irgendwelcher Art sein).” OSG, 25–26. 8. See Antonio Calcagno, Lived Experience from the Inside Out: Social and Political Philosophy in Edith Stein (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2014). In this work, I take up this claim extensively in this work. 9. See Zachary Davis’s excellent article, “Max Scheler,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https:​//​plato​.stanford​.edu​/entries​/scheler​/. Accessed July 15, 2021. 10. “Nur wenn eine Persönlichkeit die von ihrem Grundwesen geforderte Gemeinschaft vorfindet oder bildet, kann sie sich voll entfalten.” OSG, 107. Translation mine. 11. “Die sozialen Triebe sind also sozusagen Unterabteilungen des „Dranges zur Einigung mit den anderen Menschen“. Sie sind auf die Aufsuchung „verwandter Seelen“ gerichtet; zielen auf ähnliche Wesen oder Wesenheiten bei anderen Menschen. Von der Art der Wesenheit, auf die die sozialen Triebe sich richten, hängt nun wesentlich die Art der sozialen Gemeinschaft ab, die durch die Einigung dieser Wesen erzielt wird. Zunächst kann dieser Einigungsdrang sich auf das individuelle Wesen richten. (In der Entwicklung steht diese Art der Einigung allerdings kulturhistorisch auf der letzten Stufe, da sie eine große Abweichung (Differenzierung) der Einzelnen voneinander voraussetzt, die erst relativ spät erreicht wird.) Wir haben dann die in der Zahl stets beschränkten sozialen Gemeinschaften, die auf persönlicher Einigung beruhen, wie Freundschaft, Ehe, Familie.” Gerda Walther, “Die sozialen Triebe. (Noema und Noesis),” Manuscript Signature: Ana 317 A.III.1.6, in Munich Staatsbibliothek manuscript holdings “Gerda Walther Nachlass.”

On the Lived Experience of Inauthentic Communit

145

12. “Daneben gibt es natürlich auch hier eine Einigung mit dem Grundwesen eines anderen, ein bloßes Zusammenwachsen mit Ihm, das sich nicht durch das Ich des anderen hindurch vollzieht, sondern gleichsam ‘hinten herum,” ohne sein Wissen und Zutun; wie etwa, wenn man auf irgendeine Weise das Grundwesen eines anderen erfaßt und sich nun mit ihm von sich aus einigt, ohne aktuellen Kontakt von bewußtem Ich zu bewußtem Ich. Ein bloßes ‘Zusammenwachsen’ im früher entwickelten Sinne ist dies allerdings nicht, da diese Einigung sich ja durch das eigene Ich des sich einigenden Subjektes hindurch vollzieht, nur vom Standpunkt des geeinigten Objektes ist es ein Zusammenwachsen, da dessen Ich daran nicht beteiligt ist.” (OSG, 63) 13. Gerda Walther, Phänomenologie der Mystik (Munich: Ontos Verlag, 1951). Hereafter parenthetically cited as PM. 14. Walther, PM, 39. 15. Walther, PM, 64–66. 16. Marina Pia Pellegrino, “Gerda Walther: Searching for the Sense of Things, Following the Traces of Lived Experiences,” in Gerda Walther’s Phenomenology of Sociality, Psychology and Religion, ed. Antonio Calcagno (Dordrecht: Springer, 2018), 19.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Calcagno, Antonio. Lived Experience from the Inside Out: Social and Political Philosophy in Edith Stein. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2014. Davis, Zachary. “Max Scheler,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https:​//​plato​ .stanford​.edu​/entries​/scheler​/. Accessed July 15, 2021. Pellegrino, Marina Pia. “Gerda Walther: Searching for the Sense of Things, Following the Traces of Lived Experiences,” in Gerda Walther’s Phenomenology of Sociality, Psychology and Religion, ed. Antonio Calcagno. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018. Pfänder, Alexander. Phenomenology of Willing and Motivation, trans. Herbert Spiegelberg. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967. Scheler, Max. Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, trans. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. ———. The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954. Simmel, Georg. “Exkurs über die Soziologie der Sinne,” in Ders., Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908). Berlin: 5. Auflage 1968. ———. On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings, ed. Donald N. Levine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1989. ———. Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, trans. Mary Catherine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki. Washington, DC: ICS Publication, 2000.

146

Antonio Calcagn

Tönnies, Ferdinand. Community and Civil Society, in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, ed. Jose Harris and trans. Margaret Hollis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Walther, Gerda. “Die sozialen Triebe. (Noema und Noesis),” Manuscript Signature: Ana 317 A.III.1.6, in Munich Staatsbibliothek manuscript holdings. ———. Phänomenologie der Mystik. Munich: Ontos Verlag, 1951. ———. “Zur Ontologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften (mit einem Anhang zur Phänomenologie der sozialen Gemeinschaften),” in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, vol. 6, ed. Edmund Husserl. Halle: Niemeyer, 1923.

PART THREE

Politics and the History of Thought

147

Chapter Eight

María Zambrano and Hannah Arendt Thinking in Exile Elvira Roncalli

It is always a curious, intriguing moment for anyone teaching and researching in any field of studies when a correspondence emerges between unlikely phenomena, events, writers, or thinkers. María Zambrano and Hannah Arendt were born two years apart, in two different countries, but their lives, which spanned the greater part of the twentieth century, follow parallel trajectories. Both were confronted with events and conflicts that impacted their thinking in profound ways. In reading their work side by side, an affinity in thought is clear, even though they most likely never met or knew of each other’s work.1 On the surface, Zambrano and Arendt appear a rather unlikely pair: the former is a thinker whose work has spiritual, religious, and even mystical undertones, while the latter is a political thinker whose work radically rethinks the political sphere and the political dimension of the human condition. Nevertheless, the affinity in their thinking becomes more evident if we consider their thought in relation to their experiences of exile. The way they talk about this experience differs, but if we move past this linguistic discordance, we gain insight into the exile experiences and a deeper understanding of their thought. Arendt examines “statelessness” from a legal and political standpoint; Zambrano speaks of “exile” as an existential and spiritual state of being. In reading the writings that focus most on the experience of exile, side by side, a conversation begins to take shape, in which each tells the other about “her” exile, and the experience acquires greater depth and manifold dimensions. Not only that, in reading them alongside each other, their language does not appear very far apart; it is as if what one says is echoed by the 149

150

Elvira Roncall

other, perhaps in a different key. While Arendt does not make “exile” a central theme in her thought, in placing her work next to Zambrano’s work, we begin to see how it marks her thinking indelibly. Similarly, even though political concerns are not as central to Zambrano’s thought, when we approach her work with the notion of the “political” in an Arendtian sense, we can see that it resonates deeply. Why does this matter? An affinity of thought found between two thinkers who were unknown to one another attests to the urgency they each felt to rethink “thinking” and “reason” in light of the total collapse of the European political and moral framework, further supporting their critical stances— which they arrived at independently from one another—toward the tradition of philosophy. For both, that the moral and political conceptual framework could not withstand such a collapse is sufficient evidence for reason and thought to be implicated at the core. Thus, the need to think anew and differently, and in this approach their affinity comes to the fore. While “affinity” is a term that refers to a spontaneous feeling of liking and sympathy for something or someone, it also refers to similarity or resemblance; etymologically it comes from the Latin word “affinis,” which describes sides that touch, such as the geographical borders of countries, and also something that is near, that is close. Thus, by “affinity” I mean a closeness in their way of thinking, not necessarily in the specificity of what they thought. In this essay I propose to read Arendt’s and Zambrano’s writings on exile side by side so that their thinking “affinity” comes into focus. It will show that their respective lifelong preoccupations stem out of their experience of exile as an experience of loss of the world, to which they respond by rethinking thinking as an activity that sustains our relation to the world. As already stated, Arendt’s and Zambrano’s lives run parallel courses in many respects. Zambrano was born in Spain in 1904 and studied in Madrid with Ortega Y Gasset from 1924 to 1927. After earning her degree in philosophy, she started teaching and writing, while also becoming more politically involved by joining the Federación Universitaria Escolar (FUE), which sought a more “redeeming dimension of politics.” After this organization was closed down in 1929, she continued to write for several newspapers, addressing social issues and supporting the Spanish Republic,2 a support that continued with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936. Her writings at this time became more intensely political, using reason “as a weapon of war.”3 She left Spain in 1936 with her husband, Alfonso Rodrígues Aldave, who was appointed to the Spanish Embassy in Chile, but both returned the following year “to support the republic,” even though it had become apparent the Republic was doomed.4 She identified with the generation of the civil war and like many Spaniards of her generation, she crossed the Pyrenees in 1939, after the Republic was defeated by Franco’s forces.

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

151

Arendt was born in 1906 and studied philosophy in Marburg and Freiburg with Martin Heidegger in 1924–1927, moving on to Heidelberg to work on her thesis with Karl Jaspers. These were difficult years for Germany, with a very dire economic situation and widespread social unrest that saw the rise of the Nazi Party culminating in the appointment of Hitler as chancellor in 1933. At this point in time, Arendt, being Jewish, knew that her life was in danger and in the fall of the same year left Germany for France. As she stated in the famous interview with Günther Gaus in 1964, she had been politically naive up to then, but with Hitler’s rise to power, she could no longer remain indifferent; she “felt responsible” and she joined the Zionist organization, although she was not a Zionist. She was happy to be able to do something; “at least I am not ‘innocent,’” she said. She was arrested, but released, and “had to cross the border illegally” when she left Germany because her “name had not been cleared.”5 Arendt would stay in France until 1941, when, after France was occupied by German troops, and after being interned at the camp in Gurs, she was able to obtain visas to the United States for both herself and her husband Heinrich Blücher. ARENDT: STATELESS AND A REFUGEE When Arendt left Germany, she told herself: “Never again! I shall never again get involved in any kind of intellectual business. I want nothing to do with that lot.” She was disgusted by the compliance of many German intellectuals with the Nazi regime and though she admitted that her reaction may have been “somewhat exaggerated,” she thought it had something to do with the profession of the intellectual, that of fabricating “ideas about everything,” ideas that then end up becoming their own “trap.”6 The primary concern for her at this time was “doing something” and while in Paris she worked for an organization, Youth Aliyah, that helped relocate Jewish children to Palestine. Arendt continued to write during these “political years” and it is not surprising to find that her main concern centered around the “Jewish question.” As a Jew growing up in Germany, Arendt was familiar with the feeling of “estrangement,” of being aware of not belonging to the German nation in the same way as other non-Jewish citizens, yet this feeling of estrangement did not cause any restrictions placed on her life as such—something that would quickly change with Hitler’s rise to power—and, therefore, she never felt the need to do anything about it. It is, however, on account of her Jewishness that she threw herself into “politics,” as she put it: “But now belonging to Judaism had become my own problem and my own problem was political,” and that “if one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man,

152

Elvira Roncall

or whatever.”7 This same idea is repeated in other writings, for instance in her essay on Lessing in which she writes, “for many years, I considered the only adequate reply to the question, Who are you? to be: A Jew. That answer alone took into account the reality of persecution.”8 It is fair to say that if the Jewish question awakened her to politics, and if politics became the central question of her thought in light of that, it is also the case that she never let go of the “Jewish question.” Besides Rahel Varnhagen, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and Eichmann in Jerusalem, she wrote many articles on the Jewish state and its relations with the Palestinian people, a preoccupation that remained strong throughout her life.9 She told her friend Chanan Klenbort, also a refugee from whom she took lessons in Hebrew while in Paris, “I want to know my people,”10 and as she said in a letter written later in her life: “I knew that any real catastrophe in Israel would affect me more deeply than almost anything else.”11 It was while in France as an emigré and an outcast, that she experienced firsthand the dangers of being stateless. In the article “We Refugees,” Arendt speaks about this condition in a tone that lies between sarcastic and absurd, but is also deeply personal, bringing to light the gravity of this condition. To start with, the array of names given to this condition further reveal that the confusion in language is symptomatic of a deeper confusion: for instance, “they” are called “refugees” but “we” prefer to be called “immigrants” or “newcomers.”12 The term “refugees” describes a plethora of different situations: a refugee is someone who literally seeks refuge, but the reasons for doing so vary and are often not of his or her own making. It is in The Origins of Totalitarianism that Arendt provides the historical circumstances out of which statelessness arose; with the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the redrawing of geographic borders following the end of World War I and the 1919 Peace Treaty, many people found themselves to be Heimatlosen or “apatrides,” that is, living within geographical boundaries where they were not the national majority. This group grew in size when people who were forced out of their countries by the victorious governments after revolutions—such as the Armenians, the Spaniards, the Hungarians, and others—joined their ranks. They found themselves “stateless” after being “denationalized” by their governments, a practice that was at the time, “entirely new and unforeseen.”13 The stateless are, in Arendt’s words, “legal freaks,”14 those who are outside the protection of the law. With the failure of the nation-states to “repatriate” or “naturalize” the stateless, their status deteriorated even further into something undefinable, reflected in the language: as “stateless,” they could invoke some international law for their protection; as “displaced persons,” the possibility of some legal protection was lost; as “undesirable aliens,” they would be at the mercy of the police. For the most part, the stateless were ignored and the “internment

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

153

camp” became “the routine solution for the problem of domicile, of the ‘displaced person.’”15 Thus, according to Arendt, “statelessness” is a new condition created out of the specific circumstances in Europe during the twentieth century, and it points to the failure of the nation-state to protect the populations that are not identified with a nation—a concept that in itself presupposes ethnic and cultural homogeneity where there is none16—thus opening the way for all kinds of abuses, crimes, and genocides. Unfortunately, the history of the twentieth century is not lacking in such realities. As Arendt claims, without equal protection of the law, “the nation dissolves into an anarchic mass of over- and underprivileged individuals,” and the nation-state, through its principle of sovereignty unchecked by any international supervision, turns into a dangerous machine for the “liquidation” of peoples.17 A great number of the stateless in Europe were Jews, which may “explain” why “statelessness” may have been viewed primarily as a “Jewish problem.” It does not, however, explain—even less justify—the indifferent attitude of most states toward the fate of the stateless. That Hitler could send millions to concentration camps, demonstrated “a way” of “dealing” with the question of the stateless, refugees, and minorities, which, unfortunately, has not remained an isolated instance. It also made it obvious that the issue could not be viewed simply as the “Jewish question,” but rather, that statelessness was a new condition arising directly out of the idea of the nation-state itself, its principle of sovereignty, the idea of a homogeneous nation that does not stop at ethnic or linguistic differences but, enabled by a lack of any international oversight, goes as far as to “denationalize” those who think differently.18 Today, in a time when the issues of “statelessness,” “refugees,” and “immigrants” remain an urgent question—to which an adequate international response has yet to be found—Arendt’s insights ring eerily true: “the refugees and the stateless have attached themselves like a curse to all newly established states on earth that were created in the image of the nation state.”19 And as to nation-states: “the clearer the proof of their inability to deal with stateless people as legal persons and the greater the extension of arbitrary rule by police decree, the more difficult it is for states to resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police.”20 But “we wanted to rebuild our lives, that was all,” Arendt wrote in her essay “We Refugees.” “In order to rebuild one’s life, one has to be strong and an optimist. So we are very optimistic.”21 Perhaps, the issue is not so much that it is impossible to live as stateless, but rather that life is all that is left after one loses everything: a home, a language, an occupation, relatives and friends. Everything. “We are told to forget” and not to talk about concentration camps or internment camps, “nobody wants to listen to all that,” and so, “among ourselves we do not speak about this past.”22 Even with a well-disposed attitude, it becomes evident, however, that “there is something wrong with our

154

Elvira Roncall

optimism,” it has become a sort of a veil that hides a resigned attitude, one for which death has lost its horror and “instead of fighting . . . refugees have got used to wishing death to friends or relatives; if somebody dies, we cheerfully imagine all the trouble he has been saved.”23 It is a challenge to know who to be, what to do, when one is called so many different names, and when one is an outcast. The stateless dream of becoming “prospective citizens” at night, but are “enemy aliens” by day; they try to be like Frenchmen, but no matter what, they are still called “boches,”24 and the situation never changes, whether in Paris or in Los Angeles, only the names they are given. Arendt’s essay intentionally plays with the ambiguity of “we” “refugees” viewed en masse, as an entity, whose primary qualification is that of being “outlaws,” and what this “we” refers to becomes increasingly difficult to pin down; it does not really matter what they call themselves, whether “newcomers” or “immigrants,” or what they are called; what eventually stands out is their nonpolitical existence, the mere fact of each being a “naked human being.” What kind of human being is this? It is a being emptied out of all that is recognizably human, a new sort of being, one of “the kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes and in internment camps by their friends.”25 Arendt would later write in The Origins of Totalitarianism about the manufacturing of “living corpses” in the concentration camps—human beings would be made “superfluous,”—and from the knowledge of that history it is difficult not to see “statelessness” as a potentially sinister prelude to the radical transformation of human beings into “ghastly marionettes with human faces.”26 Arendt could not anticipate the horror of the concentration camps when she wrote “We Refugees,” but she had no hesitations about the dangers of being “stateless,” and the essay has become a sort of wake-up call for all refugees, and particularly for the Jewish refugees who, on account of their history, have come to exemplify the condition of the “refugee.” In an ironic twist of history, Arendt details how the Jewish predicament has now become the predicament of many Europeans, and by extension, of many people all over the world. In spite of the history of exclusion and persecution, Jewish refugees are no less prone to fall into the same facile optimism that overtakes refugees, which is only a façade, “the vain attempt to keep head above water,” while “they constantly struggle with despair of themselves.”27 Actually, the desire to conform seems to be accentuated among Jewish refugees who, as Arendt sees it “adjust in principle to everything and everybody,”28 and even though “we” do not resort to something as extreme as “suicide,” “a blasphemous attack on creation as a whole,”29 “we” vanish nonetheless. “Whatever we do,” she writes, “whatever we pretend to be, we reveal nothing but our insane desire to be changed, not to be Jews,”30 and it is this desire “not to be Jews” that Arendt finds particularly troubling.

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

155

The attitude is understandable since one tries everything one can in order to belong, but in so doing “we” shortchange ourselves. Instead of fighting to gain legal and political status, “we” follow the path of adapting to whatever society expects of “us,” only to no avail, since whatever is gained in this way does not provide a firm foothold in the world. Thus, she rejects the “spurious doctrine” of assimilation31—as Bernard Lazare refers to it—which makes one only further dependent and far more exposed. Arendt acknowledges that to declare one’s Jewishness under the circumstances is not an option: “If we should start telling the truth that we are nothing but Jews, it would mean that we expose ourselves to the fate of human beings who, unprotected by any specific law or political convention, are nothing but human beings. I can hardly imagine an attitude more dangerous, since we actually live in a world in which human beings as such have ceased to exist for quite a while.”32 However, this desire to change who “we” are, to become a Frenchman or an Englishman, is not a good option either. Short of being able to organize politically and demand equal recognition before the law—Arendt goes as far as advocating for a Jewish army to fight against Hitler during World War II33—the only viable alternative out of statelessness is the attitude of the “conscious pariah,” namely, the attitude of the one “who insists upon telling the truth, even to the point of ‘indecency.’” The price to be paid is “unpopularity,” but what is gained is access to history and politics.34 Arendt’s analysis of statelessness shows the gravity and magnitude of that condition, which requires legal and political measures to be adequately addressed. But there is also the need for an attitude that rebels against compliance, that stands up against the system and denounces it, refuses to be absorbed by it: a struggle must also be carried out from within one’s own ranks. ZAMBRANO: EXILE AS HOMELAND Between 1939, the year Zambrano crossed the Pyrenees to seek refuge in France following Franco’s victory against the Spanish Republic, and 1984, when she returned to Spain, Zambrano lived as an “apatride” and belonged to the group of people who, in the words of Arendt, were “denationalized” by the victorious government of her nation. As she wrote in Delirio y destino: Los Veinte años de una espagñola, as soon as they were separated by the other republicans, “they had this revelation: they were not the same as the others, they were no longer citizens of any country, they were exiled, banished, refugees.”35 Zambrano, not unlike Arendt, immediately perceives the precariousness and the gravity of her condition as a refugee, but in contrast to Arendt, she does not settle down permanently in another country. Instead, the

156

Elvira Roncall

crossing of the Pyrenees marks the beginning of a lifelong peregrination that takes her from place to place, first to Central America and later to Europe. Rome and Switzerland are the places in which she lives the longest, but even then, she lives always at the margins, as someone who is “in transit,” waiting to move somewhere else. Exile becomes the condition of her existence and her way of life, something that is imposed on her, but that she also makes her own, a condition that becomes central to her thought.36 In a letter published in 1961,37 Zambrano writes that exile is a deeply ambiguous condition that ultimately reveals the fundamental ambiguity of the human condition. Zambrano speaks of “masks,” either imposed by others or created by the person in exile herself. She has to confront and dispel these masks if she wants to get out of such ambiguity. For Zambrano, exile becomes a path of gradual dispossession, stripping away everything the exiled has ever been, further immersing her deeper into life, but a life without a place. Yet, Zambrano says that this is what the human condition is about; it is as if the exile bears the weight of this condition for all. Zambrano evokes images to describe the condition of exile and convey the gradual dispossession, as one becomes progressively untied from the place one has known as home. The exiled person is there, yet invisible and not able to speak. She is like the Niños de Vallecas of Velázquez, Zambrano writes: “What does he do there, that one does not know where he is?”38 Nobody understands him, not even he. Similarly, the exile: what does she do there? Her life being there but nowhere. It is a place without a name, a place of forgetfulness, the place of all those who have been abandoned, a place that does not “hold” because it is empty and a desert. She is without a place, yet still living, because life is all that is left. In Zambrano’s words, “life is all they left me, or more precisely: because they left me in life.”39 Zambrano writes that exile is like being born, but different from our first birth, because in exile one has to give birth to oneself and it is a birth that resembles dying; it is “being born and dying at the same time, while life goes on.”40 It is not a birth “into” the world, but rather a birth “out” of it, a birth that resembles death more than life, that is more like “leaving” and taking leave from everything one is or has been, turning into “nobody” (nadie, ninguno).41 This birth leads to a place that is no place, where the past is submerged and the exile is a “survivor,” a “castaway.” She is thus thrown back onto herself, but what is most her own is precisely what is impossible, hanging between the impossibility to live and the impossibility to die.42 In her various reflections on exile, Zambrano speaks of the gradual dispossession of oneself as a “revelation”: it makes visible what cannot be seen otherwise. Through exile’s radical loss of a place in the world, something is nevertheless gained: a horizon from which to see the human condition for what it is. Zambrano writes: “The exile lacks above all the world, so that she

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

157

is exiled not only for having lost her first homeland, but for not finding it anywhere. She has only a horizon. But, paradoxically, the horizon is, at the same time the condition for visibility, for the visible order, that borders with the invisible.”43 With the loss of the world, the exile lives in a “desert,” and in order not to lose herself, she has to plumb her depths and come to discover herself as “unknown” (sconosciuto), that is, being nothing. It is in light of this radical form of abandonment that Zambrano differentiates the condition of being exiled from that of being a refugee. The former is far more extreme; the exile feels completely abandoned and dispossessed of everything, while the refugee is still able to find some degree of hospitality and a place. The exile is “uprooted” from the earth, expelled, and even what is most her own is negated.44 The exile is there, like the Niños de Vallecas, but for what? What does she do there? This is the question that goes to the heart of exile, a question that Zambrano must have confronted constantly in her life; and once embraced, once one has dispossessed herself of all her “masks,” and reached the horizon from where it is possible to see, can one return from it? Those who have remained in Spain tell the exiles to return; they ask them to “un-exile” themselves, to forget that they were exiled, but forgetting, Zambrano writes, is denial. She points out that, in a strange sort of way, those who have stayed behind in Spain, and have not lost their place in the world, are no less lost than those in exile. They, too, live in a sort of a dream, disconnected from their history. The exile, on the contrary, has had to confront her history and in exploring it, has gained awareness and lucidity; she is the living memory of that past and the conscience of that history. History does not go away simply because we forget; it actually returns in the guise of phantasms, and the only way to dispel those ghosts is to interrogate history, to confront the past of the Spanish Civil War. It is the exiled person that offers that past; as the conscience of that history she can become the bridge to it, but she must be given a voice. She must be allowed to speak. On her part, the exile is ready to give “the freedom [she] took away with herself and the truth that [she] has gradually acquired in this sort of posthumous life that that has been left to her.”45 It appears then, that the price paid for the exile, the loss of a place in the world, is “rewarded” by gaining a conscience of the past and a clarity of vision. Zambrano’s reflections on exile give us images that may seem contradictory at times: being in the desert, and yet being “shipwrecked” at sea, or being forced to go deeper within oneself, and yet discovering oneself as unknown, as nobody; exile is like being born, but a birth that seems more like dying, though not death per se. In some of Zambrano’s reflections there are clearly spiritual and religious overtones, for example, when she writes about “immensity” which opens up only if the exile is able to endure abandonment in a sustained way. She writes: “Without abandonment, immensity does not

158

Elvira Roncall

appear,”46 and only if she resists all pretense of existence, that is, renounces all temptations of the I, will a deep trust take her.47 She also calls the exile a “believer” and a “mystic,” a way of existing that “assumes all for oneself,” but where oneself is “always beyond.”48 Zambrano’s thought on exile seeks to name a condition that is beyond the commonly shared experience of being human, but precisely for that, becomes the revelation of the human condition for what it is when stripped of all its social ties and affiliations: when one is no longer a member of a community, no longer inhabiting the world with others, no longer attached to a piece of land, and no longer connected to a place. The exile is a dis-placed being, removed from all place, plunged in a void—the nowhere of a desert or an open sea. This language, although not the same, evokes Arendt’s description of the stateless person who, having been stripped of the protection of the law, is forced to confront the danger of being a “naked human being.” Arendt also refers to the stateless as “apatrides” and “Heimatlosen,” words that indicate precisely the condition of being deprived of a place they can call home. Zambrano writes they are “nobody,” and “nothing,” destined to “peregrinate” endlessly. It is, however, clear that whereas Zambrano sees in exile the possibility for “revelation” and even a path toward spiritual discovery, Arendt is troubled by the dangers to which such a condition exposes human beings. Upon returning to Spain in 1984, Zambrano said that when viewed from the perspective of her return, exile was “essential”: “I do not conceive of my life without exile; it has been like my homeland or like a dimension of an unknown homeland but that, once known, becomes unrenounceable.” She is not only speaking for herself, since she goes on to say: “exile is an essential dimension of human life, but in saying this, I bite my lips, because I would not want there to be more exiles, but that all be considered human beings and, at the same time, cosmic beings, and that exile become unknown.” She recognizes the contradiction in her words but adds, “what can I do: I love my exile”—Amo mi exilio.49 It is hard to imagine that Hannah Arendt would go along with Zambrano in stating that exile is her homeland or an essential dimension of the human condition. Being stateless, being deprived of the protection of the law means that anything can happen, and history shows this is anything but good. Rather than embracing the condition of statelessness, Arendt argues for finding a way out of it, and beyond that, the question of statelessness remains urgent to this day and must be addressed legally and politically both at the national and international level. How then to understand their thinking “affinity” that I claim becomes apparent when we read Zambrano and Arendt side by side?

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

159

ARENDT AND ZAMBRANO: EXILE AS WORLDLESSNESS One way to understand the difference in their considerations of exile can be found, in part, in their biographies. Both lived as exiles, and stateless, but while Arendt became an American citizen in 1951 and was able to rebuild her life, writing and teaching philosophy, affirming herself as an original and influential thinker, Zambrano remained in exile for most of her life; professional stability and recognition arrived late. As Rodríguez writes, “For Zambrano, geographical exile would be compounded by academic exile.”50 The experience of statelessness led Arendt to examine how statelessness became possible and how so many found themselves without the protection of the law. She saw it as the failure of politics, and at the same time—since politics is traditionally a province of thought—a failure of thought as well. Rethinking politics and thought became urgent for her. Zambrano, who remained in exile for most of her life, was thrown back on this condition repeatedly, and in exploring its depths, she discovered an unknown “homeland.” She, too, was spurred on by the urgency of rethinking reason. We can see an intersection, a convergence in their thought and, at the same time, a divergence, in the way they think of birth. They both see the moment of birth as crucial, but they understand it differently. Exile, for Zambrano, is analogous to giving birth to herself, a birth that does not usher her into the world; rather, it leads her further into herself as an “orphan,” without relationships, alone. When Arendt speaks of “natality,” she refers to the beginning that every human being is. As biological birth brings one into the world, so “natality” is the moment of appearance among others in the public sphere. If exile entails being forced outside a community of people, becoming other than one has been, becoming invisible, Zambrano believes, in order not to succumb, one has to give birth to oneself anew, “recreate” oneself again, even if within oneself and without leading to an “I.” For Arendt, natality corresponds to the fact of being born, but to show “who” one is, one must appear and insert oneself in the public sphere. To statelessness—the extreme condition of being made into a naked human—she responds with the need for a space of appearance in which a plurality of beings can come together and manifest who they are in their distinctive uniqueness. It is only in this way that one acquires reality, the reality of existing among others, the sole reality possible among humans.51 It would seem that the experience of exile leads Arendt and Zambrano into different directions: Arendt becomes concerned with politics or political thought, and Zambrano with thought as exploration of the “entrails” (entraña) of history. If we wanted to say it more succinctly, we could say that

160

Elvira Roncall

having both experienced exile as loss of the world, Arendt is most concerned with ensuring the world be preserved, while Zambrano focuses on exploring interiority, by which I mean, loosely, what goes on within oneself. While this is not inaccurate, if we leave it here, we are not able to see the affinity which is at play in their respective thought. Zambrano’s investigation of interiority is not forgetful of the world. Nor is Arendt’s political thought oblivious of interiority. Zambrano’s concern for the world is evident in her “letter on exile,” when she speaks of those who have stayed in Spain and have not lost a place in the world, yet, she claims, by not confronting their past—the past of the Spanish Civil War—they, too, are worldless. They may be closer to the Spanish soil, but they are no less removed than those in exile. Zambrano exhorts them to confront their exile as something that has persisted throughout their history, and points to the need to account for this repeated history, something that cannot be reduced to comparing themselves to exiled people of other nations. She writes that exile has made her enter the depths, the entrails of history, seeking some glimpse of truth, and in so doing she has become the “conscience of Spain” that cannot be dismissed, ignored, or removed.52 Perhaps, she says, this is ultimately what exile is all about: becoming memory of the past, and therefore conscience for all in the present. Similarly, Arendt, in speaking about Jewish refugees, calls out those who are so readily adaptable to everything and everyone, who have been assimilated to the point that they don’t know who they are anymore. They cannot see a future other than what society offers them because they do not acknowledge their history. In contrast to this, she points to the attitude of the “conscious pariah” as a preferable alternative under the circumstances, the “outsider” who is fully aware of where she stands, who avoids conforming to society’s demands and makes her own demands clear, who becomes a “rebel” and fights equally against the oppressor and those who “comply” with the system of oppression, a sort of battle on two fronts. This is consistent with Arendt’s stated position that “you can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as. A person attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or Frenchman.”53 And elsewhere she goes as far as saying, “politically speaking every pariah who refused to be a rebel was partly responsible for his own position and therewith for the blot on mankind which he represented.”54 These may sound like harsh words, but for Arendt, the question of exclusion and oppression is eminently political, and its resolution must also be political. Zambrano’s position is no less political. Her concern for the world is manifest in her appeal to both exiles and those who have stayed in Spain to come together, interrogate one another on their pasts, so that they are able to acknowledge their different, even opposing, sides; only through such

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

161

confrontation can they, together, become part of the world. Both Arendt and Zambrano refuse to comply with those whose attitude, for the sake of social approval, accommodates or denies the past in order to fit into a “view” that does not acknowledge other sides. They end up living in a “dream,” which is bad enough, but worse: their view is bound to have disastrous repercussions on the exiles themselves and the human condition as a whole. It negates their being there; it is a refusal to address the issue of statelessness that permits— perhaps condones—its continuous existence. For Arendt, the “conscious pariah” becomes the point of contact with all European people, and even a “human type.”55 In the same way, while Zambrano speaks directly to the people and exiles from Spain, she also sees her condition of exile exemplifying the human condition as such. By employing the term “diaspora”56 in reference to the Spanish exiles, she connects the destiny of many Spanish peoples to the Jewish history: it is not simply a passing phenomenon, but an ongoing condition of existence for many Spanish people to the point of becoming tied to the Spanish nation. Arendt, on her part, sees the growing numbers of refugees as a sign that this condition is no longer restricted to the Jews, but concerns people throughout Europe. Today, it has become more evident that refugees are not necessarily tied to a nationality but the condition of many people everywhere in the world. Even though Arendt and Zambrano’s respective thought takes different directions—political for Arendt, spiritual-religious for Zambrano, and I say this with some hesitation, as the point is not to categorize or reduce their thought, only to indicate each one’s preeminent focus—it has become apparent that they are both concerned with “worldlessness,” the absence of relation to the world, which concretely means the absence of relations to a plurality of others who are part of the world. Exile is the condition whereby one is deprived of the relation to one’s homeland, the land of one’s birth, and of one’s relations to a community of people. Etymologically, it comes from the Latin “ex,” meaning “outside,” and “solum,” meaning “soil,” “land,” even “earth”; to be exiled is to be expelled from the soil to which we are connected by birth and our constant interaction with it. Concretely, it results in being “dead” to the world, in the sense that having been banished, one becomes invisible and “disappears,” or is “there” without being seen. When Arendt speaks of “statelessness,” she speaks about the same reality viewed from the political perspective, making the dangers associated with that condition explicit. In their respective appeal to the Jewish refugees and to those who have remained in Spain, Arendt and Zambrano emphasize the importance of this interrelation, which is informed and sustained by the relation with the past, and by which these people gain a place in the world, and, thus, consciousness of their condition, a conscience, and the ability to speak with lucidity. The “conscious pariah,” Arendt writes, insists

162

Elvira Roncall

“on telling the truth even to the point of ‘indecency’”;57 likewise, Zambrano does not renounce her exile until she can speak about the fragments of truth she has found in the depths of history. And perhaps, herein lies the answer to the question, “Why is the exile there?” To act as conscience. Arendt’s and Zambrano’s affinity now comes to the fore. Exile is worldlessness: it is the destruction of humans’ relation to the world. It manifests itself in many ways, but it is at work wherever the possibility for engaging in conversation with as many and as different perspectives as possible is removed. In a strange sort of way, the experience of exile furnishes the urge to find a way of thinking that responds to the condition of worldlessness. ARENDT AND ZAMBRANO: THINKING IN EXILE Arendt does not speak of “exile” per se in her own writings, and, unlike Zambrano, she does not make it a central question of her thought. Exile as punishment, inflicted on someone who has done something considered politically “dangerous” to the community, goes back to ancient times. It has often been used as a political tool to extinguish the defeated enemy of the opposite side after a conflict, and many in history have suffered this punishment. For Arendt, “statelessness” is an entirely new phenomenon, specifically tied to the evolution of the nation-state and the change of geographical boundaries following World War I that resulted in the displacement of many outside their original homelands. All are made “stateless” without having done anything wrong. It is understandable that words such as “refugee,” “emigré,” “migrant,” “enemy alien,” “stateless,” among others, are the terms Arendt uses, instead of the term exile, so as to highlight the novelty of this condition. Yet worldlessness, as the loss of the world, is experienced in all of these situations, even if it is not experienced in the same way. Worldlessness, in its many variations, is the primary concern of both Arendt and Zambrano. “Finding” ways to connect with the world, to relate to it, and sustaining such relation becomes, not surprisingly, crucial for both. Oddly, it is where one might least expect it, in the solitude of thinking for Arendt and in the experience of exile as Zambrano articulates it, that such relation to the world is restored and kept alive. It is also made present in Zambrano’s “poetic reason,” a way of thinking that does not renounce the world as the philosopher does. Paradoxically, thinking also entails a sort of worldlessness, but not one that uproots, rather, one that by virtue of seeking distance, establishes a relation with the world. To describe the experience of thinking, Arendt refers to Valéry’s famous line “Tantôt je pense et tantôt je suis” (At times I think, at times I am),58 indicating an activity that is out of the ordinary, that interrupts life through a

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

163

withdrawal from the immediate surroundings into a realm that is outside the coordinates of time and place, a “region of nowhere,” often described as “homeless.” Arendt often refers to the “thinking ego,” but this is somewhat misleading because due to this dislocation, there is no “I” at play, no self with specific qualities; there is only thinking as sheer activity, which is experienced as an “enduring presence.”59 Similarly, Zambrano speaks of the exile as a person who does not have a place, not even her own. She speaks of a radical dispossession and total abandonment, indicating the loss of all qualities of the I, and though she does not speak of thinking as an activity, she describes this condition as one of being “suspended,” detached from every relationship, an “orphan.” What characterizes it most particularly is not having a place in the world, not geographical, not social, not—and this is decisive, for this unknown to go out of oneself—ontological. Being nothing, not even a beggar; not being anything. To be only that which cannot leave oneself, nor lose oneself (and this) in the exiled more than in anyone else. Having stopped being everything in order to continue to maintain oneself in that place without any support, losing oneself at the bottom of history, even one’s own and finding oneself, in an instant, floating on all of them (histories).60

Arendt’s thinking experience as one divested of a self, finds its correspondence with Zambrano’s loss of an I. Furthermore, the image of being “suspended” and maintaining oneself “there” without any support, aptly describes a condition that “hangs” in a region detached from everything. Zambrano also speaks of waking up within that limit between life and death, a stranger to everything, but in a privileged place for contemplating history, where clarity and lucidity emerge.61 To concretely visualize this timeless region of thinking, Arendt finds Kafka’s parable “He” particularly apt.62 “He” finds himself battling with a force pressing him from behind and another force pushing him from the front. For Arendt it is the insertion of “He” that creates a break in the continuity of time whereby it is possible to distinguish a past and a future; in so doing it opens up a “gap,” an interstice, an in-between where “He” stands—he is the battleground. What is of note is that Arendt finds it necessary to modify this parable, so that “He” does not jump outside the world, nor does he die from exhaustion; instead, precisely at the point where past and future clash, a diagonal line results from the encounter of the two forces. This diagonal force is for Arendt “a perfect metaphor for the activity of thought.”63 It is an “interstice” that does not sever the relation with the ground—does not become completely unbound from the world—yet it is a “time-space” where

164

Elvira Roncall

“he” can move freely unencumbered, free from what would normally constrain him: the forces at play. Zambrano, on her part, proposes “poetic reason” as an alternative path to the logos of philosophy: while the poet is in tune with what is of the world, the philosopher turns away from it. There is a search for unity in poetry, but unlike the philosopher who seeks the unity in order to save oneself from the appearances,64 the poet seeks unity in the word that best embodies what is transitory and feeble.65 The philosopher wants the one above all, a unity that is absolute, while the poet sees and embraces every one thing; the unity found is incomplete and frail.66 The poet is taken by the beauty of the world, is a “guest” of the world, while the philosopher who seeks being, seeks mastery over what is.67 Ultimately, while the philosopher seeks one’s own being, the poet remains still, awaiting the gift. The spiritual and religious language of Zambrano is undeniable: she refers to creative origins, she uses scriptural passages such as “in the beginning was the verb,” and speaks of love for the origins, like that of a son toward the father,68 but in so doing she displays a recognition of being in relation with the world in a “carnal” and irrefutable way. When Arendt writes that thinking is the “dialogue of the two-in-one,” an intercourse of oneself with oneself in which the two question and answer one another for the sake of finding some way of living together, she reminds us that even in our most solitary activity we are already with others. The two have to be “friends,” they have to find ways to become friends in and through dialogue because they live “under the same roof.”69 Friendship is a relationship that is cultivated, not found. In thinking, one is not alone, and plurality is manifest in the interrogations that come from the other, where the “other” is anyone “unlike” us, but with whom we need to find a way to be with. Likewise, Zambrano has spoken about the need for questions and answers between those who stayed in Spain and those who were exiled. Unless this interrogation-conversation happens, the world remains foreign, even hostile. Ultimately, this constant negotiation is a form of reconciliation: for the world to be a hospitable place, there needs to be a dialogue, and the dialogue of thinking echoes the dialogue with the world. Arendt and Zambrano propose a way of thinking that moves from and returns to the world incessantly; Arendt’s thinking is characterized by the paradoxical movement of taking distance for the sake of creating a more human place. Without the ability to take distance, the interstice, the in-between, disappears and with it, so does our relation to the world. Zambrano’s concept of poetic reason resembles an immersion into one’s flesh and one’s entrails so as to dwell more deeply in the world. In this ascent-descent the poet is “the one who does not wish to save himself alone” and “it is not himself that the poet looks for, but for all and everyone.”70 Their respective thinking cannot be

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

165

reduced to one another’s, and there are significant differences that should not be overlooked—for instance, the corporeal-spiritual nature of poetic reason seems to evaporate in the sheer activity of thinking as Arendt describes it— yet, in both there lies the urgency of a thinking that incessantly treads back and forth, coming and going, creating relations with the world by preserving its “plurality” even in the most solitary activity, and its multiplicity and heterogeneity in the poetic word. As Arendt writes in her essay on Lessing, “we humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves, only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it, we learn to be human.”71 And Zambrano echoes these words by stating that the poet “does not want one’s own individuality, but the community.”72 CONCLUSION Exile, in the sense of finding oneself outside the familiar and the known, detached from everything that defines and qualifies one, was experienced by both Arendt, as a Jewish refugee and Zambrano, as a Spanish dissident. It encompasses a variety of experiences of dislocation, and it has not been the intent of this essay to minimize such differences, nor the degree to which exile exposes people to the danger of becoming mere “naked human beings.” Although many terms are used to describe this condition in political and legal terms, exile itself is not one of them. It is a more encompassing experience that affects the whole of the person and manifests itself in a deep sense of loss and a feeling of being out of place. At heart, exile is the experience of worldlessness, the loss of a world to which we belong together with others. The ruptures Arendt and Zambrano experienced directly in their lives, as exiles, brought them face to face with worldlessness and its tragic repercussions. In that condition of profound loss, they looked for ways to be in relation with a world that had turned against them and banished them. From within the eye of the storm they found a way of thinking—an exercise in distancing—in an effort to calibrate anew a relation to it. To be clear, this is a temporary exercise happening in a “time-space” that is timeless and nowhere, yet it is one in which a constant negotiation, a confrontation—a struggle— takes place: one seeks some way of reconciling oneself to it. Arendt speaks of a dialogue of thought as of the two-in-one, exhibiting difference and plurality at the heart of thinking. Zambrano speaks of poetic reason as an open space, a desert, awaiting the gift that gives of itself.73 How does thinking renew a relationship to the world? By allowing us to move “freely,” by relieving us, temporarily, of all attachments, it reorients us toward the world, it rebalances our situation in relation to that of others. As an incessant interrogation, it escapes the trappings of various constraints that

166

Elvira Roncall

emerge from our various belongings, yet as a conversation, it is a form of perennial negotiation and an act of reconciliation. It is not a mere coincidence that both Arendt and Zambrano connect it to what has been traditionally called conscience. The thinking activity happens elsewhere, outside the sphere of political action, and the two are for Arendt equally important: they are dimensions of our human condition that must be kept in tension, a tension that is vital for humanity: we act in concert with others, and think in solitude, but even then, we are not alone. In speaking about this, Arendt says, “I think I understood something of action precisely because I looked at it from the outside, more or less,”74 and repeats the idea again: “I had this advantage to look at something from outside. And even in myself from outside.”75 It seems Arendt could be saying, “I understood my being Jewish, by looking at it, by taking distance from it and looking at it from the outside,” which is not at all the same as ignoring “Jewishness.” This thinking activity does not occur automatically but has to be engaged and practiced constantly to become part of our lives. In a world that is technologically advanced, globally and instantly connected, yet no less divided, the danger of thoughtlessness seems now to loom larger than it has in the past. At the same time, rather than disappearing, the condition of worldlessness in all its forms, experienced as a refugee, as a migrant, as a stateless person, as an outsider, and so on, appears to be even more widespread. It is clear that thoughtlessness and worldlessness go hand in hand. Arendt and Zambrano offer a way of thinking that places our relationship with the world at the center, a thinking as an activity that starts anew and tirelessly threads the relation to the world. In this lies their affinity of thought. NOTES 1. To my knowledge, neither Zambrano nor Arendt, in their respective work, refer to the other, which would provide the obvious “proof” of knowledge of each other’s work. 2. See Beatriz Caballero Rodrígues, María Zambrano: A Life of Poetic Reason and Political Commitment (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017), 36–39. 3. Ibid., 45–46. 4. Ibid., 46. 5. “‘What Remains? The Language Remains’: A Conversation with Günter Gaus,” in Arendt: Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, 1st ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1994), 1–23. 6. Ibid., 11. 7. Ibid., 12.

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

167

8. Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing,” in Men in Dark Times (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 17. 9. In The Jewish Writings, we find a “Publication History” that details the date and the place of publication of the essays Arendt wrote on the “Jewish Question”—which is also the title of one of her essays in this collection—and we can see that the decade of the 1940s is the most prolific in this regard; however, she continued to write on this issue in the 1950s and in the 1960s. See “Publication History,” in Hannah Arendt, The Jewish Writings, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), xxxvii–xl. 10. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 119. 11. Ibid., 139. 12. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in The Jewish Writings, 264. 13. Hannah Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Men” in The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 278. 14. Ibid., 278. 15. Ibid., 279. 16. In an essay Arendt wrote in 1940, she states: “Belief in a single homogenous European nation is belief in a utopia—and not a pretty one at that.” “The Minority Question,” in The Jewish Writings, 130. 17. Hannah Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Men,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 290. 18. With regard to “mass denationalizations,” Arendt writes: “They presupposed a state structure which, if it was not yet fully totalitarian, at least would not tolerate and would rather lose its citizens than harbor people with different views.” Hannah Arendt, “The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Men,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 278. 19. Ibid., 290 20. Ibid., 290. 21. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in The Jewish Writings, 264. 22. Ibid., 264–65. 23. Ibid., 266. 24. “Boche” is a disparaging and offensive French term used to refer to a German. Arendt uses this term in the article “We Refugees,” 270. 25. Ibid., 265. 26. Hannah Arendt, “Total Domination,” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 437–59, 455. 27. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in The Jewish Writings, 268. 28. Ibid., 272. 29. Ibid., 268. 30. Ibid., 271. 31. Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition,” in The Jewish Writings, 283. 32. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” 273.

168

Elvira Roncall

33. See Hannah Arendt, “The Jewish Army—The Beginning of Jewish Politics?” in The Jewish Writings, 136–39. 34. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” 274. 35. María Zambrano, Delirio y destino: Los Veinte años de una Española (Madrid: Mondadori, 1989), 287. See Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, Maria Zambrano, 63. 36. Zambrano had conceived a book on exile and began to work on it in 1961, writing on this theme for a number of years, but she did not complete the project. It was going to be entitled Desde el exilio (From Exile). Some parts of this project were published separately at different times, but they were eventually collected in a volume published in Spain, also translated in Italian, which includes an introductory essay on exile by Juan Fernando Ortega Muños. For the purpose of this essay, I will rely primarily on Zambrano’s writings collected in this volume and the translation of direct citations is mine. See: Juan Fernando Ortega Muños, María Zambrano: El exilio come patria (Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 2014); In Italian: Maria Zambrano, L’esilio come patria (Brescia: Editrice Morcelliana, 2016). 37. Maria Zambrano, “Lettera sull’esilio,” in L’esilio come patria, 75–90. Originally published in “Cuadernos del Congreso per la libertad de la cultura,” 49 (1961): 65–70. 38. Ibid., 80. 39. Ibid., 77. 40. Ibid., 77. 41. Ibid., 112–13. 42. Ibid., 124–25. 43. Ibid., 129 (translation mine). Please note, in translating this passage, I have intentionally chosen the feminine subject “she” even though when speaking of the subject in general, “he” would be the norm. 44. “L’incontro con l’esilio. Riflessioni varie,” in L’esilio come patria, 111–50. 45. Ibid., 89. 46. Ibid., 137. 47. Ibid., 139. 48. Ibid., 142. 49. María Zambrano, “L’altra faccia dell’esilio,” in María Zambrano, L’esilio come patria, 155–58, 157 (emphasis mine). 50. Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, María Zambrano, 65. 51. Hannah Arendt, “Action” in The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), specifically 175–81. 52. Maria Zambrano, “Lettera sull’esilio,” in L’esilio come patria, 75–90. See 86–87. 53. The full passage is: “One truth that is unfamiliar to the Jewish people, though they are beginning to learn it, is that you can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as. A person attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or Frenchman. The world would only conclude that he is simply not defending himself.” Hannah Arendt, “The Jewish Army—The Beginning of Jewish Politics” (November 14, 1941), in The Jewish Writings, 137.

María Zambrano and Hannah Arend

169

54. Hannah Arendt, “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition,” in Hannah Arendt: The Jewish Writings, 285. 55. See Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” 274; and “The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition,” 276; both are found in The Jewish Writings. 56. María Zambrano, “L’Esilio, alba ininterrotta,” in Maria Zambrano: L’esilio come patria, 153. 57. Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in The Jewish Writings, 274. 58. Hannah Arendt, “One/Thinking” in The Life of the Mind, one-volume edition, (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 197–213. 59. Ibid., 211. 60. María Zambrano, “L’incontro con l’esilio. Riflessioni varie,” in L’esilio come Patria, 132–33 (emphasis mine). 61. María Zambrano, “Lettera sull’Esilio,” in L’esilio come Patria, 132–33. 62. Hannah Arendt presents this parable in The Life of the Mind, the volume on “thinking” (One-volume Edition), 202–10. She also presents the same parable in the “Preface” to Between Past and Future, (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), “Preface: The Gap between Past and Future,” 3–15. 63. Ibid., 209. 64. María Zambrano, Filosofia e poesia (Bologna: Edizioni Pendagron, 2010), 42–43. Originally published as Filosofía y poesía (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996). The references are taken from the Italian edition and the translation is mine. 65. Ibid., 44. 66. Ibid., 44–45. 67. Ibid., 60–61. 68. Ibid., 117. 69. Hannah Arendt, One/Thinking in The Life of the Mind, One-volume Edition, 188. 70. María Zambrano, Filosofia e poesia, 11–112. 71. Hannah Arendt, “On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts on Lessing,” in Men in Dark Times, 25. 72. María Zambrano, Filosofia e poesia, 118. 73. Ibid., 119. 74. Ibid., 303. 75. Ibid., 306.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958. ———. The Jewish Writings, eds. Jerome Kohn and Ron H. Feldman. New York: Schocken Books, 2007. ———. The Life of the Mind, one-volume edition. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. ———. Men in Dark Times. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.

170

Elvira Roncall

———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. ———. “Preface” to Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. Arendt, Hannah, and Jerome Kohn. Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954. 1st ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1994. Muños, Juan Fernando Ortega. María Zambrano: El exilio come patria. Barcelona: Anthropos Editorial, 2014. Rodrígues, Beatriz Caballero. María Zambrano: A Life of Poetic Reason and Political Commitment. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2017. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Zambrano, María. Delirio y destino: Los Veinte años de una Española. Madrid: Mondadori, 1989. ———. Filosofia e poesia. Bologna: Edizioni Pendagron, 2010. ———. Filosofía y poesía. Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996. ———. L’esilio come patria. Brescia: Editrice Morcelliana, 2016.

Chapter Nine

One Good Turn . . . Aristotle, Derrida, and the “Peaceful Transfer of Power” in Democracy Michael Naas

Until very recently, we Americans were in the habit of congratulating ourselves at the end of every election cycle on having pulled it off once again. For no matter how partisan, fierce, or even rancorous the electoral campaigning had become, we were still able, we told ourselves, to hold free and fair elections and oversee yet another “peaceful transfer of power.” In the wake of every presidential election, therefore, and especially those in which another party, the other party, took power, we celebrated the fact that after all the votes had been counted and the winner declared, the losing party graciously conceded and stepped aside in order to make way for the victor. And so, in the days around each presidential inauguration ceremony, pundits, politicians, and political analysts of all stripes would take to the airwaves and newspapers to congratulate the American people on their achievement and ask them to reflect upon that most solemn and mysterious of moments when sovereign power passes from one person or political party to another, the moment when another person, sometimes from another political party, gets to take their turn at ruling, that is, gets to rule in turn. All that, as I say, was more or less a matter of course until very recently, a ruling in turn or by turns that could be counted on like the turning of the seasons themselves, as American, we thought, as the presidential turkey pardon on Thanksgiving or baseball players dutifully returning to the dugout after a third called strike. It could, for the most part, be taken for granted, until, of course, the elections of 2020, after which one party and particularly one man from that party refused to accept the results of what were almost universally 171

172

Michael Naa

considered to be very free and fair elections, thereby putting into question, for a time, that peaceful transfer of power and threatening the “by turns” of democracy itself. My aim in what follows is not to return in any detail to that sad and ominous chapter in American history, but to consider some of the lessons about democracy itself that have emerged from it. For no matter how tired or self-serving those self-congratulatory discourses about the peaceful transfer of power may have been, their absence during the 2020 election cycle told us something essential about the central event of democracy, namely, that genuinely uncertain and unstable moment of political alchemy when those who were once ruled are suddenly transformed into those who shall rule. Though all our talk about a peaceful transfer is perhaps meant to conceal it, this moment of transfer or transition is, in its essence, anything but reassuring. For even in a state in which the constitution and state apparatus watch over the transfer, there is—as political theorists have always known—an irreducible caesura or interruption in power that is, at bottom, anything but peaceful, an unfathomable abyss between the time one party or person relinquishes power and another takes it up. Even when it goes without a hitch—and it is precisely the hitch in this most recent election cycle that so starkly revealed this perennial truth—there is an irreducible, ungovernable, unmasterable moment between these two turns at ruling and, while there is much to be done both before and after, we can only at that moment hold our breaths and hope that this time, this time again, it will turn out well. Now it so happens that the question of the nature of this so-called peaceful transfer of power, the question of ruling by turns in democracy, was central to one of Jacques Derrida’s last works, his 2003 work Voyous, published in English under the title Rogues.1 Written not long after September 11th, and in anticipation of the American invasion of Iraq, an invasion carried out under the dual pretext of defending American interests and security from what was called the “rogue state” of Iraq, and bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East, Derrida’s book analyzes the Western political tradition’s understanding of democracy with this more contemporary context in view. Much of Rogues thus consists of a reading of classical philosophical discourses about democracy, from de Tocqueville and Rousseau back to Plato and, especially, Aristotle, in order to understand both the aporias and promises of democracy, as well as philosophy’s almost universal skepticism regarding it. Derrida then proceeds to put this philosophical skepticism regarding the virtues of democracy into the context of, on the one hand, the American—and, indeed, largely European and Western—condemnation of certain Arab-Islamic states’ explicit rejection of democracy and democratic institutions, and, on the other, the ineradicable possibility within democracy itself of the end of democracy, that is, the danger—what Derrida calls the “autoimmune” danger—of democratic

One Good Turn . . 

173

elections leading to the election of someone or some party that will bring an end from within democracy to democracy itself. Derrida thus reminds us throughout Rogues that democracy is in its essence open to autoimmune attacks upon it, that is—and the last American elections have shown that this possibility is more real than we ever thought—to the election of a person or a party that would annul or reject the results of those elections or simply refuse to accept another person or party ruling in turn. As Derrida demonstrates throughout Rogues, democracy in its essence vacillates between two different valences of the “one good turn” of my title; it vacillates between the one good turn that “deserves another,” that allows for, and even calls for, another, that is, another ruler, another party, another part of the state to have its time for ruling, and the one good turn, like the one good push or the one good kick, that turns democracy away from its democratic principles and brings it to an end. As Derrida puts it in Rogues, “democracy hesitates always in the alternative between two sorts of alternation: the so-called normal and democratic alternation (where the power of one party, said to be republican, replaces that of another party, said to be equally republican) and the alternation that risks giving power (modo democratico) to the force of a party elected by the people (and so is democratic) and yet is assumed to be non-democratic” (R, 30/53–54). Whatever democracy is in the end (and Derrida argues there can be no single, univocal definition), it cannot be thought, he suggests, without taking this alternation, the possibility of these two moments, into account. But while the end of democracy is an essential, constitutive, possibility of democracy itself, as Derrida argues throughout Rogues, that does not mean that one cannot—that one should not—try to do everything possible to mitigate that possibility and try to prevent it from being realized, that is, everything short of bringing democracy to an end oneself in order to prevent others from doing it. I would thus like to argue in what follows that we find in Aristotle a thinking of the “by turns” of democracy that tries to do precisely this. For we find in Aristotle an attempt to walk a fine line between allowing for a democratic transfer of power from one part of the polis to another, that is, from one part to a different part, thus making for a genuine transformation of rulers into ruled and vice versa, and controlling or even mastering that transfer by restricting access to the ruling class and by educating those within that class in such a way that the “by turns” becomes little more than a simulacrum of democratic rule within an essentially aristocratic regime, a simulacrum of alternation and of the “by turns” within a state that essentially returns to itself in a circle. As we will see, Aristotle’s account of democracy in the Politics tries to navigate between what Derrida in Rogues calls “two truths” of democracy, namely, that of

174

Michael Naa

the turn, the return to self of the circle and the sphere, and thus the ipseity of the One, the autos of autonomy, symmetry, homogeneity, the same, the like, the semblable or the similar, and even, finally, God, in other words everything that remains incompatible with, even clashes with, another truth of the democratic, namely, the truth of the other, heterogeneity, the heteronomic and the dissymmetric, disseminal multiplicity, the anonymous “anyone,” the “no matter who,” the indeterminate “each one.” (R, 14–15/35)

If democracy thus always hesitates or vacillates, as Derrida argues, not only between normal democratic processes and non-democratic ones, but also between a return to sameness, in a certain thinking of the circle, and an opening toward the other and heterogeneity, in a certain thinking of the ellipsis, we will want to ask whether the line Aristotle walks can teach us anything about how to negotiate between these two figures. In what follows, then, I would like to read Aristotle in light of Derrida, and Derrida in light of what has recently happened in America, in order to ask whether or in what way the “by turns” of democracy can be informed, oriented, or itself “educated” so as to mitigate or minimize this possibility of the worst within democracy, that is, the possibility of elections leading not just to regressive or repressive policies but to the end of democracy itself in the coming to power of an autocrat or tyrant. Though the practices and institutions of fourth-century Greek democracy can hardly be compared to those of twenty-first-century American democracy, they too had to account for the notion of the “in turns.” I would thus like to inquire into what exactly Aristotle meant by ruling “in turns” or “by turns” in the Politics and how he understood, even if he never quite used the term, the “peaceful transfer of power” within democracy. If Aristotle ultimately excludes the hypothesis of a single, preeminent ruler governing forever, not in turn but perpetually, permanently—if he excludes the hypothesis of a philosopher king—then how does he understand or try to control or inflect a rule “by turns”? How does he argue for rule “by turns” and then how does he protect it from what he would have experienced as the dangers of an unbridled, undisciplined, and uneducated dēmos or else popular leader supported by that dēmos coming to power in order to destroy the very “by turns” of democracy? To understand what Aristotle means in the Politics by the turn of phrase “by turns,” we must first understand who it is that takes such turns ruling in a state. Since every political community is made up of rulers and subjects, rulers and ruled, one of the essential questions of the Politics concerns the relationship between these two groups. Arguing in Book 2 against Plato, who, he claims, tried to erase class differences and unite the polis into a single, individual body, Aristotle maintains that distinct classes are necessary for the state and that political community depends upon the clear difference between

One Good Turn . . 

175

ruler and ruled. The question then becomes whether a permanent ruling class is best—a class of permanent rulers and a class of the permanently ruled—or whether rule should alternate, with some ruling and some being ruled in turns. Aristotle, of course, ultimately endorses this latter form of government as the most realizable, and so, contra Plato, appears to be a qualified advocate of that good, natural form of democracy called a politeia or constitutional state. But how does Aristotle understand such a constitutional government or politeia in which freemen rule “in turn” or “by turns,” “in alternation” or “rotation”? To answer this question, we must first recall that while Aristotle considers the constitutional government the best of the realizable forms of government for most states, it is not the first and most divine: that honor goes to absolute monarchy, a form of government nowhere in evidence in his time, says Aristotle, but one that nevertheless provides something of a template if not a telos for what the constitutional form should look like. This is the form of government in which a man of absolutely exceptional virtue, a man who would be, as Aristotle puts it, like a god among men, rules permanently over those who recognize themselves to be his inferiors in virtue. Perhaps the clearest statement of this position is to be found in Book 7, where Aristotle argues: If then it were the case that the one class differed from the other as widely as we believe the gods and heroes to differ from mankind, having first a great superiority in regard to body and then in regard to soul, so that the preeminence of the rulers was indisputable and manifest [anamphisbētēton einai kai phaneran] to the subjects, it is clear that it would be better for the same persons always to be rulers and subjects once and for all [kathapax]. (1332b17–27)

The most divine form of constitution would thus be one in which there is a clear and acknowledged difference in soul, in virtue, between ruler and ruled. In such a case, it would be better, Aristotle says, for “the same persons always to be rulers and subjects once and for all,” that is, for there to be a permanent monarch or, perhaps, aristocracy in which the identity of rulers and ruled is fixed once and for all, the differences between them as indisputable and manifest as those between gods and men. Were there to be such a man, someone who is “our superior in virtue and in practical capacity for the highest functions,” it would be “noble,” says Aristotle, to “follow” him and “just” to “obey” him (1325b11–13).2 Aristotle addresses the question of the superior or radically unequal man again in the Politics when he assesses the value of the practice of ostracism. He asks whether ostracism, often practiced in deviant state forms for mere private advantage or as a means to revolution, might be practiced even in good or natural constitutions when the common advantage might be achieved

176

Michael Naa

by it. He concludes that while it would be best to avoid such a remedy, either by framing the constitution or educating the citizens in such a way as to avoid the emergence of a man of extreme power, wealth, or influence, there might be instances where, for the sake of the whole, ostracism might be justifiable.3 But what about the exceptionally virtuous man—the only one, it seems, who could make a reasonable claim to rule permanently? Could he be ostracized in the name of preserving the “by turns”? No, says Aristotle, for it makes no sense to banish the exceptionally virtuous from a state, even if ruling over him would be, as it were, like ruling over Zeus. It would thus be natural for “all to obey such a man gladly, so that men of this sort may be kings in the cities for all time.” But while that would be natural and just, Aristotle admits that in contemporary states popular obedience to such a man is rare and the more likely scenario is that this godlike man will have to suffer the injustice of being ruled by mere men. That is why Aristotle, not unlike Plato in the Statesman, ultimately sets this constitution and ruler aside. Because men of such supreme virtue have become increasingly rare and the growth of city-states has made such rule more difficult, one must instead devise means of sharing authority and ruling “in turn.” As Aristotle goes on to say in Book 7, when there is no great difference between ruler and ruled “it is necessary for all to share alike in ruling and being ruled in turn”—that is, in ruling and being ruled kata meros, by turns or in turn, as opposed to kata hapax or kathapax, once and for all. Aristotle argues that such an arrangement, in most states, is not only expedient and just but, interestingly, natural. For just as it would be contrary to nature for the inferior in virtue to rule over their superiors, so it would be contrary to nature for one person to be “sovereign over all citizens where the state consists of men who are alike.” It is thus natural and just for no one person to govern or be governed more than another, “and therefore for everybody to govern and be governed alike in turn [to ana meros].” Aristotle writes, For equals [homoiois], therefore, the noble and just consists in their taking turns [en merei], since this is equal and alike, but for those that are equal to have an unequal share and those that are alike an unlike share is contrary to nature [para physin], and nothing contrary to nature is noble [kalon]. (1325b7–10)

Equality is thus essential to democracy, but then so, too, is liberty. This latter is, as Aristotle puts it, a “fundamental principle [hypothesis] of the democratic form of constitution.”4 But these two principles of democracy then seem to conflict. For in a city of free and equal men, each man can claim the right to rule and never be ruled, that is, each can claim an equal right to ruling over all the others without ever having to be ruled. Because of the principle of equality, therefore, there has arisen the democratic “claim not to be governed,

One Good Turn . . 

177

preferably not by anyone, or failing that”—and this is Aristotle’s solution to the dilemma—“to govern and be governed in turns [kata meros]” (1317b15– 17). “To govern and be governed in turn [en merei arkhesthai kai arkhein]” (1317a40–1317b3) is thus said to be one of the features of liberty. For in a democracy the popular principle of justice is equality according to number, not worth, the equality of all free men, so that justice dictates that each citizen should have an equal share in rule, either by deciding things through direct elections where the majority rules or by ruling in turns. In short, when the state is “constituted on the principle of equality [isotēta] and similarity [homoiotēta] between the citizens, these claim to hold office by turn [kata meros]” (1279a8–11). In a city of equals, then, it is natural to rule and to be ruled in turn. Aristotle refers to citizens who, “in earlier times, under the natural system,” did “public service in turns [en merei],” allowing others “to look after their own welfare just as previously they looked after [others’] interest when in office themselves” (1279a). The analogy Aristotle offers is that of a pilot who watches out essentially for the interests of the passengers and only incidentally for his own interests, that is, insofar as he, too, is a passenger on the ship. In a state of equals, each thus becomes in turn and for a time the pilot for the others, ruling essentially for the benefit of the ruled and only incidentally for himself as one of the ruled. This is “natural,” says Aristotle, with each becoming in turn, as it were, a different person—the ruler the ruled, the pilot the passenger, and vice versa—as the wheels of succession turn. Aristotle goes on to lament the fact that in many cities this incidental interest in rule has become primary, the pilot or ruler looking to rule or pilot because of the advantages that accrue to that position, the desire to rule “in turns” becoming corrupted and giving way to a desire to rule permanently for one’s own advantage (1279a). This helps explain Aristotle’s claim that most magistrates in a constitutional state must have a relatively short tenure of office, for the “in turns” becomes threatened in proportion to the advantages that accrue to ruling, and these advantages increase in proportion to the length of the tenure of office. Because a city is a “partnership [koinōnia] of free men,” only those constitutions that seek the common advantage are rightly framed in accordance with “absolute justice [to haplōs dikaion],” while those that aim at the rulers’ advantage alone are faulty, containing an element of despotism. Of the three natural or good regimes that seek the common advantage—monarchy, aristocracy, and the constitutional state—only the latter, therefore, with its emphasis on freedom and equality of number, rather than monarchy’s emphasis on virtue or aristocracy’s emphasis on virtue and wealth, puts a premium on ruling “by turns.” It is for this reason that the first development of the notion of “ruling in turns” occurs in Book 2 in the context of a discussion of “reciprocal equality [ison to antipeponthos],” what Aristotle calls the

178

Michael Naa

“preservative [sōizei] of states.” In a constitutional state of free and equal men, political equality lends stability to the state, since without it men will rightly complain that they are being treated unjustly insofar as they have a lesser share in the state than those who are their equals. But exactly how, Aristotle asks, is political equality to be achieved? Since all free and equal men cannot “govern at once [hama],” that is, at the same time, they must take turns ruling or rule in turn.5 Such an arrangement is, let me recall, not only expedient, just, natural, and noble, but necessary. For differences are necessary to the state, be they differences between rich and poor, or ruler and ruled.6 Indeed, a state must consist of unlike persons (anomoiōn), of different or unlike parts, just as—and these are Aristotle’s analogies—an animal consists of soul and body, or a soul of reason and appetite, or a household of husband and wife, or ownership of master and slave. In each case, a difference in function is required for there to be rule: the soul ruling over the body, reason over appetite, husband over wife, master over slave, and, thus, the point of the analogy, the ruler over the ruled.7 The difference between ruler and ruled is therefore essential to the state, Aristotle argues, not only to the monarchy or aristocracy in which natural differences in virtue are translated into ruling and being ruled, but even in a state in which all men are equally free and more or less equal in virtue. And herein lies the challenge: whereas these other relations of authority are at once natural and nonreversible, once and for all, since the body is never to rule over the soul, or appetite over reason, or the wife over the husband, or the slave over the master, the relationship between ruler and ruled in a constitutional state is meant to be reciprocal or reversible and works only if it is reversible through the “by turns.” While the ruler qua ruler is, of course, never ruled, the one who rules will by turns become the one who is ruled and vice versa. It is in this sense that it is as if, as we will see, one becomes a different person in the constitutional state. The reversibility of ruler and ruled is, therefore, written into the very notion of constitutional rule. “There is much truth,” says Aristotle, “in the saying that it is impossible to become a good ruler without having been a subject.” Here, the possibility of an “in turns” is conditioned by rulers having been or being willing to be, for a time, the ruled. And here is where the uniqueness of the ruler-ruled relation resides; for one would not at all become a better master by first being a slave, or a better husband by first being or fulfilling the function of a wife. The reciprocity of the “by turns” appears to be conditioned by the homogeneity of a class of free and equal men who will be able to become, as it were, not only different people but, in a certain sense, one another.

One Good Turn . . 

179

The state must have different parts if it is to function properly. It must find, as in a monarchy or aristocracy in which the great natural difference in virtue between the ruler and the ruled becomes the natural basis for a corresponding political difference, a way of creating a difference between ruler and ruled. Thus, in a state of free and equal men, this natural difference between ruler and ruled must be, so to speak, artificially introduced by means of a constitution that determines that some will rule and others will be ruled at any one moment in time, but that this difference will be limited in time by the “in turns.” I say “artificial” here because Aristotle himself in Book 2 calls this an “imitation” of an original dissimilarity, that is, it seems, the kind that can be found in an aristocracy between superior and inferior men of virtue. He writes, “for equals thus to submit to authority in turn [en merei] imitates [mimeitai] their being originally dissimilar; for some govern and others are governed by turns [para meros], as though becoming other persons [hōsper an alloi genomenoi]” (1261a31–b7). One could circle endlessly around this extraordinary passage. I will limit myself here to just three points. First, Aristotle says that by ruling in turns the state essentially “imitates” an original dissimilarity between ruler and ruled. We cannot help but think again of Plato’s Statesman, in which the good statesman, the best in the six deviant regimes, is supposed to imitate that divine or ideal statesman, the first or the seventh. Through the artifice of a rule “by turns,” through the supplement of imitation, one approaches a natural state of dissimilarity between ruler and ruled. It is as if Aristotle were using the supplement of an “as if” and a “by turns” in order to insinuate into democratic equality according to number—that is, into the arithmetic equality of all free men in a democracy—something of the equality according to merit upon which the very best, albeit unrealizable, regime is based. Second, the phrase being translated in this passage as “in turn” is en merei (en followed by the dative form of to meros), whereas the phrase that has been translated as “by turns” throughout the Politics is kata meros (or sometimes para meros). This raises the question: What exactly is a meros? In other works of Aristotle, from the Metaphysics to the Physics to the Parts of Animals, meros means a part, share, or portion, so that the phrase kata meros might mean one part or one portion at a time, bit by bit, part by part.8 The translation of kata meros as “in turns” makes good sense if we keep in mind that each has a share in ruling, each takes a part in ruling, though each cannot take his part or have his share at the same time. But this would seem to suggest that political authority is something of a whole that can be divided between individuals and distributed across time, each taking up his share or portion of authority in his own good time. Certain uses of the word meros and, especially, the phrase kata meros in the Politics and elsewhere justify this view. Early on in the Politics, for example, Aristotle establishes that

180

Michael Naa

the state is prior to the individual in nature and that “each individual is not self-sufficient” but “must be related to the whole state as other parts [meresin] are to their whole [to holon],” hence the famous phrase that someone who has no need of the state and is “no part [ouden meros] of a state . . . must be either a lower animal or a god” (1253a28–29). Someone living within the state but who has no need of the state is thus, as a part that is no longer a part of the whole, an absolute anomaly, a part apart, as it were. Hence it appears that the citizen of a constitutional state is part of a whole, that ruling in turns means that one part rules for the whole, for the body politic as a whole, while the other parts of the body politic are ruled and wait their turn to rule.9 Whereas the man of superior virtue is sovereign (kurios) absolutely (haplōs), and his sovereignty whole and undivided in time or space, in the constitutional state this undivided sovereignty must at once remain intact and pass from one part of the state to another. Sovereignty is thus not exactly divided or parceled out, but the artifice of the “by turns” allows each to rule for the whole, as the whole, for a time, that is, for each to rule in turn absolutely, ruling for the whole in time and yet, insofar as the “in turn” promises a return, across time. That is how Aristotle’s use of meros as the part of a whole attempts to elide or overcome the problems that would arise from parts being definitively separated in either time or space. The “in turns” attempts to elide the temporal and spatial differences that result from the fact that, first, not all free men can rule “at the same time” and, second, it would be unjust for one man, one equal man among others, to rule “continuously.”10 Finally, the above passage demonstrates how the dissimilarity brought about by the “by turns” introduces something of a fiction—a fiction that will nonetheless have the force of law—into the body politic. Aristotle says that in the constitutional state “some govern and others are governed by turns, as though becoming other persons [hōsper an alloi genomenoi]” (1261b4–5). As though, that is, as if they were becoming other persons: Aristotle seems to suggest that, through imitation of an original dissimilarity between ruler and ruled, the constitutional state introduces the fiction of a real, natural difference between ruler and ruled. It is a fiction that is to be maintained until the moment the roles are reversed, that is, the moment another part of the state gets its share in ruling as if it, now, were suited always to rule, that is, as if it were naturally suited always to rule. The artifice of the “in turns” provides the possibility of thinking a natural, permanent rule that would be continuous, that is, forever, but also only for a time. Where nature does not provide dissimilarity (for example, between master and slave, husband and wife, naturally superior and inferior), where there are many men with nearly equal virtue, ruling by turns will introduce dissymmetry by creating—through artifice, or through, for example, “insignia, titles, and honors” (1259b8)—a difference between ruler and ruled. Aristotle

One Good Turn . . 

181

thus establishes here a delicate balance between the dissimilarity of ruler and ruled and the similarity of free and equal men; between the artificial dissimilarity created through the fiction of the as if and the natural similarity that is revealed when the fiction is suspended; between the artificial and yet very real and effective, even authoritative dissimilarity and dissymmetric distribution of power at any one moment in time and the natural similarities between ruler and ruled across time. The trick, it seems, is to introduce an artificial difference with real, effective consequences and then attempt to elide these differences in time and space—in time, as we will see, through anticipation and memory, and in space through the underlying homogeneity of ruler and ruled.11 We have seen how Aristotle wants the constitutional state to imitate the natural dissimilarity between ruler and ruled in, say, an aristocracy or monarchy by introducing rule “by turns.” Without a natural dissimilarity in virtue, the constitutional state must rely upon an artificial introduction of this dissimilarity. Otherwise, the same men will always rule, a state of affairs that, among men virtually equal in virtue, is both unjust and inexpedient. This is part and parcel of Aristotle’s critique of a permanent ruling class in the Republic. Aristotle says that in the Republic some people always rule, since the “god-given admixture of gold in the soul is not bestowed on some at one time and others at another time, but is always in the same men” (1264b12– 13). Indeed, it is from birth that one is gold, silver, or bronze, and one cannot become—not even through the fiction of an as if—gold or silver “in turn.” Now we must also acknowledge here—something Aristotle does not—that Plato has his own rule “by turns,” and it is not unlike the one Aristotle himself proposes for an aristocratic state, as we will see shortly. Speaking near the end of Book 7 of the Republic of a city governed by philosophers trained in dialectics and brought to see the Form or Idea of Good, Socrates argues that these philosophers will govern the city not at the same time but “each in turn [en merei]” (540b).12 In other words, no one of these philosopher kings or queens will rule permanently but each will rule for a time. Though Plato’s reasoning appears to be that it would be unjust to require any one individual to rule permanently, there is a certain “by turns”—and thus a certain democracy—within the ruling class of the Republic. I say a “certain” democracy because while there is an alternation or rotation between ruler and ruled, one does not “become” gold with the transfer of power; one does not become, even by means of a fiction, a different person. For one will have been a member of the gold class all along, and at no time will a man of the bronze or silver class become a member of the golden class. Aristotle’s comparison of the ruler to a pilot—a comparison he probably gets from Plato in the first place—is thus probably more appropriate here: on a ship with several pilots, all equally competent, each might agree to rule “in turn” for a time for the

182

Michael Naa

benefit of all onboard, though each would have preferred simply contemplating the order and movement of the stars rather than having to use those stars to navigate the ship. Having seen how the “in turns” gives way to permanent rule in the monarchy of the virtuous man, and how it institutes a relation between ruler and ruled in a constitutional state, we turn now to what might be considered the intermediate state of an aristocracy, where, as in monarchy, rule is based on virtue rather than equality, but where, as in democracy, a rule “by turns” is instituted within a virtuous class of men in a way that is not wholly unlike the Republic. This will then allow us to ask in conclusion whether Aristotle has provisions within the constitutional state for a ruling in turns that would be not within one class but between classes—for example, rich and poor—or whether rule “by turns” even within a constitutional state must ultimately attempt to reduce the differences between those who will take up their rule in turn.13 In other words, we will have to ask whether the democratic feature of the “by turns,” the “each in turn,” or the “one part of the whole at a time,” is not, in the end, oriented by an aristocratic desire: the rule of the same by the same. That will then allow us to return to Derrida’s question from Rogues, namely, whether the “by turns” of democracy does not always risk turning toward homogeneity and simultaneity, that is, whether it does not always risk excluding some from taking part or taking turns in the “by turns” of democracy. We have already seen that ruling in turns allows Aristotle at once to accept the equality of individuals in a constitutional state and institute differences between them. These differences between the various parts of the state are, as we have also seen, essential to the state. In Book 3, Aristotle contends that the “cause [aition]” of there being several different kinds of constitutions is that each city has several different parts, such as households, the virtuous and the base, the rich and the poor, the armed and the unarmed, the well-born and the less well born, and, among the common people, agricultural workers, traders, mechanics, and so on. Constitutions, in fact, differ from one another to the extent that these parts—these merē—differ from one another, since constitutions are but the workings out of the superiorities and power arrangements of these parts. In Book 7, Aristotle considers which of these parts of the state are indispensable for the state to exist and then, among these, which should be considered parts in the full and genuine sense of the term. He determines six necessary functions of the state and six corresponding classes: a) farmers for the food supply, b) craftsmen for handicrafts, c) a military class for protection within and without, d) the wealthy for one’s internal needs and for war, e) priests for the service of religion, and f) judges. For a state to be “absolutely (haplōs) self-sufficient, it must have all these occupations.14 But “in the

One Good Turn . . 

183

most nobly constituted state,” Aristotle continues, by which he here means, it seems, an aristocracy, the rulers must not lead mechanical, mercantile, or agricultural lives since such lives are “ignoble and inimical to virtue.” The two classes, then, with the “leisure [skholēs] needed both for the development of virtue and for active participation in politics” are the military class and the judges (1328b38–1329a2). These are truly parts of the state, indeed the only parts in the genuine or absolute sense of the term. Farmers, craftsmen, and laborers are thus necessary appurtenances of the state, while “the military and deliberative are parts of the state.” As a result, the appurtenances are permanently (aei) separate from the parts, while the parts, as we are soon to see, are separate (kekhōristai) from one another by turn (kata meros) (1329a38–39). To the question that then arises as to whether the functions exercised by the military and by judges should be located in distinct classes or whether both can be assigned to the same persons, Aristotle’s answer turns this time not upon an as if but upon an “in a certain sense” that leads to a “by turns.” He says, “in a certain sense [tropon] they should be assigned to the same persons, but in a certain sense to different ones.” For each of these two functions belongs to a different prime (akmēs) of life, the one requiring wisdom (phronēsis) and the other strength (dynamis). In a certain sense, then, both functions need to be given to the same people, “for these who have the power of arms have the power to decide whether the constitution shall stand or fall” (1329a7–14). Aristotle’s solution is thus to give these two functions to the same people—but not simultaneously. “In the natural order of things strength is found in younger men and wisdom in the elder,” so that “it seems to be expedient and just for their functions to be allotted to both in this way, for this mode of division possesses conformity with merit [kat’axian]” (1329a15–18). Hence the same man will both serve in the military and be a judge, but not at the same time. As Aristotle puts it, “the only course left them is to assign this constitutional function to both sets of men without distinction, yet not simultaneously [mē hama de]” (1329a13–15). A citizen will thus, as a young man, serve in the military and then, as an older one, serve as a judge. This gives a very new twist to the “by turns”: one will be “by turns”—or rather first—a warrior and then, second, a judge or officeholder. There is thus a synchronic difference between the classes, a difference between ruler and ruled, the ruling class and the ruled, at any one point in time, and yet a diachronic identity, an identity of ruler and ruled, over time. The artificial difference between ruler and ruled is here mapped onto a natural difference between old and young. For it is “nature [physis],” says Aristotle, that “has given the distinction by making the group that is itself the same in race partly younger and partly older, of which two sets it is appropriate to the one to be governed and for the other to govern” (1332b36–38). Recall how, in a state of equally free men, where differences in virtue or wealth are not considered determining

184

Michael Naa

factors for ruling, an artificial difference had to be created between ruler and ruled by means of the “by turns.” We now see that, in the aristocratic state, this artificial difference is to be grounded upon a natural difference in age. A kind of identity is thus created between the young men in the military and their elders, or better, between these young men and their future ruling selves. Only by having the same men, in a certain sense, both govern and serve in the military will one contain or reduce the possibility of a revolt or military coup. Because those in the younger prime of their lives can expect to rule when they get older, and because those in the older prime of life can remember having been governed when they were in the military, those governing are, in a certain sense, the same as those being governed. That Aristotle considers this expectation or anticipation of rule important is clear when he adds: “and no one chafes or thinks himself better than his rulers when he is governed on the ground of age, especially as he is going to get back [antilambanein] what he has contributed to the common stalk when he reaches the proper age” (1332b38–41).15 We now understand just what kinds of differences Aristotle had in mind when he said that differences, that classes, were necessary to the state: in the absence of great differences in virtue, the framer of a constitution will rely on differences in age, natural differences that are, so to speak, provisional, temporary, and so can be, in a sense, overcome by the fiction of another as if: it is as if, even in being ruled, the ruled are already ruling. To be a good ruler, recall, one first had to learn to be ruled; the ruler was already conceived as someone who had been ruled, someone who could identify, so to speak, with the ruled. Here in the aristocratic state the ruled can already identify in advance, as it were, with the rulers. No other characteristic would allow for such anticipation and, thus, for such an elision of time. For the lowly born can never expect to become well born over time, the poor cannot expect to become rich over time; but the young can expect to grow older. They can expect to rule in turn and can thus, in some sense, already see themselves ruling, that is, see themselves as having already become other persons. The “by turns” is thus really a difference internal to a single set of citizens or, ultimately, within an individual: for the individual citizen will be ruled and then will rule “by turns,” in alternation, as he exchanges one prime of life and thus one function for another. As Aristotle says, “In a sense therefore we must say that the rulers and ruled are the same [hōs tous autous], and in a sense different [hōs heterous]” (1332b43–1333a1). The “by turns” is thus made functional by assuring that the rulers and the ruled are by turns the same and different. By rooting the artificial supplement of the “by turns” in a natural difference in age, Aristotle is able to balance differences in age and ability at any one point in time with homogeneity of age and ability over time.

One Good Turn . . 

185

Hence, Aristotle assigns both functions to the same people, “yet not simultaneously.”16 Because this difference is based on age and its concomitant strength, it is, Aristotle notes, in conformity with merit. But since the same functions will have been or are to be given to the same men, there is something here of the equality according to number by which one rules and is ruled “by turns.” In the sort of aristocracy Aristotle seems to be advocating, the political “by turns” is an imitation of the natural succession of generations in which classes are distinguished not on the basis of wealth or birth but age in conformity with merit—age being the one characteristic a legislator can absolutely count on changing with time. Aristotle concludes his argument in Book 7 about this one class of citizens that, as it were, divides itself in two according to age, by saying that “each of these divisions [that is, the six classes necessary to the city] is separate from one another, either permanently or in turns [to men aei, to de kata meros]” (1329a39), the division that is “in turns” being, we are given to understand, that between the judges and the military. That is how Aristotle overcomes or elides the differences instituted by the “by turns” within an aristocracy, and it seems to confirm Derrida’s claim in Rogues that the “by turns” always risks favoring identity and sameness in a return to self that excludes the other, difference, heterogeneity, and so on. For if, as Derrida elliptically puts it, “sovereignty is round” (R, 13/33), then “this circularity or spherical rotation, the turn of the re-turn upon the self, can take either the alternating form of the ­by turns, the i­n turn, the each in turn . . . or else the form of an identity between the origin and the conclusion, the cause and the end or aim, the driving [motrice] cause and the final cause” (R, 12/33). In other words, the turn of the “by turns” always risks “totalizing, in totalizing itself, and thus in gathering itself by tending toward simultaneity” in a movement that is anything but democratic (R, 12/32). If the aristocratic state always risks simply reproducing itself in a circular fashion, if it risks reducing the “by turns” to a mere simulacrum or alibi, if it merely reproduces, albeit with more sophistication and no doubt greater success, the “by turns” of Plato’s philosophers in the Republic­, then what happens in a democracy or constitutional state in which the citizen base might include some of these other necessary parts of the state, from artisans to farmers? Since natural differences in age and virtue (as in an aristocracy) can no longer be used as the basis for rule, and since the “in turns” now becomes more unpredictable and open to instability as differences in birth, wealth, occupation, and virtue all have an opportunity, at least in principle, of gaining control through the chance of the “by turns”—which reaches its most extreme when offices are determined by lot—how will Aristotle attempt to elide or at least temper the differences between the various parts of the state so as to assure the normal succession of the “by turns”? The answer, it would appear, is, first, an emphasis on rule by law and the stability of offices and magistrates

186

Michael Naa

and, second, the promotion of a single educational system for all citizens that aims to produce a large and strong middle class. In lieu of absolute and permanent differences in virtue, Aristotle thus seeks a certain homogeneity through rule by law, common education, and a large middle class that tends to reduce the extremes of rich and poor. Were the same men always to rule and the same always to be ruled, it would make sense to have different forms of education for these two groups, just as we do in the Republic. The same would be true in a state of the extremely rich and poor, for as Aristotle argues in Book 4, those excessively well off know only how to govern, and only as a master, while those excessively diminished know only how to be governed, and only in a servile manner. “The result is a state consisting of slaves and masters, not of free men, and of one class envious and another contemptuous of their fellows,” a state that is far removed from “friendliness [philias] and political partnerships [koinōnias politikēs]” (1295b22–25). Hence, the “ideal of the state is to consist as much as possible of persons that are equal [isōn] and alike [homoiōn], and this similarity is most found in the middle classes” (1295b26–27). When the extremes rule, we have either extreme democracy or extreme oligarchy, sometimes even tyranny, but when the middle class rules it neither plots nor is plotted against, and so lives “free from faction [astasiastos]” and danger (1296a10). Hence, “the lawgiver in his constitution must always,” says Aristotle, “take into account the middle class,” whether the laws are of an oligarchic or democratic character. When the middle class exceeds both the rich and poor together, or even just one of the two, it is possible to have a strong and “lasting [monimon]” constitutional government, for neither extreme will want to be governed by the other and both will support the middle class. The extremes of rich and poor would never, Aristotle argues, “endure to take turns [en merei] to govern because they distrust [dia tēn apistian] each other” (1297a4–6), and a government in which rulers rule by turns must be a government based in trust. Because rich and poor cannot trade places in the way those nearly equal in virtue can or in the way the young can become the old, rich and poor are forever separated from and so forever distrust one another. It is, thus, the “arbitrator [diaitētēs] that is most trusted, and the man in the middle is the arbitrator” (1297a7). Rich and poor are separated from and cannot trust one another in the way young and old trust one another because the one cannot expect to become, and so cannot see himself in, the other; he cannot imagine himself becoming, as it were, such a different person. In a state of rich and poor the risk is thus great that the one side will distrust not only the other side but also the “by turns” itself, in which case the one side or the other may try to put an end to the “by turns” after it has gained power. As we suggested at the outset through

One Good Turn . . 

187

Derrida, nothing in the “by turns” of democracy can exclude this possibility of the end of democracy within democracy: the possibility of democracy turning of its own accord, and in accordance with what might seem to be the most democratic procedures, toward populism, oligarchy, demagogy, even tyranny. Aristotle thus suggests, it seems, that we do everything we can to prevent such a possibility short of ending the “by turns” itself. By insisting on the necessity of a strong middle class and proposing a common education for all citizens, Aristotle seems to believe he can narrow the gap between the “extremes” and, more importantly, reduce the possibility of the “extremes” coming to rule. But is that democracy? However one answers this question, it is notable that in Aristotle’s solution there is no alternation “in turns” between the extremes. In no case, whether of a monarchy, an aristocracy, a constitutional state, or a democracy, does Aristotle envision anything like an alternation or rule “in turns” between rich and poor, between one set of interests and another radically different set of interests, nor even between young and old, for while the young will become the old, they are not to rule when they are young. Thus, we do not see a ruling “by turns” between what we would call classes or political parties, for example, a party of or for the rich or a party of or for the poor, as some would like to understand American democracy. But then who could possibly blame him, for with no notion of the nation-state, nor of a general will or spirit of the people to elide the time between turns and the space between the governed and the governing, Aristotle was forced, for the sake of the stability of the state, and motivated, obscurely perhaps, by that mystical foundation of all authority, to reduce the “by turns” through a series of turns toward the same or toward the middle. For the promise of democracy, the promise of the “by turns,” is precisely, as we saw Derrida argue, the peril of democracy, the possibility of an opening to an alterity or a difference that may radically change things for the good or else bring about the end of democracy for good. Between Derrida and Aristotle there is thus no simple alternative. Both will have understood, albeit in different ways, that the problems of democracy are also its promises, and vice versa. Perhaps both would agree, at the very least, that we need to promote a form of education in which one would read the two of them together, which is not to say at the same time but in the same series, the two read together, like continental philosophy and the history of thought, not quite simultaneously but by turns. NOTES 1. Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005); Voyous: Deux essais

188

Michael Naa

sur la raison (Paris: Les Éditions Galilée, 2003). Hereafter parenthetically cited as R with the English pagination followed by the French. 2. Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932). 3. Just as a painter would not for the good of the whole paint an animal with an unusually large foot, or just as a chorus master would not for the good of the whole chorus want a singer who sings much louder or more beautifully than the others, so there may be “a certain element of political justice” in exiling the overly wealthy or powerful man (1284b8–17). 4. Aristotle adds this caveat about liberty as the fundamental principle of democracy: “that is what is usually asserted.” See Rogues 23/46. 5. Whereas inequality and nonreciprocal relations can obtain in other domains—for example, the shoemaker will not complain that the carpenter is always a carpenter and that he, the shoemaker, should be given a chance to replace him, men will complain that they should have a turn at ruling since the fundamental criterion for rule in such a state is not having some skill but simply being a free and equal man. 6. Aristotle makes this claim in the context of a critique of Plato’s Republic. He argues that Plato ends up destroying the state by trying to create a genuine unity of the state through the common ownership of women, children, and property. Even in the very best state, says Aristotle, where everyone might be a good citizen, not all can be good men. 7. Aristotle says that “the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female”—except in certain cases that go contrary to nature—and that “the older and fully developed person [is better fitted] than the younger and immature” (1259b2–4). But whereas the younger person grows up to be older, and so becomes more fit to rule, and whereas among equals in a republican government one rules and is ruled in turn, “the male stands [in a relation of superiority] to the female continuously” (1259b10). 8. In many works of Aristotle the meros or part is opposed to the whole in the way that a particular is opposed to the universal or the general. Grasping something kata meros is thus sometimes synonymous with grasping it kath’hekaston, that is, grasping something particular or in a particular way. Both are thus opposed to grasping the whole, to katholon, or grasping something kath’holou or katholou, that is, in general or on the whole. See, for example, Physics 189a, 202b24, On the Heavens 274a20, Parts of Animals 639a24, Metaphysics 11 1060b32, Rhetoric 1354b5, Nicomachean Ethics, 5.1138a24–25, 6.1140a27, 6.1141a13, 8.1160a13–15. 9. The equality that is so important to a democracy or constitutional state can be included either within the magistrates, where, whether by election or lot, each will serve in turn, or in the deliberative body, where citizens can either meet as one body or else serve in rotation, by turns, and meet in a single body only for the most important issues. Speaking in Book 4, for example, of how all citizens may serve in the deliberative body, Aristotle remarks that there are different modes of “universal membership ”: citizens can serve “in rotation [kata meros] and not all in a body [mē pantas athroous]” (1298a12–13). The part, the meros, is thus here opposed to the body taken as a whole.

One Good Turn . . 

189

10. At 1291a38 there is a contrast between serving in turn, kata meros, and serving continuously [synekhōs]: “it is therefore necessary that there should be some men who are able to govern and who render this service to the state either continuously [synekhōs] or in turn [kata meros].” 11. Put otherwise, the trick of democracy is to make the kata meros resemble as much as possible the haplos. Without such resemblance, the very legitimacy of democracy is threatened. 12. See Derrida’s treatment of this passage in Rogues 76–77/112–113. 13. Though ruling by turns may well be in its very nature, as Aristotle argues, a democratic feature, it is, we can see, incorporated even into Plato’s Republic of philosopher kings. It would also have to be incorporated into Aristotle’s aristocratic or oligarchic regimes, everywhere individuals of more or less but not absolutely equal wealth or virtue recognize that they cannot rule all at the same time but must instead rule by turns. 14. The question of whether these six functions can be performed by the same or different classes will be determined by the kind of state one has; whereas a democracy combines functions, an oligarchy separates them. 15. As for the members of the priestly class, they too must be appointed from among the citizens and not from among the artisans or farmers, “for it is seemly that the gods should be worshipped by citizens” (1329a30). Hence the same person may be warrior, councilor, and priest—though not at the same time. He may be a warrior in his youth, a councilor in his later years, and then, in his very old age, a priest. The office of priest allows the city at once to honor its elder citizens and ensure that they do not maintain political power for too long or during years of declining physical and mental health. 16. Property ownership must also be centered around these two classes, for the citizens must have plentiful means. As for the artisan, he can have no share in the state since he is not, says Aristotle quoting Plato, “an artificer of virtue [tēs aretēs dēmiourgon]” (1329a22).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932. Derrida, Jacques. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. ———. Voyous: Deux essais sur la raison. Paris: Les Éditions Galilée, 2003.

Chapter Ten

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Thought Bettina Bergo

For three decades we have debated the difficulties with Levinas. Difficulties such as the absoluteness of his ethics, the unassumed, normative determinism in his hermeneutics, the comparative marginality of his Talmudic readings to his philosophy, because the Talmudic readings define ethics and politics in ways often different from his “pure” philosophical writings, not to mention the ostensible absence of politics as already criticized by the Adornian Gillian Rose.1 The absoluteness of the ethics poses a question of phenomenological time, as many have already noted. This is a question of time we could call psychological and intersubjective, as opposed to the classical phenomenological time as pure flow, as the a priori structure of consciousness. As for the absence of politics, Rose attributed it to the “postmodern” turn in philosophy. For her, “postmodernism” was so concerned with radical transcendence—which grounds nothing, but opens a “holy middle,” or an empty center, supposedly inherited from Kant’s antinomies—so concerned then with transcendence, that postmodernism proved incapable of providing the material mediations necessary to bring an ethics of responsibility into political practices. A devastating critique of Levinas. As to the marginality of his Talmudic readings, we might compare it to the old New York commercial for Levy’s rye bread: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s [bread].”2 Except that we tend to consider the Talmudic readings as largely confessional, rather than looking at their politics. Indeed, for the most part, we take the notion of “confessional” in Christian terms, as being somehow about belief. One implication of this is that we miss what amounts to a diasporic politics—a politics of people without a State. We miss the relationship between Law and politics—and, indeed, law and 191

192

Bettina Berg

violence—all within the framework of a second- and third-century community that was so under threat its Temple was destroyed and the oral Torah had to be committed to writing, lest it be lost. That is the politics of the Talmudic debates. It is not our politics, though it may resemble a politics of parrhesia. We will see. In any case, diasporic politics lies beneath the origin of the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Midrash, and the Tosafot or later additions. In short, three of the problems with Levinas I mentioned concern the hyperbolism of responsibility, the question of the relationship of the Talmudic readings and the “confessional” writings to his philosophy, and the naivete or ambiguity of his politics. These are not the only problems in Levinas’s thought, but I hope a focused discussion will clarify my claim that to understand his philosophy, one has to conceive it as a fabric in which hermeneutics and the Bible form the warp, and phenomenology and Talmudic reasoning form the weft of a whole cloth. In other words, to understand Levinas, one should read for the intersections of phenomenology, existential hermeneutics, the Bible, and the Talmud. Allow me to specify the problem of hermeneutics in Levinas. This concerns Heidegger’s impact on him. Methodologically speaking, Heidegger had extensive recourse to religious texts (Augustine, Luther, Eckhart) in order to deformalize the concepts of ego, world, and existence as found in the NeoKantian philosophies he opposed. This mattered for Levinas in an unexpected way that I shall discuss. Of course, a vast number of concepts and insights come to Levinas from Heidegger: from the idea of formal indication undercutting conceptuality, to a new understanding of the epochē and the meaning of time, to new ways of conceiving transcendence, to being-in-the-world, to the Saying and the Said. Indeed, Levinas, too, enlisted the wisdom of religious texts—the Bible and Maimonides—even before he encountered the Talmud with Shushani, starting in 1947. Let me add a brief word about Maimonides. The philosopher of Fustat was not a source of interest for Heidegger, who pored over Luther and Eckhart and prepared to teach a course on Medieval mysticism in 1919—a plan he thereupon abandoned.3 Heidegger would return to Eckhart throughout his career, and I will have more to say about that momentarily. Note for now that in 1935, the same year in which Levinas published his first original philosophical essay, De l’évasion, he also published the two-page article “L’actualité de Maïmonide.”4 We might ask how, after eight years’ contact with Heidegger and his work and two years into the Nazi regime, Levinas would find something contemporary and relevant in Maimonides. Clearly, he could not be recommending that French Jews read the Guide of the Perplexed instead of worrying about politics. What if, instead of a medieval philosophical education for French Jews, Maimonides’s authorship opened a new conception of language that gradually informed Levinas’s own semantics, enabling

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

193

his critique of Heidegger’s ontology by 1974? What if Levinas discovered something about Eckhart’s relationship with Maimonides—something that Heidegger would silence? This other question about religious texts and Heidegger’s complex presence in Levinas’s thought is the other thread in the warp that structures the fabric of Levinas’s philosophical cloth. HUSSERL’S INFLUENCE I want to touch on all the threads I have mentioned to support my claim that they are intertwined in Levinas’s thought. Husserl’s influence is rather dry, so I will briefly bring out some highlights of Husserl’s impact on Levinas. First, Levinas long understood that the Husserlian reduction amounted to a focusing of attention that avoided objectifications of direct experience. The reductions, he knew, were never complete, never quite finished. Above all, it was possible to perform a reduction starting from the Lebenswelt and standing outside Husserl’s Cartesian paradigm. The reduction from the Lebenswelt path lies at the root of what Levinas calls his “paradigmatic” thinking in Totality and Infinity.5 This is and is not eidetics, because paradigmatic thinking, though it aims at existential essences, is already massively colored by hermeneutics. The second important point is that, as early as 1940, Levinas pinpointed the paradox of intentionality and pre-intentionality in Husserl. The paradox concerned the welling up of sensations from the body, which Husserl insisted were already intentional. But welling up is also a physiological process. And if intentionality is itself structured by flowing time-consciousness, as it is, then the welling up of internal sensations should ground the flow of time Husserl called “absolute subjectivity.”6 Thus, Husserl’s so-called “intentionality of sensation” depended on sensation; intentionality depended on bodily pre-intentionality, even though there is no pre-intentionality in Husserl. Of course, he was aware that sensation fed the time-flow necessary to becoming conscious of sensation, but he never resolved this to his satisfaction.7 By 1911, when Husserl argued that consciousness is consciousness through and through—in short, that consciousness is “originary experience,” including perception, sensation, feeling—he had somewhat displaced the problem.8 By contrast, Levinas held on to the pre-intentional and described “what it is like,” using figures like obsession, persecution, and recurrence.9 And this “what it is like” comes to him from Heidegger. We begin to see some of the intertwining here. One might say that, like Merleau-Ponty, Levinas took a psychological path,10 as opposed to the foundational, Cartesian one to which Husserl continually returned. This is possible because, again, unlike Husserl, Levinas

194

Bettina Berg

was not founding a science of experience—indeed, a science of essences. Levinas was exploring alternative temporalities that contest the sovereignty of Husserl’s so-called “absolute subjectivity.” Like Heidegger, who was deeply critical of Husserl’s transcendental subject that constituted its world even as that world had constituted it, Levinas focused on the impact of what is not the ego on the emergence of that same ego. In Heidegger’s case, it was the world; in Levinas’s, the world and other. He picks up Husserl’s phenomenology in its genetic phase that starts around 1913. Levinas was certainly interested in the way Husserl ongoingly radicalized his own notions, like that of Einfühlung, ultimately reaching a point where empathy was so direct an experience that Natalie Depraz has called it contact direct or relation immédiate.11 One might object that there is no Einfühlung, no empathy in Levinas. But there is clearly behavior in the world, clearly social interaction, and the fact that, as Levinas says, “one can be otherwise.”12 To summarize, I broached four points of influence from and in divergence with Husserl: 1) the openness of the reduction, notably the phenomenological reduction; 2) sensation and the paradox of time-consciousness, already noted by Husserl in 1907, and picked up by Levinas to explore the pre-intentional; 3) the constitution of the subject—or the “same”—by what it is not, by the world or by the other; 4) the evolution of Einfühlung (or empathy, or intropathy) into “contact direct” in Husserl, and the strong possibility that Levinas was aware of this ongoing question about the constitution of intersubjectivity. HEIDEGGER’S INFLUENCE The impact of Heidegger on Levinas has been noted by Michael Fagenblat13 and includes the following: (1) the dramatic alteration of phenomenology through hermeneutics understood as concrete lived experience or as how I “have” myself, and as relationality; (2) the deconstruction of the subject, the primacy of being “in-the-world”;14 (3) recourse to religious texts as models for deformalization; and lastly, (4) formal indication.15 I can think of more influences, such as Heidegger’s radical caring-for (Fürsorge) in Being and Time and how close it sounds to Levinas’s substitution16—not to mention the fact that comprehension emerges out of pre-comprehension, which is characteristic of how I am revealed to myself and how the world comes to me before intentionality. Thus, Totality and Infinity is Levinas’s hermeneutics of being-inthe-world.17 And, even before it, Heidegger’s question of how I “have myself”18 comes to light in 1947 when Levinas speaks of the hypostasis. Relationality clearly defines his philosophy as well, and the deconstruction of the subject is redirected, away from Heidegger’s critique of the Neo-Kantians

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

195

and toward intersubjective investiture. All to the good. But let me focus on what I think is most important: Heidegger’s formal indication and his recourse to religious texts. The latter will provide us a bridge to Maimonides and ultimately to the Talmudic readings and the question of politics. Formal indication appears early in Heidegger and is designed to undercut the limitations of conceptual reasoning within idealistic philosophies. It is well understood in light of Heidegger’s sharp criticism of conceptualism as Ruinanz, or ruin: our enduring illusion about the power of thought,19 and thanks to his 1923 remark to Gadamer that “there is no ontological difference, except at the level of representation.”20 In practice, we live the difference; we cross in and out of it by plunging into Being. Formal indication is thus what the words Dasein, world, and Being actually are. Not concepts, but pre-comprehension, the outline of a phenomenology of lived experience. Now, this is also the case for obsession, recurrence, and substitution in Levinas. These are not concepts, but ways we have ourselves in intersubjectivity or through the mnemonic returns called obsession. Moreover, and critically, when Levinas argues that being, from the moment it enters language, is both noun and verb, he shows that he is aware of Heidegger’s formal indication, but turns it back on him.21 Starting from his so-called amphibology of being as noun and verb, Levinas speculates that beneath the linguistic dualism lies an unnameable indeterminacy, an indistinct humming. That would be the “ground” of ontology. More could be said about formal indication, its relationship to praxis, how it expresses our pre-comprehension, but let me pass to Heidegger’s use of religious texts because therein lies a strange question that demands our attention. Between 1920 and 1923, Heidegger pored over Augustine’s Confessions, Luther’s Sermons, and those of Meister Eckhart. The dissolution of the subject before God in Augustine and the latter’s modes of being called molestia gave Heidegger resources for deformalizing idealistic approaches to subjectivity.22 He followed this tack, translating Augustine’s “good” as Existenz, and applied this material-relational approach to Aristotle’s practical philosophy, claiming to recapture the early Greek that understood ousia as meaning Hausstand or household, poiesis as productive commerce, phronesis as anticipatory discursivity. This was Heidegger’s acid wash applied to centuries of Scholastic readings of Aristotle.23 Heidegger also began a decades-long reading of Meister Eckhart’s negative theology. Some have actually argued that Eckhart’s “principle of indistinction” contributed powerfully to framing the ontological difference itself.24 What does this mean? In Eckhart, God is an integral part of every being. Precisely as such, this unknowable God is also radically different from every being. God is the only thing that is part of every other being—and for that reason, unlike any other being. Eckhart writes, “God is indistinct from

196

Bettina Berg

every being, just as Existence Itself is indistinct from any being . . . but everything created, by the very fact that it is created, is distinct.”25 Because God is so much a part of beings as to be indistinct from them, God is also radically distinct, “more distinguished from the distinct than any two distinct things are from each other.”26 We can readily see the inspiration of Eckhart in fundamental ontology. Being is indistinct from beings; they are a part of it as it were and as such, Being also proves heuristically different from beings. The ontological difference is thereby denied and affirmed, as Heidegger asserted to Gadamer, and thanks here to Meister Eckhart. The paradox called indistinction thus characterizes the relationship between beings and being in Heidegger. This is one influence on the emergence of the ontological difference. There are, of course, others. But it brings me to 1935, when Levinas was moving definitively away from Heidegger. In January of that year, he published “L’actualité de Maïmonide,” on the 800th anniversary of the birth of the great rationalist and virtual creator of apophaticism. Again, we might wonder what negative theology had to do with the French-Jewish community for whom Levinas was writing. Though it was an important anniversary, we can hardly imagine that Parisians would start reading The Guide of the Perplexed. They had enough to do during the half-a-million-strong demonstrations on July 14th that formed the seedbed for the Front Populaire, which ultimately united the French left around an important slogan: “Pain, Paix, Liberté.” Please keep the first word in mind. We might rather think that Maimonides’s relevance was for Levinas and, perhaps, for observant Jews interested in existentialism. The end of the article gives us an insight into its addressee. Paganism, writes Levinas, is the inability to get out of the world, understood as a totality. As contrasted with Judaism, paganism is the impossibility—Heidegger’s very impossibility—to conceive transcendence in light of the good or as the card played outside the game. Paganism, therefore, is not a matter of how many gods you honor; it is not even defined as sacrifice. It is “the world is all that is the case,” and fundamental ontology expresses paganism in its secular contemporary avatar. Recall that when Heidegger speaks of the good, he either translates it directly into “existence” (Augustine),27 or he translates to agathon as aletheia,28 again aligning it with fundamental ontology. In both cases, the good cedes its priority to Being. It is against this that Levinas also recurs to religious thought for his deformalization and critique. Remember, too, that De l’évasion, also published in 1935, is the narrative of failed attempts at transcendence. It is a new way to understand mortality as entrapment, as being riveted to being rather than the decision to be out-ahead-of-oneself toward one’s most proper possibility, that of dying.

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

197

Perhaps Levinas also noticed something that Heidegger chose to ignore. Meister Eckhart’s arguably greatest work, the Opus Tripartitum, was massively indebted to Maimonides. So much so that Pope John 22nd issued the papal bull “In Agro Domenico” against Eckhart’s theology, targeting his argument for the radical oneness and unity of God, a profoundly Maimonidean, if un-Christian, claim. Eckhart defended himself by citing The Guide of the Perplexed, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. He died before he was condemned. Nevertheless, when he penned his Opus Tripartitum, he referred to Maimonides 119 times, third only to Augustine and Aristotle.29 One commentator has said that the “massive usage of such close reading of the Guide locates Eckhart alongside the hermeneutic practice common among Jewish Maimonideans from the beginning of the thirteenth century onward.”30 Heidegger never said a word about this, so we will never know what he knew of Maimonides. Levinas could not have failed to recognize the force of negative theology and its Jewish source. If Heidegger used Eckhart to deformalize philosophy by reintroducing “existentials” drawn from religious thought, then it is hard to deny the contemporary “Relevance of Maimonides” to Levinas’s secularizing project. Along with the Guide’s radical apophaticism came a revolution in the use of language. This revolution can be found in Levinas, starting from his 1964 Notes on Metaphor31 and extending well into Otherwise than Being. I follow the Israeli existentialist Yeshayahu Leibowitz in his reading of Maimonides. Leibowitz is gaining recognition as his works are translated from Hebrew into English and French.32 He was an admirer of Levinas’s work, as well as an Israeli advocate for the radical separation of church and state, a left-leaning orthodox Jew. For Leibowitz, Maimonides is not a crypto-Aristotelian; Maimonides’s project, including the Mishneh and the Guide, is part of a single undertaking: to unfold a theocentric perspective freed of fetishism or idolatry through the use of philosophy. “Theocentric” here means that “theology,” so called, does everything to avoid anthropocentrism, which is structurally implicit in virtually all Christianity. Levinas might say that Maimonides’s theocentrism concerns the transcendence of alterity,33 the radically unknowable. For Maimonides, humans can know nothing of God, or any attribute described of it, including most likely the practical attributes (mercy, loving kindness, humility).34 For Levinas, these would function as formal indications rather than concepts. Of God, predication must thus be negative and thereupon deconstructed. For example, “the wall is not blind.” Even if we respond ironically that this removes one attribute from God, an infinity of attributes remains open. However, the point is that alterity, which Levinas also aligns with holiness or illeity, is the leitmotif here. One last thing. Those scholars who say that Maimonides’s project is political are not wrong, just liable to be read anachronistically. His politics

198

Bettina Berg

concerns the law of the community of Fustat, bathing in a sea of Islamic mysticism and orthodoxy. Politics for Maimonides is about the survival of a community under the law, not so unlike the so-called politics that we find in Levinas’s Talmudic readings. TALMUDIC READINGS AND POLITICS The Talmudic readings should not be considered marginal to Levinas’s “thought” in the large sense of the term. Indeed, it is not even enough to say that the confessional writings and the philosophical works cross-fertilize each other, as Adriaan Peperzak once claimed.35 The former, the confessional writings, might in fact be compared to Kant’s empirical derivations from transcendental philosophy in his late-published Doctrine of Virtue (1797).36 Now, the hermeneutic techniques of the rabbis are well known, from Rabbi Eliezer’s thirty-two hermeneutical rules (middot) to the thirteen rules of Rabbi Ishmael, to the acronym “PaRDeS,” which starts from peshat, the straightforward reading of verses. As we know, Levinas preferred Rashi, who revolutionized the plain-sense reading of the verses in light of their interconnection with select Midrashic allegories. In short, peshat plus the drash in PaRDeS.37 I observed at the outset that the claim there is no politics in Levinas fails to tarry with the Talmudic readings and the so-called confessional writings. This is the case despite important arguments to the contrary from Eisenstadt, Kavka, and now Annabel Herzog.38 The latter’s 2020 book Levinas’s Politics argues that, rather than ethics interrupting being or existence, ethics and ontology reciprocally interrupt each other. This is especially the case, urges Herzog, for the relationship between ethics and politics, provided we understand politics in the context of the Talmudic debates. Above all, and at the everyday level, there is no self-showing, no phenomenalization of ethical responsibility possible other than in-the-world, and thus in the framework of the politics of that world, which can only give us impure versions of ethics. So goes Herzog’s argument, which emphasizes a rabbinic politics in Levinas’s thought. Ethics and politics would then reciprocally interrupt and limit each other, formally, ethics, understood as first philosophy, resembles what Husserl called “eidetics”; Levinas speaks of “paradigmatic” analyses. As I said, the relationship between the formal and the practical calls to mind Kant’s derivation of pragmatic norms from his “formula of humanity,” the second version of the categorical imperative. Kant argued that we can construct a bridge between the transcendental and the practical.39 In the case of Levinas, we have the paradigmatics of responsibility to alterity and the ontology of

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

199

communal politics under the Law. Of course, this is not Heidegger’s ontology but a condition of possibility of the visibility of ethical responsibility. Now, it has been said that the Talmudic readings signify the paradox of an empirical, eternal present. With Herzog, I would add that they provide valuable phenomenological material for the more “rarified” descriptions of the ethical encounter in his philosophy. The Talmudic readings thus critically limit the scope of first philosophy by forging a passage between a transcendental level and the politics and justice of everyday Jewish life. This indicates that Gillian Rose’s arguments about an “absent middle” neglect the political mediations provided by the Talmudic readings. When we scrutinize the Talmudic context, we get a broad notion of politics, one that is invariably tied to interpretations of the Law. The Talmud’s sense of politics concerns the relativity of custom among Jews and non-Jews, the appropriateness of the Law for relations with other communities, even outlines for establishing contracts, among other things.40 But what we should note is that the root of a politics structured by Law is material. It is “anxiety about the other’s hunger.” Herzog writes, “politics is not defined here by its modern philosophical attributes. It is neither a monopoly of power, nor the guardian of individuals’ natural rights, nor [even] a national expression of the people. [Politics] is defined as concern and care for the people’s hunger” (LP, 40). If we recall the progressive Front Populaire in 1936 France chanting the slogan “Pain, Paix, Liberté,” we find a ground-level politics close to the rabbinic sense: first “Pain,” and only after that, “Paix” and “Liberté.” In “The Model of the West,”41 Levinas defines politics as that of “a well-organized society,” thereby tying politics both to law and to distributive justice. Even this justice starts, of course, with bread on the table (LP, 38–42). We should not confuse justice and politics, but rather take justice to mean the various relationships or proportions between ethics and politics, and the possible balances they can achieve together. For example, where cases arise in which an ethics of responsibility proves largely impossible, we know we are most likely in an unjust situation, like Adorno’s “You can’t be good in a bad society.” As Herzog writes, “in the Talmudic readings Levinas uses the term ‘justice’ for ‘concrete human reality and a whole orientation of social and intellectual life’—namely, for the connection of ethics and politics, which never fully synthesize but require, influence, and criticize each other” (LP, 42). The politics adumbrated in the Talmudic readings, while anachronistic for us, is basic, even foundational, because material and relational (Heidegger’s two crucial requisites). It motivates demands for justice, critique, even witnessing. It does not break with Maimonides’s theocentrism, rather, it emphasizes the caveat that, in this world, the human tribunal decides. The latter is even able to annul divine sentences precisely because God’s justice

200

Bettina Berg

is unknowable to humans. Herzog underlines: “The justice pronounced by a human tribunal, which replaces divine justice, is a ratio, a ‘differential,’ of pure justice and ethical love” (emphasis added). She cites Levinas: “It is here that love of the neighbor must give all it can give, sanction without degrading, interfere in the affairs of the other without touching his freedom. Are not the court and justice this extreme measure of a difference which is a differential?”42 Hesed, the supplement of ethical love, points toward the transcendental or “regulative idea” of divine justice as attribute of action. That is why justice qua differential limits infinite ethical responsibility even as it searches for “political” solutions to legal disputes. There is also the continual negotiation between the “law of Rome” and rabbinic law, which itself breaks up between universalists like Resh Lakish versus the cultural accommodationists in the Mishnah.43 Thus, politics itself breaks into internal versus external, deontic versus utilitarian. The Talmudic readings teach that even as politics as the condition of visibility of ethical responsibility can interrupt ethics and limit it, so too may ethics criticize politics in the name of justice. Yet we here encounter a difficulty: justice is famously depicted as blind. Better, justice must be blind to individuals. Herzog reminds us that, for Levinas, justice is therefore “anethical in its essence” (LP, 57). And that is the condition of just laws; viz., to treat people equally and to operate universally. Of course, this does not mean that laws are charitable edicts (LP, 57). They can’t be. Sometimes a judge is motivated to introduce individual considerations and thereby to expand justice with mercy. But politics generally unfolds independently of judges, and it must preserve those universals called “laws,” which justice adjudicates, and which imply police power. In the “State of Caesar and the State of David,” Levinas observes, “the Rabbis cannot forget the organizing principles of Rome and its law! They therefore anticipate, with remarkable independence of spirit, modern political philosophy. Whatever its order, the City already ensures the rights of human beings against their fellow men.”44 Thus, the city or the state, either one, is necessary as a political formation. Despite the dialectic between protecting the rights of individuals and blind justice, Levinas remains a realist within the framework of European politics. Even when he criticizes the liberal state, he well understands the basic internal contradiction of the state, which in “Judaism and Revolution” stipulates that the liberation of some entails the subordination of others. Thus, although the rabbis “anticipated . . . modern political philosophy,” they slid neither into utopianism nor into imitation of the nations.45 I do not believe that Levinas ever offers a definitive conclusion about the liberal state. One reason for this is found in the story of Rabbi Eliezar, who knows how to weed out the bad seeds in the Jewish community. The rabbi

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

201

scrutinizes those who hang out in taverns at ten o’clock in the morning. If they are not essential workers or Talmud students, then they are typically robbers whose activities are similarly nocturnal. Rav Eliezar’s story is tragicomic and concerns existence within the state, whether liberal, colonial, or hegemonic. To continue, Rabbi Eliezar’s crime-fighting reputation grows, reaches Roman ears, and he is hired by the empire, which invests him with state power. As a citizen servant, he is co-opted into the police force. Naively overusing his power, he provokes the capital punishment of a launderer whom he denounced. Shocked by the injustice of the death sentence, Rav Eliezar’s only recourse thereafter is to mourn this state murder all the remaining days of his life. Now we know that, upon his death, his saintly cadaver never decomposed. But that is not the object of this aggadah. Having collaborated with the Roman state, having become part of its (necessarily abusive) police force, the rabbi’s sustained mourning practices raised him above the violent ontology of politics, if passingly—or maybe absurdly. This is an outcome not so unlike bearing witness, speaking the truth to power, and other such “absurd” practices. So much for “Judaïsme et révolution,” where the true revolutionary receives the best definition I know: He or she who “has sought neither distraction nor suicide, and who has not withdrawn from the tension in which the responsible one abides.”46 The revolutionary has learned to live in the layered tensions between ethical responsibility, political power, and legal justice. Of course, a tension also arises between “the new” and “the tradition,” because Levinas has mocked the illusion—and danger—of supposing humans capable of radically new practices of power. Thus, the tensions in which the “true revolutionary” abides amount to a performative paradox: no action admits an enduringly satisfactory issue. “The State of Caesar and the State of David,” a Talmudic reading from around a decade later (1981), underscores the relationship between the State and the police, understood as the point of delivery of State authority and management. Herzog emphasizes, fairly, that we hold to Jacques Rancière’s threefold distinction between politics, policing, and the political: politics would be grasped as collective human activities demanding emancipation or greater equality. Policing would denote the living representation of State power and what enforces it. Finally, Rancière’s “the political” expresses the clash between politics and policing, between inextinguishable demands for equality and justice, and the calculation and delivery of “management” through violence or persuasion.47 Now, on a related matter, we know how much Levinas associates political systems with systematic philosophy. Whatever the connection between Levinas and Hegel—Herzog argues there’s more of one than meets the eye—it remains that Hegel’s philosophy of right is a logic of Russian dolls,

202

Bettina Berg

whereby the highest service is not to spirit but to the state. The connection between philosophy, thematization, and state repression consists in that laws passed by the state require categorization and calculation: who is a criminal, how criminal is a certain act. As Levinas says, “reason consists in ensuring the coexistence of these terms, the coherence of the one and the other, despite their difference, in the unity of a theme.”48 This would be one reason why the face-to-face must stand outside the category of the political—not just to interrupt it as a demand, but also in order that the other not be erased through the logic of calculation and categorization. The Other, then, is Levinas’s primary formal indication. In a related but different sense, the Other carries the alterity of the unknowable God in Maimonides, an alterity that eludes human language even as it makes us conscious that language require two levels, a quotidian and human level, and an elusive level expressed parabolically and calling for immediate deconstruction, lest it slide toward the Christian analogia entis based on a God so concerned with beings that he incarnated. Here, no practical derivation is possible, which is another sense of Levinas’s so-called amphibology. From this, three eventual perspectives emerge. First, from the point of view of political institutions, State violence rests on the “thematization” of laws, whereby the very concept of “thematizing” something entails violence. Second, from the perspective of the mutual interruption of ethics and the political, thematization must not only be interrupted but also unraveled by accepting the difference of the other. Third, from the theocentric perspective that Levinas sometimes shares with Leibowitz, both of them Jewish existentialists, the unknowable is and must remain absolute. When it is cast in human language, we fall into ideology or fetishism, predicating it as though it were a substance, or judging it as though anthropocentrism retained its influence even in this logic. For Herzog, these perspectives lead to a discussion of ideals in politics and motivate her to compare two sets of political values: that of Maurizio Viroli and that of Martha Nussbaum, both of them versions of liberalism (LP, 68–71).49 The Viroli-Nussbaum contrast is useful for bringing out Levinas’s political innovation. Viroli espouses a patriotism that should not be confused with nationalism, as the former, patriotism, raises the ingroup based on institutions, norms, and values, whereas nationalism is determined by some status-criterion of the group’s members: bloodlines, ethnicity, “race” or, at worst, existential threat (state of exception). As an ideal, Viroli’s emphasis would rest on mediated freedom (LP, 70): the nation-state protects values like patriotism; it does so through its institutions, perhaps guided by something like the Kantian “human as end and never merely means.”50 Martha Nussbaum’s “cosmopolitanism” contrasts with Viroli in criticizing patriotism and demanding that culture and education “recognize humanity

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

203

wherever [we] encounter it” (LP, 69). Nussbaum’s political ideal would amount to respect for particularity through universalism—whether Roman or Christian. These quasi-paradigms serve as poles for Herzog’s claim that Levinas would answer that there is no need to deny particularity so long as we do not attach it to rootedness, to Lebensraum, or to vital needs. Rather, particularity must be aligned with “a surplus of responsibility” (LP, 71). That sets Levinas’s universalism of responsibility against Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism of tolerance. Why so? Because it is not what we learn that we share with others that should ground the good life; it is not “looking for resemblances but . . . accepting otherness [that] transcends [our] common aims and values” (LP, 71). Thus, Levinas’s Jewish universalism appears as probative as Nussbaum’s, provided we accept the thesis that ethics and politics mutually interrupt each other. We should also keep in mind that justice, in its essential blindness to individuals, stands outside questions of ethics, is anethical, and awaits a supplement of charitability—that of a paradoxical “seeing” of particularity as if through the blindfold. How does one locate the charitable dimension that shows the ethical interruption of politics and the corresponding correction of justice? Levinas offers parables for this. Of Jewish thinkers, he is certainly not alone. Remember the story of the two creations. The first creation was founded exclusively on justice; it failed to endure. The second creation added that X, that mercy, which was the corrective, the paradoxical “adjustment” to the first creation. Only the second creation survived. These parables, these aggadot to which Maimonides was so sensitive, and which prompted Levinas to urge that all language ultimately speaks beyond itself, textually, but also orally as speech act51—these parables illustrate the ratio or variable phenomenon that is the relationship between equal justice under universal law and a concern with particularism that reminds us that no judge is ever fully outside the litigation. But if the judge is not outside the conflict, can we be sure that she can bring the supplement that interrupts to the scene of litigation itself? Certainly not. There may remain to us only the correction called “witnessing”; recall Eliezar publicly mourning at the gallows. Witnessing may be for nothing, may be without results, but it is performed in the name of the other. It calls for what Aristotle deemed epieikes or justice as “decency,”52 including the decency of not receiving your equal part, among other things. I think it can also be broader in meaning than the English “decency,” because it resembles what Foucault late in his career called parrhesia: “etymologically, this is the fact of saying all (frankness, openness of heart, openness of the word, openness of language, freedom of speech),” and Foucault adds: “the Latins generally translate parrhesia by libertas. It is the opening that causes us to speak,” he says, “that one says what one has to say . . . that one says what one thinks

204

Bettina Berg

one must say[,] because it is necessary . . . because it is true.”53 Please note that this is not the freedom emphasized by Viroli. It certainly is frankness and free speech. One says what is necessary because it is true, states Foucault. But he adds that “parrhesia is essentially a moral quality that we demand fundamentally of every speaking subject.”54 In the name of the others, I would add. Thus, Foucault would agree that the moral quality of parrhesia can be speaking the truth, including to power, in the name of those restricted or otherwise damaged by it. In that sense, πᾶν ῥῆσις, parrhesia, contrasts with what Foucault called “alethurgie,” that set of procedures by which one brings to light what needs to be understood as truth, thanks this time to institutions— of power.55 You see the difference: parrhesia is bold speech with the moral quality of what we demand from speaking subjects—a performance that goes beyond itself. The other is an “-urgie” coming from ergos or work or indeed a ceremonial production like λειτ-ουργός, a liturgy, which is a ceremonial performed by a priest or public official. “Alethurgie” is not witnessing; it is institutional behavior, which recalls Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism. Please do not think I have left Levinas behind. Remember that politics in Levinas’s Talmudic readings is neither biopolitics nor the politics of institutions and discourses that gradually produce subjects. Even in the late Foucault, subjects are not just effects of nontransparent power structures. They cannot be, lest resistance to those structures, for better or for worse, be completely devoid of meaning. Parrhesia depends on the possibility of something like a division in the subject such that the “subject” may speak its truth to power whether ancient or contemporary.56 And this is where the ethical correction of politics comes in, which Herzog emphasizes in Levinas, above all in the Talmudic readings. For Levinas, the so-called division of the subject is also, and of itself, a force of subjectivation, albeit allogenic, unfolding thanks to the other. Now, whatever the deep psychological meaning of a non-monolithic subject might be, bearing witness is its demonstration or its symptom.57 And this may today be the only “politics,” in Rancière’s sense of resistance, left to us, because parrhesia, understood as speaking truth to power, carries the moral interruption that criticizes blind justice. At origin, parrhesia was tied to the relationship praised by the Epicureans as emerging between a teacher and a student. Foucault points out of Epicurus, that “to speak prophetically (dire prophétiquement) to but a few who can understand, the truths of nature that are such that they may effectively change their way of being, this is what the art and the freedom of the physiologue consist of. This is an art that is close to prophetic expression. It is an art that is close also to medicine, in function of an objective and in service to the transformation of [the] subject.”58 The matter of speaking prophetically opens a lot of questions—notably for Jewish thought and, massively, in Maimonides.59

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

205

Nevertheless, whether it is witnessing or teaching, the ethical and political dimensions come to the fore, here, intertwined. We might recall what Levinas urged in 1961, that “speech, better than a simple sign, is essentially magisterial. It first teaches this teaching itself, by virtue of which alone it can teach things and ideas (unlike maieutics that awakens ideas already in me).”60 While much speech is rhetoric—propaganda, flattery, diplomacy—and therefore close to violence and injustice,61 the relationship with the other lets the other be thanks to “the relationship of discourse . . . [of] pure disclosure” or conversation.62 But what is “pure disclosure” in Levinas if not the description Foucault offers of parrhesia? It is, I think, here, that we see the ultimate warp and weft of Levinas’s influences to which I alluded at the beginning. It is here as well that the late Foucault and the Levinas of Totality and Infinity at least would find material for a conversation . . . precisely on politics. Teaching, witnessing; again, we, of the nations in the age of biopower, may have only this “politics” left to us . . . NOTES 1. Gillian Rose, The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), xi. Rose writes, “post-modernity disallows itself any conceptuality or means of comprehension for investigating its own implication and configuration within the broken middle.” This “middle” includes (the idea of) a space between morality and legality, ethics and politics, same and other. 2. See https:​//​www​.loc​.gov​/item​/2004672653​/. Consulted 14 June 2022. 3. See Martin Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 231–54, for Eckhart 239–41. Heidegger contacted his dean to say that he would not be able to give that course. 4. Emmanuel Levinas, On Escape/De l’évasion, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003; written 1935, published by Fata Morgana, 1982). “L’actualité de Maïmonide [the contemporary relevance of Maimonides]” in Paix et droit. Bulletin de l’alliance israélite universelle, 1 January 1935. 5. Annabel Herzog, Levinas’s Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), 29. 6. Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), §36 “The Time-Constituting Flow as Absolute Subjectivity,” 79; Husserliana 10, ed. Rudolf Boehm (Springer, 1969), 74–75. 7. See Rudolf Bernet’s discussion of the approaches to retention and the (idea of the) “now-existing present” as evincing Husserl’s dual commitment to a metaphysics of unity (of conscious life) and to phenomenological description. “Is the Present Ever Present? Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence,” trans. Wilson Brown, Research in Phenomenology 12 (1982): 85–112.

206

Bettina Berg

8. Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), trans. John Barnett Brough (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 323; and Husserliana 23, ed. Eduard Marbach (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), 265–66. 9. Levinas, Otherwise than Being or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 102–9. 10. For a useful discussion of the “psychological path,” found first in Husserl’s Ideas II, then later in Merleau-Ponty (and arguably Levinas), see Natalie Depraz, Transcendance et incarnation: le statut de l’intersubjectivité comme altérité à soi chez Husserl (Paris: Vrin, 1995), 306–14. 11. Depraz, Transcendance et incarnation, 152, 163, 343–44. 12. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 3, 178. 13. See, for example, Michael Fagenblat, “Levinas and Maimonides: From Metaphysics to Ethical Negative Theology,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16, no. 1 (August 2008): 95–147. See also Fagenblat, A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). 14. Heidegger’s concern with the pre-representational subject, with enactment and relation, and the modalities by which a “self” has itself before conceptualizing itself account both for the later distinctions in Being and Time between the existential and the existentiell, the ontological and the ontic. But this also reveals “a peculiar kind of ahistoricism in Heidegger,” as John Caputo argues, for the procedure of deformalization is accompanied by reformalization, as also destruction followed by reconstruction. See Caputo, “Heidegger and Theology” in Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 330–32. 15. Martin Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life, 40–42. As part of his deformalization strategy relative to Neo-Kantianism as early as 1920, Heidegger argued that formal indication should allow us to bracket all the formal determinations that have sedimented into sciences (43). Daniel Dahlstrom recalls that “Heidegger first refers to a ‘formally indicating meaning’ (formal anzeigende Bedeutung) in regard to fixing the sense of the term ‘method.’ But method here specifically serves ‘the object of the inquiry’ which can only be ‘fixed in a formal indication as existence.’” See Daniel O. Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications,” Review of Metaphysics 47, no. 4 (June 1994): 775–95, here 780 n. 16. Also see Theodore Kisiel, who highlights formal indication in light of the “self-referential character of a pre-reflective understanding of being” in Being and Time, where both Dasein and Being should be understood as formal indication rather than concepts.” Kisiel, “Heidegger on Becoming a Christian” in Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, ed. T. Kisiel and J. van Buren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). 16. Heidegger, Being and Time, 158 n. 1; Sein und Zeit 122, n. 1: “Sich an seine Stelle setzen, für ihn einspringen.” 17. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), Section II “Interiority and Economy,” 109–50. 18. Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life, 10.

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

207

19. In the early Freiburg courses, the one from the following year (Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles, Winter Semester 1921; GA 61) thrusts the deformalizing élan into philosophy itself, arguing that the infinitely elastic tendency to re-present, to think objects, leads us toward Ruinanz (sheer ruin). The loss of immediacy and the world in its immediacy is experienced as either a “falling” or as a terrible void. There is no getting around this. There is no deus ex machina that might come to save us. As Theo Oudemans observes, “not until thinking gets permeated with the movement of Ruinanz, and takes it to its extreme, does that against which Ruinanz is, appear.” But the opposition to Ruinanz requires virtually drowning in it. That against which it is, is emptiness. This is the (nihilist) legacy both of thought (and philosophy) and that of a strange, ancient promise reinterpreted: life approaching itself in a formal emptiness that stays away, that causes anxiety. See Oudemans, “Heidegger: Reading against the Grain” in Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought, ed. T. Kisiel and J. van Buren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 35–52, here 42–43. 20. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Martin Heidegger’s One Path,” trans. P. Christopher Smith, in Reading Heidegger from the Start, 25. 21. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 7 n. 5; 93, 151. 22. Ryan Coyne, “A Difficult Proximity: The Figure of Augustine in Heidegger’s Path,” The Journal of Religion 91, no. 3 (2011): 365–93. For a sensitive discussion of deformalization in Heidegger. See also Piotr Hoffman, “Death, Time, History: Division II of Being and Time” in Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 222–40. Coyne’s 2015 monograph, Heidegger’s Confessions: The Remains of Saint Augustine in “Being and Time” and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), is a sedulous study of the presence, even the haunting, of Augustine’s work up to and past Being and Time. 23. For Heidegger’s Aristotle Introduction, also known as the “Aristoteles-Interpretationen Bericht,” see the bilingual edition, Interprétations phénoménologiques d’Aristote, trans. J. F. Courtine (Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress, 1992) with French and German page numbers. For the course on Aristotle, see Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); in Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 61. 24. Bradley Onishi, “Transcendence as Indistinction in Eckhart and Heidegger,” in Religions, vol. 8 (April 2017). DOI: 10.3390/rel8040056. 25. Eckhart, Latin Works 2, cited by Onishi, “Transcendence as Indistinction in Eckhart and Heidegger.” 26. Ibid., 489–90. 27. Heidegger, Phenomenology of Religious Life, 178–79. 28. Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth (1931–1932; 1940),” in Pathmarks, ed. W. McNeil, trans. Thomas Sheehan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 155–82. 29. Yossef Schwartz, “Meister Eckhart and Moses Maimonides: From Judæo-Arabic Rationalism to Christian Mysticism,” in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. Jeremiah M. Hackett (London: Brill, 2013), Part II, Chapter 5, 389–414, here 392. See

208

Bettina Berg

also Albert H. Friedlander, “Meister Eckhart and the Jewish Tradition,” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 27, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 78–90. 30. Schwartz, “Eckhart and Maimonides,” 393. 31. Levinas, “Notes on Metaphor,” trans. Andrew Haas, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 20, no. 3 (2012): 319–30. 32. See Yeshayahu Leibowitz, La foi de Maïmonide, trans. David Banon (Paris: Le Cerf, 1992). The author argues for the theocentric philosophy of Maimonides. Also see Jean-Marc Joubert, Leibowitz, une pensée de la religion (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008) and Michael Fagenblat, “Lacking All Interest: Levinas, Leibowitz, and the Pure Practice of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 97, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 1–32. 33. Leibowitz, La foi de Maïmonide, 14. 34. See Joseph Buijs, “Attributes of Action in Maimonides,” Vivarium 27, no. 2 (1989): 85–102. Buijs argues that while the attributes of action do not imply divine causality relative to humans (which would deny freedom), they represent a distinct logic of action rather than predication (A ø), a particular rather than an essence, indeed an event. The only question remaining is, because attributes of action are expressed in formulas without copulas (without being), how these attributes ultimately relate to humans; also, how it is that God’s attributes of action have any relation to humanity without presupposing analogy or the relationality between an absolutely simple God and human beings. Stern reminds us that the attributes the scientific mind recognizes as deficiencies, and which are to be negated in the case of God (God is caused or God is affected, has a soul, etc.), all fall under the skeptical reduction, except for one class: the “attributions of action survive this kind of critical scrutiny.” Why so? Because they do not entail concepts of compositeness, which would violate God’s simplicity. Moreover, observes Stern, “they are really ‘about’ the orderly workings of the natural world, not about God.” Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ “Guide” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 201. Thanks to Martin Shuster for recommending this work. Also see Fagenblat, A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), chapter 4, for a different perspective on this. 35. See Adriaan Peperzak, To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993). 36. For a critical discussion of The Doctrine of Virtue, see Houston Smit and Mark Timmons, “Kant’s Grounding Project in The Doctrine of Virtue,” in Kant on Practical Justification: Interpretive Essays, ed. Mark Timmons and Sorin Baiasu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 229–68. 37. Mordechai Z. Cohen, “‘Settling’ the Words of Scripture Using Midrash,” in Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 55–78. Also, Victor Malka, Rachi [in French] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993); and Elimelekh Polinsky, “What Is the Peshat on the Meaning of Peshat?” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 46, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 41–47. 38. Oona Eisenstadt, Driven Back to the Text: The Premodern Sources of Levinas’s Postmodernism (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001); Martin Kavka,

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

209

Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); R. Raskover and M. Kavka, eds., Tradition in the Public Square: A David Novak Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008); and Annabel Herzog, Levinas’s Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). 39. See note 36, infra. 40. Herzog, Levinas’s Politics, 32–37; hereafter parenthetically cited as LP. 41. Levinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. Gary D. Mole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, first published 1882 in French), 18–33. 42. Levinas, “The Will of God and the Power of Humanity,” in New Talmudic Readings, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), 57, cited by Herzog, Levinas’s Politics, 44. 43. Levinas, “Judaism and Revolution” in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz, 94–119, discussed by Herzog, Levinas’s Politics, 56. 44. Levinas, “The State of Caesar and the State of David” in Beyond the Verse, 177–87, here 183. 45. Levinas, “Judaism and Revolution” in Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 94–119. 46. Levinas, “Judaism and Revolution,” 107. 47. Jacques Rancière, La haine de la démocratie (Paris: Éditions La Fabrique, 2005). Herzog cites Rancière, Aux bords du politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). Herzog, Levinas’s Politics, 61. 48. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 165. 49. Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); and Martha Nussbaum, “For Love of Country?” in For Love of Country? A New Democracy Forum on the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Richard Rorty, Gian Ruscuni, Martha Nussbaum (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). 50. See Smit and Timmons, “Kant’s Grounding Project in The Doctrine of Virtue,” note 36, infra. 51. Levinas, Notice sur la métaphore, notes for a presentation at Wahl’s Collège Philosophique (February 26, 1962) in Levinas, Oeuvres 2 Parole et silence et autres conférences inédites au Collège philosophique, ed. Rodolphe Calin and Catherine Chalier (Paris: Grasset/IMEC, 2009), 321–47. In English, “Notes on Metaphor,” trans. Andrew Haas, International Journal of Philosophical Studies (2012) 20:3: 319– 30. Also see Shira Woloski’s penetrating commentary on these notes, “Emmanuel Levinas: Metaphor without Metaphysics” in Levinas and Literature: New Directions, ed. Michael Fagenblat and Arthur Cools (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 259–80. 52. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, chapter 10. 53. Michel Foucault, L’herméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France, ed. François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, and Frédéric Gros (Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil, 2001), 348 (my translation). 54. Ibid., 349. 55. Michel Foucault, “Leçon du 16 janvier 1980” in Du gouvernement des vivants: Cours au Collège de France, 1979–1980 (Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil,

210

Bettina Berg

2012), 23–45. Foucault also adds that alethurgie can be applied to the gods and to diviners. It is “the set of possible procedures, whether verbal or not, by which one brings to light what is posited as true by opposition to the false, the hidden, the unspeakable, the unforeseeable” (8). It is thus a diversely used concept, generally in relation to power. See Foucault, Le courage de la verité: Cours au Collège de France, 1984 (Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil, 2009), 20 n.3. 56. See Guillaume Le Blanc, Les maladies de l’homme normal (Paris: Vrin, 2007), 43–47, discussing J. Butler’s “tropic subject,” in The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 57. Symptom in the sense of bearing witness as response to the command, whether within us or without us. See Ronit Peleg, “Le langage comme reste et comme rémanence: Lire Lyotard avec Paul Celan,” in Lyotard et le langage (Paris: Klincksieck, 2017). Thanks to Olivier Blanchet for this reference. 58. Foucault, L’herméneutique du sujet, 232. 59. And running through Cohen and Strauss. The matter is less visible in Levinas. But it concerns the legitimacy of politics, whence its edicts come, and how they are experienced. Let us not venture into theo-politics here, because Levinas wants neither a “religion of reason” nor a Platonic meta-politics like Strauss’s “eternal order” beyond distinctions like conservative or progressive. Miguel Vatter, Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 213. See also Josef Stern, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide, op. cit. 60. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 69 (translation modified). 61. Ibid., 70. 62. Ibid., 71.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, chapter 10. Bernet, Rudolf. “Is the Present Ever Present? Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence,” trans. Wilson Brown, Research in Phenomenology 12, 1982. Buijs, Joseph. “Attributes of Action in Maimonides,” Vivarium 27, no. 2 (1989): 85–102. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Caputo, John. “Heidegger and Theology” in Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles B. Guignon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Cohen, Mordechai Z. 2021. Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: a New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coyne, Ryan. “A Difficult Proximity: The Figure of Augustine in Heidegger’s Path,” The Journal of Religion 91, no. 3 (2011): 365–93. ———. 2015. Heidegger’s Confessions: The Remains of Saint Augustine in Being and Time and Beyond. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

211

Dahlstrom, Daniel O. “Heidegger’s Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications,” Review of Metaphysics 47, no. 4 (June 1994): 775–95. Depraz, Natalie. Transcendance et incarnation: le statut de l’intersubjectivité comme altérité à soi chez Husserl. Paris: Vrin, 1995. Eisenstadt, Oona. Driven Back to the Text: The Premodern Sources of Levinas’s Postmodernism. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001. Enaudeau, Corinne, and Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos. Lyotard et le langage. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck, 2017. Fagenblat, Michael. A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. ———. “Lacking All Interest: Levinas, Leibowitz, and the Pure Practice of Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 97, no. 1 (Jan. 2004): 1–32. ———. “Levinas and Maimonides: From Metaphysics to Ethical Negative Theology,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16, no. 1 (August 2008): 95–147. Fagenblat, Michael, Nordholt Annelies Schulte, Cools Arthur, Noor Ashraf, Arthur Cools, Cohen-Levinas Danielle, Schonfeld Eli, et al. 2020. Levinas and Literature: New Directions. Edited by Arthur Cools and Michael Fagenblat. Berlin;: De Gruyter. https:​//​doi​.org​/10​.1515​/9783110668926. Foucault, Michel. L’herméneutique du sujet: Cours au Collège de France, ed. François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, and Frédéric Gros. Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil, 2001. ———. “Leçon du 16 janvier 1980” in Du gouvernement des vivants: Cours au Collège de France, 1979–1980. Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil, 2012. ———. Le courage de la verité: Cours au Collège de France, 1984. Paris: EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil, 2009. Friedlander, Albert H. “Meister Eckhart and the Jewish Tradition,” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 27, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 78–90. Guignon, Charles B. 2006. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hackett, Jeremiah. 2013. A Companion to Meister Eckhart. Leiden: Brill. Heidegger, Martin. Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch and Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Heidegger, Martin. 2001. Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heidegger, Martin, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. 1992. Interprétations phénoménologiques d’Aristote. Mauvezin: Trans-Europ-Repress. Heidegger, Martin, William McNeill, and William (William A.) McNeill. 1998. Pathmarks. New York: Cambridge University Press. Herzog, Annabel. Levinas’s Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Husserl, Edmund. On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917), trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. ———. “The Time-Constituting Flow as Absolute Subjectivity,” 79; Husserliana 10, ed. Rudolf Boehm. Springer, 1969.

212

Bettina Berg

———. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925), trans. John Barnett Brough. Dordrecht: Springer, 2005. Joubert, Jean-Marc. Leibowitz, une pensée de la religion. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008. Kavka, Martin. Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kisiel, Theodore J., and John Van Buren. 1994. Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. La foi de Maïmonide, trans. David Banon. Paris: Le Cerf, 1992. Lévinas, Emmanuel. 1994. Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2012. “Notes on Metaphor.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies: IJPS 20 (3): 319–30. ———. On Escape/De l’évasion, trans. B. Bergo. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. ———. Otherwise than Being or, Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. ———. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Lévinas, Emmanuel., and Richard A. Cohen. 1999. New Talmudic Readings. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel, and Annette Aronowicz. 2019. Nine Talmudic Readings. Translated by Annette Aronowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lévinas, Emmanuel., Rodolphe Calin, Catherine Chalier, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Luc Nancy, and David Stidler. 2009. Oeuvres. Paris: Bernard Grasset. Library of Congress. “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish Rye.” https:​//​www​.loc​.gov​/item​/2004672653​/. Malka, Victor. Rachi [in French]. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993. Nussbaum, Martha. For Love of Country? A New Democracy Forum on the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Richard Rorty, Gian Ruscuni, Martha Nussbaum. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. Onishi, Bradley. “Transcendence as Indistinction in Eckhart and Heidegger,” in Religions, vol. 8 (April 2017). Peperzak, Adriaan. To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas .West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1993. Polinsky, Elimelekh. “What Is the Peshat on the Meaning of Peshat?” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 46, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 41–47. Rancière, Jacques. Aux bords du politique. Paris: Gallimard, 2004. Rancière, Jacques. La haine de la démocratie. Paris: Éditions La Fabrique, 2005. Rose, Gillian. The Broken Middle: Out of Our Ancient Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991. Raskover, R. and M. Kavka, eds., Tradition in the Public Square: A David Novak Reader. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008.

The Four Threads Composing Levinas’s Though

213

Smit, Houston and Mark Timmons. 2017. “Kant’s Grounding Project in the Doctrine of Virtue.” In Significance and System. New York: Oxford University Press. https:​ //​doi​.org​/10​.1093​/acprof:​oso​/9780190203368​.003​.0007. Stern, Josef. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Timmons, Mark, and Sorin. Baiasu. 2013. Kant on Practical Justification: Interpretive Essays. Oxford;: Oxford University Press. Vatter, Miguel. Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Viroli, Maurizio. For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Index

absolute subjectivity, 194 affectivity, 133 affinity. See oikeiosis analogy: causality and, 18; Descartes on, 14–15; Suárez on, 19 Anaximander, 29 Anders, Günther, 68, 70 Anderson, R. Lanier, 38n34 annihilation: “Black beast rapist” trope and, 114; as complete negation, 113; Hegel on, 113–15; white law and, 114 Anthropocene era: concept of life and, 68–69; Crutzen on, 64, 72; homeostasis crisis and, 69; humanity and, 63–66; world-ecology and, 65 anthropocentrism: Christianity and, 65–66; detachment and, 66–70; Haraway on, 66; humanity and, 63–66; vocation and, 67–68 antiblackness, 115–16, 119 Antigone (Sophocles): Hegel and, 104– 7; murder of Till, E. L., and, 101–21; philosophy of silence in, 103–4; plot of, 102; screaming in, 107 anti-nationalism, for Luxemburg, 42–43 Anti-Semite and Jew (Sartre), 33 anti-Semitism, Sartre on, 33 Aquinas, Thomas. See Thomas Aquinas

Archimedes, 85 Arendt, Hannah: academic background of, 151; aristocratic notion of education, 46–47; on assimilation, 155; Blücher and, 41, 151; on capitalism, 49; Crisis of the Republic, 58n49; on democracy, 49; Eichmann in Jerusalem, 152; on exile, 150, 159–65; in France, 152; Haug, F., critique of, 43–47, 51, 55n9; Heidegger and, 151; on historical events, 47–50; The Human Condition, 67, 75n35; on Hungarian Revolution, 41, 47; Jewish identity for, 151, 165; on Jewish refugees, 160; The Jewish Writings, 167n9, 168n52; Luxemburg and, 41–47, 50–55, 55n9; on mass denationalization, 167n17; On Revolution, 50; Origins of Totalitarianism, 49–50, 57nn32–33, 154; on the political, 150, 159–61; on political freedom, 50–52, 57n37; on public happiness, 53; Rahel Varnhagen, 152; as refugee, 151–55; rejection of political action, 44, 46–47; on social liberation, 44; on statelessness, 149, 151–55, 159–62; Thought on Politics and Revolution, 215

216

Index

53; “We Refugees,” 152–54; Zambrano and, 149–66 aristocracy, virtue and, 177–78 Aristophanes, 32 Aristotle, 4, 30, 68–69, 188n4, 188nn6– 8; on constitutional government, 175, 180–82; on democracy, 173–87; on educational systems, 186; Metaphysics, 179; on middle class, 186–87; on necessary functions of state, 182–83; Parts of Animals, 179; Physics, 179; Politics, 173–87; on priestly class, 189n15; on property ownership, 189n16; on virtues, 175–76 assimilation, 155 Augustine of Hippo, 19, 192, 195 authenticity, for Heidegger, 28 Baldwin, James, 109 Barr, David, 116–17 Bates, Jennifer Ann, 123n26 Beauvoir, Simone de: Grene on, 27, 34– 36; on human development, 38n29; Pyrrhus and Cineas, 34; The Second Sex, 35; on solidarity, 38n30 Beck, Ulrich, 63–64 being: being-in-the-world concept, 35; as finite/infinite, 22n25; Suárez on, 14–15, 22n25 Being and Nothingness (Sartre), 34 Being and Time (Heidegger), 28–29, 194 being-in-the-world, 35 Bernet, Rudolf, 205n7 Bernstein, J. M., 104, 106 Bérulle, Pierre de, 14, 21n16 Bezos, Jeff, 70 Biberkopf, J. G., 96n55 Biogea (Serres), 79, 82 “Black beast rapist” trope, 114 “Black Mo’nin,” of Bradley, Mamie, 4, 101, 111–12; Black maternal We in, 113; mourning as defiance, 113–15, 124n54

Black mourning, 111–12; as defiance, 113–15, 124n54; “wake work” and, 4, 101–2, 115–17 blasphemy, 10 blessedness, 13 The Blood of Emmett Till (Tyson), 123n37 Blücher, Heinrich, 41, 151 Blumenfeld, Kurt, 41 the body: ecological crisis and, 88–90; hard/soft distinctions with, 89–91 The Book of the Courtier (Castiglione), 27 Bradley, Mamie (Mamie Till Mobley), 116–17, 121n3; acts of defiance by, 111–13, 124n54; antigonal act of, 107; “Black Mo’nin” of, 4, 101, 111– 13; Black mourning and, 103. See also Till, Emmett Louis Brand, Dionne, 115–16 Brown, Michael, 117 Brown v. Board of Education, 108 Bryant, Carolyn, 103 Bryant, Roy, 103, 110–11, 113 Buijs, Joseph, 208n34 Callicott, Baird, 94n1 capacitas (capacity), 13 capitalism: Arendt on, 49; democracy and, 49; ecological problems of, 64–65; Industrial Revolution and, 64; modes of production and, 64; political action and, 49; privatization and, 49 Capitalocene, critique of, 3 Capitalocene era, 64 Carnap, Rudolf, 30 Cartesian Questions (Marion), 13 Castiglione, Baldassare, 27 causality (causa sui): analogy and, 18; Descartes on, 17–19; efficient, 17; formal, 18–19; God and, 18–19; Marion on, 17–19, 22n27; Suárez on, 17–19, 22n24 Cézanne, Paul, 35–36

Index

Christianity: anthropocentrism and, 65–66; Suárez and, 20. See also God; Jesus Christ Christian Scholastic philosophy, 1 Citizens’ Councils, 108, 110 Civil Rights Movement, 103 The Civil War in France (Marx), 45 climate change: anthropogenic, 95; climate maps, 100n81 Collins, Addie Mae, 117 community: creation of, 133–34; functional models of, 141; fusional, 137–40; genuine, 135–37; hierarchies in, 138–39; individual conflicts in, 136; On the Otology of Social Communities and, 131–34; personhood and, 140–43; social bonds in, 133; social drive in, 137– 40; ungenuine, 135–37; Walther on, 131–43 conceptualism, 195 Confessions (Augustine of Hippo), 19, 195 Conrad, Joseph, 27 consciousness: ego’s influence on, 142– 43; freedom and, 141, 143; Husserl on, 141, 193 constitutional government, 175, 180–82 continental philosophy: evolution of, 1; methodological approach to, 1–6 cosmopolitanism, 202–3 crisis: ecological, 71, 75n31, 79–93; etymological development of term, 81; of homeostasis, 69 Crisis of the Republic (Arendt), 58n49 Crutzen, Paul, 64, 72 Cyborg Manifesto (Haraway), 66 Dahlstrom, Daniel, 206n15 De l’evasion (Lévinas), 196 Delirio y destino (Zambrano), 155 demagogy, 187 democracy: Arendt on, 49; Aristotle on, 173–87; capitalism, 49; constitutional government and,

217

175, 180–82; Derrida on, 172–73; equality as element of, 176–78, 188n9; necessary functions of state in, 182–83; in Politics, 173–72; ruler and ruled relationship in, 178–81, 183–84; socialist, 54–55; virtues and, 175–76 denial, 70; of reality, 66–69 Deppe, Frank, 55n9 Depraz, Natalie, 194 Derrida, Jacques, 6, 187; on democratic elections, 172–73; Rogues, 172– 73, 185 Descartes, René: on analogy, 14–15; on causality, 17–19; at La Flèche, 9; on God, 11; God without Being, 1, 11; Lévinas influenced by, 193–94; Marion on, 1–2, 10–20; Meditations on First Philosophy, 16; Metaphysical Prism, 21n3; on metaphysics, 11–13; Principles of Philosophy, 16; Suárez compared to, 10–11; on substance, 16–19 Descartes’ Passive Thought (Marion), 21n18 detachment, 66–70 Detmer, David, 34 Dewey, John, 26 diaspora, 161 Dickens, Charles, 29 the divine, Suárez on, 9–10 divine revelation, 11–12 Doctrine of Virtue (Kant), 198 Douglass, Frederick, 108 Dreadful Freedom (Grene), 26. See also Introduction to Existentialism Du Bois, W. E. B., 122n6 Duelo (Goya), 94n3 Duns Scotus, John, 15, 21n6 Eckhart, Meister, 192; negative theology, 195–96; Opus Tripartitum, 197 ecological crisis: in arroyos, 83; the body and, 88–90; disconnect/rupture

218

Index

in, 81–82; expressive content of, 83–85; music and, 87–88, 96n55; in new poetics, 90–93; science and, 85–87; Serres on, 79–93, 94n1; silence and, 82–83, 94n13; social movements as result of, 71, 75n31; Thoreau on, 92–93; zoon logon echon, 81, 90 ecological movements, 71, 75n31 ecological subject, 72 “Ecologies” (Biberkopf), 96n55 education: Arendt on, 46–47; Aristotle on, 186 ego, consciousness influenced by, 142–43 Eichmann in Jerusalem (Arendt), 152 eidetics, 198 Einfühlung (empathy), 194 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 92–93 empathy, 133; Einfühlung as, 194 Empedocles, 85 ens concept, 21n6 environmental crisis. See ecological crisis Epicureans, 204–5 epistemology, univocity and, 14 equality: democracy and, 176–78, 188n9; reciprocal, 175–78 “Erased Lynchings” (Gonzales-Day), 118–19 Essais (Montaigne), 67–68 ethical life, in Greek society, 104–6, 108 ethics of responsibility, 73 L’Étre et le néant (Sartre), 30–31 Evers, Myrlie, 116 exile: Arendt on, 150, 159–65; Zambrano on, 149, 155–65, 168n35 existentialism: Grene on, 25–36; in modern novels, 29; pragmatism compared to, 26; psychoanalysis and, 30 Existentialism is a Humanism (Sartre), 31, 33 Fagenblat, Michael, 194

Fight with Cudgels (Goya), 80 Fisher, Ruth, 41 The Five Senses (Serres), 88–89, 91, 96n57, 97n59, 97n62 Flaubert, Gustave, 34 La Flèche (Jesuit school), 9 formal causality, 18–19 Foster, John, 65 Foucault, Michel, 69–70; parrhesia for, 6, 203–5 France: Arendt in, 152; Zambrano in, 155–56 Francis (Pope), 70 freedom: consciousness and, 141, 143; Kierkegaard on, 27; Luxemburg on, 43, 58n51; political, 50–52, 57n37; Walther on, 142–43 fundamental essence. See Grundwesen fusional community, 137–40 Galilei, Galileo (Galileo), 14–15, 19 Gaus, Günther, 151 Genet, Jean, 34 genuine community, 135–37 German Idealism, 105 God, 190n34; causality and, 18–19; Descartes on, 11; metaphysics and, 10–11; Nietzsche, on, 22n26; questions on existence, 1; Suárez on, 15, 22n23; substance attributed to, 17; univocity and, 14 God without Being (Descartes), 1, 11 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 104 Gonzales-Day, Ken, 118–19 Gorz, André, 74n7 Goya, Francisco, 80, 94n3 Gramsci, Antonio, 140 Great Expectations (Dickens), 29 Greek society, ethical world of, 104– 6, 108 Green New Deal, 71 Grene, Marjorie Glicksman: academic background, 25; on de Beauvoir, 27, 34–36; critique of Husserl, 36; Derrida and, 25; on existentialism,

Index

25–36; on Heidegger, 25–29; Introduction to Existentialism, 26–27, 29, 34; Jaspers as influence on, 26; on Kierkegaard, 27–28; Merleau-Ponty and, 25, 27, 35–36; methodological approach to, 2–3; Philosophical Testament, 35; on Sartre, 25, 27, 29–34 grieving, mourning and, 106 Grundwesen (fundamental essence), 134, 139 The Guide for the Perplexed (Maimonides), 192, 196–97 Habiter (Serres), 79 Haraway, Donna, 66, 72, 117 Hartman, Saidiya, 107 Haug, Frigga: critique of Arendt reading of Luxemburg, 43–47, 51, 55n9; Rosa Luxemburg und die Kunst der Politik, 43 Haug, Wolfgang Fritz, 56n16 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: on annihilation, 113–15; Antigone and, 104–7; German Idealism and, 105; on mourning, 106; Phenomenology, 101; phenomenology for, 107; philosophical framework for lynching of Till, E. L., 4; philosophy of right, 201–2; on war, 106 Heidegger, Martin, 2; Arendt and, 151; on authenticity, 28, 37n19; Being and Time, 28–29, 194, 206n14; being-in-the-world and, 35; concept of nothing, 30; critique of conceptualism, 195; Grene on, 25–29; hermeneutics for, 194; on historicity, 29; on language, 84; Letter on Humanism, 84; Lévinas influenced by, 194–198; logos for, 90; Maimonides and, 192–93; on metaphysics, 9; “Nazi Heidegger,” 28, 37n19; ontology for, 192; on onto-theology, 1, 9; Phenomenology of Religious Life, 206n15; phronesis

219

for, 195; on relations with others, 28–29 Henrikson, John, 55n8 hermeneutics, for Heidegger, 194 Herzog, Annabel, 198–200 Hiroshima bombing, 85 historicity, for Heidegger, 29 Hobbes, Thomas, 43 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 104 Holiday, Billie, 108 Hominescence (Serres), 86 hospitality, silence and, 83 The Human Condition (Arendt), 67, 75n35 humanity: anthropocentric approach to, 63–66; degenerative metamorphosis of, 70; denial of reality and, 66–70; generative metamorphosis of, 70–73, 73n3; vulnerability of, 70–73 Hungarian Revolution, Arendt on, 41, 47 Hungary: Communist Party in, 41–42; Luxemburgianism and, 41 Husserl, Edmund, 5; on absolute subjectivity, 194; on consciousness, 141, 193; on eidetics, 198; on Einfühlung, 194; Grene critique of, 36; intentionality of sensation, 193; Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung, 132; Logical Investigations, 136; Third Logical Investigation, 139 idealism: German, 105; logical positivism in opposition to, 26; transcendental, 92–93 Idol and Distance (Marion), 21n19 idolatry, 10 Industrial Revolution, 64 in turns. See kata meros intentionality of sensation, 193 Introduction to Existentialism (Grene), 26–27, 29, 34 Irigaray, Luce, 82–83

220

Index

Jackson, David, 112 Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung (Husserl), 132 James, William, 26 Jaspers, Karl, Grene influenced by, 26 Jesus Christ, 22n25. See also God Jet magazine, 112, 117 Jewish identity, for Arendt, 151, 165 Jewish universalism, 203 The Jewish Writings (Arendt), 167n9, 168n52 Jonas, Hans, 67, 73, 76n45 jouissance, music and, 87 “Judaism and Revolution” (Lévinas), 200 justice, Lévinas on, 200 Kafka, Franz, 163 Kant, Immanuel, 29; Doctrine of Virtue, 198; moral law for, 104 kata meros (in turns), 179–81, 183, 189nn10–11 Kenyon Review, 27 Kepler, Johannes, 14–15, 19 Kierkegaard, Søren: on freedom, 27; Grene on, 27–28; Plato as influence on, 27; Socrates and, 29 King, Coretta Scott, 116 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 116 Kisiel, Theodore, 206n15 Klenbort, Chanan, 152 language: decline of, 91–92; Heidegger on, 84; science and, 91 Latour, Bruno, 69, 71–72 Lazare, Bernard, 155 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 19 Leibowitz, Yeshayahu, 197 Lenin, Vladimir: Luxemburg’s opposition to, 43–44, 52–53; ultracentralism of, 52–53 Letter on Humanism (Heidegger), 84 Levertov, Denise, 95n18

Lévinas, Emmanuel, 76n45; academic approach to, 191–93; Cartesian influences on, 193–94; De l’evasion, 196; Heidegger as influence on, 194–198; hermeneutics and, 192, 194; Husserl on, 193–94; on Jewish universalism, 203; “Judaism and Revolution,” 200; on justice, 200; legitimacy of politics for, 210n59; “The Model of the West,” 199; on negative theology, 197; Notes on Metaphor, 197; Otherwise than Being, 197; politics of parrhesia, 192; on reason, 202; “State of Caesar and the State of David,” 200–1; Talmudic readings, 191, 198–205; Totality and Infinity, 193–94, 205 Levinas’s Politics (Herzog), 198 liberation: Arendt on, 44–45; stage of, 44 Liebknecht, Sophie, 42 life, as concept, Anthropocene era and, 68–69 logic, Suárez on, 14 Logical Investigations (Husserl), 136, 139 logical positivism, 26 Lovelock, James, 66 Luther, Martin, 192, 195 Luxemburg, Rosa: anti-nationalism for, 42–43; Arendt and, 41–47, 50–55, 55n9; critique of Bolsheviks, 53; on freedom, 43, 58n51; Haug, F., on, 43–47, 51; as Marxist, 47; opposition to Lenin, 43–44, 52–53; on political action by masses, 52–55, 57n35; as political pariah, 42, 55n9; The Proletarian Woman, 41; on Russian Revolution, 42–43, 45, 50–51, 53; on socialist democracy, 54–55; on spontaneity, 51, 56n29; universalism for, 42–43 lynchings: as American phenomenon, 121n2; in artistic works, 118–19, 122n9, 127n88; prevalence rates of,

Index

110–11, 124n48; spectacle, 113–14; “Strange Fruit,” 108; white social life and, 109–10. See also Till, Emmett Louis Maimonides: The Guide for the Perplexed, 192, 196–97; Heidegger and, 192–93; Mishneh, 197; politics for, 197–198 Majorana, Ettore, 85, 95n31 Malebranche, Nicolas, 19 Malfeasance (Serres), 79 “María Zambrano and Hannah Arendt” (Roncalli), 5 Marion, Jean-Luc: on blessedness, 13; on capacitas, 13; Cartesian Questions, 13; on causa sui, 17–19, 22n27; on Descartes, 1–2, 10–20; Descartes’ Passive Thought, 21n18; Idol and Distance, 21n19; on modern metaphysics, 10, 19; Negative Certainties, 21n6; on Suárez, 9–20; Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, 13–14; on two natures of Christ, 22n25 Martin, Trayvon, 117 Marx, Karl, 45; Walther and, 140 Marxism: Luxemburg and, 47; spontaneity in, 51 Marx’s Ecology (Foster), 65 mass denationalization, 167n17 materialism, Sartre’s rejection of, 30 McCarthy, Mary, 46 McConkey, Michael, 47 McMurray, Fred A., 126n71 McMurry, Linda, 119 McNair, Carole Denise, 117 Meditations on First Philosophy (Descartes), 16 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: Grene and, 25, 27, 35–36; Phenomenology of Perception, 35; on visual perception, 36 Mersenne, Marin, 14–15

221

Metaphysical Disputations (Suárez), 10–13 Metaphysical Prism (Descartes), 21n3 metaphysics: definitions of, 10–13, 20, 21n23; Descartes on, 11–13; God and, 10–11; Heidegger on, 9; Marion on, 10; as neologism, 10; as onto-theology, 9; revelation and, 10–13; Suárez on, 11–13, 20, 21n23; substance and, 16–19; wisdom and, 10 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 179 Milam, J. W., 103, 110–11 Mills, Charles, 109 Mishneh (Torah) (Maimonides), 197 Mobley, Mamie Till. See Bradley, Mamie “The Model of the West” (Lévinas), 199 modernity, 63–64 Montaigne, Michel de, 67–68 Montesquieu, Baron de, 57n37 Moore, Jason, 64 moral law, for Kant, 104 Morgan, Sasha, 55n8 Morin, Edgar, 72 Moten, Fred, 4, 112, 120–21, 121n5, 123n32, 125n58 mourning: Black mourning, 111–17; as defiance, 113–15, 124n54; grieving and, 106; Hegel on, 106; “wake work” as distinct from, 115 Mugerauer, Robert, 83 music: ecological crisis and, 87–88, 96n55; jouissance and, 87 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 108, 124n48 The Natural Contract (Serres), 79, 80 “Nazi Heidegger,” 28 Negative Certainties (Marion), 21n6 negative theology, Lévinas on, 197 Nettl, J. P., 41–42 new poetics: ecological crisis and, 90–93; transcendentalism and, 92–93

222

Index

Newton, Isaac, 19 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 22n26, 93 nihilism, 207n19 Notes on Metaphor (Lévinas), 197 nothing, as concept, 30 Nussbaum, Martha, 202–3 oikeiosis (affinity), 64 oligarchy, 187 On Revolution (Arendt), 50 On the Otology of Social Communities (Walther), 132; affectivity in, 133; collapse of community in, 131; creation of community, 133–34; empathy in, 133; social bonds in, 133–34 On Translation (Ricoeur), 94n10 ontology: for Heidegger, 192; univocity and, 14 onto-theology: Heidegger on, 1, 9; metaphysics as, 9 “Open Casket” (Schutz), 127n88 Opus Tripartitum (Eckhart), 197 Ore, Ersula J., 109–10 Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt), 49–50, 57nn32–33, 154 Ortega Muños, Fernando, 168n35 others, relations with: Heidegger on, 28–29; Sartre on, 35 Otherwise than Being (Lévinas), 197 Oudermans, Theo, 207n19 Parasite (Serres), 79, 88 Parmenides, 29 parrhesia, 6, 203–5; Lévinas on, 192 Parts of Animals (Aristotle), 179 Pellegrino, Marina Pia, 142 personhood, 140–43 Pfänder, Alexander, 5; Walther and, 132, 134, 139 phenomenology: Antigone and, 104; for Hegel, 107; for Husserl, 35 Phenomenology (Hegel), 101 Phenomenology of Mysticism (Walther), 5, 132, 134, 141

Phenomenology of Religious Life (Heidegger), 206n15 Philosophical Testament (Grene), 35 philosophy of right, 201–2 phronesis, for Heidegger, 195 Physics (Aristotle), 179 Plato: Kierkegaard influenced by, 27; Republic, 181, 185, 188n6, 189n13; Statesman, 176, 179; The Symposium, 32 poetic reason, 164–65 the political, 150, 159–61 political action: Arendt’s rejection of, 44, 46–47; capitalism and, 49; Luxemburg on, 52–55, 57n35 political freedom, Arendt on, 50–52, 57n37 Politics (Aristotle), 173–78, 187; kata meros in, 179–81, 183, 189nn10–11 politics, legitimacy of, 210n59 populism, 187 positivism, idealism in opposition to, 26 postmodernism, 63–64; Rose, G., on, 191 pragmatism, existentialism compared to, 26 Principles of Philosophy (Descartes), 16 The Proletarian Woman (Luxemburg), 41 Pulcini, Elena, 3 Pyrrhus and Cineas (Beauvoir), 34 Rahel Varnhagen (Arendt), 152 Rancière, Jacques, 201 reason: Lévinas on, 202; revelation and, 12; scientific character of, 12 The Red and the Black (Stendahl), 34 refugees: Arendt as, 151–55; Jewish, 160 Reinach, Adolf, 135 Republic (Plato), 181, 185, 188n6, 189n13 responsibility. See ethics of responsibility

Index

revelation: divine, 11–12; metaphysics and, 10–13; propositional theory of, 11; reason and, 12; scientific character of, 12; Suárez on, 11–12; Thomist position on, 11–12 Rice, Tamir, 117 Ricoeur, Paul, 76n45, 81–82, 94n10 Robertson, Carole, 117 Rodrígues Aldave, Alfonso, 150 Rogues (Voyous) (Derrida), 172–73, 185 Romantic movement, 105 Roncalli, Elvira, 5 Rosa Luxemburg (Nettl), 41–42 Rosa Luxemburg und die Kunst der Politik (Haug, F.), 43 Rose, Gillian, 191, 199, 205n1 Rose, Jacqueline, 55n9 Rushdy, Ashraf H. A., 107 Russian Revolution: Bolsheviks and, 55; Luxemburg on, 42–43, 45, 50–51, 53 Salamanca School, 2 Sartre, Jean-Paul: Anti-Semite and Jew, 33; on anti-Semitism, 33; Being and Nothingness, 34; L’Étre et le néant, 30–31; Existentialism is a Humanism, 31, 33; on existential psychoanalysis, 30; Flaubert and, 34; Genet and, 34; Grene on, 25, 27, 29–34; on human essence, 29–30; literary heroes for, 31; materialism rejected by, 30; on relations with others, 35; on sex, 32; Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, 30; Le Temps Modernes, 33–34; on us-object, 32; on we-subject, 32 Scenes of Subjection (Hartman), 107 Scheler, Max, 132, 134, 139–40 Schiller, Friedrich, 104 Schmitt, Carl, 43 Schutz, Dana, 127n88 science: anti-scientific skepticism, 97n69; ecological crisis and, 85–87, 95n31; language displaced by, 91 Scime, Logan, 122n7

223

The Second Sex (Beauvoir), 35 self-deception, 70 Sermons (Luther), 195 Serres, Michel: on anthropogenic climate change, 93; Biogea, 79, 82; on the body, 88–90; on ecological crisis, 79–93, 94n1; on expressive content, 83–85; on Fight with Cudgels, 80; The Five Senses, 88–89, 91, 96n57, 97n59, 97n62; Habiter, 79; on Hiroshima bombing, 85; Hominescence, 86; on human disconnect, 81–82; Malfeasance, 79; on music, 87–88; The Natural Contract, 79, 80; on new poetics, 90–93; Parasite, 79, 88; on role of science, 85–87, 95n31; on transformative power of silence, 82–83, 94n3 sex, sexuality and, Sartre on, 32 Sharpe, Christina, 118; “wake work,” 4, 101–2, 115–17 Sherover, Charles, 26 Shiva, Vandana, 66 silence: in Antigone, 103–4; ecological crisis and, 82–83, 94n3; hospitality and, 83; lynching murder of Till, E. L., and, 103–4; philosophy of, 103–4; as transformative, 82–83 Simmel, Georg, 132 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (Sartre), 30 Sloterdijk, Peter, 72 Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty, 26–27 social drive, 137–40 socialist democracy, 54–55 sociality, 137–38; inauthentic forms of, 143 social movements, 71 Socrates, Kierkegaard and, 29 solidarity, de Beauvoir on, 38n30 Sophocles, 4; Antigone, 101–21 Spain, Zambrano and, 158, 160, 165 spectacle lynchings, 113–14 the spiritual-religious, 161

224

Index

spontaneity: Luxemburg on, 51, 56n29; in Marxism, 51 statelessness: Arendt on, 149, 151–55, 159–62; as deprivation, 158 “State of Caesar and the State of David” (Lévinas), 200–1 State of Mississippi v. Emmett Till (Barr and Mobley), 116–17 Statesman (Plato), 176, 179 Stein, Edith, 5, 132, 134 Stendahl, 29, 34 “Strange Fruit” (Holiday), 108 Strider, H. C., 111 Suárez, Francisco: on analogy, 19; on causality, 17–19, 22n24; Christianity for, 20; on concept of being, 14–15; created substance and, 14–15; Descartes compared to, 10–11; on the divine, 9–10; on divine revelation, 11–12; at La Flèche, 9; on God, 15, 22n23; on logic, 14; logical univocity for, 13–16; Marion on, 9– 20; Metaphysical Disputations, 10– 13; on metaphysics, 11–13, 22, 21n5; onto-theology and, 9–10; propositio efficiens for, 12; in Salamanca School, 2; on substance, 16–19 substance, as concept: Descartes on, 16– 19; finite, 17; God and, 17; human element of, 17; Suárez on, 16–19 Sullivan, Shannon, 124n41, 127n88 Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes (Marion), 13–14 The Symposium (Plato), 32

Till, Emmett Louis, lynching of: antiblackness and, 115–16; Antigone parallels to, 101–21; Black mourning and, 111–17; Bryant, C., and, 103, 110; Citizens’ Councils and, 108, 110; Civil Rights Movement and, 103; complicity of state in, 109; Hegelian philosophy and, 4; Jet magazine and, 112, 117; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People response to, 108; in news media, 110; philosophy of silence in, 103–4; social context for, 103; white law and order, 108–11 Till, Louis, 126n71 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 132 Totality and Infinity (Lévinas), 193– 94, 205 transcendentalism, 92–93 Trump, Donald, 6 Twain, Mark, 122n9 tyranny, 187 Tyson, Timothy B., 123n37

Talmudic readings, by Lévinas, 191, 198–205 Tarr, Duncan, 55n8 Tell, David, 124n47, 125n66 Le Temps Modernes (Sartre), 33–34 Thomas Aquinas, 1; on revelation, 11–12 Thoreau, Henry David, 92–93 Thought on Politics and Revolution (Arendt), 53

Valéry, Paul, 162–63 Violetta, Dominick, 55n8 Viroli, Maurizio, 202–4 virtues: aristocracy and, 177–78; Aristotle on, 175–76; democracy and, 175–76 visual perception, Merleau-Ponty on, 36 Vollrath, Ernst, 44, 57n35 Voyous. See Rogues vulnerability, of humanity, 70–73

ungenuine community, 135–37 “The United States of Lyncherdom” (Twain), 122n9 universalism, 42–43; Jewish, 203; Lévinas on, 203 univocity: epistemology and, 14; God and, 14; logic and, 14; ontology and, 14; for Suárez, 13–16 us-object, 32

Index

Wahl, Jean, 30 “wake work,” 4, 101–2, 116–17; mourning as distinct from, 115; polysemy of, 115 Walther, Gerda, 4; academic background of, 132–33; on community, 131–43; on freedom, 142–43; Gramsci and, 140; Grundwesen for, 134, 139; Marx and, 140; On the Otology of Social Communities, 131–34; on personhood, 140–43; Pfänder and, 132, 134, 139; Phenomenology of Mysticism, 5, 132, 134; philosophical influences on, 132–34; on sociality, 137–38, 143 war, Hegel on, 106 Washington, Booker T., 119 Weber, Max, 135–36 Weil, Simone, 95n31 Well, Ida B., 4, 119–21

225

“We Refugees” (Arendt), 152–54 Wesley, Cynthia, 117 we-subject, 32 white law and order, 108–11 white social life, lynching as essential to, 109–10 Wideman, John Edgar, 126n71 Wilkins, Roy, 116 Zambrano, María, 5–6; academic background for, 150–51; Arendt and, 149–66; as conscience of Spain, 160; Delirio y destino, 155; on diaspora, 161; on exile, 149, 155–65, 168n35; in France, 155–56; on poetic reason, 164–65; return to Spain, 158, 165; on the spiritual-religious, 161; support of Spanish Republic, 150 zoion logon echon, 81, 90

About the Contributors

Bettina Bergo, professor of philosophy, Université de Montréal, is the author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics and Anxiety: A Philosophical History (2020). She coedited several collections: “I don’t see color!”: Personal and Critical Perspectives on White Privilege (2015); The Trauma Controversy (2009); Levinas and Nietzsche: After the Death of a Certain God (Columbia, 2008); “Levinas’s Contribution to Contemporary Thought” (Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 1999). She translated three works of Levinas; Zarader’s The Unthought Debt: Heidegger and the Hebraic Heritage, JeanLuc Nancy’s Disenclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, and Didier Franck’s Nietzsche and the Shadow of God. She is the author of numerous articles on ethics, phenomenology, and the history of psychology. Antonio Calcagno is professor of philosophy at King’s University College at Western University in London, Canada. Codirector of the Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy, he is also the author of On Political Impasse: Power, Resistance and New Forms of Selfhood (2022); Lived Experience from the Inside Out: Social and Political Philosophy in Edith Stein (2014); Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and Their Time (2007); The Philosophy of Edith Stein (2007), and Giordano Bruno and the Logic of Coincidence (1998). Along with Ronny Miron, he is the coeditor of Hedwig Conrad-Martius and Edith Stein: Philosophical Encounters and Divides (2022). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Christina M. Gschwandtner teaches Continental Philosophy of Religion at Fordham University. She is author of Reading Jean-Luc Marion: Exceeding Metaphysics (Indiana, 2007), Postmodern Apologetics? Arguments about God in Contemporary Philosophy (Fordham, 2012), Degrees of Givenness: On Saturation in Jean-Luc Marion (Indiana, 2014), Marion and Theology (T&T Clark, 2016), Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy (Fordham, 2019), Reading Religious Ritual with Ricœur: Between 227

228

About the Contributors

Fragility and Hope (Lexington Press, 2021), and Ways of Living Religion: Philosophical Investigations into Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2024), besides many articles and translations at the intersection of phenomenology and religion. Ryan J. Johnson is associate professor of philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina. He has published books on Gilles Deleuze and the ancient Hellenistic tradition, although his current work centers on German philosophy and Critical Philosophy of Race. His forthcoming book, Phenomenology of Black Spirit, cowritten with Biko Mandela Gray, stages dialectical parallelism between Hegel’s classic text and several key figures in Black thought. His current book projects is a philosophical portrait of the radical abolitionist John Brown, and he is now beginning another on Spinoza and the Black radical tradition. Marguerite La Caze is associate professor in philosophy at the University of Queensland. Her publications include Ethical Restoration after Communal Violence: The Grieving and the Unrepentant (2018), Wonder and Generosity: Their Role in Ethics and Politics (2013), The Analytic Imaginary (2002), Integrity and the Fragile Self, with Damian Cox and Michael Levine (2003), and the edited collections Hannah Arendt and the History of Thought (2022), with Daniel Brennan, Truth in Visual Media: Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics, with Ted Nannicelli (2021), Contemporary Perspectives on Vladimir Jankélévitch: On What Cannot be Touched, with Magdalena Zolkos (2019) and Phenomenology and Forgiveness (2018). Christian Lotz is professor of philosophy at Michigan State University. His main research area is Post-Kantian European philosophy. Among his book publications are The Art of Gerhard Richter: Hermeneutics, Images, Meaning (Bloomsbury Press, 2015; pbk. 2017); The Capitalist Schema. Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction (Lexington Books, 2014; pbk. 2016); Christian Lotz zu Marx, Das Maschinenfragment (Laika Verlag, 2014); Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der kritischen Theorie (ed., Fink Verlag); From Affectivity to Subjectivity. Revisiting Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology (Palgrave, 2008); Vom Leib zum Selbst. Kritische Analysen zu Husserl und Heidegger (Alber, 2005). His current research interests are in classical German phenomenology, critical theory, Marx, Continental aesthetics, and contemporary European political philosophy. Michael Naas is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. He works in the areas of ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary French

About the Contributors

229

philosophy. His most recent books include Class Acts: Derrida on the Public Stage (Fordham University Press, 2021) and Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo’s America (Bloomsbury, 2022). He is co-translator of several works by Jacques Derrida, including Rogues (Stanford University Press, 2005), Learning to Live Finally (Melville House, 2007), and Life Death, Seminar of 1975–1976 (University of Chicago Press, 2020), and is a member of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project. He also coedits the Oxford Literary Review. Marjolein Oele is professor of philosophy at Radboud University. She was trained as an MD at the Free University of Amsterdam, has a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam and received her PhD in philosophy in 2007 from Loyola University Chicago. Her research intertwines ancient philosophy, continental philosophy, and environmental philosophy. She is the author of E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring Pathos at Life’s Material Interfaces (SUNY, 2020) and coeditor of Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations (Springer, 2017). Her most recent book project is entitled Elemental Loss. Her articles have been published in a range of journals, including Ancient Philosophy, Configurations, Environmental Philosophy, Epochê, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, Radical Philosophy Review, and Research in Phenomenology. She is a member of the executive board of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition (PACT) and the book review editor of the journal Environmental Philosophy. Elena Pulcini was professor of philosophy at the University of Florence. A specialist in social and political thought, she was a leading expert in care ethics. She was the author of numerous scholarly articles and books, including Tra cura e giustizia: Le passioni come risorsa sociale (2020); “Specchio, specchio delle mie brame . . . ”: Bellezza e invidia (2017); Care of the World: Fear and responsibility in the Global Age (2012); and The Individual without Passions (2012). Elvira Roncalli is professor of philosophy at Carroll College, Helena, Montana, USA. She studied philosophy at the Università degli Studi di Milano, in Italy, and received her PhD. from the Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve, in Belgium, with a dissertation titled “Life of the Mind and Love of the World: The Crucial Role of Judging in Arendt’s Thinking.” Her research centers around questions pertaining to mechanisms and relationships of domination, the interplay between embodied subjectivity and living space, between power and violence, between agency and political recognition. She has published articles on Arendt, Cavarero and Muraro and has coedited,

230

About the Contributors

with Silvia Benso, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers: Stretching the Art of Thinking (SUNY Press, 2021). She is the author of The Future of the World Is Open: Encounters with Lea Melandri, Luisa Muraro, Adriana Cavarero, and Rossana Rossanda, (SUNY Press, 2022). Brian Treanor is professor of philosophy and Charles S. Casassa Chair at Loyola Marymount University. Like Australian poet Les Murray, he is “only interested in everything.” Consequently, his scholarship is interdisciplinary in its method, and wide-ranging and diverse in its foci. He is the author or editor of ten books, including: Melancholic Joy (Bloomsbury 2021), Philosophy in the American West (Routledge 2020), Carnal Hermeneutics (Fordham 2015), Emplotting Virtue (SUNY 2014), and Interpreting Nature (Fordham 2013).