行动、叙事与认同:从阿伦特到利科

认同是人生在世的基本处境,涉及人生活的方方面面,但就其本质而言,它关涉到自我,是对我是谁的追问,因而是一个古老且持久的哲学问题。与此同时,人作为一种存在于世界之中的历史性的存在者,对我是谁加以追问的认同,内在地有一个共同体的公共维度。因此,认同问题呈现的是个人与共同体的相互构成。通常,关于认同的论述,无论是基于笛卡尔精神实体的非还原论,还是基于洛克记忆经验的还原论,都忽视了认同的公共维度,而陷入了某种程度上的本质主义。阿伦特通过私人领域与公共领域的划分,强调认同在本质上是一个谁而非什么的问题,认为人在公共领域的行动彰显了一个人的谁,这种对于一个谁的彰显通过叙事得以持存。认同正是在这种行动和叙事中,与发生过的事件达成和解,呈现一个持久、开放的公共形象。借此,利科阐述了一种叙事认同观念。     

The analysis of experience: John Dewey and Elsie Ripley Clapp on desire and thinking, 1911

Unpublished correspondence with Elsie Ripley Clapp, along with extensive notes for a 1911 course, The Analysis of Experience, provide the context for a consideration of John Dewey's discussion of the relation between desire and thinking. Dewey's philosophic point of view is portrayed as it was developing in his own mind. The unity of thought and desire, the necessity of making objects of inquiry, the identification of thinking and acting, are themes in these materials which would appear in their published form in such works as Essays in Experimental Logic, Democracy and Education, and Human Nature and Conduct. In the unpublished materials, Dewey is seen as a naturalist at work in his laboratory, reworking his ideas and acknowledging Clapp's assistance in getting Dewey to connect practical situations in life with the philosophic distinctions under development. The 1911 materials are an excellent connection between problematics in Dewey's earlier writings on ethics, epistemology, and logic, and his later writings, on the same subjects in the 1920's and 1930's.     

On Hannah Arendt: The Worldly In-Between of Human Beings and its Ethical Consequences

Abstract

In this paper, I show how a concept of ethics can be derived from Hannah Arendt’s theory of action in The Human Condition, which contains from her call for action. When she looks at the ‘political actor’, as well as at the concept of ‘political situation’, her ethical claim is first of all the need to take initiative, to act. Hence, ‘political situations’ as she defines them are discussed as common responsibilities. But common responsibility is rooted in the in-between of human beings, rather than in individual human nature and is determined by Arendt’s principle of humanity. Therefore, at the centre of an implicit Arendtian ethics stands the world and the in-between of human beings.     

From Radical to Banal Evil: Hannah Arendt against the Justification of the Unjustifiable

Two central strands in Arendt's thought are the reflection on the evil of Auschwitz and the rethinking in terms of politics of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics. Given Heidegger's taciturnity regarding Auschwitz and Arendt's own taciturnity regarding the philosophical implications of Heidegger's political engagement in 1933, to set out how these strands interrelate is to examine the coherence of Arendt's thought and its potential for a critique of Heidegger. By refusing to countenance a theological conception of the evil of Auschwitz, Arendt consolidates the break with theology that Heidegger attempts through his analysis of the essential finitude of Dasein. In the light of Arendt's account of evil, it is possible to see the theological vestiges in Heidegger's ontology. Heidegger's resumption of the question concerning the categorical interconnections of the ways of Being entails an abandonment of finitude: he accommodates and tacitly justifies that which can have no human justification.     

Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt on the Jewish question: political theology as a critique

The article is dedicated to the politico-theological critique of Judaism from the position of Christianity. It shows the affinity of Marx’s early critique of liberal state and of Hannah Arendt’s criticism of formal legalistic thinking in the contemporary judicial treatment of Nazism (and of similar international political crimes). Marx’s critique of nation-state finds its unlikely continuation in Arendt’s critique of international law. The politico-theological argument is explicit in Marx and implicit in Arendt, but both develop the Hegelian criticism of liberal state which shows its reliance on the abstract law, on the one hand, and on the egotistic abstract individual, on the other. The theological undercurrent of the argument is both sign of its limitations, and of the subsisting relevance of the politico-theological framework, even in the similarly novel circumstances of the twentieth century. It is only within and through the theological critique and critique of theology that these issues would stand a chance of resolution.     

Reading the Lives of Others: Biography as Political Thought in Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir

In this essay, I focus on two biographical works by Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir that I read as political texts: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (Arendt 1957 ) and “Must We Burn Sade?” (Beauvoir 2012 ). Reading Arendt's Varnhagen and Beauvoir's “Sade” side by side illuminates their shared preoccupation with lived experience and their common political premises: the antagonism between freedom and sovereignty, and the centrality of action and constructive relations with others. My argument is that these texts constitute an original style of political thinking, which I call politico‐biographical hermeneutics, or reading the life of others as exercises in political theory. Politico‐biographical hermeneutics, as I take it, is not a systematic methodology, but an approach to interpreting sociopolitical forces as they come to bear and are embodied and inscribed in the lived experiences, struggles, and works of representative or exemplary individuals. This approach identifies the political lessons of lived experience and supports one of the central claims of feminist philosophy, namely, that the personal and the political are not antithetical, but relational.     

Defending a Common World: Hannah Arendt on the State,the Nation and Political Education

For a long time, one of the most important tasks for education in liberal democracies has been to foster the next generation in core democratic values in order to prepare them for future political responsibilities. In spite of this, general trust in the liberal democratic system is in rapid decline. In this paper, the tension between the ambitions of liberal-democratic educational systems and contemporary challenges to central democratic ideas is approached by reconsidering Hannah Arendt’s critique of political education. This will be done informed by her analysis of the tension between the concepts of state and nation. By showing how education, depending on its role as a tool of the state or the nation, may be a fundamental requirement for the establishment of a common world or the most effective tool for its destruction, the paper argues for the need to understand Arendt’s educational thinking in light of her wider political analysis. Rather than downplaying the provocative aspects of her critique, the paper argues for the need to use it as a starting point for thinking again how education may become an emancipatory undertaking capable of disarming contemporary threats to human plurality and freedom.     

Re-Interpretation in Historiography: John Dewey and the Neo-Humanist Tradition

Did John Dewey’s ‘new philosophy of education’ really try to dissolve the whole block of tradition or is his debt namely to educational core-concepts of neo-humanism deeper than he was prepared to acknowledge? After some general remarks on the process of reception as productive re-adaptation and its implication for historiography I will deal with Dewey’s own contexts that shape the interpretative grid through which he receives the tradition. Two case studies attempt to illustrate both continuity and discontinuity with a specific part of this tradition, namely two critical perspectives within German neo-humanism: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Friedrich Herbart.     

Re-Interpretation in Historiography: John Dewey and the Neo-Humanist Tradition

Did John Deweys new philosophy of education really try to dissolve the whole block of tradition or is his debt namely to educational core-concepts of neo-humanism deeper than he was prepared to acknowledge? After some general remarks on the process of reception as productive re-adaptation and its implication for historiography I will deal with Deweys own contexts that shape the interpretative grid through which he receives the tradition. Two case studies attempt to illustrate both continuity and discontinuity with a specific part of this tradition, namely two critical perspectives within German neo-humanism: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Friedrich Herbart.