Abstract
This essay analyses how Arendt transforms Heidegger’s critique of the anyone (das Man) in Being and Time into the philosophical concept of power as acting in concert in The Human Condition. The essay highlights the similarities as well as the differences of both concepts by focusing on their inherent ambivalences. In Heidegger’s critique of das Man, this ambivalence derives from the combination of an existential and a historical perspective, which turn social life into both a condition for and a fallenness from authentic existence. Arendt aims to overcome this ambiguity with her concept of Acting in Concert as a condition for political empowerment, freedom and new beginning. In her Denktagebuch, the emphasis on beginning as an event is inspired by a heterodox reading of Heidegger’s mature thought. But despite Arendt’s attempt to overcome the negative aspects of das Man as a form of conventionalism by stressing instead the elements of plurality and freedom, the ambivalence of Heidegger’s das Man reappears in Arendt’s concept of acting in concert the very moment it is identified as political, i. e. democratic, power. It is the necessity of gaining majorities that expose democratic interactions to the threat of conformism. Turning Arendt against Heidegger and Heidegger against Arendt, this essay offers an understanding of democracy that encompasses this ambivalence of das Man.
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- 1.
The references to Heidegger’s Being and Time are based on the translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Heidegger 1962), which renders the German expression das Man as “the they”. However, in order to draw attention to the specific meaning of Heidegger‘s expression, the original term das Man will be kept in this text.
- 2.
See the note in the text “The image of Hell”, from 1946, stating that Heidegger made the Nazism openly respectable in the elite of German universities (Arendt 1994, 202).
- 3.
All notes are accessible via http://www.bard.edu/arendtcollection/marginalia.htm, weblinks accessed 9th June 2015.
- 4.
In her lecture “Concern with Politics”, Arendt states that Heidegger’s concept of the world “constitutes a step out of this difficulty”, and she thereby alludes to the problem of philosophical solipsism (Arendt 1994, 443).
- 5.
Kisiel (1993, 386) refers on Heidegger’s lecture “Logic” from 1925/26, where Heidegger developed his concept of solicitude in its authentic and inauthentic forms, and insinuates that Heidegger might have had his student Hannah Arendt in mind: „Such a solicitude treats the other (Let us call her ‚Johanna A.’: it was her last semester in Marburg) as a nothing vis-à-vis her Dasein.“
- 6.
See Arendt‘s letter to her doctoral student Calvin Schrag from 31 December 1955, cited in (Grunenberg 2006, 267): „I have to warn you about my essay about existentialism, particularly about the part concerning Heidegger which is not only inappropriate, but simply wrong in some parts. Please just forget about this.“ (translation S.B.)
- 7.
However, Arendt’s thesis that labor means the satisfaction of natural needs, which do not, in contrast to technical-artistic work and practical-political „action“, individualise or socialise people, is highly problematic. Ultimately, this thesis undermines Arendt’s own critique of the identification of freedom with sovereignty because she qualifies forms of dependence on needs in the household as unfreedom (Meyer 2011).
- 8.
- 9.
My thoughts are mostly based on the quote above from Denktagebuch. However, it would be possible to suggest a different reading of the beginning by refering to other statements: „Acting (politically): a) Deed: Distinction of a single individual before all others. b) Acting in concert: Power and the beginning of something (archein) that needs the help of others (prattein) in order to be accomplished” (Arendt 2002, 548; translation S.B.; archein and prattein in Greek letters). Margaret Canovan (1992, 136) shows that in a lecture manuscript Arendt defines the beginning as a power limited to the king. There, Arendt associates the heroical act of beginning with the Homeric era. This elitarian notion of the beginning can still be seen in The Human Condition, where Arendt defines power as a fragile relation between the one who starts alone and the many who accomplish something together (Arendt 1998, 189) (see also below Sect. 9.5 for these incoherences).
- 10.
Thus Arendt states in May 1951 that plurality “has been standing in the way of the human ever since Plato (and up until Heidegger) in the sense that it does not want him to keep his sovereignty”. (Arendt 2002, 80; translation S.B.)
- 11.
“Das Selbe ist nicht das Einerlei des Gleichen, sondern das Einzige im Verschiedenen und das verborgene Nahe im Fremden” (Arendt 2002, 65).
- 12.
“Von hier aus wäre ein neuer Gleichheitsbegriff zu entwickeln, der den Schrecken, die ursprüngliche Angst vor der Menschheit sowohl wie die Notwendigkeit ihrer bewahren könnte. Wir können uns mit der Nähe (dem Gemeinsamen) nur abfinden, weil sie im Fremden verborgen ist und als Fremdes sich präsentiert. Wir können uns mit dem Fremden nur abfinden, weil es Nahes verbirgt, Gemeinsames ankündigt.” (Arendt 2002, 65)
- 13.
See Arendt’s note from January 1951: “Heidegger was wrong in Being and Time: The voice of the conscience is precisely ‘the Man’ on the peak of its domination. Thus the ‘conscience’ could be used very well by the Nazis or anyone else” (Arendt 2002, 181, translation S.B.).
- 14.
Heidegger follows the tradition of Nietzsche in thinking power only in extreme and opposing relations of superior power and powerlessness. Thus, his description of the authentic Dasein is a description of continuous turns in which powerlessness and superior power alternate. See Heidegger’s conclusion in Being and Time: Only if Dasein “lets death become powerful in itself” and recognises its own “powerlessness”, it “understands itself in its own superior power, the power of its finite freedom” (BT 384).
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Sophie Bürgi, Karin Schlapbach and the anonymous referee for their helpful comments on this text.
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Meyer, K. (2017). Ambivalence of Power: Heidegger’s das Man and Arendt’s Acting in Concert . In: Schmid, H., Thonhauser, G. (eds) From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2_9
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