Politics and the Double-Edged Place of Belief

POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE-EDGED PLACE OF BELIEF

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

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

Justin James Pinkerman

POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE-EDGED PLACE OF BELIEF

JUSTIN JAMES PINKERMAN

Major Professor: Alexander Kaufman

Committee: 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.

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.

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

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

vii

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.

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 self- reliance, 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

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 so- called 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.

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.

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.

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 problem- solving 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.

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.

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.

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.

drowns out their unique voices. For instance, Emerson inveighs against the phenomenon of politically conscious masses lobbying for material provisions.

Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and

need not to be flattered but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to

them, but to tamp, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of

them. The worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not

worth preserving. Masses! The calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at

all, but honest men only, sweet, accomplished women only, and no shovel-

handed, arrow-brained, gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. If

government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population.

When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as

essential.20

Arendt expresses like distaste for the masses. She suggests that the indistinguishable and exchangeable members composing them are not “truly human beings,” but mere

“specimen[s] of the animal species man-kind.”21

Despite their strong language, neither Arendt nor Emerson is motivated by simple aristocratic contempt for the lower classes. In fact, both argue in favor of democratic government in which power resides with the people. For his part, Emerson extols democracy at a time when its future is uncertain and when its historical failures are oft-

20 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Considerations by the Way,” in The Conduct of Life, vol. 6 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Douglas Emory Wilson et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), 132. 21 Arendt, The Human Condition, 46.

cited by a skeptical aristocracy. Furthermore, he argues on behalf of the egalitarian policies of his day.

The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will, of course, wish to cast his

vote with the democrat…for facilitating in every manner the access of the young

and the poor to the sources of wealth and power.22

Writing roughly 100 years after Emerson, once democracy had established itself in the

West, Arendt also esteems the common people as the legitimate source of political power. At the same time, she insists on drawing a distinction between “the people” and the masses. She conceptualizes the people as a differentiated “multitude whose majesty resided in its very plurality” or “endless variety.” However, she also recognizes that people can align themselves uniformly, or into a mass, by neglecting their diversity and adhering to a single, “public opinion.”23

Arendt presents individuality as a counterpoise to totalitarian domination. She highlights natality, or “the capacity of beginning something anew,” as the human condition coinciding with freedom. Natality, when actualized, initiates surprising, unforeseen developments and provides hope that no matter how bleak a political chapter in history, human beings can author a new beginning.24

Emerson also finds something irrepressible, and salubrious to the political body, in the uniqueness of every newborn life.

22 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Politics,” in Essays: Second Series, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1983), 123. 23 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, (London: Penguin, 1990), 93. 24 On natality, see Arendt, The Human Condition, 8-9 and 177-178. For the hopefulness Arendt draws from natality, see her concluding paragraph in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 478-479.

The gravid old universe goes spawning on; the womb conceives and the breasts

give suck to thousands and millions of hairy babes formed not in the image of

your statute but in the image of the universe; too many to be bought off; too many

than that they can be rich, and therefore peaceable; and necessitated to express

first or last every feeling of the heart. You can keep no secret, for whatever is

true, some of them will unseasonably say. You can commit no crime, for they are

created in their sentiments conscious of and hostile to it; and, unless you can

suppress the newspaper, pass a law against bookshops, gag the English tongue

in America, all short of this is futile.25

Like Arendt, Emerson regards democratic individuality, or the newness of each and every human life, as a safeguard against political oppression.

Notwithstanding their commitment to preserving individuality, Arendt and

Emerson undoubtedly share the aristocratic concern over the political ascension of undifferentiated masses. Each observes the crowd mentality lending itself to despotic rule. Those who have accustomed themselves to a conformist way of life, in which the procurement of security has the utmost importance, are prime candidates for political use and abuse. As Arendt noted of the Nazisʼ swift rise to power, “Nothing proved easier to destroy than the privacy and private morality of people who thought of nothing but safeguarding their private lives.”26

25 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Address to the Citizens of Concord,” in Emerson: Political Writings, ed. Kenneth Sacks, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 142. 26 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 338.

Political Association: Hannah Arendt

As previously mentioned, Hannah Arendt regards the public realm as being distorted and debased by an overriding social concern with security. In her assessment, what presently passes for politics is nothing of the sort. Instead of being occupied with experiencing freedom, people order political arrangements to provide for necessity or to secure recognition.27 In modern times, people willingly vacate political responsibility, electing a few representatives to serve as mouthpieces for their interests. In so doing, they organize the state into a gigantic administrative bureaucracy, animated by their material needs but yet somehow beyond their control.

In The Human Condition, Arendt lays out a conception of politics intended to rescue the individual from the ignominy of others-directed conformism by affording the opportunity for self-display and public interaction. She begins her account of political association by differentiating between the basic human activities of labor, work, and action. She describes labor as the unceasing biological process of toil and consumption necessary to ensure survival. Labor does not yield anything lasting—its produce immediately is fed back into the life cycle and used up.28

Arendt characterizes work as the artificial process of making tangible objects. In contradistinction to labor, work produces durable objects. Work begins when a person designs a mental model or blueprint, which then is followed to manufacture a tangible good. Such material goods can be used repeatedly and comprise the physical world, or enduring space, in which humans conduct their lives and to which they accustom

27 Arendt defines freedom as follows: “not to be subject to the necessity of life or to the command of another and not to be in command oneself,” The Human Condition, 32. 28 Arendt, The Human Condition, 79-92.

themselves. Buildings, vehicles, tools, and books: each is a product of work. The world of concrete things fashioned by human work has a sense of permanence owing to its endurance beyond the lifetime of any individual.29

Arendt positions action, above labor and work, as the highest form of human activity in that it generates meaning, and in particular, allows for individuality. Per

Arendt, men distinguish themselves by taking action, that is, by inserting themselves into the common world and asserting their uniqueness through word and deed. Through action a person appears, not merely as a member of the human species, but as an identifiable, never-before-seen, and “inexchangeable” individual.30

Arendtʼs concept of action depends on the presence of witnesses who can testify to its occurrence, and thus “corresponds to the human condition of plurality.” By itself action is ephemeral, but an act can be reified in word or picture and its memory transmitted through space and time. Duly reified and classified, actions constitute history, and the after-effects of action manifest themselves in “the fabric of human relationships and affairs.”31

Since one cannot act in isolation, every action happens in the context of a “web of human relationships” characterized by the “innumerable, conflicting wills and intentions” of interconnected persons. On account of being enmeshed in this human web and being subject to the varying circumstances of the world, an agent cannot control the outcomes of the acts she initiates. Furthermore, action provokes an unending chain of reactions; oneʼs deeds echo through history. Nor can a person retract

29 Arendt, The Human Condition, 136-139. 30 Arendt, The Human Condition, 175-181. 31 Arendt, The Human Condition, 7-9, 95.

an act; once initiated it cannot be recalled. The actions human beings undertake, then, have boundless consequences, are irreversible, and elude sovereign control.32

Action entails togetherness and thus necessitates a place of assembly.

Informally, people can gather anywhere “in the manner of speech and action” in order to appear to one another in their unique individuality. However, this public realm dissipates the instant the actors part company or the moment coaction ceases.33

The Greeks enshrined the public realm by constructing the polis so that they always would have a recognizable arena in which to act. They prized participation in the public realm, for it allowed them to actualize their freedom. In the privacy of the household, man was subject to his biological needs. He could not act spontaneously but rather had to employ his time and energy to secure the necessities of life. The sort of

Greek man capable of entering the public realm did not personally toil away in manual labor, but he did command the labor power of others. In his private estate, he ruled over servants or slaves. The polis afforded him the opportunity to escape the unpleasantness of rulership and to interact with his perceived equals.34

Political Association: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson decidedly does not share Arendtʼs view of political participation as the pinnacle of human freedom. Rather, he sees politics as a necessary evil to protect people and property from the predations of selfish persons. His dim view of politics stems from the ease in which he perceives the state becoming institutionalized. For Emerson, political bodies quickly degenerate into a vehicle by which some rule over others. “This is the

32 Arendt, The Human Condition, 181-188, 236-247. 33 Arendt, The Human Condition, 199. 34 Arendt, The Human Condition, 29-37.

history of governments, one man does something which is to bind another.”35 Rather than representing the diverse viewpoints of citizens, the state operates for the benefit of its officials. “Hence, the less government we have, the better, the fewer laws, and the less confided power.”36 In the limited attention he gives to political arrangements,

Emerson indicates a preference for a small-scale, participatory democracy characterized by free-flowing, agonistic debate among independent-minded individuals.

His ideal citizen vigilantly watches the behavior of public officials to hold them accountable and to guard against centralization.37

Emerson distinguishes between natural, formal, and what I shall term consummate modes of association. He praises natural associations, though noting their limitations, and he idealizes the notion of consummate association while lamenting its inaccessibility. Meanwhile, he disparages formal association, which of his three modes of combining corresponds most closely with the type of political association Hannah

Arendt credits with founding and perpetuating the polis.

When Emerson refers to natural association, he has in mind a coincidental, temporary effort to advance the common good. Natural association is not premeditated but springs spontaneously from the intersecting paths of individuals carrying out their unique vocations in the world. It does not so much involve working together as working

35 Emerson, “Politics,” 125. 36 Emerson, “Politics,” 126. 37 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Miscellanies, vol. 11 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904), 258.

in the same direction; any commitment to a natural association is voluntary, non- binding, and provisional.38

According to Emerson, natural association occurs as a byproduct when individuals spontaneously follow their intuitions. Natural associations entail a moral union in that they represent a coming together of persons operating in accordance with the laws of the universe. Yet, people in such associations stay somewhat distant from one another so that the individuality of each remains intact. That is, each refuses to adopt another personʼs views or to sacrifice her uniqueness for the good of the whole.

Rather, each prioritizes self-cultivation above group progress and retains a decidedly individual outlook even while temporarily working alongside others. As Emerson writes,

“the union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated.”39 Citizens, allied naturally, avoid being conscripted in service of the preponderant will of the collective whereby they are driven together and diminished. Rather, in natural association, men keep apart so that they can showcase their unique quality and spur one another on to ever- expanded degrees of culture.

Emerson felt that the world had only just begun to sense the promise and potential of natural association. He anticipated that the actual, adulterated forms of association appearing in reality only hinted at a future in which the union of men would be pure and would unlock unimaginable synergies.

Men will live and communicate, and plough, and reap, and govern, as by added

ethereal power, when once they are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by

38 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 155-157. 39 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 157.

expiration and respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the

ground by the little finger only, and without sense of weight. 40

Yet Emerson asserted that to realize the ultimate form of natural association, “the union must be ideal in actual individualism.” Each member had to be given free rein to contribute after his or her particular constitution.

What I have termed consummate association captures Emersonʼs sensitivity to the human longing for solidarity, fraternity, or intimate togetherness. Consummate association is knowing, and being fully known by, another person, having one mind and a common purpose. Emerson cites the pursuit of consummate association as an

“involuntary” urge “put upon us by the Genius of Life” to draw us into society.41

However, as Emerson poignantly observes, “souls never touch their objects. An innavigable sea washes with silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with.”42 An insuperable distance separates human beings from one another, rendering consummate association inaccessible. Per Emerson, even the most intimate friends “are separated by impassable gulfs,” making “our relations to each other…oblique and casual.”43 In a line from “Society and Solitude” Emerson summarizes the human condition of remoteness: “Dear heart! Take it sadly home to thee, there is no cooperation.”44

40 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 157. 41 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Society and Solitude,” in Society and Solitude, vol. 7 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ronald A. Bosco et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), 4. 42 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience,” in Essays: Second Series, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1983), 29. 43 Emerson, “Experience,” 30. 44 Emerson, “Society and Solitude,” 4.

Emerson, who views consummate association as impossible and natural association as being in its infancy, criticizes formal associations for stifling individuality.

By deliberately joining together in common cause, men deviate from their unique work and, in so doing, reduce their force.

A society of 20,000 members is formed for the introduction of Christianity into

India or the South Sea. This is not the same thing as if twenty thousand persons

without formal cooperation had conceived a vehement desire for the instruction of

those foreign parts. In that case, each had turned the whole attention of the

Reason, that is, the infinite force of one man, to the matter, and sought by what

means he, in his place, could work with most avail on this point.45

Instead of associating officially, Emerson contends that individuals would do better to venture forth alone, arrayed fully in their peculiarity.46 Such pioneers would end up accomplishing far more for society severally, by staying true to their distinct purposes, than by forfeiting their independence to advance the goals of a collective. From the individual vantage point, Emerson rebukes formal associations for impeding self- cultivation. From the social standpoint, he asserts that formal association gives rise to inefficiency by lessening the contributions of societyʼs members.

Emerson would consider the phrase, “strength in numbers,” to be a gross misstatement. He explicitly faults New Englandʼs reformers for their “reliance on association.”47 In his estimation, a person exercises power by transitioning to ever- higher levels of culture, not by allying strength. Indeed, the attempt to advance oneʼs

45 Emerson, “Society,” 106. 46 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 29-32. 47 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 155.

cause by uniting with others is more apt to devitalize than to reinforce oneʼs influence. “It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.”48 Emersonʼs message is clear: Power stems from quality of character, not quantity of conscripts.

Politics is dubious, for the pull of party tempts men to abandon their unique reception of truth in exchange for the false security of numerical advantage.

To recap, Hannah Arendt does not view political association as “natural” and

“momentary” but as manmade and lasting.49 Accordingly, her concept of political association aligns most closely with Emersonʼs notion of formal, as opposed to natural, association. Whereas Emerson sees natural association resulting from manʼs transcendent union with the laws permeating nature, Arendtʼs locates political union in this-worldly, secular agreement of equals.

The contrast between the manner of association espoused by Arendt and

Emerson appears most starkly in their differing posture toward promising. Indeed,

Arendt puts the mutual pledges of equals, i.e., their entering into compacts and covenants, at the root of political society.50 Meanwhile, Emerson consistently denounces covenant-making. As he writes, “This [ideal] union must be inward, and not

48 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 50. 49 For Arendt, action constitutive of politics is temporary. However, she ascribes durability to the particular act of foundation, itself an instance of political association. For example, she suggests the memory of the founding of the United States has sanction enough to secure the allegiance of subsequent generations of Americans to their constitution. See Arendt, On Revolution, 179-214. Emerson attaches no such enduring importance to foundational political acts. Instead, he roots the authority of government in transcendent law. “Let us respect the Union to all honest ends. But also respect an older and wider union, the law of nature and rectitude.” Emerson, “Address to the Citizens of Concord,” 150. 50 Arendt, On Revolution, 169-181.

one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods they use.”51 In the aforementioned citation, Emerson specifically warns against joining utopian communities, but the sentiment that he expresses accords with his general aversion to formal commitments.

What underlies the divergence of Emerson and Arendt with respect to political association? Simply put, their stance toward reason separates them. Arendt values a polis founded on mutual promises, for she holds an individualʼs thoughts to be undependable in isolation but to gain a degree of stability when supported in community. Conversely, Emerson decries covenants in that they place the individual under advance obligation to others, distracting him from living out the truths he intuits when reasoning in solitude.52

51 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 157. 52 See Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 156. “He in his friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one.”

CHAPTER 2

REASON AND POLITICAL JUDGMENT

Reason as a Political Good

At the war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt was taken aback by his

“extreme shallowness” and by the frequency with which he resorted to clichés. She famously concluded that he was neither mentally disordered nor intrinsically evil, but shockingly unable to think.53 Undoubtedly, Eichmann had intelligence, but he appeared appallingly absent-minded in light of the horrific reality of the atrocities he had been party in perpetrating.54

Arendt vilified Adolf Eichmann for “his inability to think…from the standpoint of someone else.”55 I think Emerson would agree with her assessment of Eichmannʼs deficiency of reflective thought but would phrase his accusation of Eichmann in precisely the opposite manner. That is, Emerson would charge him with thinking almost exclusively from the standpoint of others (in the persons of his Nazi colleagues and superiors). From Emersonʼs vantage point, the tragedy of Eichmann would be his thoroughgoing conformism, the sense in which he allowed himself to become “the victim of society” and “the parrot of other menʼs thinking.”56 Eichmann had a pronounced inability to think from the standpoint of his unique individuality. In pursuing security

53 In this sense, to think means “the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass.” Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 418. 54 Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 417. 55 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, (New York: Penguin, 1994), 49. 56 Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 44.

(jobholding, approval from his superiors, and consistency) above all else, he neglected original thought.

For Arendt, and for Emerson, the exercise of reason has immense political value in that by thinking reflectively, a person draws on her individuality and, in turn, resists being used. They contend that the process of reflection enables one to avoid a specific type of morally obtuse compliance. In Arendtʼs words, non-thinking “shield[s] people against the dangers of examination, [and] teaches them to hold fast to whatever the prescribed rules of conduct may be at a given time in a given society.”57 As Emerson writes, “Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.”58 Contrarily, the unthinking person uncritically accepts existing codes of conduct and consequently becomes mere driftwood on the prevailing social tide. Emerson notes the vulnerability of those who, abandoning themselves to fate, refuse to employ the mind. “They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.” He stresses that “those who share [insight into truth],” by dint of thinking independently, avoid ending up as “flocks and herds.”59

In the following sections, I investigate the accounts given by Ralph Waldo

Emerson and Hannah Arendt as to how reason functions, and I draw distinctions between the two. I assert that their varying conceptions of how the human mind works lead them to their starkly different theories of political association. I contend that this is

57 Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 435-436. 58 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Fate,” in The Conduct of Life, vol. 6 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Douglas Emory Wilson et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), 13. 59 Emerson, “Fate,” 14.

the case in spite of their aforementioned similar concerns about the modern threat of self-loss.

The Relationship of Thought and Belief

Arendt and Emerson agree on a transcendent starting point of thought but fundamentally differ in their conception of whether human reason can access truth outside the realm of worldly appearances. Arendt separates belief and reason, ruling out supernatural revelation or any sort of transcendent truth as a guide to reality. Yet, she does not discount truth altogether, locating it in the factuality of worldly occurrences. As a result, she founds reality on common sense, and she ties oneʼs identity to public appearance. Meanwhile Emerson, who intertwines belief and thought in his account of reason, asserts that people become acquainted with reality through the intuitions. He perceives the polis as being established through human beingsʼ mutual insight into natural law.60 In addition, he sees oneʼs identity as self-discovered and as existing independent of public performance.

While Emerson detects a spiritual entity at the root of the world, Arendt subscribes to the modern sensibility that “God is dead.” In her estimation, the distinction between a metaphysical realm and the material realm no longer is tenable. That is, she regards as invalid any mode of reasoning in which the “supersensual” is thought to be

“more real,” “more truthful,” or “more meaningful” than sensory appearances. Though she expresses concern about the consequences of the modern divorce from tradition, she nonetheless approves of the break having been made.61

60 Emerson, “Politics,” 124. 61 Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 419-421.

Emerson affords the belief the utmost significance even as he rails against all formal doctrines, dogmas, and creeds. In his view, “The disease with which the human mind now labors is want of faith.”62 He preaches an inclusive faith in a higher realm on which all can draw—an ultimate perfection with which every person can unite. In

Arendtʼs estimation, belief limits reason and brings about delusion. However, for

Emerson when one believes he gains assurance of the personal reliability of his intuitions and receives insight into the perfection of natural laws. Indeed, Emersonʼs account of reason encompasses belief. Without awareness of transcendent laws, he contends that one cannot reason aright: “every thought loses all its depth and

[becomes] mere surface.”63

Despite exhorting his readers to believe, Emerson unequivocally disapproves of ordered metaphysical thought. “I confess to a little distrust of that completeness of system which metaphysicians are apt to affect. It is the gnat grasping the world.” In particular, he warns against a rationalized metaphysics which discounts the observations of daily life. “Metaphysic is dangerous as a single pursuit…the inward analysis must be corrected by rough experience. Metaphysics must be perpetually reinforced by life.”64 The sort of belief Emerson promotes does not require one to withdraw from the world but actively to engage in it.

Nearly devoid of specific content, Emersonʼs notion of belief perhaps is better conceptualized as a disposition rather than as a set of convictions.

62 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 158. 63 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Holiness,” in vol. 2 of The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1983), 342. 64 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 13.

In accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning

the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is

the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in the history of the globe.65

Indeed, Emerson detests official religions, considering them to be evidential of unbelief.

Anything but unbelief, anything but losing hold of the moral intuitions, as betrayed

in the clinging to a form of devotion or a theological dogma; as if it was the liturgy,

or the chapel, that was sacred, and not justice and humility and the loving heart

and serving hand.66

He outspokenly criticizes Christianity for overemphasizing personalities (its savior and saints), overstating its purported truths, and overregulating the behavior of worshipers through empty rituals. Instead, he preaches the “doctrine of the soul” exhorting the aspiring minister to “obey thyself.” The twin tenets of his faith are 1) to perceive and affirm the laws of nature and 2) to follow no laws or truths other than those intuited firsthand. Aside from these two beliefs, he urges his audience to discard any articles of faith which they consider to be contrary to their temperament.67

Emersonʼs famous admonition, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind,” undoubtedly sounded crassly irreligious in early 19th century New

65 By “sentiments,” Emerson refers to the religious sentiment, the sentiment of virtue, and the moral sentiment. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience,” 42-43. As he also writes, “I think that philosophy is still rude and elementary. It will one day be taught by poets. The poet is in the natural attitude; he is believing; the philosopher, after some struggle, having only reasons for believing.” Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 14. 66 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Preacher,” in Lectures and Biographical Sketches, vol. 10 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903- 1904), 229. 67 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “An Address,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 68.

England.68 Yet from the vantage point of the 21st century, in which nothing is holy, the statement actually appears naively credulous, for Emerson professes faith in the sanctity of oneʼs “intellectual integrity.” Despite the modern temptation to de-spiritualize

Emerson, his writings attest to his earnest promulgation of belief in a transcendent realm. As much as he undermined orthodox Christianity, he also spoke of the disastrous consequences befalling nations in which the impulse to believe had died out.69

The Starting Point of Thought

For both Arendt and Emerson abstract thought begins with wonderment at the transcendent. As Arendt writes, only people with an “admiring wonder” at what the mind encounters in the world and a “desiring love” of what the mind does not possess— beauty, goodness, justice—are able to think.70 Emerson concurs; he suggests that the human mind, in its infancy, does not seek to understand as much as to worship. The

“natural attitude” of the mind with respect to the apparent unity in nature is that of the enraptured poet who marvels at the beauty of Being with exalted affirmation.71

The beholding wonder described by Arendt, Emerson speaks of as “pious reception.”72 Reception, for Emerson, represents spiritualized instincts flowering into intuitions. He regards human beings as having a base impulse to survive which drives them to attend to lifeʼs necessities. He credits this instinct, as it evolves, for impressing upon the human mind unconscious thoughts of the beauty and unity of the laws of the

68 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 30. 69 See Emerson “An Address.” 74. “What greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay.” 70 Hannah Arendt, Thinking, vol. 1 of The Life of the Mind, (San Diego: Harcourt 1978), 141-151. 71 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 14. 72 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Intellect,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 264.

universe. Instinct affords the individual a “glimpse of inextinguishable light by which men are guided; though it does not show objects, yet it shows the way.”73 As he explains,

“Long prior to the age of reflection [conscious thought] is the thinking of the mind.” The intellect first sees, says Emerson, not in the manner of the sighted eye, but through a sense of “union with the things known.” 74

Transcendent Truth: Articulable or Ineffable?

Arendt refers to this praise-inducing pre-thought as contemplation. For her, the contemplative state is one of profound quietude in which mental activity ceases. She asserts that the eternalities intuitively felt by the contemplative mind can neither be conceptualized nor rendered in speech. If the contemplative mind can touch the everlasting, it certainly cannot grasp its import. Arendt insists on this point, that contemplation is utterly formless, cannot be articulated or expressed, and thus has no bearing on the realm of public affairs.75

Whereas Arendt regards the experience of the eternal as ineffable, Emerson believes perceptive pre-thought, or instinct, can ripen into articulable ideas with bearing on the realm of human affairs. He employs the term, “genius,” when referring to the dual capacity to absorb and actively to impart the truths of reason. For him, one-half of genius is passive reception of, and dumb obedience to, the instincts. He associates this

“intellect receptive” with sensibility to natural laws. In his line of thinking, by trusting the instincts, an individual lives in harmony with transcendent truth.76

73 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 34. 74 Emerson, “Intellect,” 263. 75 Arendt, The Human Condition, 14-21 and 27. See also Arendt, Thinking, 121-122. 76 Emerson, “Intellect,” 263-273.

Emerson labels the other half of genius as “inspiration” or the “intellect constructive” by which he means the ability to cognize and articulate instinct. Inspiration does not involve a violent clutching to rip knowledge out of the fabric of the universe but rather a gentle courting of the universal laws to domesticate their power. The inspired individual gives voice to the previously indescribable laws of nature. Emerson connects inspiration to such notions as possession of thought, skill of classification, and facility of expression. Whereas the “intellect receptive,” presaged by instinct, unites the individual with natural laws, the “intellect constructive,” or inspiration, “disjoins subject and object” and aims to extend the transcendent force pervading nature.

Genius is not a lazy angel contemplating itself and things. It is insatiable for

expression. Thought must take the stupendous step of passing into realization. A

master can formulate his thought. Our thoughts at first possess us. Later, if we

have good heads, we come to possess them. We believe that certain persons

add to the common vision a certain degree of control over these states of mind;

that the true scholar is one who has the power to stand beside his thoughts or to

hold off his thoughts at arm's length and give them perspective.77

In short, the person of genius, upon having received truth, conceptualizes it. She arranges inchoate thoughts into identifiable signifiers and renders tangible once- ethereal notions such as justice by giving them a measure of specificity. In this manner, the genius testifies to, names, and thus illuminates the laws of nature.78

77 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 44. 78 At this juncture, I must note that Emerson reckons the expressiveness of the genius to be radically incomplete. To him, even the sagest scholar relays only a morsel of the truth.

For Arendt, the individual, though unable to speak of contemplative truths, can speculate on the meaning of invisible concepts such as beauty and justice, an activity she terms thinking. For Arendt, reflective thinking is a fruitless enterprise in that it does not arrive at anything definite. The meaning a person attaches to a concept does not have the force of truth; itʼs merely a best guess. Philosophically generated principles lack concreteness; they are “uncertain and unverifiable.”79

Arendt distinguishes between thought (reason) and cognition (intellect). She relates the former to the human need to make sense of, or ascribe meaning to, what the mind encounters. Meanwhile, she connects the latter to the desire to arrive at definite, verifiable knowledge or truth. Arendt argues that humans can know only what appears to the senses and is confirmed by the like sensory perceptions of others. As she succinctly asserts, “there are not truths beyond and above factual truths.”80 Since the content of abstract principles can never be known, agreement based on preference and respecting factual evidence provides the most solid ground for politics.81

Following her division of thinking and cognition, Arendt bisects truth into two segments: philosophic truth and factual truth. Philosophic truth is somewhat of a misnomer, since any conclusion arrived at through philosophizing cannot, per Arendt, claim the place of knowledge. Rather, the philosopherʼs propositions are but debatable

79 Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 425. 80 In general, Arendt describes transcendent truths as unknowable. In this passage, I take her to mean that such truths do not exist practically speaking, though they perhaps are not absolutely non-existent. See Arendt, Thinking, 61. 81 Arendt, Thinking, 53-65.

opinions. They supply meaning, not truth. On the contrary, public events and occurrences, or facts, can undergird truth.82

Reason: Fallible or Infallible?

Arendt regards thinking, in addition to being unproductive, as a destructive endeavor.

The philosopher has greater strength to un-convince than to impart. Thinking endlessly questions, exposes, and overturns commonly accepted meanings—including oneʼs own prior understandings. Hence, the philosopher regards even the soundest rational propositions as uncertain and somewhat provisional. Here Arendt quotes Kant: “I do not share the opinion…that one should not doubt once one has convinced oneself of something. In pure philosophy this is impossible. Our mind has a natural aversion against it.”83

The persistent doubt Arendt attaches to oneʼs convictions stands in marked contrast to the absolute faith Emerson exhorts his readers to place in their intuitions.

However, for all of Emersonʼs buoyant self-confidence, he did not aspire to constancy.

His certainty is devoid of consistency. In his essay, “Circles,” Emerson highlights the transience of what one supposes to be truth. “No truth [is] so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”84 Yet being unsettled does not equate to self-doubt. Emersonʼs ideal thinker is somewhat catlike. Knock him from whatever

82 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 232-239. 83 Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 425. 84 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” in Essays: First Series, vol. 2 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1979), 189.

perch, and yet he manages to land feet-first on the solidity of some new truth.85

Emerson, then, counsels a self-trusting attitude or independent frame of mind rather than an abiding faith in the specific content of the revelations one has received.

Whereas Emerson insists on its incorruptibility, Arendt stresses the fallibility of reason. She believes man, in his singularity, is altogether incapable of apprehending truth. Thus, she asserts that “living in company, the inexhaustible richness of human discourse is infinitely more significant and meaningful than any One Truth ever could be.”86 Contrarily, Emerson steadfastly avers the reliability of oneʼs own faculty of reason.

“Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due.”87

Transcendent Truth: Unknowable or Uncontainable?

Though the recurring impulse to wonder yields no tangible end result, and even upends standing definitions, Arendt ascribes to thinking profound moral significance. She draws upon three metaphors by which Socrates identified himself in order to illustrate the valuable role of an ethical thinker. Namely, the philosopher influences others as gadfly, midwife, and electric ray.

First, as a gadfly, the philosopher provokes those who otherwise would drift thoughtlessly through life to examine themselves and their surroundings. Second, the philosopher serves as a midwife to deliver others of their uncritical presuppositions. As

Arendt relates it, the metaphor is somewhat morbid, for she suggests that the midwife

“purges” the holder of a lifeless form, as if disabusing another of belief in the fertility of

85 Emerson, “Circles,” 183. 86 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 234. 87 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 37.

his thought. Finally, as an electric ray, the philosopher induces paralysis by ushering another person into the unconstructive perplexity of thinking, a pursuit which can take place only in the cessation of all other activities. Furthermore, one remains paralyzed even after the interregnum of thought has ended. For as a destructive undertaking, thinking is apt to sweep aside the norms, customs, or rules that previously had framed oneʼs life, culminating in a disorienting standstill.88

I believe Emerson would disagree with Arendt over the intrinsic perplexity of thought, as portrayed in the metaphor of the electric ray. Arendt asserts that humans cannot grasp transcendent truths because they are fundamentally unknowable. Being aware of, or coming to terms with, the inability of philosophic speculation to yield truth arrests motion by casting doubt on anyoneʼs claim to know absolutes.

Paralleling Arendt, Emerson dismisses the ability of the human mind to fully grasp transcendent truth, but not on account of its utter incomprehensibility. In fact, according to Emerson, “Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are.”89 Rather than perceiving transcendent truth to be fundamentally unknowable, Emerson regards the partial human mind as insufficiently capacious to house the vastness of universal truth. “It is the curious property of truth to be uncontainable and ever enlarging.”90 Thus to Emerson, even the wisest of men only knows and prophesies in part.

88 Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” 432-434. 89 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 10. 90 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 78.

Reality

The varying stances toward truth taken by Emerson and Arendt lead them to polar opposite attitudes toward insights attained through reason. Emerson counsels absolute trust in oneʼs intuitions. “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.”91 Meanwhile, Arendt suspects the generalizability of thoughts birthed in private. In lieu of revealed truth, she stakes her trust on factual information observable through the five senses and evident to others.92

Arendt and Emerson, then, subscribe to alternate versions of reality. Emerson maintains that reality, rather than being rooted in the world accessible to the senses, consists of what one encounters when opening the mind to receive intuitive insights into the universe.

If the intellectual interest be, as I hold, no hypocrisy, but the only reality, then it

behooves us to enthrone it, obey it; and give it possession of us and ours.93

On the contrary, Arendt locates reality in the commonly appearing, objective world of tangible things and recordable actions.

For us, appearance—something that is being seen and heard by others as well

as by ourselves—constitutes reality. Compared with the reality which comes from

being seen and heard, even the greatest forces of intimate life—the passions of

the heart, the thoughts of the mind, the delights of the senses—lead an

uncertain, shadowy kind of existence unless and until they are transformed,

91 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 27. 92 Arendt, The Human Condition, 208-209. 93 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Celebration of Intellect,” in vol. 2, The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), 241.

deprivatized and deindividualized, into a shape to fit them for public

appearance.94

In fact, she regards the richness of oneʼs interior life, oneʼs subjective thoughts and emotions, as being inversely related to oneʼs “assurance of the reality of the world and men.”95

Common Sense

Given her notion of worldly reality, Arendt affords common sense a far more central place in her politics than does Emerson. She considers oneʼs particular sensory perceptions to be “unreliable and treacherous,” and she exalts common sense as “the only character of the world by which to gauge its reality.” On her understanding, common sense equips the individual to encounter the world by supplementing his limited sightlines with the all-round view of his community at large.96

Seen at a single moment in time, common sense appears fixed and reliable, but for Emerson a time-lapse view of undulating history reveals it to be transient and unsteady. Thus, he regards common sense as nothing more than a mood. Though it serves a purpose by qualifying other moods, in and of itself common sense is a partial, half-view of reality. In Emersonʼs estimation, common sense is a fickle advisor, and an individual choosing to conduct his affairs under its auspices “would be quickly bankrupt.”

Emerson teaches that, in actuality, the student of life never ceases to be greeted by surprises that upend a static understanding of the world.97

94 Arendt, The Human Condition, 50. 95 Arendt, The Human Condition, 50. 96 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 475-476. 97 Emerson, “Experience,” 39.

Plurality, which institutes reality for Arendt, plays no such role in Emersonʼs theory of knowledge. He insists that the individual need not rely on anyone else to acquaint him with reality: “[the individual] mind needs the existence of no other to make the spiritual world perfect to him.”98 Indeed, Emerson considers accepting anotherʼs conception of reality to be shameful.

Facts

The opposite way Arendt and Emerson designate “facts” supplies additional evidence for the split in their account of reason. For Arendt the only sorts of facts that exist are

“publicly known” happenings and circumstances. Facts reside exclusively in the world of appearances where they can be confirmed by the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses.99

For Emerson the most important facts are hidden within the realm of appearance until a person of insight “dissolves the material world” to discover them.100 Nothing more than the faithful report of this lone spectator is necessary to verify these spiritual facts.

If I [intuitively] see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time,

all mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my

perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.101

Facts, to Emerson, are ascertained spiritually, firsthand, and do not require the corroboration of another. “The life of truth…does not attempt anotherʼs work, nor adopt anotherʼs facts.”102 As Emerson remarks of the scholar, “the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds, this is the most acceptable,

98 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Individual,” in vol. 2 of The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1964), 176. 99 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 236. 100 Emerson, “Fate,” 15. 101 Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 38, my emphasis added. 102 Emerson, “Experience,” 46.

most public, and universally true.”103 Throughout his body of work Emerson emphatically asserts that oneʼs unaffected intuitions most reliably attest to truth.

Opinion

Emerson claims that people can differentiate between deliberate “acts of the mind” and the “involuntary perceptions” derived from oneʼs transcendental intuitions.

Ignorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism. There is no

confusion in the things themselves. Health of mind consists in the perception of

law. [The mindʼs] dignity consists in being under the law. [The mindʼs] goodness

is the most generous extension of our private interests to the dignity and

generosity of ideas. Nothing seems to me so excellent as a belief in the laws.104

In Emersonʼs epistemology, perceptions are the class of true thoughts received intuitively, whereas notions or opinions are uninspired, self-generated thoughts with uncertain veracity.

Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of

opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between

perception and notion.105

Emerson is exacting with respect to voicing his views publicly. Until he has a spontaneous perception, Emerson prefers not to speak on a subject, even if he fully concurs with the opinion of a friend. To him, seconding the position of another is disgraceful. In so doing, one discloses that he has nothing original to say on the matter.

103 Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 53-54. 104 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Immortality,” in Letters and Social Aims, vol. 6 of The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, (London and New York: MacMillan and Co., 1903), 252. 105 Emerson, Self-Reliance, 38.

Moreover, one speaks somewhat falsely since his words proceed neither from his constitution nor from a higher realm.106

Emerson adamantly asserts that anotherʼs expressed sentiments can never be accepted as true without having passed through the filter of oneʼs perceptions. In other words, the individual apprehends truth only through personal intuition.

[Truth] cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction,

but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must

find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he

may, I can accept nothing.107

Emersonʼs urges the individual to speak only what she deems true and initially to regard all she hears from others as mere opinion. Such a conception may appear to be a recipe for megalomaniac anarchy. However, the Emersonian citizen is radically inclusive of othersʼ opinions, profoundly circumspect in speech, and scrupulously pacific in action.

Given the fallibility she attributes to reason, Arendt believes one can put stock in her opinions only if 1) they accord with public facts and 2) have endured the scrutiny of others. Quoting Kant, she writes, “The ʻscholarʼ depends on the ʻentire reading publicʼ to examine and control his results.”108 For Arendt, opinions require reinforcement from others to be sound.109

106 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Miscellanies, vol. 11 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904), 571-572. “I will let the republic alone until the republic comes to me. I fully sympathize, be sure, with the sentiment I write, but I accept it from my friends rather than dictate it. It is not my impulse to say it and therefore my genius deserts me, no muse befriends, no music of thought or word accompanies. Bah!” 107 Emerson, “An Address,” 66-67. 108 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 235. 109 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 235. One can, however, impersonate another person in imagined conversation so as to augment oneʼs opinion without actually conversing with someone else.

The unreliability Arendt attaches to non-dialogic opinion she also imputes to singular sensory experiences. Thus, she perceives a lonely person as being utterly deprived of all bases of knowledge.

In this situation [of loneliness], man loses trust in himself as the partner of his

thoughts and that elementary confidence in the world which is necessary to make

experiences at all. Self and world, capacity for thought and experience are lost at

the same time.110

Not only does the forlorn person lose her voice, but also her bearings and identity as well. The political decision-making process, according to Arendt, involves the investigation and illumination of fact along with deliberative efforts to reach collective outcomes founded on “free agreement and consent.”111

Emerson assesses opinions, or measures their degree of truth, by the extent to which they are natural. “Men are primary or secondary as their opinions and actions are organic or not.”112 To be organic an opinion must meet two qualifications: 1) it must have origin in transcendent truth and 2) it must spring spontaneously from oneʼs particular constitution. Thus, the best opinions, or opinions that approach truth, contain a seeming contradiction. They are impersonal or free of self-interest and egoistic self- love, yet they also are intimately connected with, or shaped by, oneʼs unique temperament. Emerson disdains public opinion and received traditions, for their holders or adherents typically do not instinctively arrive at their views (hence violating the qualification of spontaneity). Still, he can praise purported natural laws such as the ten

110 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 477. 111 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 247. 112 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 30.

commandments and the golden rule for undergirding Western civilization by arguing that they are founded upon transcendent truth.113

Corresponding with the duality of an opinion, Emerson presents the two-part mental activity of detachment. First, an individual detaches from his sentiments, ridding them of self-interest and thus impersonalizing his opinion. Second, one detaches, or breaks off, a portion of transcendent truth to express a particular mental perception in a specific form. In the first sense, one depersonalizes thought, while in the second sense one displays an abstract truth through the medium of oneʼs unique personality.114

For Emerson, health of mind involves alternating between generalization

(reflective thought) and particularization (poetic action).115 Abstract thought refines action (by making it poetic), and poetic action enchants the individual who is then inspired to think abstractly. Moreover, Emerson holds that one must act before her private opinion can attain the status of truth.

Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet

man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Whilst the world hangs before

the eye as a cloud of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is

cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. The preamble of

thought, the transition through which it passes from the unconscious to the

113 For his affirmation of natural law, see Emerson, “Address to Citizens of Concord,” 135-151. 114 On detachment, see Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 34-35. 115 See Emerson Natural History of Intellect, 36. “The game of Intellect is the perception that whatever befalls or can be stated is a universal proposition; and contrariwise, that every general statement is poetical again by being particularized or impersonated.”

conscious, is action. Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know

whose words are loaded with life, and whose not.116

The process by which one arrives at truth begins with an impression (what one instinctively senses to be true), develops into an opinion (what one assents to as truth though she cannot explain why), and finally emerges as knowledge (what one demonstrates to oneself and models to others).

Purification of Opinion

In solitude, a person can think disinterestedly, temporarily adopting multiple perspectives on a single issue. By thinking impartially, individuals minimize the blindness of bias and generalize their opinions and judgments. The enlarged views a person reaches in solitude ultimately have broader appeal in the world for having been expanded beyond petty prejudices.

Emerson and Arendt both value positioning the mindʼs eye at varying vantage points, but they differ subtly in the process of impartial thinking that they espouse. When thinking disinterestedly, Arendt assumes the position of others in society, visualizing how they would interpret events or engage with ideas. However, Emerson never abandons his own intuitive perspective, but rather he alternates moods. For instance, he exaggerates the human sense of being fated, and then reverses field, amplifying the ways in which human beings display freedom of choice. Alternating between antagonistic moods, Emerson seeks neither to reconcile nor synthesize the oppositions that surface. Rather, he accepts “the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies.”117 He

116 Emerson, “American Scholar,” 49. 117 Emerson, “Experience,” 36.

finds enlightenment in embracing the contradictions persisting in the world. While he courts the opinions of others to expand his stock of moods, he never defers to them.

For Emerson impartial thinking does not purpose to eliminate individual bias so that diverse persons arrive at a common viewpoint. On the contrary, by thinking impartially, one preserves his partiality. As Emerson states, “the more deeply he drinks of the common soul, the more decided does his individuality become.”118 Thinking impartially has value, not in facilitating agreement, but in forestalling oppression.

Impartial thinking frees one from the error of believing oneʼs perspective is the correct perspective and thus prevents one from forcing his particularity on another person.

Arendt thinks impartially by encompassing the views of others, which yields a mediated opinion. Meanwhile Emerson thinks impartially by refusing to endorse a single perspective, instead endeavoring to attain a universal standpoint by adopting a variety of moods. One could say Arendt aspires to think inter-subjectively and Emerson supra- subjectively. Consequently, Arendt places the human condition of plurality at the basis of political judgment whereas Emerson regards self-reliance as the guiding principle of oneʼs decisions and actions in the polis.

To purify an opinion, Emerson offers the method of consultation, or soliciting the opinion of another “genuine mind.” In Emersonʼs view, consultation “constitutes the charm of society.” In exchanging viewpoints, individuals discover resonances between their personal notions and the ideas of others, and they thus receive confirmation of the transcendent quality of their thought.

118 Emerson, “Society,” 100.

The interest never wears out with which we crave to know the thoughts of a

genuine mind upon the topics which we think upon. This is another self. He

occupies another point of view, and sees the same object on another side. His

confirmation of our report rejoices, his contradiction makes us pause.119

In the above passage, Emerson speaks of intersubjectivity in a manner similar to

Arendt. In noting the need to reconsider oneʼs expressed notion of truth when it conflicts with the thoughts of another does Emerson, like Arendt, suspect the individualʼs faculty of reason?

In the preceding citation, Emerson conveys the importance of consultation among members of a political community. However, I assert that he nonetheless retains an unshakable faith in the human ability to intuit truth accurately. Emerson posits that individuals, given their particular temperament and limited mental capacity, can only see many-sided truth from one angle. Though imagining the perspective of others can broaden their view, they nonetheless cannot achieve an all-round, 360-degree field of vision. Since an individual never sees the whole picture, the testimony of others can always apprise one of another aspect of the truth. Furthermore, Emerson differentiates between oneʼs ability to “see” the truth and oneʼs ability to speak it. I do not find him ever to concede that oneʼs personal intuitions may be misguided. Emerson allows that an individual may misreport an intuition but he insists on the reliability of oneʼs intuited mental image.

119 Emerson, “Society” 102.

Political Judgment

The faculty of judgment is closely related to opinion formation, but judgment adds to opinion a sense of decisiveness and action. Here one observes divergence owing to the differences between Arendtʼs intersubjectivity and Emersonʼs suprasubjectivity. When judging, Arendt anticipates the need to reach agreement with others in society. As she explains, “The capacity to judge is a specifically political ability…to see things not only from oneʼs own point of view but in the perspective of all those who happen to be present.”120 The judger visualizes how others would engage with her proposals, the potential objections they would raise, and the alternate courses of action they would set forth. The judger then undergoes imagined deliberation until reaching a refined judgment which secures the widest possible support. In light of this “enlarged mentality,” the judgerʼs decision has a degree of validity. The subjectivity of the judger still comes into play, but so long as she has disregarded her personal and moral self-interests, her purified judgment is justifiable.121

Per Emerson, the judger does not primarily seek to agree with other citizens so much as to align with the laws pervading nature and revealing themselves through the intellect. Emerson founds judgment on the intuitions, with little regard for concord. Let the individual be true and the entire world a liar, one would imagine him to say.122

Though loath to delineate its content, Emerson considers some aspects of natural law to be somewhat obvious to the receptive intellect. Ironically, the anti-

120 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 221. 121 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 219-226. 122 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 82. “Society is unanimous against his project. He never hears it as he knows it. Nevertheless he is right; right against the world. All excellence is only an inflamed personality. If he is wrong, increase his determination to his aim, and he is right again.”

traditional Emerson, in his “Address to the Citizens of Concord,” identifies the ten commandments and the golden rule as the moral roots of Western civilization. He justifies civil disobedience on account of transcendent laws such as these.

I thought it was this fair mystery [awareness of the transcendental essence of the

world], whose foundations are hidden in eternity, which made the basis of human

society, and of law; and that to pretend any thing else, as, the acquisition of

property was the end of living, was to confound all distinctions, to make the world

a greasy hotel, and, instead of noble motives and inspirations, and a heaven of

companions and angels around and before us, to leave us in a grimacing

menagerie of monkeys and idiots. All arts, customs, societies, books, and laws,

are good as they foster and concur with this spiritual element; all men are

beloved as they raise us to it; all are hateful as they deny or resist it. The laws

especially draw their obligation only from their concurrence with it.

Emerson regards people as unaware of natural lawʼs origins and unable to perfectly state these laws. Yet, he maintains that natural laws are perceptible enough to serve as the orientating basis of citizensʼ political judgment.

CHAPTER 3

THE POLITICAL PROMISE AND PERIL OF BELIEF

The Double-Edged Place of Belief in Politics

In this paper, I have noted the concern with social conformism shared by Emerson and

Arendt along with their view that reasoning serves as the antidote to that conformism.

However, I also have highlighted their contradictory notions of political association, which I have traced to variations in their accounts of reason. Arendt, disbelieving of oneʼs ability to know transcendent truth, roots politics in worldly, intersubjective agreement. Meanwhile, Emerson puts stock in the individualʼs ability to intuit truth through a believing intellect, and he sets forth a radically self-reliant, participatory politics.

Emerson gives a twofold explanation of how belief, as a partner of thought and element of reason, girds the individual for action. “If the first rule is to obey your genius, in the second place the good mind is known by the choice of what is positive, of what is advancing.”123 My contention is that the former imperative, “obey your genius,” can augment Arendtʼs theorizing of the relationship between reason and politics.

Specifically, I assert that by supplementing the activity of thinking with belief one becomes more resistant to political cooption. At the same time I regard Emersonʼs latter instruction, to choose “what is advancing,” to be problematic, for it leads him to equate morality with the facilitation of progress.

123 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 61.

The Political Value of Belief

I argue that Emersonʼs account of reason, which interlinks thought and belief, better equips individuals to withstand social pressures than does Arendtʼs account, which omits belief. Once again, in terms of the content of this belief, I have two elements in mind: belief in a supersensual realm of laws or truths and belief in oneʼs faculty of reason as the sole, reliable conduit of transcendent truth.

In her political theory, Hannah Arendt attributes an individualʼs ability to transcend subjective bias and personal idiosyncrasy to the human condition of plurality.

She esteems free and open communication of thought as the corrective to manʼs fallible faculty of reason. According to Arendt, one gains confidence in his opinions when, after exchanging them within the community, he finds numerous others who share the same viewpoint.

In short, Arendt depicts a self-doubting individual who depends upon others for assurance of the reliability of his thoughts and sense perceptions. Arendt notes the frailty of this position when she speaks of how worldly reality can be destroyed in a mass society. In such conditions, people “behave as though they were members of one family, each multiplying and prolonging the perspective of his neighbor.” Instead of seeing “sameness in utter diversity,” citizens view the world alike through the screen of popular opinion. Incidentally, I posit that the phenomenon of world-loss is not limited to the extreme situation in which all adopt a single perspective. I hypothesize that itʼs only slightly less likely to happen when society polarizes into insulated families of opinion.124

124 Arendt, The Human Condition, 58.

The predicament in Arendtʼs theory is that the individuals in a thoroughly conformist society have no recourse but to declare their unique, unconventional thoughts to be misguided. If no one else can be found to confirm oneʼs opinion then the sensible course of action involves discarding it in favor of a more mainstream (and thus apparently more real) attitude. Arendt offers no universals or principles on which to fall back if one ends up standing alone on an issue. Consequently, the line between public opinion and reality gets progressively blurrier as the majority outlook strengthens.

I contend that an individual is far more resistant to conformity when she believes her private intuition to be truthful and trustworthy rather than speculative and fallible. In

“Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” Arendt grants that the spiritually attuned mind is least susceptible to conformism. “It must be admitted that it is not so much political or moral philosophy but religious thought that most unequivocally has rejected all compromises with lesser evils.”125 Emerson teaches why this is the case: religious thought entails belief and thus inspires self-reliance as opposed to the modern philosopherʼs self-doubt.

Emerson employs three phrases to describe the spiritual sense of man: the sentiment of virtue, the religious sentiment, and the moral sentiment. In his words, the sentiment of virtue refers to the “reverence and delight” arising after one observes “the presence of certain divine laws.” Relatedly, the religious sentiment is the utmost sentiment of virtue. It is awe-induced respect and joy inspired by perception of the “law of laws:” that the universe exhibits radical unity, its manifold laws working together

125 Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” in Responsibility and Judgment, Ed. Jerome Kohn, (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 36.

harmoniously. Finally, the moral sentiment describes manʼs affirming sense that each of the divine laws he encounters is perfect.126

Emerson clearly considers awareness of transcendent laws to be at the root of self-reliance and nonconformity.

Sentiment of virtue corrects the capital mistake of the infant man, who seeks to

be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages from another—

by showing the fountain of all good to be in himself, and that he, equally with

every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason.127

In the above passage, Emersonʼs capitalization of the word “Reason” serves notice of the deep spirituality he associates with that faculty. As Iʼve asserted, Emerson combines belief and thought; the two activities go hand-in-hand in his account of how reason functions. Whereas Arendt castigates supernatural belief for filling the mind with presuppositions that hinder the ability to think, Emerson considers spiritual responsiveness to be indispensable to the right exercise of reason. “In the uttermost meaning of the words, thought is devout, and devotion is thought.”128 Indeed, Emerson believes oneʼs intuitions to be emanations from a Higher Mind as opposed to random synaptic discharges: “The gleams which flash across my mind, are not mine, but

God's.”129

Emerson attaches utmost importance to the ability to believe in oneʼs intuitions as truth versus merely considering them to be speculative. As he writes, “the absence of

126 Emerson, “An Address,” 63-67. 127 Emerson, “An Address,” 66. 128 Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Prospects,” in Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, vol. 1 of The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1903-1904), 74. 129 Emerson, “An Address,” 69.

this primary faith is the presence of degradation.”130 Doubt in oneʼs reasoning faculty constrains one to fall back on unreliable sensory perceptions, thereby obliging dependence on others and opening one to victimization.

The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices,

usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal

life, the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in

the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem ridiculous. Life is comic or

pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes

near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.131

Emersonʼs notion of self-trust arms the individual with the conviction to resist political cooption uncompromisingly, even if she is the only dissident. Contrarily, Arendtʼs self- doubting individual has no option but to withdraw her protest if she happens to be the lone voice of opposition. Similarly, owing to self-doubt, an Arendtian citizen must retract her testimony if no other witnesses confirm her report. The danger in Arendtʼs thoroughgoing plurality is that in times of mass propagandizing or widespread self- delusion, an individual all-too-readily cedes her unique understanding to public opinion.

The Transcendent in Arendtʼs Political Theory

Arendt regards the elevation of being above appearance as a basic “metaphysical fallacy.” However, though Arendt aspires to move beyond a realm of essences, I argue that Arendt nonetheless draws on transcendent truth in her political theory. First, her conception of principled action leads her inadvertently to suggest a faculty by which

130 Emerson, “An Address,” 67. 131 Emerson, “An Address,” 67.

human beings intuit transcendent standards. Second, in recounting Socratesʼ martyrdom, she illustrates the indirect role of transcendent truth in politics. Lastly, in her historical analysis of political events, she praises action taken from the standpoint of transcendent truths.

In her essay “What Is Freedom?” Hannah Arendt implies that something like believing intuition guides the free political action of a citizen.

Action insofar as it is free is neither under the guidance of the intellect nor under

the dictate of the will…but springs from something altogether difference which I

shall call a principle.132

She goes on to describe principles as “general,” universally valid, and not confined to any particular person or group. In her words, principles “do not operate from within the self as motives do.” Rather, they “transcend” personal aims and “inspire, as it were, from without.” She further states that principles are “inexhaustible,” hence enduring in time beyond the performance of any single act.133

George Kateb, seeking to clarify Arendtʼs notion of acting according to a principle, writes that a principle is perhaps “best understood as a commitment” to which one submits. However, this “submission feels like an expansion, not a contraction.” One fills a role dictated by the principle, yet oneʼs unique voice speaks creatively while playing the part.134

132 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 152. 133 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 151-153. 134 George Kateb, “Political Action: Its Nature and Advantages,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, ed. Dana Villa (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 138.

Acting according to a principle, in Arendtʼs conception, corresponds closely to

Emersonʼs explication of the outworking of the instincts, which he terms inspiration. In his words, “Inspiration is vital and continuous. It is also a public or universal light, and not particular.” Like Arendtʼs principle, Emersonʼs intuition “is not in our will. That is the quality of it, that it commands, and is not commanded.” By acting, one allows the intuition to pass into deed; the process involves very little application of the will. “The

[inspired] poet works to an end above his will, and by means, too, which are out of his will…the muse may be defined, Supervoluntary ends effected by supervoluntary means.”135

In describing the manner of action that can be regarded as free (principled action), Arendt does not explain how an actor becomes bound to a principle in the first place. To inspire an action, a principle must predate its occurrence and must influence the actor performing it. By asserting that principles inspire action through a medium other than oneʼs conscious thought or will, I contend that Arendt unwittingly endorses an

Emersonian view in which people perceive principles intuitively. After all, if volition and intellect are ruled out, how else but through the instincts would principles stimulate a person to act? By extension, if acting freely constitutes abiding by principles, and adhering to principles means following oneʼs intuitions, then Arendt implicitly counsels reliance upon the intuitions. Indeed, we could describe a principle as being an essential idea one instinctively, or unconsciously, believes to be true.

Even if Arendt opens the door to transcendent principles being perceptible intuitively, she decidedly does not allow that such principles can be intelligible to the

135 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 71-72.

mind. In her view, a human agent never is able to know the principles motivating him to act. Here again we encounter the main difference in the accounts of reason developed by Emerson, to whom intuitions can be formulated (imperfectly) into concepts, and by

Arendt, to whom they cannot.

In her historical analysis, Arendt acknowledges that insisting on political reality need not mean relying solely on tangible facts; belief in transcendent principles has a role to play as well. For example, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt lauds the way

Georges Clemenceau employed truth to face down radical anti-Semites who were exploiting the Dreyfus case to call for liquidation of the Jews.

The greatness of Clemenceauʼs approach lies in the fact that it was not directed

against a particular miscarriage of justice, but was based upon such “abstract”

ideas as justice, liberty, and civic virtue. It was based, in short, on those very

concepts which had formed the staple of old-time Jacobin patriotism and against

which much mud and abuse had already been hurled. As time wore on and

Clemenceau continued, unmoved by threats and disappointments, to enunciate

the same truths and to embody them in demands, the more “concrete”

nationalists lost ground.136

She goes on to note how the truths insisted upon by Clemenceau, “were actually nearer to concrete political realities than the limited intelligence of ruined businessmen or the barren traditionalism of fantastic intellectuals.”137 In another passage, Arendt accuses the philosophy of Hobbes with undercutting the “idea of humanity” by placing foreign

136 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 110, my emphasis added. 137 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 110.

affairs “outside of the human contract.”138 She estimates the notion of the “solidarity of mankind” to be more truthful than “naturalistic ideologies” which espouse higher and lower breeds.139 In so doing, she offers another example of abstraction being nearer to reality than a purported scientific truth. Clearly, Arendt does not view claims to transcendent truth, per se, to be adverse to politics. Rather, she opposes truth claims that admit no limitation to their logical progression.

In “Truth and Politics,” Arendt supplies another passage in which transcendent truth has bearing on politics. She cites the example of Socrates, who rhetorically was unable to convince others of the truthfulness of his proposition, “It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.” However, Socrates eventually carried his point by staking his life on the claim. For Arendt, he ushered transcendent truth into the political realm by exemplifying it and thereby providing verifiable evidence of its veracity.

Teaching by example is, indeed, the only form of “persuasion” that philosophical

truth is capable of without perversion or distortion; by the same token,

philosophical truth can become “practical” and inspire action without violating the

rules of the political realm only when it manages to become manifest in the guise

of an example.140

Arendt highlights Socratesʼ act, and I think sensibly circumscribes the manner in which transcendent truth can be wielded for political persuasion. However, I contend that

Socrates never would have undertaken such a drastic measure without the forerunner of

138 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 157. 139 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 157. 140 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 247-248.

belief. He was able to translate a philosophic claim into a politically significant deed only because he first believed the statement to be true (i.e., to be transcendentally factual).

The Political Peril of Belief

Now, just because a citizen holds her view to be the truth does not rule out the possibility that she does, in actuality, embrace a myth. However, Emersonʼs description of truth being uncontainable precludes the coerciveness that Arendt ascribes to absolute truth claims. According to Emerson, one cannot, being partial, declare a comprehensive knowledge of the truth. Like Arendt, Emerson bristles at assertions of absolute truth, or more accurately, he resents and resists the idea that anyone can know truth absolutely, or in its totality.

Truth indeed! We talk as if we had it, or sometimes said it, or knew anything

about it, that terrified re-agent. It is a gun with a recoil which will knock down the

most nimble artillerists, and therefore is never fired. The ideal is as far ahead of

the videttes of the van as it is of the rear.141

In Emersonʼs mind, oneʼs attempts to employ transcendent truth as a weapon inevitably backfire. The futility of claiming to be on the side of truth comes not from transcendent truth being altogether unknowable, but being uncontainable. For Emerson, the individual should regard his revelation to be infallible. However, truth must pass through the partial channel of oneʼs personality to be published, and in the process, the truth is cramped and diminished. A faithfully reported truth retains validity as evidence of a larger truth, but a lone testimony never establishes the entirety of the truth. What is more, people

141 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 78.

may contradict one another and yet still be in the right, for sometimes, antagonistic viewpoints represent two sides of a many-sided truth.142

In other words, Emerson theorizes that truth can be intuitively “seen” but not accurately spoken.

These laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper,

or spoken by the tongue. They elude our persevering thought; yet we read them

hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse.143

Consequently, one can be certain of the truth when acting privately according to the dictates of the receptive intellect. However, while supremely confident in oneʼs intuitions, an individual must humbly recognize that in attempting to articulate truth, or to argue persuasively on its behalf, she may misspeak.144

Emersonʼs self-reliant individual is political only obliquely, for her intuitive and reflexive living may at times tell against sociopolitical movements. That is, she protests involuntarily by the force of example. Per Emerson, “The action of the Instinct is for the most part negative, regulative, rather than initiative or impulsive.”145

If Emerson rails against social conformity, he also warns against the folly of attempting to bring the world into alignment with oneʼs private thoughts. We see but

142 See Emerson, “Circles,” 183. “By going one step farther back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled, by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision.” 143 Emerson, “An Address,” 64. 144 “Every time we converse, we seek to translate [truth] into speech, but whether we hit, or whether we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get [truth] into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.” Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 166. 145 Emerson, Natural History of Intellect, 36.

through a glass darkly; our interpretation of the world only captures a modicum of its true essence.

I know that the world I converse with in the city and in the farms, is not the world I

think. I observe that difference and shall observe it. One day, I shall know the

value and law of this discrepance. But I have not found that much was gained by

manipular attempts to realize the world of thought. Many eager persons

successively make an experiment in this way, and make themselves

ridiculous.146

To force the world to revolve around our thought would be to infect it with our blindness, for in our partiality we but have access to scraps and fragments of truth. Such was the spirit of Emersonʼs cautionary words characterizing New Englandʼs reformers, who in redressing social evils were prone to lose perspective of their innate biases. By approaching life too narrowly, the activists had “become tediously good in some particular, but negligent or narrow in the rest” with “hypocrisy and vanity” as the

“disgusting result.”147

The great contradiction in Emerson is that the individual is to trust wholeheartedly in his faculty of reason even though he recognizes its tangible articulations to be partial or even partly mistaken.

The Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and never interposes an adamantine

syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God

were carried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor of the

146 Emerson, “Experience,” 48. 147 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 154.

world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the same speaker, as morbid;

"I thought I was right, but I was not,"—and the same immeasurable credulity

demanded for new audacities. If we were not of all opinions! if we did not in any

moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speak from another! if

there could be any regulation, any `one-hour-rule,' that a man should never leave

his point of view, without sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as always

knowing there are other moods.148

Emerson offsets the supreme confidence deriving from the belief that truth comes only through oneʼs intuitions with the humility of knowing that one never can express truth without admitting bias. Still, oneʼs partiality is nothing of which to be ashamed, for “the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities.” Oneʼs voice illuminates some aspect of the truth without which others would suffer disproportion. In this sense, “every man is wanted” even if “no man wanted much.”149

Coercive Truth Claims and Political Movements

In claiming to know the direction of supernatural historical trends, Emerson falls into the very trap he criticizes: employing truth as a weapon. He accepts the fluidity of political forms as a fact, and he sees the state following in the train of individual progress.150 He does not question where the unimpeded development of human culture may take government, trusting divine laws to lead it. In his estimation government exists primarily

148 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist,” in Essays: Second Series, vol. 3 of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Joseph Slater et al. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1983), 145. 149 Emerson, “Nominalist and Realist,” 141. 150 When writing of, “the growth of the Individual,” Emerson is not signifying the development of any one person. Rather, he is referring to what Stanley Cavell has called a “process of individuation.” In this process, people abandon imitative behavior rooted in egotistic self-love, instead taking up their authentic selves and seeking to live in accordance with the laws of nature. See Stanley Cavell, Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 10-11.

to foster “the growth of the Individual” rather than to facilitate peaceful collective decision-making. As such, he wants no space placed between the progress of individual character and the shape of government. This commitment pushes him to endorse proto- totalitarian thinking with respect to the inevitability of historical political developments.

The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government...Much has been

blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the

vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force.151

Emerson believes he can divine a supernatural trend in history, and he duly affirms its progress irrespective of its means of advancement.

In Emersonʼs uncritical praise of violent abolitionist John Brown, one sees the danger of regarding historical progress as the outworking of transcendent laws.

John Brown was an idealist. He believed in his ideas to that extent that he

existed to put them all into action; he said 'he did not believe in moral suasion, he

believed in putting the thing through.' He saw how deceptive the forms are. [He

saw] the fact behind the forms.152

Emerson pardons John Brownʼs decision to bypass the political process and to commit violent acts of murder since Brownʼs deeds were done to advance Truth. Emerson does not see the excesses of the abolitionist movement as brutalities to be condemned, but as excusable missteps in the trustworthy progression of nature. His political judgment lapses due to his inability to acknowledge the human condition of plurality Arendt so tirelessly brings to our attention.

151 Emerson, “Politics,” 127-128. 152 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “John Brown,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 796.

The political threat of belief does not come from seeing “truths” with spiritual eyes. Rather, the danger arises when those truths are perceived as supernatural laws whose progression justifies coercing others. As a case in point, Emerson extols his readers not to restrain from putting their truth into action, even if doing so leads to bloodshed. “Every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good, when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution.”153 Or, as he states in another passage, “Such is the perfection of the Reason that particular disasters become not only small but beneficent in its view.”154 If even such an inclusive thinker as

Emerson can succumb to the temptation to justify coercion initiated on behalf of “truth,” then one can appreciate Arendtʼs efforts to safeguard politics from it.

153 Emerson, “New England Reformers,” 151. 154 Emerson, “The Individual,” 176.

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