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Whole Dissertation Revised D4 UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Mortal Democracy: Confronting Death in Political Life Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5133c3g6 Author Barringer, Elizabeth Brandon Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Mortal Democracy Confronting Death in Political Life A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science by Elizabeth Brandon Barringer 2016 © Copyright by Elizabeth Brandon Barringer 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Mortal Democracy Confronting Death in Political Life by Elizabeth Brandon Barringer Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Joshua F. Dienstag, Chair Within liberal political theory there is a general sense that death’s meaning should be kept strictly private, ‘quarantined’ from political life; yet whether we are comfortable with the idea or not, attitudes about death powerfully shape how individuals engage in political relationships and practices. Mortal Democracy thus provides a way of acknowledging death directly as a part of contemporary political life, one amenable to democratic practices. I develop three distinct political accounts of death and its political meaning from Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber, and Hannah Arendt; each read alongside an interlocutor from ancient Greek thought. The first chapter “The Wisdom of Silenus: Friedrich Nietzsche and The Politics of Death” develops a Nietzschean adaptation of Homeric “beautiful death,” where persons are capable of transforming the contingent, painful experiences of death into moments of enacted personal or shared value. The second chapter, “A Vocation Unto Death: Max Weber, Modernity & Soldierly Politics” examines Weber’s turn towards an absolutist soldierly model of meaningful death as a part of ii modern political life. I argue this view of death artificially suppresses the grounds of democratic compromise and amplifies extremist political conviction; a point I demonstrate by juxtaposition with the Periklean Funeral Oration from Thucydides. Chapter 3, titled “Death on the Stage: Hannah Arendt and the Disappearances of Death,” develops an account of death alongside Aristotle’s Poetics, where death “appears” as an absence subject to plural interpretations and narratives, yet retains a fundamentally hidden, private aspect. In the final chapter, “Mortal Ignorance: Socrates’ Apology for Death,” I develop a political orientation towards death through a critical reading of Plato’s Apology. I argue that death’s plural and contested meanings need not be quarantined from public life, but rather the polity can inoculate against death’s excesses through a deliberately inclusive, open-ended, orientation towards death that takes its structure from the aporia at the heart of Socrates defense: mortal ignorance. I argue this perspective provides a critical vantage point from which we might acknowledge death’s plural, contested place as a part of democratic political life. Doing so, we stand to more fully recognize the variety of perspectives and capacities we have before death. We also gain powerful tools for resisting those extremist and violent politics which have traditionally leveraged death’s meaning for political ends, and which pose an increasing threat to democratic political practices in our contemporary world. iii The dissertation of Elizabeth Brandon Barringer is approved. Kirstie M. McClure Giulia Sissa John A. McCumber Joshua F. Dienstag, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv For my mother, Mary Lee Hearne Barringer, in memoriam. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Denial of Death……………………………………………………………...1 I. Tragedy, Loss, and Theorizing Death II. Mourning, Loss, and Mortal Vulnerability III. Mortality, Pessimism and The Tragic IV. Silenus, Disenchantment, and Politics in the Modern Age Chapter 1: The Wisdom of Silenus: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Death………..37 I. The Wisdom of Silenus II. Dying Socrates and the Cure for Life III. Democratic Pity, Democratic Death IV. Achilles, Dionysus, & Beautiful Death V. “To live so as to necessarily desire to live again.” Chapter 2: A Vocation Unto Death: Max Weber, Modernity & Soldierly Politics...............87 I. The Progressive Ideal II. Ideal Types and Political Judgment III. A Brotherhood Unto Death IV. The (Soldierly) Political Vocation V. “Not Walls and Ships but Men” Chapter 3: Death on the Stage: Hannah Arendt and the Disappearances of Death..…….132 I. Death and the Human Condition II. Achilles, Perikles, and Shining Glory III. Tragic Death IV. “A Death Revealed” vi V. Between Public and Private Chapter 4: Mortal Ignorance: Socrates’ Apology for Death.………………………………174 I. Politics and Philosophy II. Mortal Ignorance III. Three Regimes of Death Regime 1. Achilles and Beautiful Death Regime 2. City of the Dead Regime 3: Death in the Family IV. An Apology for Death Dissertation Conclusion: Mortal Democracy……………….………………………………222 Bibliography……..……………………………………………………………………………229 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. To my committee, for their considerable good humor and unflagging support, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude. Kirstie McClure, John McCumber, and Giulia Sissa have all shaped this work in ways too numerous to count, and I am deeply grateful for their thoughtful criticism, generosity, and advice. I owe a special word of thanks to my advisor and chair, Joshua Dienstag, who has been a tireless source of guidance and encouragement since I first arrived at UCLA. I have learned more from him than I can adequately convey, and I am grateful for our many conversations. I was first introduced to political theory as an undergraduate by Simon Stow, whose skill and humor in the classroom remains an inspiration. Finally, this project originated in a conversation with Victor Wolfenstein. He is greatly missed. While completing this project, I have been grateful for the financial support of the Edwin W. Pauley Fellowship, the UCLA Department of Political Science, and the Dissertation Year Fellowship of the UCLA Graduate Division. To my friends, fellow theorists, writers and co-conspirators: I cannot think of better company, or a group of people I admire more. For their willingness to share their time and talents as readers, critics, and commiserating souls, special thanks go to Liz Ballou, Arash Davari, Carol M. Dingman, Megan Gallagher, Stacey Greene, Emily Hallock, Aaron Hess, Jeff Jackson, Anita Kellog, Allison Lindell, Rob Schrode, Althea Sircar, and Lucy Williams. To my family, who supported me even though it meant moving to Los Angeles, and most of all to Ben: your love and faith in me has carried me through. viii VITA. Elizabeth Brandon Barringer graduated cum laude from the College of William and Mary in May, 2004 with a B.A. in Government and Fine Arts. In 2005, she earned an MSc. in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science in London, UK, before returning to the United States where she worked for several years at a public-policy think tank in Washington, DC. As a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, she received the Edwin W. Pauley Fellowship in 2008, and earned her second M.A. from the UCLA Political Science Department in 2010. In 2012 she was awarded the Swarr Prize, an annual award given for the best unpublished paper written by a graduate student in the UCLA Political Science Department. She chaired Ethos, UCLA’s graduate student reading group from 2012- 2014. In the fall of 2015 she was awarded the Dissertation Year Fellowship by UCLA’s Graduate Division. For the 2016-2017 academic year she will be a lecturer with the Political Science Department at UCLA. ix Mortal Democracy: Confronting Death in Political Life Introduction: The Denial of Death “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” —James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time How can democratic politics better accommodate death? The fact of human mortality has featured heavily in political thought since classical times, yet among liberal democratic theory and discourse there nonetheless seems to be a general sense that the practices, customs, and institutional responses to death should be kept ‘quarantined’ from political life and contestation—either from a desire to separate deeply felt convictions from the application of state power; or, alternatively, because of a belief that the rational, instrumental bargaining of politics should be kept clear of matters pertaining to individual conscience.1 Instead, death is understood a medical, material, or ontological fact, one to be bracketed from political life. Death in this sense is an event to be secured against for the sake of “commodious living;”
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