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Plato, Arendt, and the Conditions of Politics, Pp. 12-17 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ZENODO Plato, Arendt and the Conditions of Politics Luca Timponelli Abstract: I will expose and discuss Arendt’s genealogical tion of housekeeping»2. Echoes of this vision can be account of the contemporary understanding of the human easily found in the rhetoric of ‘there is no alternative3‘ affairs and her critiques to a technocratic conception of that is often employed nowadays to defend (and to put politics which nowadays holds sway. Politics was for Ar- outside of a serious debate) neoliberal-oriented policies: endt originally meant to be the place where men can governments, in order not to fail, should do ‘homework’, manifest their individuality through speeches and deeds take advice from commissions of ‘wise men’, and follow which can affect the life of the community, as actually prescribed ‘recipes’ and ‘cures’. The most important deci- happened in the public sphere of the polis, where citizens sions, as a much celebrated former Italian Prime Minister could meet and discuss as equals. Starting from Plato, the once stated, must be «protected from the electoral pro- philosophical thought, modelled on the idea of logical and cess»4. natural necessity, refused to acknowledge the peculiar sta- Far from being just the product of the recent circum- tus of public life and looked for universally valid criteria stances, this approach to politics has a very long history. and ends according to which the city or the state should Arendt’s genealogical account traces it back to Plato: by be shaped anew. The politician was no more a citizen tak- showing that this conception of politics originated from a ing part into public confrontation and became a skilled serious misunderstanding of the peculiar status, meaning technician who can operate according to his abstract prin- and goals of the human affairs, Arendt wishes to rehabili- ciples: the core moment of politics, rather than debate, tate a different understanding of politics5, which was ex- becomes legislation. The existence of a plurality of men is perienced in the life of the Greek polis (and, in modern obscured by the concept of a human nature which should times, in sporadic resurgence of participative experiences allow to know, foresee and manipulate human behaviour. during revolutions). Politics was not meant to be a profes- While praising Arendt’s rehabilitation of participative sion exercised by an élite of skilled technicians, but was politics and positive liberty, I will criticise her dismissal conceived as the possibility of every citizen to realise of the traditional framework insofar it remains necessary himself as an individual recognised by a community of to edify and maintain a well-articulated institutional and peers. Such an experience could be secured only by the social context which allows freedom to be possible with- participation to public life, where men could manifest out disappearing in a short time or to remain a privilege of themselves as free individualities able to display their dif- a number of happy few. ferences on a ground of equality. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, genealogy of politics, in- strumental reason 2. The Stages of the Human Condition We can have a better understanding of these statements 1. Introduction by keeping in mind Arendt’s phenomenology of practical life as she describes it in her magnum opus, The Human Arendt famously blamed Plato for having started a Condition (1958). For Arendt practical life is made up of philosophical tradition which, by subjugating politics to three different categories which reflects all the possible ontology, has radically misunderstood the nature of poli- interactions men can establish between them, nature and tics and more generally of the human world1. In doing so, the world: labour, work and action. Plato would have implicitly contributed to the disappear- 1) With labour Arendt means the activities required ance of the public space which characterized the experi- for the self-preservation and reproduction of human life. ence of the Greek polis. Arendt strongly opposes the Through labour, men struggle to satisfy their needs understanding of politics as a problem-solving technique through in order to simply preserve their biological func- that aims at conforming the social reality to a predeter- tions as other animals do. They act as slaves of a natural mined standard, which science should be able to dictate. necessity. Their life is entirely spent in the meaningless Politics, according to this framework, should be a matter cycle of a process which alternates «toiling and resting, only for experts who have been taught how to implement labouring and consuming, with the same happy and pur- the common good. This technocratic conception of poli- poseless regularity with which day and night and life and tics has become quite commonly held. We see, in Ar- death follow each other»6. Thus, everyone simply behaves endt’s words «the body of peoples and political communi- as a member of an animal species, to the point that Arendt ties in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have employs the expression animal laborans (labouring ani- to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administra- mal) to define this way of life. Northwestern Italy Ph.D. Program in Philosophy Philosophical Readings IX.1 (2017), pp. 12-17. e-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.826066 PLATO, ARENDT AND THE CONDITIONS OF POLITICS The forms of organisation established with the pur- themselves only through what they do and say. Action is pose of securing the survival and the propagation of the the power that enables each and every man to start some- species presuppose from the beginning a hierarchical thing new, unexpected and unpredictable, and which structure and the division of roles. This was the case of makes history irreducible to a set of laws or to a pre- family, which Aristotle defined as the first natural society: determined process: men are supposed to earn nourishments and women to generate and rise children, and for this reason, women The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of stat- must be subordinated to men7. istical laws and their probability, which for all practical, every- 2) But human life is not entirely determined by nature: day purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always the form of intercourse between man and nature does not appears in the guise of a miracle. The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that consists just in toil and consumption, but also in a purpos- he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this ive transformation of the environment and in the con- again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with struction of lasting items, which allow us to emancipate each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With ourselves from the rhythms dictated by nature itself. Men respect to this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that can, for example, build shelters and walls to protect them- nobody was there before10. selves from bad weather and wild animals. Against the instability of a cyclical nature, which destroys everything While the effect of work is always predictable, an action it gives life to, the homo faber edifies a stable and solid never completely reflects the intentions of the agent be- reality where human existence can safely take place. Un- cause it immediately falls «into an already existing web of like animals, men are able to build tools and artefacts to human relationships, with its innumerable, conflicting serve their purposes. The fabrication process involves the wills and intentions». transformation of matter according to projects, models Since action is unpredictable, we can just form an and purposes, which the artisan has in mind. He begins opinion on what is actually happening and going to hap- with an idea and ends with a product as compliant as pos- pen, without any possibility to appeal to an apodictic cer- sible to the imagined object. While the animal laborans is tainty and truth. We can judge situations only from our slave of necessity, the homo faber is fully master of him- point of view, which is also unique as our faculty to act. self and of his work, which follows directly from his plan. We can only form opinions (doxa, from dokei moi, ‘it Matter can be employed as a means to craft instruments, seems to me’) about social facts: the same reality can ac- and these instruments, in turn, can serve our purposes. tually appear very different to different observers. Our Nature is shaped by the homo faber, «lord and master of perspective can be enriched only by the confrontation the whole earth»8 unto a world of items which have for us with others by means of speech, which becomes crucial a signification as employable tools. for a better understanding of the social. As Kant already Although the homo faber can give purpose to the observed11, freedom of thought without freedom of world, he is still unable to find a meaning for himself: the speech would be meaningless: categories of instrumentality and of utility, through which he interprets things, suggest a regressio ad infinitum in Political thought is representative. I form an opinion by con- the search of a final end, which should not become, in sidering a given issue from different viewpoints, by making turn, a means for something else. Homo faber’s mind-set present to my mind the stand-points of those who are absent; cannot provide this final end: he can employ his creative that is, I represent them.
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