POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE-EDGED PLACE OF BELIEF by
JUSTIN JAMES PINKERMAN
(Under the Direction of Alexander Kaufman)
ABSTRACT
Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Emerson both express alarm at the way social conformity imperils individuality and debases politics. Yet, they respond to the threat by explicating contradictory notions of political association. Arendt argues for political cooperation rooted in mutual promises whereas Emerson warns against pledging oneself to a common cause. In this paper, I argue that Emerson and Arendtʼs opposing accounts of reason underlie their divergent ideals of political association. Arendt regards the lone individual as unable to reason properly, and she stresses the importance of common sense in making political judgments. Conversely, Emerson considers the solitary person able to ascertain knowledge reliably and perceives formal association as corrupting. I contend that Emerson, by incorporating belief into his theory of knowledge, better equips the individual to resist political cooption than does Arendt. However, I also insist that belief only benefits politics when used to justify resistance and not coercion.
- INDEX WORDS:
- Hannah Arendt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Politics, Belief,
Individuality, Society, Political association, Nonconformity, Opinion, Truth, Political judgment, Common sense
POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE-EDGED PLACE OF BELIEF by
JUSTIN JAMES PINKERMAN
B.S., Oral Roberts University, 2004 B.A., Oral Roberts University, 2004
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS ATHENS, GEORGIA
2012
© 2012
Justin James Pinkerman
All Rights Reserved
POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE-EDGED PLACE OF BELIEF by
JUSTIN JAMES PINKERMAN
Major Professor: Committee:
Alexander Kaufman O. Bradley Bassler Robert Grafstein
Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2012
DEDICATION
This thesis is dedicated to my father and mother, Arlo and Anita Pinkerman, whose constant love and encouragement have been a source of inspiration throughout my life. Also, this thesis is dedicated to my wife, Rossana Pinkerman, whose kindness and care have strengthened me greatly during my graduate studies.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to express his profound gratitude to the Department of
Political Science at the University of Georgia for their many forms of support. This thesis has benefited greatly from the comments and advice of Dr. Elizabeth Brient, Dr. O. Bradley Bassler, Dr. Robert Grafstein, and Dr. Alexander Kaufman.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v CHAPTER
1 INDIVIDUALITY AND POLITICAL ASSOCIATION.......................................... 1
Introduction................................................................................................. 1 The Threat to Individuality .......................................................................... 4 Political Association: Hannah Arendt........................................................ 13 Political Association: Ralph Waldo Emerson............................................ 15
2 REASON AND POLITICAL JUDGMENT ....................................................... 22
Reason as a Political Good ...................................................................... 22 The Relationship of Thought and Belief.................................................... 24 The Starting Point of Thought................................................................... 27 Transcendent Truth: Articulable or Ineffable?........................................... 28 Reason: Fallible or Infallible?.................................................................... 31 Transcendent Truth: Unknowable or Uncontainable? .............................. 32 Reality....................................................................................................... 34 Common Sense........................................................................................ 35 Facts......................................................................................................... 36 Opinion ..................................................................................................... 37
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Purification of Opinion............................................................................... 41 Political Judgment..................................................................................... 44
3 THE POLITICAL PROMISE AND PERIL OF BELIEF.................................... 46
The Double-Edged Place of Belief in Politics ........................................... 46 The Political Value of Belief...................................................................... 47 The Transcendent in Arendtʼs Political Theory......................................... 50 The Political Peril of Belief........................................................................ 55 Coercive Truth Claims and Political Movements ...................................... 58
BIBILIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................ 61
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CHAPTER 1
INDIVIDUALITY AND POLITICAL ASSOCIATION
Introduction
In their writings, Hannah Arendt and Ralph Waldo Emerson potently articulate the challenge modern society poses to individuality and the peril of anonymity darkening the horizon of every newborn life. Both perceive a creeping social conformism overtaking the public space requisite for individuals to sound their identity. Each also bemoans societyʼs incessant intrusion into the private sanctuary where every global habitant must retreat to make sense of the world.
Acutely sensitive to the threat of self-loss in the modern condition, Arendt and
Emerson both embark on projects to preserve selfhood. Emerson intimates, and Arendt spells out, a conception of politics urging nonconformity and dignifying human uniqueness. Both present a mode of political life in which humanity can reassert itself against pressures of standardization.
Yet despite remarkably similar concerns and parallel goals, Arendt and Emerson present conflicting theories of political association. Arendt advances an affirmative theory of politics that emphasizes plurality, is based on mutual pledges, and establishes a stable public sphere in which men can express their uniqueness through action. Contrarily, Emerson suspects political cooperation of bringing individuals into false relations with one another, and he advocates reducing the role of politics in modern life.
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By taking part in politics, he believes one is nearly certain to be coopted into a social movement and divested of uniqueness. Thus, Emerson counsels uncompromising selfreliance, eschews covenant-making, and argues for a rather dissociated polis in which citizens have fluid relationships and join together only inadvertently and temporarily.
Given their comparable motivations, how do Arendt and Emerson arrive at contradictory conclusions regarding the place of politics? In this paper, I assert that their conflicting accounts of the faculty of reason lead them to opposite notions of political association. In particular, I contrast how the two perceive the human capacity to apprehend truth. Arendt regards truth, both transcendent and worldly, as utterly unknowable to the lone individual.1 She places the human condition of plurality at the foundation of her political theory, and she bases reality on commonly sensed worldly appearances. Meanwhile, Emerson perceives transcendent truth to be intelligible to the solitary mind, even if uncontainable by it, and he insistently stipulates that one can only ascertain truth firsthand. This leads him to endorse absolute self-trust of oneʼs intuitions and to prioritize expansion of oneʼs capacity to receive truth. He views responsible and truth-responsive self-government, with its indirect influence on the public realm, to hold the most political promise. Conversely, he considers cooperative political ventures to be corruptive in that they dissuade individuals from living in accordance with their uniquely intuited apprehension of truth.
What are we to make of the pairʼs oppositional explanations of human reason, and the political implications thereof? I contend that their antagonistic views stem from
1 In this paper, I use the word “transcendent” to mean “independent of the world.” In her writings, Hannah
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alternate conceptions of the relationship between thought and belief.2 I argue that by supplementing the activity of reflective thinking with belief one becomes more resistant to political cooption. Accordingly, I contend that Emersonʼs incorporation of belief into the faculty of reason enables him to fashion a more robust nonconformity than Arendt. Furthermore, I assert that Hannah Arendt, despite her avowal that transcendent truth undermines politics, nonetheless draws upon it in expounding her theory of action. In so doing, she unwittingly connects belief to political freedom.
Though I theorize a beneficial role for belief in politics, I do not deny the potential danger of transcendent truth claims in the public realm. Having witnessed the horrors of totalitarian regimes, Hannah Arendt is especially attuned to the danger of affording socalled higher laws a dominant place in politics. She argues that fixed standards of natural law, when translated into positive law by a political body, pose no danger to politics. However, she also asserts that when a natural or historical law of movement motivates the machinery of a state, terror results. To conclude the paper, I explore how Emerson occasionally conceives of truth in terms of an advancing process. Consequently, he resorts to extreme language, and betrays a narrow outlook, in political debate. I contend that his heedless, inflammatory rhetoric illustrates that political
2 Throughout the paper, I employ the term belief in a content-laden manner. In my usage, belief has a twofold meaning: 1) belief in the existence of a supersensual realm of perfect laws or transcendent truths, and 2) belief in oneʼs own faculty of reason as the sole conduit by which one can know transcendent truth. Importantly, my definition of belief does not imply that human beings can explicitly state or accurately express the entirety of transcendent truths or laws. Nor does the definition suggest that one can rely steadfastly upon the specific content of a belief one presently holds to be true. Furthermore, Emerson regards strict religious observance to be indicative of unbelief, for by adhering to formal doctrine one denies personal intuitions and accepts truth externally via tradition.
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appeals to transcendent truth must be subject to important restraints in order to augment and not undermine the political process.3
The Threat to Individuality
Emerson and Arendt each express alarm at the threat to individuality posed by the pressures of social conformity. Both perceive the prevailing social conventionality leading to a debased mode of politics in which persons sacrifice their unique identities in exchange for security—whether in the form of material wealth, social standing, or ideological consistency. They perceive modern society as bereft of spontaneity and tending toward a vulgar oneness.
In the Human Condition Arendt laments that in modern times the formal political space created by man largely has ceased to be a site of action.4 She voices dismay at the public realm being overrun, perverted, or even destroyed by society.5 The crux of her outcry is that survival (necessity) and status (acceptance) have eclipsed action as the foremost concern in politics.
Following the ancient Greeks, Arendt considers the activity of procuring the goods necessary for survival to be prepolitical in nature and thereby proper to the domain of the household rather than to the public realm. In her writings, she outlines a historical process through which private economic interests became a common concern
3 Hannah Arendt argues against transcendent laws of movement as political forces in The Origins of Totalitarianism, (Orlando: Harcourt, 1994), 460-479. 4 For Arendt, action presupposes plurality. It denotes the initiation and continuance of a disinterested performance, undertaken for the sake of a principle. By acting, persons make themselves known in word and deed, and thusly are identified, or have an identity bestowed upon them, by their peers. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 175-247. See also Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, (New York: Viking Press, 1958), 151-156. 5 “Society,” in Arendtʼs writings, is a loaded term. I employ it to signify the particularly modern form of society which she describes as the “collective of families economically organized into the facsimile of one super-human family.” Arendt, The Human Condition, 29.
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and assumed a dominant position in political life. In her mind, due to this transition, the polis ceased to function in the way originally intended by the Greeks. That is, it no longer could be recognized as the site of unique deeds in which human beings, unencumbered by the demands of necessity, sought uncertain glory. Instead, the modern state became the caretaker of the wealth of property owners, and later, the guarantor of the smoothly functioning life processes (accumulation and consumption) of its members. Over time, people arranged public institutions primarily to ensure the maintenance, or perpetual increase, of their standard of living. Humankind esteemed the productivity of human labor, rather than the pleasure of taking action in a durable world, as the primary “good” to be advanced in public. As a result, politics degenerated into a means to an end rather than being regarded as a self-contained good.6
Emerson similarly considers the modern elevation of economic coordination, which he regards as an offshoot of individual impotence, as having a detrimental impact on society. For him, discontent with oneʼs personal financial affairs drives the individual into the arms of the collective. As he derogatorily comments, “I have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be.”7 Due to widespread feelings of personal powerlessness, people have banded together in societies which, “have usurped the whole field of human action,” in a calculated quest for greater efficiencies.8
6 Arendt, The Human Condition, 28-49.
7 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “New England Reformers: Lecture at Amory Hall,” in Essays: Second Series, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1983), 156. 8 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Society,” in vol. 2 of The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1964), 106.
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To be clear, Emerson does not necessarily oppose large-scale economic coordination per se. He perhaps would not be averse to decentralized, distributed modes of mass collaboration, such as crowdsourcing. Indeed, he affirms the problemsolving benefits inhering in the practical intelligence of a collective.
Each man has a feeling that what is done anywhere is done by the same wit as his. All men are his representatives, and he is glad to see that his wit can work at this or that problem as it ought to be done, and better than he could do it.9
One imagines that Emerson would not disapprove of crowdsourcing so long as the “crowd” remained individuated.
Still, the prevailing view that Emerson expresses in his essays is that people entering into associations for the sake of greater productivity or efficiency inevitably suffer loss of individuality. “Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.”10 Emerson denounces forms of collective organization in which the individual sacrifices, rather than contributes, his uniqueness for the good of the whole.
Every man, with whatever family resemblances, has a new countenance, new manner, new voice, new thoughts, and new character. Whist he shares with all mankind the gift of reason, and the moral sentiment, there is a teaching for him from within, which is leading him in a new path, and the more it is trusted,
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers, vol. 12 of The Complete Works of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904), 31. 10 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays: First Series, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1979), 29.
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separates and signalizes him, while it makes him more important and necessary to society. We call this specialty the bias of each individual. And none of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.11
Emerson praises the “mutual convenience” of division of labor resulting from the fact that “people delight in different employments.” However, he adamantly resists the idea of individuals setting aside their unique sense of purpose in order to combine formally for the sake of material ease.12
“Society,” as Arendt uses the term, connotes public preoccupation with necessity, but it also refers to polite society, or the people from whom one yearns for acceptance.13 Individuals are aware of popular fashions and prevailing views on current events, which they tend to adopt as their own in order to “fit in.” People aspire to hold the “right” opinions, which they assiduously attempt to discern in those situated above them socially or to read in collective preferences. By conforming to oneʼs peers or social superiors, a person hopes not so much for privilege and prestige as for a sense of protected belonging.
In a similar vein, Emerson regards the fear of being outcast as fueling an unnatural respect for numerical strength or a perverse craving to be in the majority.
11 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Greatness,” in vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. George Sampson, (London: George Bell and Sons, 1904), 343. 12 See Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 88. “Labor is everywhere welcome;
always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.” 13 For example, see Arendtʼs usage of “society” in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 54-88.
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The moment they bring in any shape what they call the Public Opinion to bear on me, to induce me to sign a pledge, or join a society, they are thwarting their own design, for they are using numbers, that is, mobs and bodies, and disusing principles. They quit a spiritual for a material ally. If I yield to this force, I degrade myself and have only exchanged one vice for another, self-indulgence for fear, which it is to be presumed was not the intention of the society.14
Not only does dread of loneliness internally dispose one to behave in socially acceptable ways, one also must endure recruiting or advertising strategies that prey upon oneʼs fear of isolation.
Operating in accordance with social norms, people aspire to security—they donʼt want to stand out as much as to blend in. Forfeiture of individuality is the requisite price to guarantee security. Particularly offensive to Arendt is the comprehensive manner in which the habits of others-directed living become ingrained in the individual.
Society expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to “normalize” its members, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement.15
Arendtʼs call to action is fundamentally an invitation to accept uncertainty for the opportunity to assert oneʼs individuality in the world.
Emerson likewise detects, beneath the apparent security of social prestige and creature comforts, an enslaving and debasing conformism.
14 Emerson, “Society,” 107.
15 Arendt, The Human Condition, 40.
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I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society; I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.16
Throughout his essays Emerson decries modes of living in which a person defers to tradition and custom, imitating others at the expense of originality.
Arendt and Emerson perceive an obsessive desire for consistency to be another facet of social conformity. Emerson links an inordinate longing for consistency with a desire for social prestige. People do not want the reputation of being self-contradictory, so they painstakingly behave in accordance with their prior words and deeds.17 Arendt ascribes peopleʼs attraction to the consistency of ideological thinking to an innate desire to control the unpredictability of the world. She thinks people embrace ideologies out of a sense of insecurity. As she observes, unreflective persons grow accustomed to “the possession of rules under which to subsume particulars.”18 They bypass speculative examination in favor of iron-clad logic. To the lonely, disoriented individual, such unfailing logic has immense appeal, for it brings much-desired order and structure to life.19
For both Emerson and Arendt, the ultimate tragedy of conformism is that individuals organize themselves into masses where the social clamor for security
16 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 152. 17 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 33-34. 18 Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” Social Research, 38, no. 3 (1971): 436.
19 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 460-479.
