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In Heidegger's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Phenomenological Humanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Lewis P. Hinchman  and
Sandra K. Hinchman
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Extract

Hannah Arendt's political theory gains in clarity and resonance when it is placed in the context of German phenomenology and Existenz philosophy. In this essay, the authors examine the points of contact (on the level of ideas rather than personal ties) between Arendt and Martin Heidegger. The argument holds that Arendt followed Heidegger in grafting traditional humanism onto an untraditional, self-consciously antimetaphysical body of thought. Yet almost from the beginning, she struck out in a direction peculiarly her own, seeking to escape a certain contemplative aloofness and remoteness from public affairs which she sensed in Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Against Heidegger, Arendt tried to show that the core values of human rights and dignity cannot be sustained unless one explicitly recognizes the “plurality” of human life and the importance of the public realm in revealing who we are as individuals.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 183 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

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References

NOTES

1 Voegelin, , “Review of The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Review of Politics, 15 (1953), 68–76;CrossRefGoogle ScholarArendt's, “A Reply” appears in the same issue (pp. 76–85).Google Scholar

2 Arendt, , “Letter to Gershem Scholem,” cited in Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 104.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Jay, Martin, “Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views,” Partisan Review, 45 (1978), 348–68;Google ScholarVollrath, Ernst, “Hannah Arendt and the Method of Political Thinking,” trans. Fantel, Hans, Social Research, 44 (1977), 160–82;Google ScholarYoung-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt, especially pp. 217–20;Google Scholar and Parekh, Bhikhu, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Admittedly, it will not always be easy to demonstrate in every case that Arendt's views were shaped exclusively by Heidegger rather than, say, by Jaspers as well. We do claim, however, that some of Heidegger's influences are unmistakable and others at least likely.

5 Arendt, , “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” Partisan Review, 13 (1946), 34–56.Google Scholar

6 Parekh, , Hannah Arendt, especially chapters 3 and 8.Google Scholar

7 We shall not hesitate, however, to cite later works by both Arendt and Heidegger when these show promise of clarifying the issues at stake here.

8 Arendt, , The Life of the Mind, vol. 1, Thinking (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), p. 46.Google Scholar

9 Arendt remarks of the epochẽ that it is not “a special method to be taught and learned,” as Husserl thought, but the characteristic attitude of genuine thinking when we withdraw from the world of appearances (ibid., p. 53).

10 Parekh, in Hannah Arendt, pp. 4–5,Google Scholar makes this point in a somewhat different way in his discussion of “hierarchical ontological dualism.”

11 See Heidegger, , Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 49–63.Google Scholar

12 Heidegger, , “On the Essence of Truth,” Basic Writings, ed. Krell, David Farrell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 127.Google Scholar

13 Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 67.Google Scholar

14 Heidegger, , An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Manheim, Ralph (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961), p. 121.Google Scholar

15 Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 79.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 80. In his later essays—for example, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”—Heidegger pursues the meaning of “dwell” in its manifold connections to other ideas, especially that of preserving and saving what is.

17 Heidegger, , “Letter on Humanism,” Basic Writings, p. 193.Google Scholar

18 There should be no mistake about this issue. Heidegger is not proposing any form of subjective idealism. He is just saying that all that is, is a phenomenon, something that appears. But how it appears—as “present-at-hand,” as tool, as Existenz, etc.—depends on Dasein's experiencing it as such.

19 Heidegger, , Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 11.Google Scholar This is a point to which Arendt gives full assent. See, for example, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969), p. 66,Google Scholar where she writes: “Words can be relied on only if one is sure that their function is to reveal and not to conceal.”

20 Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 87.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Heidegger, , Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 11:Google Scholar the “translation from the Greek into the Latin is not accidental and harmless; it marks the first stage in the process by which we cut ourselves off and alienated ourselves from the essence of Greek philosophy.”

22 Ibid., p. 87.

23 Heidegger, , “Letter on Humanism,” pp. 195, 210.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., p. 210.

25 Heidegger, , “The Essence of Truth,” Basic Writings, p. 127.Google Scholar

26 Heidegger, , “Letter on Humanism,” p. 210.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 241.

28 Cf. Bernstein, Richard J., The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), pp. 117–69 and especially pp. 135–41.Google Scholar

29 Arendt, , The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), pp. 158–61.Google Scholar

30 Cf. Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 81:Google Scholar “In these analyses the issue is one of seeing a primordial structure of Dasein's Being—a structure in accordance with whose phenomenal content the concepts of Being must be Articulated.”

31 Arendt, , in Thinking, p. 57,Google Scholar almost paraphrases Heidegger when she notes that thinking, whenever it is “true” thinking and not just common sense reasoning, asks “what it means for [something] to be.”

32 Heidegger, , Being and Time, pp. 91–95.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 81.

34 Arendt's analysis of worldlessness resembles an observation by Heidegger, in his “Letter on Humanism,” Basic Writings, p. 219:Google Scholar “Homelessness is coming to be the destiny of the world.” But the difference between homelessness and worldlessness may prove to be decisive.

35 Arendt, , The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 474–78.Google Scholar

36 Arendt, , The Human Condition, pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., p. 13.

38 Arendt, , Thinking, pp. 15, 78.Google Scholar

39 Arendt, , The Life of the Mind, vol. II, Willing (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 3.Google Scholar

40 Arendt, , Thinking, pp. 42–44.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., p. 19.

42 Ibid., p. 10, 12.

43 Arendt, , The Human Condition, p. 160.Google Scholar

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid., p. 158.

46 Heidegger, , Being and Time, pp. 67–68:Google Scholar “That Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being, is in each case mine. Thus Dasein is never to be taken ontologically as an instance or special case of some genus of entities as things that are present-at-hand.”

47 Arendt, , “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” p. 37.Google Scholar

48 Arendt, , The Human Condition, p. 3.Google Scholar

49 Arendt, , “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” p. 46.Google Scholar

50 Cf. Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 153;Google Scholar see also his attempt to defend himself against the charge that he is “volatilizing” the “core” of man's being.

51 Heidegger, , Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 121.Google Scholar

52 Arendt, , “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” p. 48.Google Scholar

53 Heidegger, , Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 121.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., p. 112.

55 Heidegger, , Being and Time, p. 165.Google Scholar

56 Arendt, , The Human Condition, p. 4.Google Scholar

57 Arendt, , “What Is Existenz Philosophy?” pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., p. 51.

59 Ibid.

60 Arendt, , Willing, p. 173.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., p. 182–83. This is similar to the charge Arendt herself leveled against Heidegger in “What Is Existenz Philosophy?”

62 Ibid., p. 22.

63 Heidegger, , Basic Writings, “On the Essence of Truth,” pp. 125–30.Google Scholar

64 Arendt, , Willing, p. 187.Google Scholar