Vol. V, May 1994 by Episteme: Denison's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

EPISTEME

A Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy Volume V

May 1994

Contents HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES:

A REASSESSMENT ,., •........•.......•••..••.•••••..•, •••........•.•••..••..•••••••.•.•.•••••••.••.•••• 1

. Michael P. Greeson; University of Central Oklahoma ARENDT AND MAcINTYRE ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT'S FAILURE ............. 17

Andrew Janiak; Hampshire College THE ORIGIN OF AN INQUIRY: EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY IN JAMES' PRAGMATISM .................................................. 35

J. Ellis Perry IV; University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth REVISIONING HEIDEGGER: EXISTENTIELL CruSES AND THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING OF BEING ............................................ 53

Paul Rector; Towson State University HARTMANN, KOLB, PIPPIN AND THE UNHAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS ............

Kevin Thomson; Carleton College

The editors express sincere appreciation to the Denison University ResearchFoundation, the Denison Office of Admissions, the Denison Honors Program, Pat Davis and Faculty Advisor David Goldblatt for their assistance in making the publication of this journal possible. We also extend special gratitude to the Philosophy Department faculty: Eric Barnes, David Goldblatt, Amy Friesen, Tony Lisska, Ronald E. Santoni and Steven Vogel for their constant enthusiasm, support and creative input.

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES:

A REASSESSMENT

Michael P. Greeson

University of Central Oklahoma

Both Thomas Hobbes and John Locke utilize a "state of nature" construct to elucidate their more general views onhuman nature and politics. Yet their conceptions of man's original condition in the state of nature are usually contrasted: the political philosophy of Locke's Second Treatise paints man as a "pretty decent fellow," far removed from the quarrelsome, competitive, selfish creatures said to be found in Hobbes's Leviathan. 1 Lockean man seems to be more naturally inclined to civil society, supposedly more governed by reason. From this interpretation of human nature, Locke concluded that the state of nature was no condition of war, placing himself in opposition to the traditional interpretation of Hobbes. Itismy contention that although Locke painstakingly attempts to disassociate himself with the Hobbesian notion of the "se1f-inter ested man" in a perpertual "state of war," the execution of this attempt falls short, and can even be recognized to implicitly (if not explicitly) contain the very reasoning that Hobbes ulilizes to advo cate the movement ofman from the state of nature to civil society. In order to demonstrate the truth ofthis contention, I will briefly ou tline the development of their philosophies and offer both a reinterpreta tion ofthe Hobb esian sta te of nature, and a cri tical anal ysis 0 fLoc ke' 5 view of the state of nature in the Second Treatise. I. Hobbes: Method and Problem

Hobbes offered a materialistic metaphysics that utilized a simpli fied version of Galileo's resolutio-compositive method. According to this method, complex phenomena are broken down into their is II junior philosophy lfIajol' ami political sciwce miliaI'. 1II! ,,[mls em IIt1Cllllillg fill! University of To rollto to complete II docfotlte ill 1'/1ilasophy. This paper WIlS m:enfliJ co winner oft/Ie Undergraduate Paperojfl!e Yeal'llWIll'd offered by tile Soutit-Westall Political Scitmce Association. GI'US01t

1 Examples of the many works in political philosophy that hold such views are Simmons, A. J. "Locke's State of Nature," and Great Political Thinkers, W. and A. Ebenstein, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanavich College Publishers, 1991.

Episteme • Volume V • May 1994

MICHAEL P. GREESON

simplest natural motions and components. Once these elements are understood, the workings of complex wholes are easily derived. Hobbes' intent was to develop a systematic study in three parts, starting with simple motions in matter (De Corpore), moving to the study of human nature (De Homine) , and finally to politics (De Cive), each based, respectively, on a lower level of analysis (Lasco and Williams, p. 230). Hence, reality for Hobbes is reducible to mechanis tic and material principles, or, simply stated, bodies m motion. If we are to understand politics. Hobbes suggests that we should look at such phenomena in tenus of the relationships between "men in. motion." Furthermore, Hobbes adopted the Galilean proposition that that which is in motion continues in motion until altered by some other force. (Of course, this is a theoretical assumption which, indepen dently, cannot be proven true or false, since all we do observe are bodies that are acted upon by such forces). Likewise, Hobbes as sumed that human beings act voluntarily based upon their "pas sions," until they are resisted by another force or forces. This outward motion of the individual is the beginning of voluntary motion, which Hobbes calls "endeavor." Endeavor directed towards an object is called "appetite" or" desire." Endeavor dlrected away from an object is called "aversion" (Gauthier, p. 6). The several passions of man are "species" of desires and aversion, which are directed toward those objects whose effects produce pleasure and away from those objects which produce pain. Thus, Hobbes conceives men to be self-maintaining engines whose "mo tion is such that it enables them to continue to 'move' as long as continued motion IS possible" (Gauthier, p. 7). From this account of utili tous motion, itlogically follows, accord ing to Hobbes, that each man in the state of nature seeks only to preserve and strengthen himself. "A concern for continued well being is both the necessary and sufficient ground of human action; hence, man.is necessarily selfish" (Gauthier, p. 7). !tis this perpetual endeavor for self-preservation within the state of nature which gives rise to a condition of "war." Hobbes believes that men, being originally all equal in the "faculties of the body and mind," equally hope to fulfill their ends of vital motion (Leviathan, p. 100). Hence, if "two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies," for both, knowing

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

naturalmorallaw would b e privy to the unconditional, absolute and categorical right to preserve oneself at all cost (Leviathan, p. 98). This state of war encompasses all, "everyman, against everyman" (Levia足 than, p. 100). Without a common power to police and settle disputes, man is in a perpetual condition of war; "war consisting not only in battle, orin the act of fighting, but in a willingness to contend by battle being sufficiently recognized" (Leviathan, p. 100). The state of nature is seen as a condition in which the will to fight others is known, fighting is not infrequent and each individual perceives that his life and well-being are in constant danger (Leviathan, p. 100). Accord足 ingly, menin the state of nature live without security other than their own strength; this is argued to be the natural condition of mankind, and leads Hobbes to the conclusion that such existence is "natural" to man, but not rational (whereas society is seen as rational, but not natural, contra Aristotle) (Kavka, p. 292). It is within this irrational condition of "war," or Hobbesian"fear" or "despair," in which humanbeings find little hope of attaining their ends without conflict, that mortal men are compelled to elect a sovereign and move out of the state of nature; only then can the imperative of self-preservation be truly fulfilled through peace (Lemos, p. 24). It is important to note that the state of nature, for Hobbes, is a philosophic device employed as a means ofhypothesiz足 ing about human behavior in a pre-political and pre-socia] state, Le., a state without any extemal constraint on behavior. As Hobbes indicates, His not necessary to presume such a state actually existed, only that it captures essential features human beings would exhibit in such a condition. Hobbes' political philosophy was received in his own time with nearly universal rejection, being more often renounced than actually read. Hobbes was labelled an atheist, the "monster of Malmesbury," a schemer, a heretic and a blasphemer (De Cive, p. xx). His advocacy of an absolute monarch as the solution to man's inherent condition further distanced him from the "enlightened" mainstream of 17th century political thought, including Locke's philosophy. It is a commonly held view that although Locke makes no specific mention of Hobbes in the Second Treatise, it may nonetheless be interpreted as an attempt to systematically refute both the notion of absolute mon足 archy and Hobbes's description of the state of nature (Lemos, p. 74).

MICHAEL P. GREESON

II. John Locke: Method and Problem Philosophy, Locke tells the reader in the introduction ofhis Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is "nothing but true knowledge of things." Properly, philosophy contains the whole of knowledge, which Locke himself divides into three parts: a physica or natural philosophy, practica or moral philosophy, and logic, the" doctrine of signs." The goal of the philosopher is to build as complete a system as he possibly can within these three categories (Aaron, p. 74). Yet Locke persuasively argues in the Essay that mankind's ability to gain true knowledge is significantly limited, and sets himself the task of determining the demarcations of human knowledge. To help mankind rid itself of this "unfortunate" failing, he argues that man has been endowed with talents capable of allowing him to live a useful and profitable life. The Essay is extremely pradical: we should concentrate on what we can know, and not waste our energy or e Hort searching for knowltdge of things which lie beyond us (Aaron, p. 77). It is exactly these practical and utilitarian ends that moti va ted the construction of his nloral and political philosophy. Although politi cal and moral philosophy are not reducible to metaphysical plin dples thot app.ly outside of their respective fields of inquiry (thus explnining the difficulties between advocating, on one hand, the strict empiricism of the Essay, and, on the other hand, the rationalist naturalluw theory of the Two Treatises), in all of his writings Locke assumes, fu ndamentally, that man knows enough to live a good and righteous hfe if he so chooses. Locke argued that the state of nature is not identical to the state of war, and, although it is "inconvenient," nature is governed by a nuturullnw known by reason, the "coounon rule and measure God hus given mankind." The nalurallaw "teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no on€: ought to harm anothel: in his Hfe, health, liberty or property" (Locke, p. 4). If the law of nature is observed, the state of nature remains peaceful; conv(mtional wisdom defines this condition as one of mutual love (via the "judicious" Richard Hooker), from whence are "derived the great maxims of justice and charity" (Locke, p. 4). Yet, according to Locke, God has instilled in natural man a "strong obligation of necessity, convenience and inclination to drive him into society"; hence, men quit their "natural power, resigned it

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

up into the hands of the community" for the assurance that their property will be preserved (Locke, pp. 44, 48, 53). Men being, as has been said, by nature free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. The only way whereby anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and put on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater securitr against any that are not of it. (Locke, p. 53).2

An equally important factor motivating men to forfeit the perfect freedom of the state of nature is that within this environment, each man has a right to interpret natural law and to punish what he judges to be violations of it (Lemos, p. 85). Anyone who violates another's right to life, liberty or property has placed himself in a state of war, and the innocent party has the right to destroy those who act against him because those that are waging war do not live under the rule of reason, and, as a result, have no other rule but that of force and violence. Furthermore, this state of war would be perpetual if justice could not be fairly administered (Locke, pp. 11,13). Therefore, in order to avoid a state of war, Locke suggests that one must forfeit the state of nature, creating an environment where disputes can be decided upon by an impartial authority (Locke, p. 14). It would seem, at least upon prima facia analysis, that although

both thinkers utilize a state of nature device to demonstrate political necessity, their similarities would end there. Hobbes' slate of nature would seem to be populated by self-interested egoists whose per足 sonal gain is ultimately important. Locke ,on the other hand, appears to suggest that a "civil" nature permeates pre-ci viI society to such an extent that man is voluntarily obliged to respect his fellow human beings. and the formation of civil society soon follows. The common conception regarding the state of nature theories of Hobbes and Locke is thus presented. I shall now turn to the argu足 2

A classic statement of libertarianism!

MICHAEL

GREESON

ments as to why this conception is invalid, beginning wi th a reassess足 ment of Hobbes' position, followed by specific argtunents regarding Locke 'snotion of pre-political man' smoti vation to pursue civil ends. III. Reassessing Hobbes To understand morality and politics, Hobbes argues that one must understand man qua man; hence, psychology becomes the necessary foundation of moral and political science. And the only way to view mankind in its most natural condition is to assume a hypothetical state of nature in which men act purely out of passion, void of reason at Ieast initially. Hobbes' account ofthe state of nature, as shown in Chapter 17 of Leviathan, was expressly "designed to provide a glimpse of man without the garb of convention, h'adition orsociety, so asto uncover the underlying principles ofthemundane equity of natural man, without assuming an transcendent purpose or will" (Lasco and Williams, p. 252). Therefore, Hobbes' prescription for stability was a deduction from the necessary behavior of man in a theoretical society, nnt emphasizing how men ought to act, but rather how they would act void of any relationships, whatsoever. It is in this condition that our endeavors dispose us towards plensllre or pain; man, being concerned with only those endeavors which serve to preserve himself, chooses those objects which meet this condition. Hence, man wOl1Jd find himself often in competition with others for the same objects, and a state of war would ensue, with each having the "right to everything" he wishes. 3 Historically, the negative interpretation of this condition of nature, being a "war of all against all," has been dominant in political and philosophical circles. Sterling Lamprecht defines the common conception of Hobbes' psychology as follows: God made man such a beast and a rascal that he 3Keep in mind that the aim of Hobbes is not to suggest thnt we can actually observe such a condition, or that it is even remotely possible; this is m0rdy a fundqmental axiom in Hobbes' thought experiment. In fact, R.E. Ewin hilS nrgued that this more radical form of the natural condition is lIsed by Hobbes as part of a reductio, as to pointou t the logical inconsistencies between simultaneously ilssuming the existence of both such a natur<ll condition and the pursuit of self-preservation: they ultimately prove contradictory (Ewin, p. 108).

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

inclines universally to malice and fraud. Man's typi cal acts. UJ1Jess he is restrained by force, are violent and ruthless, savagely disregarding the persons and property of his fellows. His greatest longing is to preserve himself by gaining power over others and exploiting others for his own egoistic ends (De Cive, p. xx).

Lamprecht labels this view "Hobbism," and argues that in this view of human nature, Hobbes is far from being a Hobbist. Hobbes gives, to be sure, a picture of man in the state of nature which is far from becoming. But, Lamprecht argues, Hobbes did not intend to say that his picture of man in the state of nature is an exhaustive account of human nature. Rather, the concept of man in the state of nature enables us to measure the extent to which reason and social pressures Le., other "forces" determine and direct the expression of human passions. The idea of man in the state of nature is for social science like that of a natural body in physical science. Physical science holds that a body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless influenced by outside forces. Actually, there is no body which is not influenced by outside bodies; but the idea of such a body enables us to measure the outside forces (De Cive, p. xxi). Such a natural man in "full motion" would be observable when ever one operates wholly under the dominion of passion, without the restraint, or to use Hobbes' language, "the opposing force," o.f reason. Man, acting on his own, with no concern for others' sel£ preservation, guided by short-term considerations only, is doomed to failure in a state of nature. But if long-term moral and political arrangements (i.e., a voluntary social contract) enable them to main tain themselves without facing a war of all against all, then the basic cause for hostility is removed (Gauthier, pp. 18-19). In fact, many scholars suggest that the whole concern of Hobbes' moral and political philosophy is to show men the way out of this short-term condition of war and into a long-term condition of peace, for human life can continue only if mankind can remove itself from such a

MICHAEL p, GREESON

condition. David Gauthier, in his treatise titled The Logic OfLeviathan, states this argument most eloquently: In the beginning, everyman has an unlimited right to do what he will, conceiving it to be for his preserva足

tion. But the exercise of this unlimited right is one of the causes of the war of all against all, which is inimical to preservation. Thus the unlimited right of nature proves contradictory in its use; the man who exercises his right in order to preserve himself con足 tributes thereby to the war of all against all, which tends to his own destruction. And so it is necessary to give up some part of the unlimited natural right. ... The fundamental law of nature is "that every man ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it." The law is the most general conclusion man derives from his experience of the war of all against all. Clearly it depends on that experience, whether real or imagined. Although hypothetically a man might conclude that it was necessarily inimical to human life, only an analysis of the human condi足 tion with all social bonds removed shows that peace is the primary requisite for preservation (Gauthier, pp.51-53), The salvation of mankind, for Hobbes, depends on the fact that although nature has placed him in an unpleasant condition, it has also endowed him with the possibility of removing himself from it, as revealed through the use of reason i.e., the rational desire to pursue those avenues in which the hope of attaining peaceful existence is real! To argue that the state of nature, for Hobbes, is purely brutish and warlike, devoid of rationality or reason, is to miss the point: it is a necessary ingredient to lead man out of the state of nature and into a civil society. Hobbes' visionofnaturernightbe but a limited guide; yet, to borrow the words of Gauthier, "it is a truth which we must endeavor to overcome-but we shall not overcome it if we misunder足 stand it, deny it, or ignore it (Gauthier, p. 180).

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

IV. Locke and Political Motivation What follows are several arguments which independently sug足 gest that the Lockean state of nature implicitly admits of a Hobbesian condition of war, for Locke himself views conflict as the primary motivating factor that necessarily compels man to leave the state of nature and enter civil society. Initially, it is important to establish a fundamental point of difference between these two theories: Locke's state of nature is pre足 political (Le., prior to common authority). whereas, for Hobbes, it is pre-social. Locke refers to a situation in which a collection of human beings are not subject to political authority, not a situation in which there exists no form of rudimentary organization, much less an organized society (Lemos, p. 89). Hobbes uses the expression "state of nature" to denote a situation in which men do not live in any form of society at all, regardless of how fundamental. Furthermore, his definition tells us w hat people would be like if they could be divested of "all their learned responses or culturally induced behavior pat足 terns, especially those such as loyalty patriotism, religious fervor or class honor" that frequently could override the "fear" that Hobbes speaks of so dramatically in pre;-civil society (Hinchman, p. 10). If we were to assume man as existing pre-socially as Hobbes does (a condition without, trade, without the arts, without knowledge, without any account of time, without society itself), it seems a rather intuitive implication that he might be motivated by only self-cen足 tered drives, for that would be the extent of his learned behavior within this condition. Locke, on the other hand, takes social and cultural bonds for granted and argues purely from a pre-political position. Even a hypothetical Lockean might act a bit more selfishly in a Hobbesian state of nature; once semantic discrepancies are taken into account, these definitions already begin to appear closer to agreement. Secondly, Locke's position seems tobe a normative prescription, as opposed to a theoretical description. For example: in chapter II, section 6 of the Second Treatise, Locke argues that through reason, those who consult the law of nature will learn that no one "ought" to harm another's life, liberty or possessions. This phrasing seems to suggest a normative position, prescribing how man should live in a state of nature, versus the account that Hobbes constructs upon his

MICHAEL P. GREESON

theoretical premises. These positions are not mutually exclusive: one can observe pre-civil manin a Hobbesian state of nature and morally prescribe a Lockean state of nature as a more "civil" alternative. Thirdly, Locke seems to provide evidence for the Hobbesian assumption thatman often acts out of selfishness and criminal intent. Initially Locke seems somewhat ambiguous about precisely what motivates the man of nature to move to civil society: he states that God has instilled a "strong obligation of necessity, convenience and inclination to drive him into society." But why would man leave a state of nature that, at least according to Locke, provides him the ultimate liberty and power over his destiny, a condition that he likens to "a state of peace , good-will, mutual assistance and preservation"? If the man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said, if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom, why will he give up his empire and subject himself to the domin.bn and control of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer that though in the state of nature he has such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain and constantly exposed to the invasion of others .., This makes him willing to quit a condition which, however free, is full offeal' and continual dangers (Locke, p. 71),

He continues: were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degen足 erate men, there would be no need of any other law, no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community" (Locke, p. 72). If Locke 'sstate of nature is truly as "rational" and "concerned" as he suggests, why is the only motivating factor powerful enough to move men out of this condition that which he so vehemently denies exists: a Hobbesian condition of "war"? Locke clearly states in the Second Treatise that one of the natural rights that must be granted to all men in the state of nature, equally, is that man should interpret natural law for himself and decide upon

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

appropriate punishment for offenders since there exists no common judge to settle controversies between men. It is precisely this intui足 tive and pre-political knowledge of the natural law that is said to enlighten man to the burdens of civil SOciety. Yet Locke argues persuasively that any knowledge of a natural law is more often than not hindered due to mankind's inherent epistemic limitations. Man's own unquenchable and boundless cu足 riosi ty itself becomes a hindrance. Richard Aaron uses the words of Locke's Essay to demonstrate this point: Thus men, extending their inquiries beyond their capacities and letting their thoughts wander into these depths where they can find no sure footing, 'tis no wonder they raise questions and multiply dis足 putes, which never coming to any clear resolution, are proper only to continue and increase their doubts and to confirm them at last in perfect skepticism (Aaron, p. 77). Even if one accepted that a natural law existed, Locke's clear rejection of man's ability to know this law with any degree of certainty, combined with his suggestion that foreknowledge of such a law does not guarantee moral action, would seem to suggest a condition of skepticism and disagreement. This position is strikingly similar to Hobbes' argument that although human reason is capable of discerning the laws of nature, mankind is unable to consistently follow the dictates of such reason (Lamprecht, De Cive, p. xxix). In fact, one of the strongest arguments that Locke proposes to reject in the First Treatise is the divine right theory of Sir Robert Filmer, which is based upon the notion that even if a right of succession had been determined by a law of nature, our knowledge of natural law is limited to such a degree that there remains no compelling reason to accept one explanation over another. Furthermore, such subjective interpretations of the natural law would logically imply an unfairly administered and inconsistent justice. Locke continues: for everyone in the state of nature being both judge and executioner, of the laws of nature, men being

MICHAEL P. GREESON

partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry them too far with too much heat in their own cases, as well as negligence and unconcernedness to make them remiss in other men's (Locke, p. 71). This seems contradictory to an environment of peace and fellowship, and Locke strongly suggests that a state of war would exist if justice could not be fairly administered. Consider this: For Locke, in the absence of a neutral judge, no one can accurately know truthfully whether his cause is right or wrong. Thus, everyone is at liberty to believe himself right. Patrick Colby provides case-in-point: IT one person fears his neighbor, whether with cause or without (for only an individual can judge), by this partial and subjective determination the neighbor becomes a wild beast and is lawfully destroyed. But when the neighbor, now the target of attack, might understandably conclude thathis assailant is the wild beast and so endeavor to execute the law of nature against him (Colby, p. 3). But this means that Locke's state of nature will not divide neatly into groups of "upright law-abiders and selfish malefactors." And if a distinction cannot be made between such individuals, it would seem impossible for justice to be administered effectively. Locke himself deduces suell a conclusion: The inconveniences that they are therein exposed by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the power every man has of punishing the transgressions of others make them take sanctuary under the law of government (Locke, p. 71). . Locke makes it clear from the beginning of his argument and increas足 ingly so ashe progresses, that because judgment and punishmen tare in the hands of everyman, the state of nature works very poorly (Godwin, pp. 126-127). And in the state of nature, conflict (or a willingness to contend by conflict), once begun, and once unable to achieve a satisfactory resolution, would tend to continue to a harsh

HOBBES, LOCKE AND THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

ending, because there exists no authority to subject bothparties to the fair determination of the law (Godwin, p. 127). This potential inconsistency in the application of natural law seems, for Locke, to create significant enough hardships to motivate man to civil sOciety: I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature, which must certainly be great where men may be judges in their own case; since it is easy to be imag足 ined that he who was to be unjust as to do his brother an injury will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it (Locke, p. 9). Clearly, Locke's original state of nature, if not absolutely equiva足 lent to Hobbes' state of nature, is at the very least a place of extreme anxieties, inconveniences, inequality and fear of the potential out足 break of war. Locke provides convincing evidence that the state of nature would be so dangerous and unhappy, and the preservation of one's right to life so precarious, that the law of nature demands that the state of nature be abandoned for civil society (Locke, p. 18). Though Locke suggests that his state of nature is not a Hobbesian condition of "war," a closer examination of this argument would tend to suggest that without the failure of the state of nature to guarantee a secure peace, mankind would never voluntarily choose to forfeit his absolute freedom. Jean Faurot provides support: But (Locke's) state of nature also includes a condition scarcely distinguishable from that which Hobbes describes as a state of war-all that is needed is for some man to act contrary to reason, because in the state of nature every man is obligated to punish evildoers. In this way, war begins, with the right on the side of the innocent to destroy the evildoer, or, if he prefers, to enslave him. Nor is there any end to this condition in the state of nature, where every man is both judge and executioner. The slightest disagree足 mentis enough to set men fighting, and the victory of the righteous is never secure. Therefore, menhave the strongest reasons for leaving the state of nature and

MICHAEL P. GREESON

entering civil society (Faurot, p. 75). Hence, not only do I argue that Locke's state of nature corre足 sponds to Hobbes' notion of a condition of perpetual fear, or the "state of war," but it actually becomes the identical catalyst by which Lockean man justifies movement to civil society. V. Conclusion

The point of this presentation is clear: the common conception of Locke as the political propounder of the polite school of positive, optimistic descriptive psychology is an inaccurate characterization. Furthermore, the also-common contrasting of Locke's view of man in the state of nature with Hobbes' theoretical consideration of natural man has been misunderstood. Hobbes did not concern himself with a "plain, historical method": his concerns were with devising a system of government (albeit monarchial) that would best serve mankind's inherent drive for both self-preservation and peace. Men enter civil society because the state of nature tends to deteriorate into a condition of unrest and insecurity. If all men were rational and virtuous, apprehending and obeying a natural law, th.::.re would be no problem. The presence of a few men acting in opposition to reason, combined with an environment lacking a common authority to arbih'ate disputes, creates a condition of insta足 bility and provides the necessary impetus for, in Locke's words, "reasonable part of positive agreement": a social contract (Faurot, p. 75),

Whether one accepts a reinterpretation of Hobbes' state of nature construct, or a closer examination of Locke's arguments, it is clear that, although not identical, their analyses offer many striking simi足 1arities. And, more importantly. without the instability and fear within the state of nature, neither philosopher could logically infer movement from nature to civil society: it becomes the necessary, perhaps sufficient cause for any social contract. Therefore, the classical juxtaposition of Hobbes' and Locke's state of nature theories is at best questionable and far from convinc足 ing.

HOBBES, LOCKE AND'THE STATE OF NATURE THEORIES

WORKS CITED

Aaron, R. John Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Colby, P. "'The Law of Nature in Locke's Second Treatise," The Review ofPolitics, Vol. 49, Winter 1987. Ewin, R.E. Virtues & Rights: 171e Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Boulder: Westview Press, 1991. Faurot, J.H. Problems of Political Philosophy. Scranton: Chandler Publishing Co., 1970 Gauthier, D. P. The Logic ofLeviathan. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Godwin, R. "Locke's State of Nature in Political Societies," Westem Political Quarterly. Vol. 29, March 1976. Hinchman, L. P. "The Origin of Human Rights: A Hegelian Perspective," Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 37, March 1984. Hobbes, T. De Civc. ed. Sterling P. Lamprecht. New York: Appleton足 Century-Crofts, Inc., 1949.

- - . Leviathan. New York: MacMillan, 1962. Lasco, J. and L. Williams. Political Theoly: Classic Writings, Contemp01'a1Y Views, New York: st. Martins, 1992. Lemos, R. M. Hobbes and Locke. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1978. Locke, J. The Second Treatise ofGovernment. ed. Thomas P. Reardon. New York: Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1952. Kavka, G. S. "Hobbes's War Against AU," Ethics. Vol. 93, Issue 2, January 1983. Simmons, A J. "Locke's State of Nature," Political Theory. Vol. 17, August 1989. Taylor, A.E. Thomas I-Iobbes. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1970.

17 ARENDT AND MACINTYRE ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT'S FAlLURE*

Andrew Janiak

Hampshire College

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. -Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy ofHistory Speaking far outside the realm of political theory, Donald Davidson once claimed that it is only upon some basic agreement that true clisagreement can be founded (Davidson). Though they represent clivergent strains-the continentaland the analytic-within contemporary philosophy, the interpretations of the Age of Enlight enment offered by Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre parallel one another in surprising ways. Each characterizes the "Rights of Man"proclaimedby Robespierre andJeffersonas empty, ungrounded and insufficiently protected to found the new moral and political order devised in Europe's 18th century revolutions. With this paral lel as a backdrop, I will develop a brief MacIntyrean critique of Arendt to bring her work into better focus. This critique claims Arendt is insensitive to some of the fantastic philosophical upheav als from Aristotle, St. Augustine and Aquinas to Kant, Diderot and Hume that led to the Enlightenment's ultimate demise. I then pro pose a quick Arendtian response to this cd ticism: wi th an addition of some philosophical work, with a quantitative change, Arendt's En lightenment work would satisfy the Maclntyrean argument I em ploy. It then becomes clear that though Arendt can respond to this argument through such quantitati ve changes, the Maclntyreanmight lack such a response to the Arendtian criticisms I propose. To satisfy Arendt, MacIntyre would be required to transform his work, to make not simply quantitative but qualitative, even fundamental, changes in Janiak is completing his last YCIlr ofstudy at Hlwillsitire Colli~ge. where he com:entmted ill philosophymId TXllitics. Alldrewis currently Editoroftize Five College Journal of Law and Society. He plans OIL pursuing a doctorate ill philosophy at the University of Michigan this fall. *Many thanks to Professors Meredith Michaels and Nicholas Xenos for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Episteme • Volume V • May 1994

ANDREW JANIAK

After Virtue. Though MacIntyre sees the Enlightenment project's failure as philosophical in nature, Arendt characterizes the emptiness of rights rhetoric born from the American and French revolutions as political in character. This Arendtian response to MacIntyre facilitates a deeper presentation of some of the more subtle points in Arendt's interpretation of the Enlightenment. From an Arendtian standpoint, MacIntyre mischaracterizes the very nature of the failure embodied in the Age of Enlightenment, the failure that she thought led to the rise of fascism, such as the Nazism she fled and fought throughout the early years of her life. I. Arendt's Critique of Rights Hunchback: "You know Marshall, Iused to be a Jew." Marshall: "Oh really? ... I used to be a hunchback." -Groucho Marx, Groucho at Carnegie Hall The European revolutions of the 18th century brought the proc lamation of a series of rights, such as the rights of man and the citizen in France and rights endowed in every human by their Creator in America. These were extensively explicated and critiqued by Arendt, particularly in the book that made her famous in America, The Origins of Totalitarianism. There, Arendt argues that though the newly established American and French nation-states introduced and claimed to foster human rights, historically they have protected only citizen's or national rights, such that the "loss of national rights in all instances entail[edl the loss of human rights," and, in turn, that human rights could be guaranteed only through "national emanci pation" (OT, pp. 299,291).1 As these citizenship rights were extended to increasingly large sections of European and American popula tions, assirnilationist-rnindedJews on the Continent gladly accepted the barmer of civil rights, as for them it represented the best bulwark against an ever-present European anti-semitism. By the close of the 18th century, bourgeois Jewry often exhibited a great faith, some what naive in Arendt's view, in their respective states and a willing ness to assimilate themselves into French or German cullure to demonstrate their allegiance to the nations that had recently em an 1 Cf. also Benhabib, S. "Hannah Arendt and the Redemptive Power of Narra tive," Social Research Vol. 57 Spring 1990; pp. 167-68.

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cipated them. 2 Jews were willing to "adjustin principle to everything and everybody," a sentiment that meant, in the Europe of the early 19th century, a willingness to accept emancipation and the newly established civil rights as assimilated members of European nation states (JP, p. 63). As Arendt demonstrates in her biography, Rahel Vamlzagm, the assimilationists, or parvenus, attempted both social and cultural integration into the European bourgeoisie on individual bases: each denied his or her Jewish identity and became faceless members of civil society (RV, pp. 26, 30, 85; cf. IF, p. 85). In this way, of course, assimilated Jews exemplified the condition of modernity: though they suffered communally at the hands of anti-semitism-that is, it was as Jews that they suffered-they chose to fight this oppression individually, apolitically, as atomized individuals. 3 At first, Arendt's Rahel first embraces this tactic of assimilation into German culture by attempting to renounce and to deny, even in the privateness of her diary, her Jewish identity. This attempt ultimately brings her face to face with a paradoxical and deeply disturbing reality: Rahel realizes that to truly assimilate into anti-semitic German or European cul ture, she must become an anti-semite. At this prospect, Rahel recoils and chooses instead to maintain her Jewishness in the face ofboth the anti-semitism of German culture and the many parvenus who fre ,quent her salon (RV, pp. 216, 224). This was, in Arendt's view, an admirable and conscious choice on Rahel's part. In contrast to Rahel's perseverance, many Jews gave in to assimilation, but this very assimilation, if taken to mean a complete integration into bourgeois Christian culture, and the loss of all Jewish characteristics, ended in failure. European Jews could not, despite their best efforts, relinquish their Jewishness. 4 Kurt Blumenfeld called this the "objec tive Jewish question," the inescapability of Judaism for European Jews (Blumenfeld in Young-Bruehl, p. 72). On a broader historical scale, Arendt's work demonstrates the ~ For the Jewish "faith" in European nation states, see Ron Feldman's introduc tion to IP, p. 27; for Arendt's comments, see IP, pp. 63-64. 3 For Arendt's view of the atomization prevalent in modernity, see He p. 5~ff, p.21Off· 4 Arendt writes of "the history of a hundred and fifty years of assimilatedJewry who performed an unprecedented feat: though proving all the time their non Jewishness, they succeeded in remaining Jews all the same" UP, p.64).

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truly dialectical dilemma of modem Jewry and its relation to the failure of the Enlightenment to establish a moral foundation for politics and a bulwark against recurrent bouts of anti-semitic vio足 lence throughout Europe. Under modernity, Jews joined and were swept up ina dialectical movement of great proportions: those Jews who rejected their given pariah status opted to become the assimi足 lated parvenus Rahel knew so welL The pariah Jews rejected the parvenu tactic of assimilation into European bourgeois culture as fervently as their assimilationist cousins defined themselves over and against the masses of Europe 's poor Jewry, especially its Ostjuden. Hence, an antithesis of identities and of social roles grew historically within the Jewish community. particularly for the Jews in Germany that remain Arendt's focus. These antithetical poles of Jewish history and identity were synthesized under Nazism, where all Jews, re足 gardless of social status, were rendered Jews per se and en masse, and murdered as such UP, p. 90). In the concentration camp. we see the final proof that the very pariah/parvenu distinction Jews struggled for two centuries to maintain proved, in the last analysis, irrelevant. 5 This history forms a centerpiece of the Enlightenment and its rights legacy as Arendt saw it, for the only rights available in Europe were national rights. and Jews, even the parvenus, never fully emerged as accepted na tional citizens. Here we reach the terrifying possi bility that. if stripped of their newly -found and still tenuous civil rights. the Jews would sit naked, rightless, vulnerable. On Arendt's view, the Nazis understood and exploited this peculiar situation of European Jewry, a result of the Enlightenment's limited protection of the peoples under its tutelage. Indeed, long before the Final Solution, Hitler's regime moved in the early 1930s to strip Jews of their civil rights as German citizens, which they knew would remove their "legal status" altogether, rendering Jews de facto and de jure rightless (OT, p. 296).6 In Arendt's estimation, the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of1935 violated not human but national rights (El, p.268). These political moves of the 30s paved the way, of course, for the rapid expulsion, forced concentration and final extermination of Germany' s 5 As Arendt writes in Eicl111Ul1l1l in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evt7 , for the Nazis, "aJew is aJew." (, Cf. also 贈/, p. 138: "In nearly all countries, anti-Jewish action started with stateless persons."

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and Europe's Jewish populations.7 It was always stateless Jews, and other so-called enemies of the Reich with refugee status, who met with their death first, for they lacked the only political protection available in Europe at that time. indeed the only protection available since the Enlightenment erupted (EI. p. 191 passim). It is, of course, with great irony that Arendt notes how Adolf Eichmann could only be tried before the Jerusalem court because he too was stateless, a mere foreign national in Argentina, a man unclaimed and unpro足 tected by the Federal Republic of Germany and left to face Israel's judgment (E/. p. 240). Here Arendt's critique of the Enlightenment and of the rights rhetoric it generated becomes clear: because of the solely national protection of rights, Jews and other refugees stripped oftheir citizen足 ship "had lost those rights which had been thought of and even defined as inalienable, namely the Rights of Man" (OT, p. 268). With respect to the masses of new refugees roaming Europe in the 1930s and early 1940s, Arendt demonstrates how the condition of modern Jewry became the condition of modernity for many Europeans, how the two were suddenly united in their stateless and rightless predica足 ment (JP. p. 20. 66). Arendt emphasizes unequivocally that the Enlightenment's failure to estabUsh and protect human rights set the precedent for this catastrophe. The holocaust brought an end to the cultural distinctions Jews had fostered among themselves, an end to Jewish hope for the future promised under civil emancipation in Europe, indeed the "end of the world" for European Jewry (El, p. 153). And perhaps most radically, it meant the end of the Age of Enlightenment and its legacy.

II. Macintyre's Interpretation of the Enlightenment With the publication ofAJter Virtue in 1981, Alasdair MacIntyre emerged as a strong critic of the contemporary scene in analytic moral philosophy, particularly of the moral precepts he thought we have inherited from the Aristotelian project of grounding morality in rationality and human nature. We see a close affinity between the Enlightenment critiques of MacIntyre and Arendt: both demonstrate 7 For these three stages in the Nazi program against European Jewry. d. El. chapters 4. 5 & 6.

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the emptiness of contemporary rights rhetoric in relation to the Enlightenment project of extending inalienable or natural Rights to hurnani ty. Though Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant or Jefferson took Rights to be inextinguishable, as the foundational moments of morality and politics, Arendt and MacIntyre both contend that such rights do not exist inherently and that they are dependent onpolitical communities and the social institutions that support them. 8 On a grand scale, Arendt and MacIntyre characterize the late-20th century as a "post" era: for MacIntyre "post-Enlightenment," for Arendt "post-tra ditional," an era that is witness to the sinking of Europe and the Americas into moral and intellectual chaos,9 into an age without authority, tradition (Arendt), or the necessary grounding in coherent views of hwnan nature (MacIntyre). Because of these parallels, I want to construct a criticism of Arendt's analysis from within MacIntyre's project, a critique centered on Arendt's view of the Enlightenment, pushing that analysis into greater focus and giving it greater clarity against the background of After Virtue. First, I will briefly outline MacIntyre's narrative of the Enlightenment. In After Virtue. MacIntyre delineates precisely how moral dis足 course fell into its present predicament of emptily asserting rights and moral precepts-largely inherited from Arlstotelianism and Christianity-without properly grounding them in coherent con足 ceptions of human nature and rationality. MacIntyre the Aristotelian tra vels, not surprisingly, to fourth century B. C. Athens to unearth the roots of our current condition. In Aristotelian ethics, phronesis, trans足 latable perhaps as practical reason (or wisdom),l0 is posited as the ability to distinguish good ends from imposters, to discern the proper aim of action (praxis) within a moral framework. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that intelligence [phronesis] is a state of grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about what is good or bad for a human being (NE, p. 154~ 1140b). g or, "The Decline of the Nation-state and the End to the Rights of Man;" J1 V, pp, 66-7. 69, passim, 9 For Maclntyre, this chaos is exemplified, in par~ in emotivism and its moral cousins: d. AV. chapter 1. passim. 10 Terence Irwin's translation of phronesis as "intelligence" migh~ given the contemporary usage of this term and its correlates. be rather misleading. Irwin recognizes the possible problems with this rendering of the term in his translation ofthe Nicomacflearl Ethics at pp. 412-13.

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This differs significantly from the contemporary notion of ratio nality an ability that uncovers the best route to achieve presupposed ethical aims; for Aristotle, phronesis itself proposes these aims (AV, pp.52-3). Aristotle also held a teleological view of human development: to remain healthy on the moral, intellectual and spiritual levels, one must progress through particular stages of growth from childhood through old age. Hence Aristotle might argue that Susan ought to, through phronesis pick those aims that we know contribute to the happiness of people a ther stage oflife-development. Though strenu ous exercise may be seen as beneficial at one stage of human life, it might not help an exhausted 80-year old to realize her telas. That is, phronesis distinguishes moral from immoral, or improper, aims through human teleology, through the view of human nature that demonstrates the proper endpoint of human life and the necessary steps we must take toward reaching our life climax. Finally, Aristotle outlines, in Macintyre' slanguage, various "moral precepts" to guide one toward one's true end, precepts that enable one to develop a virtuous character to guide one in realizing one's felos (A V, pp. 52-3). In MacIntyre's view of Aristotelian ethics, then, the three compo nents of morality derive meaning from their interrelation; separate one from the whole and all quickly lose their coherency and purpose (A V, pp.54-5). MacIntyre then demonstrates how western moral philosophy moved from this basic Aristotelianism, through the Christianity of Augustine and then Aquinas, into the 18th century and the Enlight enment, resting finally in its present form within contemporary analytic discourse and the wider Euro-American culture. ll He char acterizes contemporary culture as having retained only the moral precepts we inherited from the Greeks, as filtered through Christian moral doctrine and its revisions by Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume and Kant, as having lost the very support for those precepts: Aristotelian teleology and phronesis (A V, pp. 54-7). This current predicament stems, in Macintyre' sself-proclaimed "historicist" view. from trends already evident in France in 1640, the site of the fireplace I

11 For another broad, historically sensitive philosophical account of the relation of the Enlightenment to the rise of instrumental rationality, see Horkheimer M. and T. Adorno, Dinleefie of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1991.

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at which Descartes wrote his Meditations, and at the University of Padua, 'where Galileo fidgeted with his new telescopes and peered at the heavens in an astonishing new way. Here, of course, we find the birthplace of modern science. With it developed a purely instrumen tal view ofhuman rationality, a view that replaced phronesis with the Reason that founded science, developed the calculus of Leibniz and N ewton, led to the founding of the American and French republics, and brought to humanity the industrial revolution. 12 This newratio nality presupposed as already established all human ends and goods, and found the most efficient method of obtaining them, but itself could find no ends (A V, p. 54-7).13 In this analysis, Macintyre rightly po~ts to Hume, whose Treatise on Human Nature appears a good century after this new view ofreason takes shape, as a philoso pher who took reason to exhibit solely an instrumental function, with science and mathematics asits obvious territory. 14Reason, for Hume, is "the slave of the passions,"lS a mere efficient calculator of the best Ineans to already-determined moral ends (TBN, §III, 3, 3, p. 415). Hence, Hume famously, or perhaps infamously, writes: "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger" (THN, §III, 3, 3, p. 416). This remained significant within western philosophy well into the 19th century, as Nietzsche testifies in 1886 in Beyond Good and Evil, when he claims that "reason is only an instrument" (BGE, §191). The death of phronesis paralleled the equally significant philo sophicalloss of teleology. Aristotle might counsel, for instance, to eat in moderation, for it will prove difficult to remain in the proper physical state in old age if one eats voraciously in one's youth. 12. Interestingly, Arendt chronicles the perhaps parallel development of praxis into modern actior!, a purely instrumental notion whereby the performance itself is irrelevant Cf. HC, pp. 228-30. 1:1 Arendt's discussion of modern science and of the development of modern mathcmntics via instrumental rationality parallels in many ways MacIntyre's own presentation. C£' HC, "The Discovery of the ArchimedeanPoin~" and also p. 268ft. 11 Poul Eidclberg suggests that Hobbes can be seen as Hume's historical predecessor in this respect. (For his view of Hobhes, he relies on the Leviathan.) He bemoi:lns the implicationsofthe view that reason is impotent in the face of emotion for 20th century psychology "The Malaise of Modern Psychology," The Journal of J>HycJlOlogy Vol. 126 1992; p. 109ff. lr, For more on Hume and his 18th century rivals and mentors among the Anglo philosophicnl community, d. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics. New York: Macmillan, 1966; chapter 12.

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Because we modems have lost this perspecti ve on the proper human end-state, and even of the successive stages through which human life ought to proceed, the mere injunction to eat in moderation lacks coherency: it requires rational argument if it is to be followed properly, and it is precisely this that it now must do without. Macintyre notes, however, that we are not left utterly stranded, that we have retained our inheritance from the Enlightenment, a bag of rights and of Reason supporting them, but in his view this represents a rather problematic inheritance, even a dangerous one (AV, pp. 66-7). MacIntyre argues that we have retained the notion of the Rights of Man developed in the 18th century, but now lack any coherent, rational arguments demonstrating both their existence and their necessary moral and social function in late-20th century west足 ern society (AV, 66fj). Yet here is the Enlightenment paradox: it simultaneously removed all authority, all foundation, from under the medieval moral and political order, and attempted, in part through the concept of "rights," to found a new social order without any of the old philosophical foundation. As Arendt writes in "What is Authority?": the revolutions of the modern age appear like gigan足 tic attempts to repair these foundations, to renew the broken thread of tradition, and to restore, through founding new political bodies, what for so many centuries had endowed the affairs of men with som e measure of dignity and greatness (BPF, p. 140). Put in crude tenns, the predicament that Arendt would surely recogruze 16 is that we lack God, the Catholic Church and Aristotelian teleology and phronesis to ground our current moral views, to serve as the foundation and guarantor of what have become hu man rights: we have dismantled the foundation but somehow retained bits and pieces of the roof. Hence, the Enlightenment failed to provide the necessary philosophical grounding for the new order. 17 Rights are, of 16 See, e.g., her discussion in "What is Authority" of the end to the Roman stabilizing trinity of religion, authority and tradition (BPE, p. 140). 17InOn Revolution Arendt characterizes modern revolutions assa fundamental, so different from other "mere changes" in political life, that they constitute for her "beginnings" of new orders (OR, p. 21).

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cuurse, protected by and developed from within legal orders, but MacIntyre notes that they lack coherent philosophical support, and therefore could not and cannot serve as the basis for the new moral and political order. Equally, they cannot save us today.18 III. A Quick MacIntyrean Response to Arendt

N ow I can bring into focus a MacIntyrean criticism of Arendt's work on rights and the Enlightenment as a rhetorical device to better explicate that work Both philosophers begin their critiques with the contention that human rights, since the Second World War, have failed to ground moral and political life ,have proven unsuccessful in protecting Vulnerable peoples, and perhaps even lack sufficient coherency and support to bode well for the future. Once we have seen this affinity between their work, the possibility of criticism arises, for while MacIntyre might find much in the theoretical sections of The Origins of Totalitarianism that he concurs with, he might ultimately chide the historically-minded Arendt for failing to sufficiently explicate the deeply rooted philosophical forces within western culture that have led to the emptiness of current moral and political rhetoric. It is precisely because Arendt would be sympa thetic to such an account that MacIntyre's disappOintment and subsequent critique might arise. For Macintyre, both Europe's philo sophical and historical pasts must be understood if contemporary philosophers are to develop the necessary tools to critique, under mine and replace the current debates over rights with debates centered on virtues. Arendt is by no means ignorant of the history of philosophy, far from it; yet from MacIntyre's perspective, her his torj~al work in (e.g.) The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in len/salern is far too caught up in social and political details to notice the broad philosophical picture he implores us to consider. Though she is clearly aware of the death of phronesis and the demise of Aristotelian teleology, she fails to provide this philosophical back ground in her analysis of the Enlightenment's failure. This failure was ltl.ade possible not simply by European historical events, but also by centuries of the slow erosion of our philosophical heritage, 18 Arendt argues that the Declaration of the Rights of Man was indeed intended to found a new political order for France, and perhaps even for Europe (OR. p. 109).

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leaving only the foam of empty rights at the brim of our collective cup. Thus, I do not take MacIntyre-the-historicist to reject the politi cal history Arendt provides as irrelevant, but as insufficient, requir ing more philosophical analysis and more work in the history of philosophy.19 For MacIntyre, a historico-philosophical understand ing of this event will secure us, on a communal level, from contem porary "barbarism," the very barbarism that Arendt spent her life chronicling and fighting (AV, p. 263). This MacIntyreanresponse to Arendt's work is, I think, suscep tible to what one might call a quantitative solution on Arendt's part. Precisely because the Arendt of The Human Condition is aware of the rise of instrumental rationality, the use of reason by Descartes and Galileo and the end to Aristotelian teleology and the Greek virtues, she might integrate more of these philosophical elements into her critique of the Enlightenment developed in The Origins ofTotalitari anism and elsewhere. As Arendt provides the sort of political history MacIntyre characterizes as important, even crucial, to an under standing of our present predicament, her work requires philosophi cal supplementation to satisfy MacIntyre's criticism. In fact, On Revolution looks similar to the sort of histolico-philosophical work MacIntyre alludes to-here Arendt recognizes the very sort of "phi losopher-influence" on political events MacIntyre chides social his torians for down-playing in their scholarship: By the same token, I am inclined to think that it was precisely the great amount of theoretical concern and conceptual thought lavished upon the French Revo lution by Europe's thinkers and philosophers which conhibuted decisively to its world-wise success, de spite its disastrous end (OR, pp. 219-20). This MacIntyrean push on Arendt reveals that her work on the Enlightenment could be supplemented by more extensive philo sophical exegesis on her part.

19 For MacIntyre, of course, unless we see our p hilosophica\ ills, we will not see a new Aristotelianism as the cure to these ills.

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IV. Arendt's Counter-Critique

Deutschland, Deutschland Uber alles was, I fear, the end of German Philosophy. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols Arendt is famous for resisting labels. Is she a Jew, existentialist, Zionist, Nietzschean, modernist, postmodernist, political theorist, Heideggerian, or historian?20 In response to Gershom Scholem's question on how to place her, Arendt herselffamously wrote: "If I can be said to 'have come from anywhere,' it is from the tradition of German phil'o sophy" (Encounter, in Hinchman, p. 435). As might be expected, some recent commentators, such as Dana Villa, argue that her work has strong Heideggerian and Nietzschean elements, reject足 ing, for example, the claim that she represents a mOdern-day Aristo足 telian, a view apparently defended by Habermas in the past (Villa, 274ff). Jeffrey Isaac, in turn, chides Villa for ignoring Arendt's extensive work on "anti-Semitism, imperialism, the Holocaust, the Stalinist usurpation of revolutionary politics, the Cold War balance of terror, the' crIses of the republic,'" work he apparently considers far more important than the philosophical exegesis in Between Past and future Dnd '! he Human Condition that Villa must rely heavily on for his interpretation (Isaac, p. 535). Without attempting to settle this question-which, in part, seems interesting only in the context of the modern-day Arendt industry within academia-I think it fair to say that she had significant political and historical concerns throughout much of her mature life. I refer to this problem of placement only because part of Macintyre's criticism above derives from my charac足 terization, from what I think might be his perspective, of Arendt as an "historicist," or at least as an historically-minded philosopher. I will now generate an Arendtian response to MacIntyre. In doing so 2(1 For <1 discussion of Arendt and existentialism, see 1. P. Hinchman and S. K. Hinchm<1n, "Arendt's Debt to Jaspers," ReviewofPolit.ics Vol. 531991; pp. 435-68. For <1 discuilsion of Arendt's Zionism, see Young-Bruehl. Hmma/! Arendt. For a discus足 sion of tho Nictzschean elements in Arendt's work, see "Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Niulr.:sche. ,md the AestheticizationofPoliticalAction," Political TheoryVol. 201992; pp. 274fl Also, Benhabib claims that at least with respect to certain issues, Arendt is <1 "political modernist," (p. 168).

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I will forego the rather obvious move of having her reject the historicist label a MacIntyrean might pin on her in favor of a more detailed, critical response concerning philosophical methodology and, specifically, the proper mode of analysis for dealing with the Enlightenment's failure, an event that, in part, led to the barbarism both Arendt and MacIntyre identify as a principal component of contemporary intellectual and moral life. As noted, MacIntyre explicitly adopts an historicist label: he considers philosophical arguments and developments within a broad historical context, remaining sensitive to significant cultural diver gence among the British, French, German, Dutch and other philoso phers whose work he represents. For an Arendtian, this approach is far more admirable than the ahistorical, and possibly more narrow, exegetical work of Anglo-American analytic philosophers, MacIntyre's colleagues. Hence the Arendtian criticism of MacIntyre concerns neither the relevance of history for philosophy, nor the success of the Enlightenment, but is deeper and more substantial than these, involving the very nature ofthe failure they both see in the 18th century articulation of Rights as the guarantors of a stable moral system, indeed as the very found a tion of politics for Europeans and Americans. For MacIntyre, this is principally a philosophical failure, albeit an historically grounded one. This claim becomes the crux of my Arendtian critique of MacIntyre. In Arend.t's view, the divorce of phHosophy from politics by Plato, a separation upheld by nearly every western philosopher in what she calls "the tradition," met swiftly with its demise in the mid 19th century with Marx's last thesis on Feuerbach: "The philoso phers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it" (Marx, p. 158}.21 Though she may feeinostalgiafor what we have lost of the philosophical legacy of Plato and Aristotle,22 Arendt does welcome a politically-minded, histOrically-specific phi losophy, an enterprise combining masses of historical data with 11 In Arendt's view, serious difficulties and confusions have resulted from philosophers' ignorance of the political: for e.g., considering freedom to be <l question of the relations among the will, thought, and action, a purely philosophicol question divorced from political realities. Cf. BPF, "What is Freedom?" p. 145ff. 22 On Arendt's nostalgia for pieces of the p hilosop hical tradition she chronicles that now lay dead, see Villa, D.R. "Postmodernismand the Public Sphere," American Political Science Review Vol. 86, Issue 3 1992; p. 719.

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broad philosophical insights ,integrating critiques ofindividual mem bers of the Nazi party with long exegeses of the basic underpinnings of Nazism. Arendt's critique of the Enlightenment must be placed within this framework, for she considers the failure of the Judeo Christian tradition in the 20th century to be political innature, and not philosophical, as in MacIntyre's work. In investigating totalitarian ism, the climax of this moral collapse, Arendt writes that "the event illuminates its own past," for her a political past: her characters are not principally Hume, Diderot and Kant, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, but Goring, Himmler and Eichmann, Dreyfus, Rhodes and Lazare (Young-Bruehl, p. 203).23 It is here that I can construct Arendt's principal critique of MacIntyre: he reads Kant but not Hirnmler, Hurne but not Rhodes, a fact that blinds him to the fantastic political failure of the Enlighten ment to protect, through rights, the Jews and other peoples that became the focal point of the Nazi genocidal program. For Arendt, MacIntyre does not venture sufficiently far from traditional philoso phy into the tombs of modern history, into anti-semitism, imperial ism, racism, into the volumes that chronicle the concentration camps, where the JudeO-Christian legacy of founding morality on rights was slowly but surely murdered. I must emphasize here "sufficiently far," for it is precisely MacIntyre's first steps into historically-based philosophy that open him to Arendt's criticism. It would surely be useless. if not comedic, to criticize, say, W.V.O. Quine for ignoring relevant political events in his .investigations into set theory or symbolic logic. But MacIntyre takes seriously the notion of his tori cism,24 he considers the Enlightenment's failure to be historically specific, and would presumably criticize his colleagues for ignoring relevant cultural differences among 18th century philosophers, for instance, or for missing the historical development of whatis consid ered rational support for a philosophical position. It is precisely this 2JThis is not to say, of course, that because the failure was political, philosophy is irrl'ievant for Arendt. She claimed, in fact, that philosophy too is not entirely free of guilt for the Holocaust: "Not of course, in the sense that Hitler somehow had something to do with Plato. ". Butin the sense that occidental philosophy never had a pure conceptof poli tics and could not have such a concept because it always spoke of Man and never dealt with human plurality" (Arendt in Young-Bruehl, p. 255). 2·j See especially AV, chapter 18, where MacIntyre explicitly proclaims his historicism.

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that makes Arendt's criticism of MacIntyre's work so powerful, for

. he largely ignores the historical movements to which he claims to be

sensitive. I do think I can develop a MacIntyrean response to this criticism, in part because he has been criticized along somewhat similar lines by Abraham Edel, of whom MacIntyre writes: The gist of his criticism is ... that I focus too much attention upon the level of explicit theorizing, articu足 lated concepts, and the stories told about their condi足 tionby various peoples and not enough on the actual social and institutional life of those peoples (A V, p. 271). To Edel's sentiment MacIntyre first retorts that social history must be far more sensitive to theoretical development than it appears to be at present; his work is a step in this direction. Secondly, he admits that Edel is in part correct in his criticism, for the narrative of After Virtue, i.e. the story of western moral philosophy and its apparent downfall, would certainly benefit from more "social and institutional history," history that, MacIntyre admits, he largely presupposes in this project (A V, pp. 271-2). Frorn MacIntyre's view, Isuppose,he could have said far more ofHume'sScotland,Aristotle's Athens, the founding of the American and French republics, the industrial revolution, and pe!haps even the rise of fascism. He thinks that more history would strengthen his narrative; hence he takes Edel's criticism to be principally quantitative in character. This response to Edel allows me to sharpen what I think would be Arendt's critique ofthemethodology impli cit in After Virtue. I take Macintyre and Arendt to agree in principle that rights rhetoric, both that prevalent in the 18th century, and its contemporary form, to be lacking in validity, or to be what we might call empty. For MacIntyre, this emptiness is philosophical, owing its existence to the failure of moral philosophers to ground rights in. human nature and human rationality, to make rights and the moral precepts they entail and presuppose philosophically substantial, strong enough to weather the coming storm. Arendt rejects this notion, for she unequivocally states that human rights never found sufficient grounding, not in

ANDREW JANIAK

human nature and rationality, but in politics, for the era of the 1930s, that period of political disintegration [that] suddenly and unexpectedly made hundreds of thousands of hu足 man beings homeless, stateless, outlawed, and un足 wanted ... could only have happened because the Rights of Man, which had never been philosophically established but merely formulated, which had never been politically secured but merely proclaimed, have, in their traditional form, lost all validity (0, p. 447). From Arendt's viewpoint, in thinking the emptiness of rights is philosophicat, MacIntyre commits a qualitative, indeed fundamental error, one not amenable to repair through the mere quantitative measures he proposes in response to Edel's attack. For an Arendtian,. After Virtue represents a deep mischaracterization, not only of the Enlightenment project, but of our prese:lt moral and political condition, of the post-tradition era we now inhabit. For it is not the present emotivist culture, as lvlacIntyr<;;! claims, that both signals and constitutes the Enlightenment's failure: it is Auschwitz.

WORKS CITED

[He] Arendt, H. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958.

- - . [OR] On Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1963. - - . [En Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality ofEvil. New York: Penguin, 1964.

- - . "Eichmann in Jerusalem: Reply to Gershom Scholem." Encounter Vol. 22, Issue 1, 1964.

--. [BPF] Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin, 1968.

ARENDT AND MAcINTYRE

- - . [RV] Rahel Varnhagen: The life of a Jewish Woman. Trans. R. Winston and C. Winston. New York Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich,1974. - - . rOT] The Origins ofTotalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975.

- - . [IP] The Jew As Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modem Age. ed. R. Feldman. New York: Random House, 1978. - - . [LM] The Life oftheMind. NewYork Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978.

[NE] Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985. Benhabib, S. "Hannah Arendt and the Redemptive Power of Narrative." Social Research Vol. 57, Spring 1990. Davidson, D. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." Inquiries Into Truth and Inte11'retation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Eidelberg, P. "The Malaise of Modern Psychology." The Joumal of Psychology Vol. 126, 1992. Hinchman, L. P. and S. K. Hinchman. "Arendt's Debt to Jaspers." Review of Politics VoL 53, 1991. Bonnie H. "The Politics of Agonism." Political Theory Vol 21, 1993. Horkheimer, M. and T. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1991.

[THN] Hume, D. A Tl'eatise on Human Nature. ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Isaac, J. "Situating Hannah Arendt on Action and Politics." Political Theory Vol. 21, 1993.

[SHE] MacIntyre, AA Short History ofEthics. New York Macmillan, 1966.

ANDREW JANIAK

[A V] After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984 (2nd edition).

--.lWJ] Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Marx, K. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. ed. D. McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

[BGE] Nietzsche, F. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to aPhilosophy ofthe Futu1"e. trans. R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin, 1990. Villa, D. R. "Beyond Good and Evil: Arendt, Nietzsche, and the Aestheticization of Political Action." Political Theory Vol. 20, 1992: - - . "Postmodernism and the Public Sphere." American Political Science Review Vol. 86, Issue 3,1992. Young-Bruehl, E. Hannah Arendt: For Love afthe World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

35 THE ORIGIN OF AN INQUIRY:

EVOLUTIONARY EPISTEMOLOGY IN JAMES' PRAGMATISM

J. Ellis Perry IV

University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth

"Much struck." That was Darwin's way of saying that something he observed fascinated him, arrested his attention, surprised or puzzled him. The words "much struck" riddle the pages of both his Voyage ofthe Beagle and his The Origin of Species, and their appearance should alert the reader that Darwin was saying something important. Most of the time, the reader can infer that something Darwin had observed was at variance with what he had expected, and that his fai th in some alleged law or general principle had been shaken, and this happened repeat edly throughout his five year sojourn on the H.M.S. Beagle. The "irritation" of his doubting the theretofore necessary truths of natu ral history was Darwin's stimulus to inquiry, to creative and thor oughly original abductions. "The influence of Darwin upon philosophy resides in his ha ving conquered the phenomena of life for the principle of transi tion, and thereby freed the new logic for application to mind and morals and life" (Dewey p. 1). While it would be an odd fellow who would disagree with the claim of Dewey and others that the American pragmatist philosophers were to no small extent influenced by the Darwinian corpus,! few have been willing to make the case for Darwin's influence on the pragmatic philosophy of William James. Philip Wiener, in his well known work, reports that Thanks to Professor Perry's remarks in his definitive work on James, "the influence of Darwin was both early and profound, and its effects crop up in unex pected quarters."

Perry is a senior at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmoltth. Hc will join the Cwtre Jor Philosophy, Technology and Society at the University of AberdcC1l, Scotland this jaIl, where he will commence reading Jor a1l M. Wt. in Philosophy. I There is no dearth of references for the impact of Darwin upon philosophy, American or otherwise.

Episteme • Volume V • May 1994

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But that being said, Wiener proceeds to "trace James' use of the Darwinianideaofevolutionin Uames'] magnum opus, ThePl'inciples ofPsychology," beyond which tomes Wiener felt no need to trespass (as is clearly evinced by Wiener's choice of sources and citations) (Wiener, p. 104). It is neither my intention to discuss why Wiener decided to confine his investigation of James' Darwinism to The Principles, nor whether Wiener was indeed justified in that decision. Yet while reading the collectionofJames' 1906-1907 Lowell Institute lectures (thereafter published as Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways afThinking) , Iwas "muchstruck" by their Darwinianfeel, by their Darwinian-sounding phrases, and by their general resonance with the theory of evolution via descentwithmodification-"natural selection." Whatever Wiener's reason for forsaking Pragmatism足 and I suspect some over-reliance on the advice of R.B. Perry had something to do with it-it seems to me that he ought not have. Though Wiener's book is in many respects the seminal work on the relationship between Darwin and the founders of the American philosophical tradition known broadly as pragmatism, it is not the only work that treats of this subject, and Wiener is not alone in his virtual abandonment of Pragmatism in favor of other sources for insights to James' dalliance with Darwin. Cynthia Eagle Russett, in her Da1ilJin In America: The Intellectual Response 1865-1912, cites Pragmatism only once,2 and Peter J. Bowler neglects Pragmatism entirely. thereafter offering only the most pithy citations from James' Principles. And while Michael Ruse (in his stimulating Taking Darwin Seriously) was considerably more generous in his treatment of James than either Russett or Bowler-Ruse actually cites Pragmatism in his bibliography-he, too, did not apparently find the Lowell Institute lectures as interesting a source for James' Darwinism as I have. The important question that this raises is: Are these authors justified in leaving Pragmatism out ojtheirpot'tt'ait ofJames as aDarwin足 influenced philosopher? And while this question is quite germane to my present agenda, I propose to answer it only by way ofoffering my own celebration of what seems to me to be James' genuine evolution足 2 James: "To determine a thought's meaning, we need only consider what conduct it is fitted to produce." To her credit, she chose a passage which has a good Darwinian word in it, that is, "fitted." The means-end relationship here is consistent with my observations about James' Darwinian thinking, apropos adaptation, adaptive traits, &c.

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ary epistemology.3 Should I succeed in convincing the reader that there is much Darwinian thought in James' Pragmatism, and more importantly, that James' remarks on common sense are best appre足 ciated when read from a Darwinian point of view, then I feel that I will have demonstrated that the above mentioned treatments of James are, on this head, deficient. Some perambulatory remarks are necessary: I believe that Darwinian evolution may be an invaluable way to frame what James had to say about, among other things, common sense. While Wiener has focused almostexc1usively onhow Darwin's work influenced James' physiological psychology-and I think Wiener implies: by that route, James' philosophy-I hope to show how James' thoughts on common sense can best be appreciated if one thinks about them in terms of Darwinian evolution. It is, of course, too easy to impose upon James evolutionary ideas which could scarcely be called outgrowths of James' reading of Origin (&c.); and to this extent these would not be, properly speaking. Darwinian in origin. I have been careful not to use (e.g.) post-evolutionary synthe足 sis ideas about molecular genetics to bring out the "evolutionism" in James' pragmatism-even when these ideas genuinely resonate with the spirit of Darwin's own evolutionary theories. Pragmatism has long been esteemed as one of the classics of this nation's indigenous philosophy. If our appreciation of Pragmatism is to survive, if the slim tome is not to become extinct from the shelves of college bookstores-or from syllabi-then we might wish to consider the advantages of adapting our reading of it-in spite of Wiener (et al.). I. Evolutionary Epistemology: What is it?

The history of the use of the word' evolution' is itself interesting; and were it not question-begging I would begin by saying that the word has undergone considerable evolution before and since Dar足 3 Ruse rejects thatJ ames ever adieu Ie ted an "eval u Honary ep istemology." This, however, has as much to do with disagreements about what precisely "evolutionary epistemology" is, as it does with (a) what James had to say about knowledge, ( b) whatJames had to say abou t evolution and Darwin and (c) whatJames meant when he said it!

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win.4 For our purposes, we may define' evolution' simply as achange in form or behavior over time. To explain "evolutionary epistemology" is a somewhat easier task, thanks to the new Blackwell '5 Companion to Epistemology, which devotes three pages to the subject. Excerpts from the first two paragraphs (for our present purpose) do an admirable job of summing it up: This is an approach to the theory of knowledge that sees an important connection between the growth of knowledge and biological evolution. An evolution ary epistemolOgist claims that the development of human knowledge proceeds through some natural selection process, the best example of which is Darwin's theory of biological natural selection. The three major components of the model of natural selec tion are variation, selection and retention ... [T]hose variations that perform useful functions are selected, while those that do not are not selected ... In the modem theory of evolution, genetic mutations pro vide the (random, non-directed] variations ... the environment provides the filter of selection, and re production provides the retention ... Evolutionary epistemology applies this blind variation and selec ti ve retention model to the growth of scientific knowl edge and to thought processes in general (Blackwell, p.122). The "evolution" part is sometimes meant quite literally (d. Steven Toulmin), while others intend only that knowledge, knowledge acquisition, "belief fixing," obtain in an evolutionary sort of way: Beliefs vary. and these differing beliefs "compete" for limited attentional resources, for scarce cognitive space, for some functional role in our lives. Some of these beliefs, owing to their present fitness -Le.: their tried-and-true value in our lives-fare the struggle for survival better than other beliefs; these beliefs are the ones that are kept-and vvhich go on to support the production of other beliefs, which will ensemble prOVide the firmament for future abductions. 4 Curiously, Darwin does not use the word "evolution" once in the first edition (1859) of Origin. The closest he comes is the cognate "evolved "-it is the last ward ill tlze book.

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Literal application of the theory of evolution to epistemic matters is fraught with difficulties: First, "knowledge" is lumped together with the set"all organic beings" and then the laws believed to obtain for the laUer are applied to the former. A less objectionable exploita足 tion of evolutionary principles (as described above) is as a model for how persons fix beliefs (or, for how beliefs seem to get fixed), since the principles of evolutionS are taken strictly heuristically. The claim, then, is that the value of our reading James' Pragma足 tism is enhanced if we understand it as an attempt to articulate a theory ofknowledge which is based inpart on the Darwinian model of evolution. 6 I will endeavor to unearth for the reader key passages in the chapter on common sense which support my claim that James intended his audience at the Lowell Institute to be thinking about Darwin and his principles of biological evolution. I am assuming that James accepted Darwinism, accepted the argument that species evolved from a single common ancestor, that he rejected creationism as well as Lamarckism (&c.) as alternative accounts of the origin of species. A good question to ask at the outset, then, is this: What sorts

ofbeliefs about the world would someonewho accepted Darwinian evolution be likely to have? And one sort of answer is this: uniformitarianism and actualisltL. II. "Uniformitarianism" and "Actualism" Without going into great detail, it should be recalled that the way for Darwin's evolutionary model and mechanism was paved in part by the geologists of the earlier part of that century, who, challenging Usher's pronouncement that the world was created by God in the year 4004 B.C., attempted: (1) to establish that the age of the earth was much greater than 5 While there is much agreement within the field. evolutionary biologists (to include molecular geneticists working on evolutionary problems). there is still much disElgreement about (e.g.. ) whether natural selection oc neutral drift is the leading cause ofevalu Hon. how species ought to be qualified. &c. It would be wrong to believe tha t there is one and only one" evol u tionary theory." I am gra teful tha ~ for the purpose of this paper. I shall not need to trespass too far beyond the well足 established and generally accepted core of post-evolutionary synthesis thought. 6 An additional daim is. of course, implied, namely that Wiener (et al.) erred by not reading Pragmatism with Darwin in mind.

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that affirmed by ecclesiastical authority, and (2) that the physical characteristics of the earth were the result of natural phenomena, and not supernatural megaphenomena. The rejection ofvarious "Vulcanist" and UN eptunian" catastrophic theories was made possible chiefly through the efforts of James Hutton and Charles Lyell? whose separate efforts combined in time for Darwin to have a world which was both old enough and inher ently dynamic enough to be the stage for evolution. According to uniformitarianism, "processes now seen by humans to operate could have operated when humans were not watching." (Ridley, p. 43). Uniformitarianism was, among other things, an argument against the necessity of supernatural causes. The earthquakes and volca noes, storms and mud slides that now occur throughout the world have probably always gone on; and given enough time, these forces could have molded the present landscape like so much putty. There was no need to postulate God's creative hand in shaping the moun tains, in carving out the valleys; time and the mundane physical forces such as those now known could have given our planet its complexion. Darwin betrays his uniformitarianism in Voyage, when he relates his experience of witnessing an earthquake while at Concepcion: A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associa tions: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid -one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced. (VB, p. 303).8 Do we find any evidence that James espoused the uniformitarian hypothesis? Yes, though admittedly, trivially so; it would be more strange for a man of science such as James to not have accepted Lyelliangeology. Be that as it may, there is one passage in "Pragma 7 My chief source of information about Hutton, Lyell and the birth of historical geography has been The DiscovenJ of Time. Consult index for pertinent passages. 8 I think that it is interesting that Peirce, also a child of the 19th century's "evolutionism," wrote: "That single events should be hard and unintelligible, logic will permit without difficulty: we do not expect to make the shock of a personally experienced earthquake appear natural and reasonable by any account of cogita tion" (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined, 1892).

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tism and Common Sense" that clearly suggests that James wished to remind his audience of the value of unifonnitarian theories as such, apart from their well-known application in historical geology: New truths are ... resultants of new expeliences and of old truths combined and mutually modifying one another. And since this is the case ofchanges ofopinions

oftoday, there is not reason to assume that it has not been so at all times (p. 78). That is: the habits of mind, the peculiarities of mental life, the way in which persons think about the world, has not changed. But why should it be important for James to show that the way men and women think in 1907 is not different from the way men and women thought in 18077 1707? 7077 It is important, as we shall see, because James is to play upon the Darwinian theme of descent with modifi足 cation, upon the idea of inheritance. This germ of uniformitarian thought, then, may be counted as our first bit of evidence in favor of James' use of evolutionary principles in and throughou t Pragmatism. The second edge of the anti-catastrophic sword is actualism. While uniformitarianism is a statement about the kinds of forces (natural, common) which given sufficient time have the power to cause great change, actualism is a statement about the magnitude of those forces. For example, the uniformitarian hypothesis would explain the denudation of the Weald9 by the action of the waves; but it is the actualist hypothesis that argues against the occurrence of a "single diluvian wave." There is no need to invoke forces greater in magnitude than those we actually observe; all of the forces of change are publicly knowable, and these observable forces are sufficient to account for all historical change. On this head Darwin had written: as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modifica足 tion in their structure (OS, p. 285). 9 The Weald is a horseshoe-shaped tract of land on the eastern coast ofEngland. due west of Dover.

J. ELLIS PERRY IV

[The actualist hypothesis having been flushed-out, Darwin later fleshes it out:] If, then, we knew the rate at which the sea commonly

wears away a line of cliff of any given height, we could measure the time requisite to have denuded the Weald. Hence, under ordinary circumstances, I con足 clude that for a cliff 500 feet inheight, a denudation of one inch per century for the whole length would be an ample allowance (OS, p. 285). Statements such as these abound in Origin, and perhaps it was to one such passage that James was referring when he wrote: But when we look back, and speculate as to how the common-sense categories may have achieved their wonderful supremacy, no reason appears why it may not have been by a process just like that by which ... Darwin let al.] achieved [his] similar triumphs in more recent times. In other words, [the common足 sense categories] may have been successfully discov足 ered by prehistoric geniuses ... [the common-sense categories] may have been verified by the immediate facts of experience which the first fitted; and then from fact to fact and from man to man they may have spread, until all language rested on them and we are notincapable ofthinking naturally in any other terms. Such a view would only follow the rule that has proved elsewhere so fertile, [namely], of assuming the vast and remote to conform to laws of formation that we can observe at work in the small and near (P, p.83).

This is as explicit a reference to actualism as one could hope to find in any non-geological, non- evolutionary tract-but why would James make it? Why would he wish to implant in the minds of his audience the idea that the magnitude of those forces "that we can observe at work in the small and near" would be sufficient to bring our brute common sense from a remote age into the present? If we

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embrace my hypothesis-that James was thinking seriously about Darwin and evolution when he articulated his "pragmatism"-then the answer is plain. As the Weald was made by the sustained, gentle lapping of the sea upon the shore, so too has the mind of man been made by the sustained attempts of our somewhat hairier forebears to come to grips with the rude contingencies of life. The "booming, buzzing" world which challenges us every day, confronts us at every tum, is the same "world" in which our antecedents were immersed, just as it is the same sea which has long nibbled away at the chalk cliffs of Dover. The net effect of this ceaseless tide of experience upon the human intellect is a brain, a nervous system, a mind peculiarly adequated to this "red in tooth and claw" natural world. Not only does James here deftly dispatch of any lingering transcendental a priori-isms, but he provides a thoroughly naturalistic account of the origin of common sense. If this is a fair appraisal of what James was really up to, then, we too may concede that James was to some extent mindful of the effects of inheritance on the one hand and differential fitness on the other. In other words, James would have to have been thinking about descent with modification, mitigated by some form of (natural?) selection against disutility. III. Natural selection

What would be the features of a genuine evolutionary epistemology? Again, ifthe "epistemology" itself only uses "evolutionary" concepts as a model, then we must only be able to analogize epistemological concepts into evolutionary ones, and then apply the theory of evolu足 tion-in this case, Darwin's theory-to the epistemological con足 cepts. How convincing the theory of knowledge is will be a function of (a) how well the paradigm retains its integrity, and (b) how well the paradigm works for the ideas therein treated. That is, an evolu足 tionary epistemology can fail to be either "evolutionary" or much of a theory of knowledge if, on the one hand, the model of evolution is changed too radically in order to accommodate the epistemologist's agenda, or, on the other hand, if there is little payoff from the application of the evolutionary model. Since Darwin explained evolution by way of the mechanism of

J. ELLIS PERRY IV

natural selection, the most important aspect of any so-called "Dar足 winian epistemology" is the application of this mechanism to episte足 mological constructs (i.e., beliefs, ideas, the relations between these and "truth," and the whole host of terms the epistemologist uses), We must therefore begin by articulating what "natural selection" means to the evolutionary biologist, and Ridley has defined it thus: natural selection: Process by which the forms of an organism in a population that are best adapted to the environment increase in frequency relative to less well-adapted forms over a number of generations. (Ridley, p. 638), In Pragmatism, the beliefs take the place of "forms of an organism," and everything else in the definition remains the same. Therefore, the position of James for which I am arguing is this: That some of the beliefs of individuals are best adapted to the environment of those indi viduals, and that as a result of differential fitness of these beliefs, their frequency in the population will tend to increase relative to the frequency of other beliefs in the population as a whole. In order for natural selection (in the biological sense) to work, three fadorsmust obtain. Weneed now to present these, and then see if our epistemology can be squared with them. They are: . (1) characters of organisms must be variable; e.g., no two gimffe necks are exactly the same length, at that there is a naturally occurring continuum of the length of giraffe necks; (2) these characters must be heritable; e.g., the genes/ gene complex responsible for the character here defined as "giraffe neck" must be able to be passed from parents to offspring; and (3) the genotype (genes for characters) must have the effect of differential fitness, when expressed in the phenotype (physical form); e.g., the slight differences in length of the giraffe neck must place some individuals at an advantage, and others at a disadvantage, relative to the frequency of necks of certain lengths in the population. Here again we must extrapolate from the ideas of biology to those of epistemology; and this is easily enough done. The "characters," here, are our beliefs, and these indeed are variable. No two persons beli eve exactly the same thing, about the same thing, at the same time; and if it were possible to catalog all of the beliefs heldby two persons

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it is unlikely that we would discover that they have exact! y the same

beliefs, though many beliefs-both correct and incorrect (e.g., that Paris is the capital of France, that a tomato is a vegetable) -would indeed be the same. Furthermore, these beliefs are "heritable," in the sense that beliefs can be passed from one individual to another. Educators and parents, for example, pass on beliefs to their students and children, and daily, we are each exchanging and sharing ideas with one another.lO Beliefs, then, are "heritable," or at least for our purposes, heritable enough. Lastly-and this is the upshot of James' lectures-we get different results from the possession of different beliefs; those beliefs that do not work for us we jettison, while in contrast we may tend to better fasten-down those that do work, and which are, due to their utility, more highly valued by us. Experience is the crucible, and we will weed out those beliefs that are "unfit." It is worthwhile to note that this is a very individualistic truncat足 ing, and that the units of selection are individuals, and not groups; this is a point commonly misunderstood about Darwin and his scheme for evolution via natural selection, but not apparently by James. It just so happens that certain beliefs, like certain "heritable characters," will grow in frequency throughout a given population because these beliefs happen to have tried-and-true value and do tend to be useful to their possessor. For example, James might say that most persons profess to believe in God, or to have some theologico足 spiritual commitment as a result of some religious experience. The fact that an individual may have such-and-such belief (say, about the existence of a Spirit) is not a function of the prevalence of that belief in the "belief pool" (like "gene pool") of the population; rather the prevalence of the belief among many individuals is an indication of the utility and value of the belief of those who have it. This "fitness" of (e.g.) spirituality is responsible for its high frequency in the belief pool, andifthe belief did not confer some advantage to its possessors, its frequency distribution (in individuals and in the population) would drop. If the frequency dropped enough the belief would go IOPapers published in 1993 in both Scientific AmeriCilu and Americil/! Scientist address the issue of "horizontal gene transfer," or, "horizontal drift," which postu足 lates that some parasites (e.g., viruses) are able to transfer genetic material (DNA) from one species to another. Thus the "hereditary" aspect of cu I tural, non-biological information (per contra the biological information of DNA) seems to have now a more sure analogical footing than it did in James' time.

J. ELLIS PERRY IV

"extinct." The analogy between genes and beliefs is a good one; but if we are to be justified in attributing the full complement of these evolutionary ideas to James, we must turn to what James actually had to say; and we will now tum to Pragmatism. IV. Pragmatism and Common Sense James notes that "the world does genuinely change and grow," but that "knowledge grows in spots," and that "knowledge never grows all over" (P, p. 77). That knowledge "grows" implies that knowledge changes, and James explicitly remarks that the "modifi足 cations [of knowledge] are apt to be gradual" (P, p. 77). Localized, gradual change is in many ways the soul of Darwin's theory of evolution, and I think it is unlikely that James just happened to express his ideas about the dynamics of knowledge in Darwinian terms; James was thinking about knowledge in evolutionary terms, andthese words suggest a Jamesian version of Natura nonfacit saltum.揃 James tells his audience that "novelties" in thinking are gradually introduced to our storehouse of opinions, and then, when the need arises, we "modify [the novelties] to some degree" (P. p. 78). This activity is not unlike that of the pigeon fanciers, whom Darwin treats at length in chapter I of the Origin, titled, Variation under Domestica足 tion. Who could have foreseen that a pigeon fancier would select the slight tendency of a pigeon to fall head over heels, and by exploiting this queer novelty producing the breed of tumbJers? Or again: Who could have foreseen that the natural pausing of some dogs could be modified by breeding into the useful trait of "pointing"? These novelties were acquired genetically by the organism, and were later made use of by the fancier or sportsman. The storehouse of genetic information in organic things is not unlike the storehouse ofinforma足 tion which minds acquire through time, which, like genetic diversity, may someday be marshaled to the front for use. Most surprising to me was, perhaps, the discovery of a quote by a late 20th century evolutionary biologist which echoes what James s,lid to his 1907 audience at the Lowell Institute. While this is not evidence in fnvor of] ames' debt to Darwin, Ithink it is evidence that . Ed. note: Natura makes no leap.

110/1 fa cit

sa/tul/l (na to'tlr'a non fa-sit sal'hm). lntin. nature

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there is something genuinely Darwinian about James' thought on epistemological matters. Keeping in mind the achronism, James said of the dynamics of knowledge, We patch and tinker more than we renew. The nov elty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged with what absorbs it. Our past apperceives and cooperates; and in the new equilibrium in which each step forward in the process of learning termi nates, it happens relatively seldom that the new fact is added raw (P, p. 78). There is much here that smacks of biological evolution: the close interaction between the genotypic milieu and its phenotypic mani festation, the acquisition of "novelty," &c. But of chief interest to me is the first sentence, which I think all will agree is startlingly similar to that of Jacob, who once described the mechanism of evolution thus: UN atural selection does not work like an engineer. It works like a tinker" (Mayer). My argument for the existence of James' willful and intentional comparison between (a) natural selection as the means of organic evolution and (b) a broader "evolutionary model" of our epistemic kinesis, again, seems to have some foundation. The title of the lectures (as published by Longmann) is Pragma tism: Or, A New Nmne for SOlne Old Ways OfThillking. But how old is "old"? I think we can have a good laugh at the expense of so scrupulous an exegete as Wiener (et a1.): by "old," James intended us to think of "old" in Lyellian, Darwinian terms, and to think of the word ancestraL If this is so, then the exclusion of Pragmatism from the literature on early evolutionary epistemological theories is unforgi v able. The following is perhaps the best support for James' Darwinian agenda: It follows that very ancient modes of thought may

have survived through all the latter changes in men's opinions. The most primitive ways of thinking may not yet be wholly expunged. Like our five fingers, our ear-bones, our rudimentary caudal appendage, our other 'vestigial' peculiarities, they may remain as indelible tokens in our race-history. Our ancestors

J. ELLIS PERRY IV

may have stuck on a certain way of thinking which theyrnight conceivably not have found. But once they did so, and after the fact, the inheritance continues ... You may rinse and rinse the bottle, but you can't get the taste of the medicine or whiskey that first filled it wholly out (P, p. 78). The following report of some observations should, for my present purposes, suffice: First: There is the appeal to some ancient time, and to units of change (opinions), and to differential survival of those units of change. These are the essential ingredients in the evolutionary epistemologist's soup. Second: The references to both (a) our inability to completely "expunge" certain aspects of our thinking. and (b) the vestigiality of some characters of thought are most assuredly owed to the swell of interest inrudimentary/vestigial organs which-while not new with Darwin-was given new importance after 1859. The "five fingers" pentadactyly, which is expressed in all mammals (and other taxa) is still today one of the best known morphological homologies cited in favor of descent with modification. The "ear-bones," like the hand bones and jaw bones treated of by Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) in his 1833 Bridgewater Treatise The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital Endow ments as Evincing Design, were popular subjects of debate after the publication of the Origin, and so the audience likely understood the reference as one being to evolutionary explanations. i1 Third: The references to the"caudal appendage" (clearly playing with ideas on human evolution) and to '''vestigial' peculiarities" were most assuredly summoned to James' mind from reading chap ter 13 of the Origin, particularly the section titled "Rudimentary Organs." Of all of Darwin's arguments in favor of evolution via descent with modification, his appeal to embryology and to struc tural morphology were among the most impressive, and made the greatest impreSSion upon men of science of the day. It is not surpris ing, therefore, that James would frame his views on the remnants of ancient "inherited" beliefs and opinions within the context of vesti gial organs, especially if it was James' agenda to articulate an evolu 11

See Gould, Stephen J. "This View of Life." Natural History. August 1993.

THE ORIGIN OF AN INQUIRY

tionary epistemology. But without such a reading of James, his genius (as seen in the brilliant bottle metaphor) might be under esteemed. So James at last announces his thesis on page 79: My thesis now is this, that our fundamental ways of thinking about things are discoveries ofexceedingly remote ancestors, which have been able to p1'eserve themselves throughout the experience of all subsequent time. [The fundamental ways of thinking about things] form one great stage of equilibrium in the human mind's de足 velopment, the stage of common sense. Other stages have grafted themselves upon this stage, but have never succeeded in displacing it. And indeed, why should common sense be "displaced"? The fact that it hasn't been overthrown, that it hasn't been jettisoned from the

hold, is testament to its sustained utility in time. Commonsense has high fitness. By speaking in such rich detail about the transmission of this primordial common sense from our "exceedingly remote ancestors" to ourselves, James reveals his commitment to some "epistemic principle o.f inheritance," and what's more his postulation of "other stages" of thinking (with which common sense competed) suggests variation in the beUefpool over time. Variety? Heredity? Differential fitness? ... Evolution. The sophistication of James' appreciation oBhe complexities of evolution may be judged from the following. One of the biggest problems for evolutionary biology to this day is: IIow do we know when something is really an "adaptation"? The hypothesis that there will be adaptations is one thing. but their discovery, their recognition is another. (Darwin was mindful of this, as was he concerned with the tangentially related question of how common ancestors can be identified given the quite imperfect fossil record). Ridley has written on this matter: t

The methods of studying adaptation work well if we are studying an adaptation. If the character under study is an adaptation then it must exist because of natural selection and it is correct to persist in looking for the

J. ELLIS PERRY IV reasonwhyitisfavored ... However,ifa character (or different forms of it) is not favored by natural selec足 tion, the method breaks down. Methods of studying adaptation should therefore be coniined to characters that are adaptive. Probably, in practice, they mainly are ... However, there is still plenty of room for controversy (Ridley, p. 347).

Ifthe matter of explaining adaptations is of concern to the evolution足 ary biologist, and if James really was thinking about evolution (and was distilling evolution into epistemology), then we should expect to find some indication that he too was concerned about adaptive explanation. And we do (though for James it is beliefs and knowl足 edge that are the acquired characters, and are thus the objects of adaptive change): In philosophy, [a man's common sense] means his use of certain intellectual forms or categories of thought ... It might be, too ... that such categories, unimaginable by us today, would have on the whole proved serviceable for handling our experiences mentally as those which we actually use (P, p. 79).

James will conclude his remarks on common sense by informing the audience that (1) "all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality," and by suggesting that (2) "Profusion, not economy, may after all be reality's key-note" (P, p. 87). Regarding (1): Utility and adaptation had their first genuine synthesis with the natural historians, who saw the adaptation of means to ends in nature (e.g., the hawks eyes) as evidence of the magnificence ofthe creator, butitwas Darwin who provided the first viable mechanism for a naturally occurring means of such means足 end adequation. I would tend to bet that James was here making reference to Darwin, and not to Bell or Paley. Regarding (2): I invite the reader to consider whether James was addressing the quote popularized by Darwin: "Nature is prodigal in variety, niggardly in innovation;" I suggest that James was (OS, p. 461).

THE ORIGIN OF AN INQUIRY

V. Conclusion All of James' Darwinian-sounding remarks in Pragmatism may have some other cause, or they may be merely Darwinian "sound ing," but not necessarily intended by James to be "Darwinian" in flavor. The list of prominent authors who have maintained that Darwin's influence on the ideas ofJames was both (a) limi ted and (b) confined chiefly to James' physiological psychology is long, and my study of James and the Jamesian corpus is short; I therefore cannot in good academic faith say that I have made an airtight case against those authors who have not dealt directly with Pragmatism. I do, however, hope that reader was "much struck" by the siInilarities between Darwinian evolution via descent with modifica tionandJames' theory ofknowledge, his "dynamic coherentism" (as I have elsewhere called it) as it was presented in the Lowell Institute lectures; I also hope that I have taken a small step towards demon strating that "mere coincidence" may not be the best explanation for this. It is, at any rate, clear to this student that Jrunes' Pragmatism was an attempt to articulate an evolutionary epistemology-and that seems to be a possibility that has not been mOl'e rigorously explored by scholars of greater ability and resource than myself.* But what ever may come from this short study. (to quote Darwin), "It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank," which the Darwin James! evolution-epistemology nexus certainly is; and I would be pleased to have, in however small a way, enlarged the perspective of the reader. * Addendum: No study of Darwin'S influence on James would be complete if it did not include a reading of Robert J. Richards' Da/10in and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories ofMind and Behavior (Chi cago, 1987), It is with no small measure of embarrassment that I report that I happened upon this work after this paper had been submitted. But much to my surprise, (and to my delight!) Roberts who cites some 20 works by James, and who treats James at great length-does not include Pragmatism in his bibliography.

J. ELLIS PERRY IV

WORKS CITED

Bowler, P. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.

Dancy, J. and E. Sosa, ed. A Companion to Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell Reference, 1992.

[OS] Darwin, C. The Origin ofSpecies. ed. Ernst Mayr. (Facsimile of the first edition), Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1964.

I l

t \

- - . [VB] The Voyage of the Beagle. ed. Leonard Engle. New York: Anc~or-Doubleday,

1962.

Dewey, J. The Influence of Danvin on Philosophy. Indiana University Press, 1965.

[P] James, W. Pragmatism, or, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. ed. Bruce Kuklick. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981. [GBT] Mayr, E. TIle Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, E'l.lolution

and Inheritance. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard-Belknap, 1982.

- - . [TNP] Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Perry, R. B. The Thought and Character ofWilliam James. VoL I.. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1935. Ridley, M. Evolution. Cambridge, Ma.: Blackwell Scientific. 1993. Russett, C. DanvininAmerica:nzeIntellectualResponse 1865-1912. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1976. Wiener, P. Evolution and the Founders pf Pragmatism. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965.

1 ri

53 REVISIONING HEIDEGGER: EXISTENTIELL CRISES AND THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING OF BEING

Paul Rector

Towson State University

"Before my highest mountain I stand and before my longest wandering; to that end I must first go down deeper than ever I descended-deeper into pain than ever I descended, down into its blackest flood." -Friedrich Nietzsche, TItUS Spoke Zarathustra The Heideggerian philosophy of Being and Time,! properly con ceived, is a pilgrimage. It is an attempt to pave a way into the uncharted territory of the fundamental ontological question of what it means to be. The question has thus far remained uncharted not only because it has been neglected and "covered over" by Western thought, but also because its pursuit requires confronting the very reality we spend our lives avoiding: Death. The fundamentalonto logical question becomes an issue, Heidegger argues, only if we are responsive to the intimation of nothingness disclosed in angst. What angst reveals is not some abstract conception of nothing ness which Dasein may objectively evaluate; rather, it confronts Dasein with its Sein-zum-tode (Being-towards-death), with its own liability to nothingness, with its own possibility of the impossibili ty of its being. Thus, the primary presumption we have about our selves-that we are-is undermined by an intimation that reveLlls that we are able not to be. Such intimations are ordinarily not embraced by Dasein, they are repressed, swallowed by our busy concern with everyday affairs. But Being and Time is profoundly under the sway of these intimations and may be read as a beckoning of the reader to overcome the desire to avoid them. The conversion Heidegger beckons us to make is one from inauthentic everyday ness, which is most distinctly characterized by its ontological Rector is asellior philosophy major lit Towson State University ill Marylrllul. IIe is a residwt a/Baltimore alld pia liS to pursuea doctorate ill phi/osoplzyat DUqllel,'W Ullivcrflily ill tire/ali. 1 I specify this because of the well-know n and controversial iSflue ofHcidcggcr' fl "turning" from the "early" Heidegger of Beillg and Time to the "late" of hifl subse quent writings. For an argument on behalf of this distinction, see Rorty, R Essl/ys (m J-Jeidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1991; esp. pp. 50-66. For an argument against it, see Barrett, W. Irrational Man; pp. 206-238.

Episteme • Volume V • May 1994

PAUL RECTOR

somnambulism, to the authentic, in which we resolutely grasp ourselves as Being-towards-death. And, as Jerome Miller explains, "because Being and Time as a whole has principally in view the undoing of avoidances, it is not just about dying but an exercise in dying" (Miller, p. 207). But dying in what sense? What does it mean to die? Can, for example, the reading of a text be a death? Can the loss of a loved one or the collapse of a project to which one has devoted one's life be a death? Can any of these events prompt, as only death can, an experience of nothingness capable of awakening the fundamental ontological question in such a radical way that it reaches far beyond the mere fonning of aninterrogative to the very depths of ourbeing? William Barrett answers this question negatively when he writes, "man can surmount all other heartbreaks, even the death's of those he loves, but his own death puts an end to him" (Barrett, p. 225).2 Sartre, in a different manner than Barrett, argues that such events cannot be understood as deaths insofar as we never experience death, but we do experience the various "heartbreaks" described. Sartre, in direct opposi tion to Heidegger' s assertion that death is our "owrunost possibility," takes the Epicurean stance that death is "really nothing, for so long as we are, death has not come, and when it has come, we are not." Even Heidegger insists that such experi足 ences are merely existentiell crises and do not open us to the funda足 mental ontological question. 3 To enforce his claim. Heidegger devel足 ops a complex nomenclature to distinguish between onticj ontologi足 cal experiences and existentiellj existential self-awareness, devotes section 47 of Being and Time to arguing against the possibility of angst being spawned by the death of an other, and points out that, for 2 Barrett's statement seems to me to suffer from an inappropriately "literal" reading of Heidegger. Against stIch a reading, Jerome Miller asserts that: "a literal reading of Heidegger can mislead one into thinking that an encounter with death occurs only when one faces one's own physical demise. Being und Time is, among other things, an argument against just such literality; the encounter with death it describes occurs whenever one's world is shattered, irrespective of the event which triggers it" OW, n. 212). 3I've for some time now been grappling with why Heidegger drives such an uncompromising wedge between ontologically disclosive experiences and ontic/ existentiell experiences. In an obvious way, he is developing rigid distinctions between the ontic and the ontological because he holds that confusion between the two was precisely what led Western ontology astray. Further, Heidegger is acu tely aware of how we often allow the drama of crisis to divert us from the fundamental

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Kierkegaard, the focus on existentiell problems greatly impeded his understanding of fundamental ontology (BT, p. 494). Heidegger argues that the loss of loved ones, the reading of "world changing" texts and the failure of life-long projects, like any other events within the world, are ontic occurrences-sources of potential existentiell crises. Rather than advancing the pursuit of fundamental ontology, they actually hinder progress by drawing us into the world and diverting us from the "uncanniness" of angst which reveals us as not at-home within the world. Thus, the consensus among these thinkers is that existentiell crises do not and cannot raise the fundamental ontological question of what it means to be. Instead of being ontologically disclosive, their powerful impact on our lives evidences how severely we take the question for granted. But are all existentiell crises fundamentally the same? Are they all so easily homogenized within the framework of our everyday existence? Could it be that some of these events disrupt our lives so radically, shatter us so completely, that no aspect of our lives remains untouched and that Being itself is revealed as pro foundly foreign and, for the first time, questionable? In short, is it reasonable to affirm that while existentiell crises are generally events that happen within our world, some are so devastating that they can only be adequat~ly discussed as happening to our world? It is my claim, and the burden of this essay, that it is not only a reasonable affirmation, but a necessary one. Those who find this assertion incompatible with the Heideggerian philosophy of Being and Time, I will suggest, do not take seriously enough either Heidegger's phe nomenological analysis of what it means to be-in-the-world, or how significantly this "basic state of Dasein" grounds our everyday ontological presuppositions which, in principle, must be shaken if we are going to ask the fundamental ontological question. In his discussion of the "worldhood" of the world, Heidegger illustrates the pre-positional situation of thrown Dasein by underontological question. He would be the first to notice how we talk endlessly about the horrible things that happen to us. Although ordinarily, the potentially dcvastQting questions these events raise about the meaning of existence are repressed and covered over through "idle talk," "curiosity" and "ambiguity," Heidegger's distinc tion overlooks the possibility that they needn't be. Indeed, these questionsmay be intelligently addressed and allowed to rupture our deepest ontological assump tions.

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scoring the prepositional condition of our being-in-the-world-with others. Countering the modem cOgito, Heidegger argues that we are not isolated subjects who are aware of our existence through an awareness of the internal activity of our thinking and who must, therefore, make a leap (of faith) over an abyss to reach the external world. Rather, Daseinis "Being-there." We originally find ourselves amidst the world. Arguing against the Cartesian and Kantian con ceptions of the world, Heidegger asserts that the "world" is neither res extensa nor is it merely a collection of objects, that is to say, the sum of its parts. The "worldhood" of the world, what makes it a world as such, is that it is more than this sum. The world is an horizon of meaning in terms of which all objects encountered are interpreted (BT, pp. 91-148).4 Each given object encountered by Dasein is mean ingful only in terms of its relation to its place in the totality, and the totality itself is given coherency by this horizon of meaning. But this horizon of meaning is neither given nor arbitrary; it blossoms forth from our involvement in the world. This is no minor distinction. For, as Dasein, who exists primordially as being-in-the-world-with-oth ers, and who is "fallen" amidst the world in average everydayness, we are susceptible to seduction by the "things" we encounter within the world. In fact, any given object within the world has the potential to astonish us and pull us under its sway so completely that it comes to Ittean the world to us. Falling in love, it seems to me, is an extremely accessible example of this, and its exploration may help draw our inquiry into phenomenological focus. Falling in love is truly afallingin that it pulls the ground out from under us and shatters the compass which governs the direction of our everyday routines. In a very literal sense, love sends us "head over heels." Fascinated by the beloved, everything else within the world seems to fall away as we draw nearer and nearer to her. Duties once taken so seriously somehow seem far less important; schedules once adhered to without question are suddenly broken with aban don; finances once shrewdly dispersed only on essentials are now spent with spendthrift extravagance on the most impractical of gifts. 4 See 1W, pp. 79-100 for a detailed account of the phenomenological structure of "Worlds." Also, see Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Mo de mihJ. Cam bridge, Ma.: MIT Press, 1987; pp. 131-160 for a provocative discussion of "world" as "the key term of fundamental ontology" (p. 147) and its significance in modern/ postmociern discourse and controversy.

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Everything around us reveals itself in a new, unfamiliar way. OUl' world is in flux; nothing appears as it did before; the meaning of every aspect of our life is transforming. And as the beloved settles in as the center of our life, all other objects encountered and all other events engaged once again draw near, but they approach differen.tly. Being that they are objects and events occurring within our world足 which is an horizon of meaning, not a collection of things or mere spatial extension-they are now interpreted in terms of this new horizon. And this horizon is determined by the other whom we find at its center. The beloved becomes the axis of meaning around which the "global" circumference of our circumspective concern spins. And if this is the case, then the blossoming ofthishorizon of meaning cannot be correctly understood as an ontic occurrence happening within our world; for it is the very foundation of the worldhood of our world. It must be conceded that what is happening is happening to our world. Thus, if to be is to be-in-the-world-with-others and the parameters of this world are governed by the other whom has become its center, then death, which according to Heidegger "mean[s] gOing-out-of足 the-world, and losing one's being-in-the-world, occurs "not when objects disappear but when [our world' sl fundamentul structures of meaning ... are undermined" (l31', p. 281; WS, p. 194). With this understanding of what it meuns to be-in-the-world, it then seems clear that the founding of our world cannot reasonably be relegated to the purely ontic; it cannot be understood in tem1S of studying the particular person, object or project which has become the center of our life. Likewise, neither can the deconstruction of our world, via the collapse of its center, be properly understood as simply an existentiell crisis; it cannot be appropriately explained in terms of the absence of an object within the world. These experiences are, ra ther, the construction and deconsh"uction of the base on which we rest our understanding of what it means to be. Ordinarily, in our average everydayness, we find ourselves comfortably situated in a world which has blossomed forth for us and which, since this blossoming, we have come to take for granted. We feel "at home" within this world and easily maneuver through足 out it, casually engaging with the objects within our circumspedive concern as they lend themselves as ready-to-hand instruments for use in our various projects. Our understanding of Being itself is

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grounded in and delimited by our perspective within this world. This becomes painfuUy evident when our world falls apart. When we lose the other, who has come to mean the world to us, we lose the axis of meaning in terms of which we understood our life as a whole. Having lost this other, nothing makes sense. For, "here the totality of involvements of the ready-to-hand and the present-at hand discovered within the world is ... of no consequence; it col lapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking significance" (BT, p. 231). Our daily chores, once done without question in order to keep our world together, now induce nausea with their banal absurdity. Joy now seems possible only for the naive. We feel that despair is the only true glimpse of reality, though it is never black enough to be pure. We are not only depressed but morally offended. The tragedy is experienced not as one event among others, but as an affront to existence as it is meantto be. We contemplate, and may even commit suicide, preferring physical demise over confront ing the fact that Being is proving itself to beradicaUy other than what we thought it was. s But just as we may be shaken from our comfortable use of ready to-hand materials by a disruption in this use (e.g., the car breaks down), and thereby be forced to understand these objects in an entirely new way (as present-at-hand), we may also be awakened from our ontological somnambulism by a crisis so devastating that it refuses to be understood in terms of our world (BT,pp.102-107). A crisis of this depth and magnitude cannot be homogenized within the framework of our circumspective concern as one event among others, because it undermines the structures of meaning which enable aU possible events to be understood. Thus, to hold fast that these supposedly existentieU crises are 5 That suicide is the refusal to throw one's self and one's ontological assump tions into question, rather than the fundamental question itself, refutes Camus' claim that "there is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide." Properly speaking, suicide is not a problem bu t a supposed solution to which one may come only after "judging whether life is or is not worth living." The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage Books, 1955: p. 3. The fundamental, or "truly serious," prob lem, to which suicide purports to be an answer, is the question of the meaning of Being. What I am suggesting is that suicide is not an answer to the question but the refusal to ask it. For a remarkably creative response to Heideggerian ontology, Camus' absurdist position and the futility of suicide, see Levinas. E. Time and The Other. trans. Robert Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1987; p. 50, passim.

REVISIONING HElDEGGER

necessarily excluded from ontological discolITse overlooks the real ization that the truly radical of these events happen to and not within our world and, therefore, dismantle the structlITes which enabled us to understand anything, including Being. This exclusion presup poses that those who experience such a crisis have a conception of the meaning of Being that transcends the parameters of their everyday concern. But, as our phenomenological sketch of the loss-of-our world indicates, in OlIT average everydayness, the boundaries of OlIT ontological understanding are strictly delimited by that which has become the center of our world. This being the case, only the loss of the center of this horizon of meaning can precipitate the sort of ontological uncertainty characterized by Heideggerian angst. It is precisely this uncertainty that prompts a mortifying questioning which, if not repressed, will undermine OlIT ontological presupposi tions and allow the fundamental ontological question of the meaning of Being to be raised anew, in all its dreadfulness. The marginalizing of these supposedly ontic events closes off and restricts from onto logical discourse the very breach in our ontological assumptions which, if pursued, will result in a radical rethinking of w hat it means to be. Rather than plunging us into this breach and compelling us to confront the dreadful questions that crisis raises about our lives, this marginalizing restricts these events to the ontic1evel. Consequently, against Heidegger's intent, it "helps to keep one's ownmost non relational possibility-of-being completely concealed" (BT, p. 298). Still, many will contend that even the most devastating of existentiell crises (e.g., our beloved abandons us, or a tumor is found in our child) are objects of fear, not angst in the face of nothingness. This contention holds that whereas angst is "already 'there' and yet nowhere, ... is so close that it stifles one's breath, and yet it is nowhere," fear is always of "a detrimental entity [or ontic event] within the world which comes from some definite region, .,. is bringing itself close ... and yet might stay away" (BT, pp. 231, 230). This argument concludes that if our beloved returned to us, or our child's tumor were found to be benign-that is, if the danger were to "stay away"-we would remain placidly embedded within OlIT world rather than radically uprooted from it, as OCClITS in angst. The problem wi th this objection is threefold. Firs tly, it fails to take seriously what it means to be-in-a-world and the central importance of the other, who establishes this world's axis. Secondly, it overlooks

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the insight that an experience of nothingness, or the loss-of-our-world, occurs when the fundamental structures of our horizon of meaning are undermined. And lastly, it fails to see that an intimation of the frailty-the liability to nothingness-of what means the world to us transcends the fear of any particular object or event, and opens us up to our "ownmost possibility" insofar as it awakens us to the radical finitude of every person or thing, every possible world. We are intimated of the desolate nothingness pervading everything that could ever mean the world to anyone-even ourselves. To the degree that these intimations and the questions they raise about Being are repressed, they may be relegated to the domain of fear because we refuse to allow them to touch our ontolOgical presuppositions. Rather than drawing us away from our world, it is precisely this world and our position in it that is secured most adamantly. However, these intimations and the questions they raise need not be repressed. And to the extent that we allow them to rupture our ontological assumptions, we are open to the encounter withnothingness and ourownmostpossibilityofbeing ablenottobe. In short, if such questi.ons are not repressed, we find ourselves radically dislocated, spiraling in the abyss, confronted with the inherent nothingness of what we always assumed was Being itself. It is only in such a destitute position. I would like to suggest, that the fundamental ontological question of what it means to be can be authentically asked. For only in this barren state do we realize the uncompromising import of the question. And this question, as we have seen, is not only raised by an uncanny experience of angst, which oozes through and draws us away from our comfort in the world when everything is ontically normal and existentielly placid. It may also be precipitated by an existentiell crisis which most Heideggerians, and Heidegger himself, would argue tends to draw us away from intimations of death as our ownmost possibility. Their argument is justified, I have claimed, insofar as we ordinarily recoil from these intimations and, quite often, divert ourselves from them with preoccupati.on in the drama of life's crises. I have attempted to illustrate, though, that this contention takes for granted that existentiell crises always occur as events within our world. But what is passed over in silence is the possibility that a crisis which fractures the center of our world must be said to happen to it not within it. And because we ordinarily equate Being with the parameters of our world, the

REVISIONING HEIDEGGER

shattering of this world can be understood as no less than the shattering of everything we thought was immune to deconstruction. Only whenour sedimented structures of meaning have collapsed can the possibility of a new horizon be glimpsed. Only when every足 thing we ever thought was Being itself is undermined, only when Being reveals itself as radically foreign-as radically beyond any and every understanding we may have had of it-can it become ques足 tionable in its very essence and compel the fundamental ontological question to spring to our lips ... and this is only the beginning ...

WORKS CITED

Barrett, W. Irrational Man. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1962.

[BT] Heidegger, M. Being and Time. trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. [TW] Miller, J. A. In the Throe afWonder. New York: State University of New York Press, 1992.

- - . [WS] The Way of Suffering. Georgetown University Press, 1988.

63 HARTMANN, KOLB, PIPPIN

AND THE UNHAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS

Kevin Thomson

Carleton College

"Meta" discussions in philosophy are a bit like the media talking about the media, Le.. they are prone to generating a lot of heat and seldom any light. On the other hand, more "disciplined" exegetical efforts have a way of implicitly taking stances on macro-interpretive issues, with the defect of being assumed and hence not argued for. With these twin dangers in mind, I propose to examine the motiva tions of the thinkers who are currently offering up Neo-Kantian domestications of Hegel. I am referring to the interpretations put forth by Klaus Hartmann, David Kolb and Robert Pippin. I will first sketch their interpretations and will then show how even in the Logic Hegel disallows for the thought/ object dualism which so stubbornly clings to their interpretations. Next, I will argue that Hegel implicates the reader in the system and thereby provides hermeneutical guid ance. (I will argue that Hartmannian approaches are accotmted for in the Unhappy Consciousness section of the Phenomenology a/Spirit.) I will conclude by bringing out an implicit aspect of Pippin which pOints to an ontological reading of Hegel. Because Hartmann has the most crystnlline position (and asH isperhaps the originofthe others), I propose to start with his essay "Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View." Hartmann reads the Logic as a reconstruction. It must be presupposilionless and so there must be a prOvisionally granted (being-in-itself/implicit) content which via necessary progressions (the process of becoming-for-itself/ explicit) acquires determinacy. In this manner, thought is the urnnoved mover which "grounds" itself. But Hartmann takes "thought thinking itself" rather literally. Which is to say that he sees the whole process as thought playing with itself. For Hartmann, there is a radical bifurcation between thought and reality (nature), "Hegel'S philosophy appears to us as categorial theory, i.e., as non-metaphysical philosophy, or as a phi losophy devoid of existence claims" (Hartmann, p. 274). Accordingly Tl101tIson is /1 seninr at Carleton College ill Minnesota. He plans to attend till! Committee 011 Social Thought at the Ulliversity of Clzicago this filII where he will pursue a doctorate in philosophy and social thought while studying under Robert Pippin.

Episteme • Volume V • May 1994

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he sees thought as innocuous: "Similarly. if one says that the archi tectonic is an imposition on pre-existing material. such criticism is mistaken, since the architectonic can be taken as an innocuous orderingin the interest of ra tionality" (Hartmann, p. 275). There is no fear of the categories imposing on nature because they have been developed based on the "satisfaction of reason" instead of fit with nature. We might better understand the moves he is making by consid ering the differences between geometry and engineering. Geometry might be said to satisfy the demands of reason (admittedly not in the same way as Hegel's categories) whereas engineering is instead concerned with empirical fit with nature. Just as geometry treats the idea of a triangle, so engineering treats the actually existent triangle. And just as Hegel's categories (in the Philosophy ofRight) deal with the idea of a state, so the political theorist deals with the actually existent state. It is important to note that Hartmann is not merely offering a descriptive account of Hegel's behavior but also norma tive guidance. When Hegel gets carried away and "goes metaphysi cal," it is seen by Hartmann as an illicit though forgivable rhetorical flourish: the fault of Hegel's may be ... that he makes conces sions to existential considerations.... thus creating existential bonds between society and the state. This move is understandable, in the sense of" forgivabJe," in view of historical precedent and even language. but cannot be defended in theory.... If we thought these flaws away, the account of the state would be more abstract, but also more correct (Hartmann, p. 282).

As Hartmann's essay proceeds. he becomes more candid about saddling Hegel with an interpretation which doesn't fit. He labels any indigestible aspects of Hegel as "maximal" claims which are in turn "indefensible." In a crucial admission, Hartmann reveals the criteria which have been driving his reading all along: We feel free to single out that systematic core of

Hegel's philosophy which exhibi ts strictness. In that

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sense, the interpretation presented here can stand for a "minimal" interpretation, or for a non-metaphysi足 cal interpretation, of Hegel (Hartmann, p. 286). Hartmann repeatedly says that the value of his interpretation is that it delivers strictness. Herr Hartmann began his essay by staking out the reading he is most anxious to derail, [Findlay] claims that in Hegel we have a system of affinities or of non-strict, loose, probabilisticimplica足 tions between concepts.... The difficulty is, however, that on this view Hegel's theoretical achievement, the dialectic, hinges on an irrationality, on likelihood and affinity rather than on strictness" (Hartmann, p. 268). The reader is advised to remember terms like "non-strict," "loose" and "probabilistic." It will be instructive to watch how these same terms (and the agenda/proclivities they announce) show up in our other Neo-Kantians (though the whipping boy does change from Findlay to Taylor). Before I draw out any conclusions, I want to get my other two commentators on board. I find a strong internal tension present in Kolb's and Pippin's interpretations of Hegel. I sense they want the . purity and necessity that a transcendentalist reading will provide, but are more cognizant (than Hartmann) of the senses in which Hegel resists this imposition. Nevertheless, at key pOints I find the Hartmannian sympathies manifest. I will first identify those areas and will later include the sense in which Kolb and especially Pippin point to a metaphYSical (by which I mean ontological) reading of Hegel which they are perhaps too concerned with "rigor" to endorse. Kolb has slightly more in common with Hartmann, so I will treat him next. As indicated, I am going to first accentuate those aspects of Kolb which paranel Harhnann. Kolb sees the logic as the core of Hegel's system. He also views Hegel as doing Kantian transcenden足 tal analysis: "Hegel's logic will be a metaphYSiCS in this Kantian sense, a study of the necessary structure of thought" (Kolb, p. 41). According to Kolb, the order of Hegel's categories is systematic and necessary. He also depicts the movement of the categories as going

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from implicit to explicit, or from simpler to richer determination. For Kolb, the logical categories develop autonomously; they are "self足 sufficient." Whatever his misgivings, Kolb lines up squarely behind Hartmann with this move: We would expect that the "absolute knowledge" at足 tained at the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit and worked out in the system would be a definitive ontology stating what is real and what is not. Instead itis a transcendental deduction of what is valid (Kolb, p.87).

Kolb, like Hartmann, is conscious of the fact that sometimes Hegel doesn't behave himself. When Kolb can not convincingly recast what Hegelis doing in terms of transcendental analysis, he too is willing to dismiss such anomalies as rhetorical or juvenilia (or both): Sometimes Hegel uses images suggesting that the universal is some vaporous force or energy or life circulating through things. Hegel never entirely shook off the rhetorical influence of the romantic images he used in his youth (Kolb, p. 62). On the thorny issue of concrete reality, Kolb has this to say: [that] Hegel's discussions of concrete reality ... con足 tinue the development of the logical categories ... is not easy tounderstand,anditisnothelpedby Hegel's vague and metaphorical deSCriptions of the relation of the logical idea to concrete reality (Kolb, p. 85). I think Kolb is drawn to transcendental analysis for some of the same reasons Hartmann is. Kolb is also anxious to derail irrational spirit monism: When I say the logic is not a metaphysics, I want most of all to preclude the idea that Hegel provides a cosmology including the discovery of a wondrous

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new superentity, a cosmic self or a world soul or a supermind (Kolb, pp. 42-43; emphasis added). Kolb also is concerned to wean us of our existentialism-or in his words, our "voluntarism." Kolb is well aware that talk of separate logical categories is precarious, but for him there is a larger threat, Talking oflogical categories as if they were things on their own is dangerous. But still more dangerous talking as if categories of thought were tools that we make and shape at will. English-speaking philoso足 phy has a strong voluntaristic bent (Kolb, p. 48). I think this is a telling formulation in that we are invited to consider what the opposite of "voluntarism" might mean. Does scientism come to mind? While Kolb may not consciously endorse scientism, I mention it because it resonates with the profile I have been constructing. What might philosophical scientism look like? I sus足 pect that (like Hartmann) not too far behind Kolb's adoption of transcendental analysis lie concerns with strictness, rigor, necessity, discipline, closure and certainty and their correlate fears of irratio足 nality, looseness, contingency ambiguity, mysticism, romanticism, arbitrariness and relativism. One wonders if Hartmann and Kolb are willfully putting a spin on Hegel in the interest of rigor. But then Kolb tells us (approvingly) that this is precisely what Hartmann is doing: I

On the question of what Hegel was doing, Hartmann does not seem to go far enough. On the more important

issue ofwhatis possibleforour thinking today,Hartmann 's proposal is more cautious and more acceptable than Hegel's. In fact, Hartmann is not so much trying to interpret Hegel as to correct him and make him useful today. He takes the idea of categorial justifica足 tion to be the core of Hegel's thought, but a core betrayed by Hegel's full system. Corrected and made more rigorous, Hegel can be important today (Kolb, p.

94; emphasis added). PreCisely what might it mean to make Hegel "more rigorous"? I

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don't think it means deeper. In fact, I'm fairly sure it means more disciplined, ie., more algorithmically rule-governed. Before I show how this obsession with rigor is just an entrance ramp to the "high way of despair," I must first get some hardware from my third Neo Kantian. Pippin hopes in his conceptual scheme that idealism can be a middle ground between the poles of "precritical metaphysics" and "the bloodless dance of the categories." But on my reading of Pippin, this middle ground amounts to colluding the two poles in a very sophisticated though, in the end, misleading way. As with Kolb, there is a deep tension in Pippin's interpretation. Accordingly, I will proceed in a similar manner. I will first argue why it is helpful to look at Pippin in light of Hartmann, and later I will have recourse to the other strand of his thought. Pippin is Hartmannian in that he is offering a transcendental, nonmetaphysical interpretation. It is transcendental in that Hegel is seen as responding to a question like "What are the conditions for the possibility of having a conceptual scheme?" The sense in which it is nonmetaphysical is a bit more complicated. Early on, in a footnote, Pippin gives us an initial due as to what nonmetaphysica] might mean: "Hegel is, like Kant, an' antirealist,' not a metaphysicall'ealist" (Pippin, p. 262). By "antirealism," Pippin is referring to the sense in which objects cannot exist independently. The germ for this "antire alism" is the Kantian discovery that there must be an T which accompanies my representations-that the subject's "hard-wired" concepts are ineluctably constitutive of experience. This appercep tive theme is the tool Pippin uses to build his bridges between Kant and Hegel. 1 By "metaphysical realist," Pippin is referring to those readings of Hegel which suggest that there is some extra-subjective force (call it Geist, Oversoul, Supermind, God) existing in the world. By portraying Hegel as an antirealist, the locus quickly shifts to apperception/ self-consciousness. Pippin takes very seriously the idea that thought determines itself-hence the title Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness. This apperceptive theme applied to the Logic yields a reading which views the progression of the categories as an autonomous. 1 Regarding Hegel's purported anti-Kantianism, Pippin tells us, "Hegel's rhe torical bark is worse than his appropriating bite when it comes to Kant" (pippin, p. 248).

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organic self-actualization. One might label this an "internalist" read ing, "So to ask whether the fundamental elements of OUI cone tual scheme are true is to ask if they' agree with themselves' or p:: e d from the se1f-,d~termining power,of th~ N otion itself , (Pippin. p. ~4~). When ,de~~nbmg thou~~~. (notion~ty) Pippin cOnsistently uses terms like autonomous, mternal, self-determination" and "sel£ grounded." B~t these terms ha,ve a cash value only if they are understood With reference to theIr correlates (Le., externality, other wise determined or grounded). This is the key ambiguity in Pippin•s interpretation. The very term, "conceptual scheme," suggests a subject who employs it and an object realm to which it is applied. I sense that Pippin would not appreciate this formulation, but I'm wondering if he isn't trading on our intuitions regarding the meaning(s) of this term, Ludwig Siep, in a review of Pippin's book, suggests that this is ind eed how Pippin is understanding" conceptual scheme": "It looks as if he [Pippin] still understands the conceptual scheme as a means of reference to extra-subjective and extra-conceptual reality." He later adds, "Hegel at the end of the Logic claims to have shown once and for all that there is no 'outside' and no . other' for the self determination of the concept" (Siep, pp. 74-75). The crucial queslion facing Pippin is, "Is there any meaningful sense in which we can speak of an 'outside' to the scheme?" If not, then talk of schemes becomes misleading. My sense is that the term was chosen with care and that Pippin is not in a hurry to relinquish it. It is a piece of hardware he needs to make a clean distinction between thought and object (between the necessary, rule governed behavior of the notion, on the one hand, and mere externality, on the other). This leads us to the question of why Pippin would be interested in a bifurcation between thought and object in the first place. This brings us back to Hartmann and Kolb. In their cases, I pointed out that by their own admissions, they were subverting Hegel in the interest of "rigor." I suspect and will now attempt to show, that a similar motive is behind Pippin's Kantian reading. Motivations are a very difficult thing to get our hands on, but Pippin provides us some indication in the text. He ini~ally justi~es his Neo-Kantian approach "with the hope that there IS some pllllo sophically useful payoff in reading Hegel so intensely in the light of Kant's actual project" (Pippin, p. 7; emphasis added). Pippin also

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appears to be aware of the sense in which his interpretation doesn't accord with Hegel's ambitions, "Ibelieve that Hegel's texts [have] the resources for reacting him this way without anachronism, and with philosophical merit, but it is certainly true that Hegel himself seems often much more ambitious about his system" (Pippin, p. 259). What is the "philosophically useful payoff" which justifies this revision of Hegel? Thomas Wartenberg speculates that the "payoff" is the un earthing of a systematic core behind Hegel's dialectical excesses: The guiding principle of their interpretations is there fore to isolate the argumentative sh"Ucture that will allow the name "Hegel" to stand for an intelligible position on contemporary philosophic issues. For this reason they seek to unveil the "rational core" behind the "mystifying shell" of Hegel's idealism (Wartenberg, p. 121). I think this impulse also stands behind Pippin's polemics against spirit monism. He, like Hartmann and Kolb, uses terms like psychol ogy, pre-critical. romantic, pragmatic. existential, mysterious, loose, ambiguous, arbitrary, etc. when he is denigrating metaphYSical readings. Hartmann. Kolb and Pippi n are uni ted in that they are all 0 ffed ng interpretations of Hegel which see him as answering Kantian tnm scendental questions as opposed to ontological questions. They also are similar in their recognition that Hegel himself would not counte nance their readings and finally. their interpretations are driven by an urge to find strictness, rigor and discipline in HegeL I am going to argue that in their zeal for necessity they are driven to a formalism characteristic of what Hegel called the "understanding." This fixa tion with rigor, "cannot see when it has reached its limit; nor, if it has transgressed that limit does it perceive that it is in a sphere where the categories of understanding, which it still continues rudely to apply, have lost all authority" (Logic, p. 289). I will now consider how welt their interpretation accords with Hegel's texts. In surveying some of the recent Hegel scholarship, one notices how contentious the issue of relation amongst Hegel's texts is. In fact, the choice of which Hegelian text is primary goes a long way towards determining one's stances on a whole host of macro-interpretive

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issues. Accordingly. most N eo-Kantians see the Logic as the primary text (the others are merely derivative applications of the dialectical method). The Logic also is (conveniently) the easiest text to view through a Kantianlens. So as not to construct a straw man, I will show how even in the Logic (esp. the Doctrine of the Notion) their reading leaves key moves Wlaccounted for. Toward the end of the Doctrine of Essence. Hegel is more circum spect on the issue of contingency than our N eo-Kantians would have us believe: "we must guard against being so far misled by a well meant endeavor after rational knowledge, as to try to exhibit the necessity of phenomena which are marked by a decided contin gency" (Logic, p. 206).2 What I am interested in taking issue with is the formalism which stands behind their desire for rigor. On this ques tion Hegel has much to say. In the beginning of the Doctrine of the Notion, Hegel chastises those who would posita Platonic-like bifur cation between logical forms and the content to which they apply: The Logic of the Notion is usually treated as a science of form only, and understood to deal with the form of notion, judgement and syllogism as form, without in the least touching the question whether anything is true. The answer to that question is supposed to depend on the content only. If the logical forms of the notion were really dead and inert receptacles of con ceptions and thoughts, careless of what they con tained, knowledge about them would be an idle curi osity which the truth might dispense with. On the contrary they really are, as forms of the notion, the vital spirit of the actual world (Logic, p. 226). Hartmann's portrayal of thought as "innocuous" or as a "luxury" simply does not comport with either the spirit or (as we see here) the letter of Hegel's writings. For Hegel, the Idea (the culmination of his system) is defined as the unity of subject and object, of the ideal and the real. of the finite and the infinite, of soul and body (Logic, pp. 276~ 77). Externality, particularity and contingency are preserved in the 2Here Hegel is simply reiterating Aristotle's guidance from the Nico11l11chean Ethics, "it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits" (Aristotle, pp. 24-261094b).

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reconciliation-not abstractly negated. It is for this reason that Hegel has a home for existentialists in his system. An interpretation which reintroduces a cleavage between thought and existence we might tentatively name "Kantian dualism." Pippin refers to it as "the problem of 'returning' to the empirical world, once one rejects empiricism or a naturalist realism in favor of original, constitutive conditions" (Pippin, p. 259). I submit that here Pippin (through his interpretation) is foisting Kant's problem onto Hegel. Hegel remon足 strates ad n.auseam on the incorrigible urge to indulge the "Either-Or" of the Understanding, the Logic of Understanding ... believes thought to be a mere subjective and formal activity, and the objec足 tive fact, which confronts thought. to have a separate and permanentbeing. But this dualism is a half-truth: and there is a want of intelligence in the procedure which at once accepts. without inquiring into their origin, the categories of subjectivity and objectivity (Logic, p. 255). This is all a rather long winded way of saying Hegel has some足 thing to say on hermeneutical issues. I submit that the context which informs (en-forms) the Logic is thoroughgoing. Another way of evincing this feature is to ask the question. "Is the meaning of the categories in the Logic exhaustively defined by their place in the dialectical process?" Is the Logic an enclosed architectonic of words and ideas which then stand in opposition to externality? [Pippin's "unreal" particulars] (Pippin, p. 236). On my view. it is not. I read the Logic as part of a system which exhibits a thoroughgoing monism. There is a sense in which the Logic isn't a whole but as a moment of the Hegelian corpus, is the whole. This essay might be seen as an application of this insight. It does so by conSidering the sense in which the reader is implicated in the system. It is symptomatic of Hartmann's formalism that in his approach he assumes Hegel pro足 vides no guidance regarding the application of "strictness" as the criteria which adjudicates interpretations. What appears to be a meta-textual issue is. for Hegel, subsumed in the system. Hegel opens the Doctrine of the Notion by asserting, "The Notion is the principle of freedom" (Logic, p. 223). This is not mere hyperbole,

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nor are the political overtones unintended. I think Hegel (like the Greeks and against modernity) sees epistemology and ontology as fundamentally linked (if not speculatively identical). Said another way, epistemology (truth) and ethics/politics (virtue), for Hegel, should not and can not be radically divorced from each other. I think this sentiment is behind his rather paradoxical use of "freedom" in a book on logic. One might ask, "So, how and where does Hegel implicate the reader and provide hermeneutical guidance?" I will argue that a Hegelian response to Neo-Kantian domestications of his thought can be found in the Self-Consciousness section of the Phenomenology of Spirit. To make my project more manageable, I will argue that Hartmann's Either-Or (either thought or reality) can be seen as an example of the inwardly disrupted nature of the Unhappy Con sciousness (insofar as I have been successful in bringing to light the Hartmanniansympathiesin Kolb and Pippin, then this characteriza tion will also hold for them). The Unhappy Consciousness is marked by a thoroughgoing bifurcation between universality and particularity: the simple Unchangeable, it takes to be the essential Being; but the other, the protean Changeable, it takes to be the unessential. The two are, for the Unhappy Consciousness, alien to one another; and because His itself the consciousness of this contradiction, it iden tifies itself with the changeable consciousness, and takes itself to be the unessential Being, it must at the same time set about freeing itself from the unessen tial, i.e. from itself (PS. p. 127), Many commentators see the Unhappy Consciousness exemplified in the Christian-esp. in Kierkegaard. I think one can find a secular correlate in what I have dubbed "Kantian dualism." The desire to posit a beyond (noumena) of knowledge is the very same quest for "the unchangeable"-in this case for the apriori. This is matched by an equally vehement renunciation of contingency-of "the protean changeable." LudWig Siep. while criticizing Pippin's transcendental reading of Hegel, also sees a connection between Christian and philosophical longing for transcendence: "the conception of a be

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yond for our knowledge and desire is at the same time that basic feature of the Christian religion, which transfers true reality into a 'transcendence'" (Siep. p. 67). Kant's noumenal realm, the Christian God and Hartmann's attempt to carve out a realm for necessity are linked in their construction of a "beyond." Further, the Christian's conception of sin is equivalent to the Hartmannian renunciation of contingency in that they are both a denial of the body-the a posteriori, the changeable, the inessential, the deviant, the messy, gritty, playful vitality that is life. Hartmannlongs for purity; he feels soiled by the shadows on the cave wall. These mere appearances will not deliver the stable cer足 tainty he yearns for. In this regard he reminds us of Nietzsche's depiction of the ascetic priest. 3 Out of impotence, the priest (Uke today's logicians) wallows in his life inimical resentment. Perhaps truth is less like Hartmann's geometry and more like Nietzsche's woman. 4 Are we trapped on the "highway of despair"-tragically forced to choose either Hartmann's barren formalism 01' Nietzsche's (& Rorty's) free spirited relativism? Hegel hoped reason could provide some kind of reconciliation between universal and particu足 lar, between subject and object, between the ideal and the real, between the actual and the rational. Hegel tells us we need, "To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to delight in the present" (Philosophy of Right, p. 22). I conclude with a suggestion. I see aspects of Pippin's account 3 Rorty adds an interesting (and I think in this case ilpplicable) gloss on Nietzsche's description of the ascetic priest. "Such a person shares Niutzsche's endlessly repeated desire for, above all else, cleanliness. He also shares Hcidegger's endlessly repeated desire for simplicity. He is likely to have the same attitude toward sexual as to economic commerce: he finds it messy. So he is inclined both to keep women in their traditional subordinate place, out of sight and mind, and to favor a caste system which ranks the manly warriors, who bathe frequently, above the smelly traders in the bazaar. But the wan'ior is, of course, outranked by the priest-who bathes even more frequently and is still manlier. The priost is manlier because what is important is not the fleshy phallus but the immaterial om.'-the one which penetrates through the veil of appearances <lnd makes contact with true reality, reaches the light at the end of the tunnel ina way that tho warrior never ciln" (Rorty, p. 72). ~ "Supposing truth is a woman-what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriollsness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart?" (Nietzsche, p. 2; emplUlsis added).

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which, if altered, point to the kind of ontological reading I am more sympathetic with. If we substitute logos for conceptual scheme, we can ameliorate the sharp schism between subject and object which plagues Pippin's Kantian interpretation. Kolb provides a working definition: For the Greeks, logos (speech, argument, reason, gath足 ering together) names that common principle of defi足 niteness and unity that makes thinking, speaking and acting possible .... logos is the primal gathering that forms and allows unity within any sphere of beings or thought" (Kolb, p. 57). Whereas "c!?nceptual scheme" is more like language (and hence suggests a user and a realm of objects to which the scheme applies),5 logos is closer to a shared, intersubjective historical context-our collective horizon (or Geist if you prefer). And in that sense it has a way of gathering the subject and the object together. It allows for the monism Hegel had in mind. In short, I think Hegel is a live enough option without Kantian ornamentation.

5 For 11 tight treatment of "concep tual scheme" ,lOd the problems it is plagued by see Davidson, D. "On tho Very Idea of a ConceptuD,! Scheme."

WORKS CITED

Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. ed. Richard McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941. Davidson, D. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oarendon Press, 1991. Hartmann, K. "Hegel: A Non-Metaphysical View," Studies in Foundational Philosophy. Amsterdam: Rodopi; Wurzburg: Konighausen & Newmann, 1988.

[EPR] Hegel, G. W. F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. ed. A. W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University

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Press, 1991.

- - . Logic. trans. W. Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. - - . [PS] Phenomenology of Spirit. trans. A. V. Miller Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Kolb, D. The Critique ofPure Modernity: Hegel. Heidegge,', and After. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988.

Nietzsche, F. Beyond Good and Evil. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. Pippin, Robert B. Hegel's Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rorty. R. Essays on Heidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Siep, 1. "Hegel's Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Inquiry, Vol 34. Wartenberg, T. E. "Hegel' s Idealism: The Logi c of Conceptuali ty," in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. ed. F. C. Beiser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.