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Article Excerpt
HANNAH ARENDT IS CELEBRATED AS ONE OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS of our time. But is such a celebration truly legitimate? Indeed, as surprising and as paradoxical as it may seem, Hannah Arendt has always demonstrated a strong opposition to political philosophy and to its tradition of thought. Despite almost unanimous recognition of Arendt, the idiom "political philosophy"--and the institutions that are born of it--are highly problematic. For the author of The Human Condition, under the guise of a supposedly happy alliance between the substantive and the qualifier, "political philosophy" willingly conceals a conflict between philosophy and politics and bears the threat of the sovereignty of one over the other. This conflict is extremely profound since it represents opposition not only between two academic disciplines but between two modes of existence that seek to establish a hierarchy--excellence being attributed to one of them, in this case, the bios theoretikos at the expense of the bios politicos.
Little surprise, then, that a philosopher critical of the concept of sovereignty attacks the general configuration of political philosophy. Indeed, Arendt is aware of the necessity of rejecting the model of competence in the political realm in order to better recognize the inherent political capacity of all; her resolve is to struggle against the government of philosophers, of "those who know over those who do not know." In order to fully comprehend the "contra political philosophy" that Arendt puts forth, what better vantage point than that of her critical interpretation of Plato's thought? Did the author of the Republic not edify or institute political philosophy away from and even against the polis?
In a letter dated May 8, 1954, in which she attempts to explain to Heidegger the broad outline of her work, Arendt writes,
Starting with the parable of the cave (and your interpretation of it), a representation of the traditional relationship between philosophy and politics, [we see] actually the attitude of Plato and Aristotle toward the polis as the basis of all political theories. (It seems to me decisive that Plato makes the agathon [the good] the highest idea--and not the kalon ]the beautiful]--for political reasons) (Hannah Arendt-artin Heidegger letter, 1925-1975).
Two years later, July 1, 1956, in a letter to Karl Jaspers, Arendt once again speaks of Plato's position:
It seems to me that in the Republic Plato wanted to "apply" his own theory of ideas to politics, even though that theory had very different origins. Heidegger, it seems to me, is particularly off base in using the cave simile to interpret and "criticize" Plato's theory of ideas, but he is right when he says that in the presentation of the cave simile, truth is transformed on the sly into correctness and, consequently, ideas into standards (Arendt and Jaspers, 1992: 288).
From these letters, three essential points can be drawn:
* The importance of the allegory of the cave, which is the heart of Plato's political philosophy. Arendt also adds the importance of Heidegger's interpretation in "Plato's Doctrine of Truth." Here we must admit that Arendt expresses a reserve concerning Heidegger's attempt to interpret the Theory of Forms via the cave allegory (Heidegger, 1998:155-182).
* The hypothesis that Plato, in the Republic, sought to apply his Theory of Forms to politics, even if this theory is of a different origin, inasmuch as its aim is to answer the philosophical question of the truth rather than the political question of the organization of the city. It is during this problematic application that Plato realizes the no less problematic passage from the idea of Beauty to the idea of Good.
* The hypothesis of the passage from the idea of Beauty to the idea of Good is confirmed by Heidegger's interpretation, which insists on the ambiguity of the platonic concept of the essence of truth, that would experience a transformation of the truth as "non-voilement de l'etant" to the truth as exactitude of view, a transformation from aletheia to omoiosis.
By making the allegory of the cave the central aspect of Plato's political philosophy, is Arendt not articulating a most profound critique of the idea of political philosophy, a superior form of critique, the general principal of which is expressed in a fragment of the introduction to the Politics: "Plato, the father of political philosophy in the West, attempted in various ways to oppose the polis and what it understood by freedom by positing a political theory in which political standards were derived not from politics but from philosophy" (Arendt, 2005: 130-131). From this stems a domination of reason over politics that, following Arendt, had a decisive effect on the destiny of political philosophy in the Western world. "Quelque chose de fondamentalement faux" writes Arendt about political philosophy in the Journal de pensee.
And so what is the Arendtian interpretation of the cave allegory?. How can we define its uniqueness? Even if it rests upon the strong certitude that the allegory represents the heart of Plato's political philosophy, this interpretation unfurls in many different directions. Beyond this multiplicity, we find one overriding issue: Plato's acceptance or rejection of political philosophy.
This interpretation of the cave allegory gives Arendt the opportunity to highlight Plato's ambivalence toward human affairs and also to respond to Pascal with a "yes, but." It is true that Plato does not give great philosophical importance to the political realm and that he thought that we should not take it very seriously. It is nevertheless true that, contrary to almost all of the philosophers that followed him, Plato "still took human affairs so seriously that he changed the very center of his thought to make it applicable to politics" (Arendt, 1961: 113). Pascal's Thought 331 (Pascal, 1968) only expresses half of the truth. Admittedly, we can compare Plato's cave to Pascal's insane asylum, but Plato's intervention aims at something more than the simple re-establishment of order by the psychiatrist (medecin alieniste). His desire to put an end to the anomie that ravages the ship of fools (nef des fous) is transformed into a quest for the best regime. This, in turn, gives birth to a well-administered and well-ordered city. Hence, Plato modifies the most proper philosophical elaboration, the theory of Forms, in order for it to serve his project. This ambivalence constitutes the fabric of the cave allegory. Does it not hold to the ambiguity of the philosopher who, following the paradox of the membership and the withdrawal, belongs and does not belong to the city, finding himself both outside and inside its walls?
THE ARENDTIAN READING AS A POLITICAL READING
Arendt deliberately and immediately turns her interpretation to the philosopher. For Arendt, as for Heidegger, the allegory tells a story: it gives an account of the path from the cave to the light of day and, inversely, from the light of day to the darkness of the cave. The man liberated from his chains, an uncertain figure for Heidegger, is the philosopher and the cave allegory presents "a concentrated biography" of him in three steps, three turning points the whole of which represents a conversion of human beings in their totality, the formation of the philosopher, or, in Heideggerian terms, "leading the whole human being in the turning around of his or her essence" (Heidegger, 1998: 166). In the initial phase, the future philosopher freely turns in the cave and discovers behind him an artificial fire that permits him to see things as they are in their reality. For Arendt, this first attitude is that of the learned who seeks to know things as they are in themselves, without taking into account the opinions of the multitude. Indeed, the shadows and images that stream on the screen fixated by the prisoners of the cave would be their opinions (doxai).
Unsatisfied with the light of the fire, the philosopher, "this solitary adventurer," discovers an exit that leads, by stairway, to the open sky, to a new area: the kingdom of Ideas or Forms, the eternal essence of perishable and changing things, illuminated by the sun, the Ideas of ideas or the Super Good. Here is the peak of the life of the philosopher, but here also begins his tragedy. Because he is mortal, the philosopher cannot remain indefinitely in the sky of pure Ideas. He must go back down into the cave among his companions of misfortune. However, this return to his origins is not a return home. It becomes an ordeal of a strange malaise. In this third stage, the philosopher appears to be a laughable figure to those who surround him. Worse, he is in danger. His ascension to the kingdom of Ideas makes him lose his sense of orientation in the cave; he nurtures very dangerous ideas that oblige him to contradict the obvious facts of common sense.
This is a sketch that rests on an obvious simplification of the platonic allegory. For example, the essential problem...
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