Perhaps the most often criticized element of Hannah Arendt's political theory is her insistence on the necessity of constructing and maintaining rigid boundaries between various activities of the human condition. Less often, however, is the attempt undertaken to determine the philosophical motivation stimulating this project of distinction. This article will attempt to demonstrate the extent to which Arendt's imperative is rooted in a certain misreading of the Marxian dialectic. The first part of the article will outline the contours of Arendt's (...) erroneous interpretation of Marx's understanding of labour, demonstrating the degree to which the latter breaks down the tripartite structure of the vita activa. The second part of the article will read Arendt's affirmation of distinction as being a response to what Arendt will take to be the problems of the dialectic, specifically the dialectic's allegedly necessary positing of conceptual contingency and logical necessity. Finally, the third part of the article will demonstrate, through an examination of two key passages in the work of Marx, the extent to which Marx himself was just as concerned with overcoming the type of homogeneous and abstract universalism rejected by Arendt. The ground will thus be provided for the overcoming of the necessity of Arendtian distinction, and perhaps also for a more fruitful engagement between the Marxian and Arendtian theoretical problematics. (shrink)

Critically engages the work of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

In the literature on Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, two sorts of claim have been made by different interpreters. First, there is Beiner’s observation that there is a shift in Arendt’s thoughts on judgment, which has led to the idea that Arendt develops two distinct theories of judgment. The second sort of claim concerns Arendt’s use of Kant’s transcendental principles. At its core, it has led to the critique that Arendt detranscendentalizes — or empiricalizes — Kant, by linking (...) Kant’s judgments of taste to an empirical sociability. In this article, I argue against both of these claims. Early fragments of Arendt’s on judgment make clear that she develops only one theory of judgment. It is only that it is not until later in her life that she fully elaborates it. Nor does Arendt confuse Kant’s idea of enlarged thinking with an actual dialogue with others. In fact, Arendt introduces an interesting interdependence between judgment and speech, or communication. I develop my argument by first outlining the problems Arendt hoped to resolve via judgment. Through my reading of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, I show how Arendt interprets Kant’s Critique of Judgment not as his theory of aesthetic judgments, but as an answer to the more general question ‘How do I judge?’ I also clarify the difference Arendt draws between common sense and community sense. With community sense, Arendt uncovers a foundation not only for men as political beings but also for the idea of humanity. This finding is often overlooked in the literature. I conclude with another Arendtian distinction that is often overlooked, that between spectators and the solitary philosopher. (shrink)

In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of (...) political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What is the place of compassion in politics? For Hannah Arendt, compassion – a natural fellow-feeling for a suffering other – cannot be brought into politics without damaging both the feeling and the political realm. Arendt develops this analysis in the context of her critique of the French revolution, particularly its Jacobin episode. According to Arendt, the Jacobins attempted to keep the revolution’s compass fixed on unanimity and social cohesion by deploying a discourse of compassion. My reconstruction of Arendt’s (...) argument in On Revolution looks at how the Jacobins’ moralisation and politicisation of compassion not only destroyed the nascent space of politics in the revolution but introduced new ways of justifying cruelty. I go on to show the role that Jacobin compassion has played in the revolutionary tradition more broadly. Read thus, Arendt’s critique is not limited to the French revolution but targets a possibility that is present within the political culture of modernity – one that is activated whenever public action becomes equated with displaying virtuous pity for suffering groups. (shrink)

In this text, the relationship between fallibilism and cognitive vulnerability is examined using Richard Rorty’s thinking as an example. First, some of Rorty’s central ideas are collected and commented on, especially the substitution of objectivity for solidarity, since it affects relevant issues of epistemology and of reflection on rationality. Next, the notions of fallibilism and cognitive vulnerability are examined, which will be connected to an existential dimension of vulnerability. Examples of all those things are also given from Rorty’s thinking and (...) it is highlighted that the author operates with both a negative and a positive sense of existential vulnerability. It is then stated that Rorty’s proposal implies pessimistic fallibilism and an excess of cognitive vulnerability. First, it is argued that the cause of this lies in the fact that his approach is imprisoned in what Richard Bernstein called Cartesian anxiety and secondly, this generates unwanted consequences for the Rortyan goals themselves to raise his ethnocentric proposal as a non-relativistic alternative to realism and authoritarianism. In this respect, it is maintained that the priority that Rorty attributes to solidarity is accompanied by the rejection of any notion of evidence. This produces a conceptual lacuna in the structure of his thought that makes it impossible to reflect philosophically on an epistemic activity (the activity of adducing or requesting evidence) that is a normal part of day-to-day conversational exchanges as important as controversies to determine the best option in each case. In response, we will argue that one can better work towards the achievement of Rortyan goals if we bear in mind that reasons based on solidarity do not replace and do not deactivate the value of epistemic reasons, although they do combine and reinforce each other. (shrink)

Rorty's Neopragmatism and the Imperative of the Discourse of African Epistemology Pragmatism, as a philosophical movement, was a dominant orientation in the Anglo-American philosophical circles in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Pragmatism, as expressed by its classical advocates, namely, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey, emphasized the primacy of practice or action over speculative thought and a priori reasoning. The central thesis of pragmatism (though there exist other variants) is the belief that the meaning of (...) an idea or a proposition lies in its "observable practical consequences", And as a theory of truth, it diverges from the correspondence and coherence theories which see truth in terms of correspondence of a proposition to facts and coherence of propositions to other propositions within the web respectively, but instead contends that "truth is to be found in the process of verification". In other words, pragmatists would emphasize the practical utility or "cash value", as it were, of knowledge and ideas as instruments for understanding reality. Neopragmatism is used to refer to some contemporary thinkers whose views incorporate in a significant way, though with minor differences bordering on methodology and conceptual analysis, the insights of the classical pragmatists. Our intention in this paper is to explore Rorty's neopragmatism, particularly his critique of analytic philosophy and then argue that his views have potential for the establishment of African epistemology as an emerging discourse within the African philosophical tradition. (shrink)

I cite areas of pragmatism and feminism that have an intersection with or an appeal to the other, including the notions of the universal and/or normative, and foundationalist lines in general. I deal with three areas from each perspective and develop the notion of their intersection. Finally, the paper discusses the importance of a pragmatic view for women's lives and the importance of psychoanalytic theory for finding another area where pragmatism and feminism mesh.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991.

This article examines Hannah Arendt’s bold and provocative proposal to institutionalize civil disobedience. First, I argue that the proposal follows from Arendt’s peculiar interpretation of this mode of protest. She sees it as an unexpected yet welcome echo of the revolutionary spirit that accompanied the foundation of the American republic. In seeking to bring civil disobedience into government, she aims to embed this spirit within the very institutional fabric of the polity. Second, I suggest that we have strong reasons to (...) take the proposal seriously as an account of how the constitutional state should respond to dissenting minorities. The call to institutionalize civil disobedience can be defended as an approach that is different to — and ultimately more appealing than — familiar liberal and democratic perspectives on this issue. (shrink)

This article reassesses Arendt's relationship to Augustine, exploring the Augustinian context for Arendt's own thinking about the relationship between thought and action. What Arendt drew from Augustine, the contours of which remain in her later work, is a journey of memory in which reflection, as it removes us from the world, paradoxically reveals us as inserted into this world. Out of this ontology of origins emerges an ethic of beginning as we recognize, in the moment of reflection, a bond of (...) kinship and an equality toward each other that is constituted by our common relationship of beginning and fatefulness to the world. It is this Augustinian journey of memory that continued to guide Arendt's thinking in developing a political ethic that shared with action the ontological foundation of beginning. (shrink)

John Dewey's ideas on politics derive from his epistemology of inquiry as practical problem-solving. Dewey's philosophy is important for democratic theory because it emphasizes deliberation through questioning. However, Dewey's philosophy shares with positivism the same conception of answering as exclusively the dissolution of questions. While Dewey's ideas are distinct from positivism in important respects, he rejects a constitutive role for questioning by constructing knowledge as problem-solving via experience. The problem-solving ideal lends itself to a scientific conception of politics. Applying Michel (...) Meyer's philosophy of questioning, problematology, to Dewey's logic, reveals that Dewey's theory of inquiry is itself the product of an inquiry, confirming that questioning plays a constitutive role in knowledge. This suggests a problematological reconstruction of knowledge which extends Dewey's ideas by affirming an enhanced status for questioning. Grounding knowledge in the principle of questioning provides the basis for extending the rhetorical analysis of politics. (shrink)

An identification is made of the core metaphilosophical, philosophical, and intellectual history theses in Richard Rorty's pragmatism. Their rationale is displayed and it is argued that his metaphilosophical theses are very much dependent on certain of his non‐metaphilosophical philosophical theses, most centrally his anti‐representationalism. Questions emerge about the status and justification of these theses. Rorty, in his programmatic pronouncements, resists providing a vindication of them. Seeking to avoid what has been called performative contradictions, he regards it as sufficient to provide (...) the best narrative going of what is to be said here. It is argued that a more straightforward defence can be provided that does not depart from his holism or his historicism with its setting aside of claims of necessity. (shrink)

This article seeks to examine Rorty's contention that literary narrative, not political philosophy, is best able to address the problems of the West. It argues that although Rorty's conception of the novel as a valu able and informative medium is credible, he does not establish it as a valid alternative to political philosophy. Moreover Rorty retains the sort of reasoning that is characteristic of political philosophy, despite his assertions to the contrary.

This article surveys recent work in pragmatism and political theory. In doing so, it shows both how recent work on pragmatism has secured the view that at its core is a set of arguments about the character of democracy – although the character of those arguments is open to debate and reimagination – and how pragmatist arguments have been reinterpreted and deployed to address contemporary concerns and approaches. This charts a terrain of live disagreements rather than settled opinion.

The hegemonic discourse on humanism in the contemporary academy – a critical discourse in the form of a theoretical anti-humanism – is marked by a certain degree of impoverishment. This impoverishment is the result of many contextual factors, including the ideological purposes to which the discourse has been put, but also the effects of internal workings of the paradigm associated with anti-humanism itself. In this article, I trace the development of this discourse in its foundational early- and mid-twentieth century manifestations, (...) outlining its central characteristics as well as its tensions and aporias, both theoretical and political. I argue that the critical discourse, which has informed our contemporary understanding of humanism, needs to be meaningfully sublated and that a new discourse – one that has reflected deeply upon the anti-humanist discourse: its strengths and its weaknesses – should take its place. (shrink)

Anthony Giddens, Hans Joas, Margaret Archer, Norbert Wiley, and Eugene Halton (to name but a handful of such figures) are social theorists whose philosophical importance is all too often missed (or ignored) by professional philosophers. The main reason for this is obvious: they are by training and appointment social scientists, while professional philosophy tends to be an insular discipline. Disciplinary purity, like most other forms of this misplaced ideal, tends to insure insularity and vit...

Expressed in terms of his categories, Peirce criticized Hegel for having overlooked secondness, “not mere twoness [or duality] but active oppugnancy” (CP 8.291; emphasis omitted), “the sense of shock,” surprise, and especially struggle and conflict (CP 5.45). In particular, he judged his predecessor harshly for having neglected or, at least, downplayed the role secondness, especially in the form of experience, plays in the growth of knowledge. In Peirce’s judgment, then, Hegel’s emphasis on thirdness (mediation, conciliation, integration, and the overcoming of (...) estrangement) tended to eclipse secondness (otherness, opposition, conflict, clash, and direct encounters with irreducible otherness). If one considers what Hegel actually wrote about both experience vis-à-vis reason and, more generally, the role of conflict in the generation of knowledge and indeed of much else, Peirce’s criticism hardly seems fair. My proximate purpose is, however, not so much to defend Hegel’s thought against Peirce’s charge as to show how close Hegel and Peirce are in their understanding of the relationship between experience and reason. Beyond this, my ultimate objective is to illuminate this relationship, by consideration of the nuanced, subtle manner in which these thinkers construe this relationship. That is, my main purpose is not hermeneutic or historical but philosophical. Becoming clearer about how Peirce stands to Hegel is not nearly as important as becoming clearer about how experience stands to reason. As it turns out, however, a philological comparison facilitates our philosophical task. (shrink)

In his recent work on postsecular societies Jürgen Habermas has stressed the need for a dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens aimed at strengthening social integration and rejuvenating the moral bases of modern political and juridical institutions. This dialogue should focus on the translation of religious traditions into rational, secular forms. In his more recent work on the social function of rituals, however, he rejected the Durkheimian view of public secular rituals as mechanisms for fostering social integration. In this article (...) I discuss Habermas’s early reflections on postsecularism and assess his interpretation of public religious rituals as sources of social integration. I then propose an alternative to his translation proviso whereby religious symbolic content would be translated into behavior-regulating technologies aimed at developing the dispositional resources needed for a continuous postsecular dialogue between religious and nonreligious citizens. (shrink)

Technology is fundamental to and embedded in the way practice is conceptualized and institutionalized in social service work. Many scholars assume and expect that good practices of care are achieved with the correct application of theory produced by rigorous scientific research. However, there are significant critiques of this viewpoint. We examine the work of Donald Schön and Martin Heidegger and agree with these authors' suggestions that technical rationality and modern technology are not the way to achieve good practice in the (...) human services. At the same time, we are not convinced that the alternatives offered by Schön and Heidegger provide what good practice requires. We draw on Aristotle's account of the intellectual virtues and make the case for phronesis and praxis as other possibilities for inspiring new kinds of social welfare practice in the twenty-first century. (shrink)