Abstract
Robert Sokolowski, in Husserlian Meditations, writes:
Heidegger situates Husserlian themes within the wider context of the question of being, but he does not sufficiently consider the context of political philosophy. And even the question of being appears different if the political context is taken into account. Heidegger advances beyond Husserl by… raising the issue of pulicness in a more appropriate way than Husserl, with his stress on the discourse of science, was able to do. But Heidegger’s conception of the public is not adequate for political life; in terms of the kinds of human association distinguished by Aristotle in Politics I.2—family, village, city—Heidegger’s thoughts are most appropriate for the village, not the city. A village is not based on any kind of constitution or “social contract.”1
I am grateful to Joseph Walsh of Stockton State College and Michael Zimmerman of Tulane for valuable criticisms of earlier drafts of this paper. It has appeared in Cultural Hermeneutics, Summer 1976.
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References
Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, Evanston, 1974, pp. 212–213, fn. 7.
See Hannah Arendt, “Reflections on Violence,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 27, 1969, pp. 24ff.
See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, New York, 1968, pp. 17–18.
Ibid., p. 107.
Ibid., pp. 116–120. As will be seen from what follows, there is reason to applaud rather than to chastise Aristotle for not offering a definitive resolution.
Gabriel Marcel has made something of the same point. See his The Mystery of Being, tr. by G.S. Fraser, Chicago, 1964, Vol. 1, pp. 34, 39–40, and 45–46.
See, however, in this connection Jean-Michel Palmier, Les écrits politiques de Heidegger, Paris, 1968
and Otto Poggeler, Philosophie und Politik bei Heidegger, Freiburg-München, 1972.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures of the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien, Evanston, 1973, pp. 28–29.
Ibid., p. 225. It is important to note that Merleau-Ponty saw that communists, too, could work in and not be excluded from a parliament.
Ibid., p. 226.
Ibid., p. 227. See in this connection Merleau-Ponty’s “On Madagascar,” in Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary, Evanston, 1964, pp. 328–336.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 221.
Ibid., pp. 222–223.
Ibid., p. 35. My modification of McCleary’s translation.
See in this connection Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, pp. 153–154.
M. Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 222. My insertion.
I leave out, as irrelevant to my present concerns, the question of Heidegger’s connection with Nazism. That question is well handled by Palmier, op. cit.
See M. Heidegger, “Wissenschaft und Besinnung,” in Vorträge und Aufsatze, Pfullingen, 1967, Teil I, esp. pp. 53–62, and Letter on Humanism, tr. By Edgar Lohner in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. by William Barrett and Henry Aiken, New York, 1962, Vol. III, pp. 270–302.
M. Heidegger, “Überwindung der Metaphysik,” in Vorträge und Aufsatze, p. 88.
Ibid., p. 90.
M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” tr. by Albert Hofstadter, in Philosophies of Art and Beauty, ed. by Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns, New York, 1964, pp. 685–690. The themes of destiny, fate, and heritage are already at play in Being and Time.
M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” p. 695.
Ibid., pp. 696–698.
See in this connection Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power, tr. by J.F. Huntington, Boston, 1962.
For useful distinctions between power, coercion, force, and violence, see Hannah Arendt, “Reflections on Violence,” New York Review of Books, February 27, 1969, pp. 19–31.
R. Sokolowski, op. cit., p. 282, also calls attention to the connection between speech and politics.
On Greek and Roman political traditions, see H. Arendt’s “What is Authority?” and “What is Freedom?” in her Between Past and Future.
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© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Dauenhauer, B. (1978). Renovating the Problem of Politics. In: Bruzina, R., Wilshire, B. (eds) Crosscurrents in Phenomenology. Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_3
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