© frail 60626¢ Peter (Fuss University of Miseourt Ste Louis Hannah srendt's Conception of Political Commmity The observation that men reveal their distinctive identities as husan beings in what they do and say seens neither very original nor very con= troversial But consider the following set of corollaries: that men are ore Likely to reveal vho they uniquely are when they act and speak spontaneously, than when they labor to maintain biological substetence or work to produce « tongible world of hunon artifacts; that action and speech together wake up 2 "web of hunen relationships" thet forns the intangible but vital substonce of hunen community; that, paradoxically, when they act end epesk in huson comunity nen are most truly free and yet least in con trol of thetr om destinies; that when deprived, as they ean be, of hunen coumunity men quickly lose the sense of their om reality as well as thet of @ world experienced in comon; thet the Athenian eftizenry of Perteles! tine, fully aware of all this, constituted the grestest and possibly the ast authentically "political" community in Western history; and that Pericles! faith in the pover of the Athenien polis to actualize and to sustain human grectness wae, for understandable reseons, 40 short-lived thet political thought end political dectston frou Plato to the presont day might well be regarded as an escape fron "polities" altogether. These contentions are the guiding theses of Hannah irendt's The Huran Gonditton (1958). Richly textured, astonishingly erudite, and difficult * to read, this book is to ay mind one of the uost profound and provocative exercts in political thinking in recent times. Pronpted by this con- viction, I have chosen to present and to elaborate, nostly in her teras006265 (even in her Lenguage) but occasionally in ny om, her conception of politics) comunity. My method in what follove will be, like srendt's, phenomenological" in a loose and someuhat stretched sense of the tern: I shall eimply equate, as did old Arietotle, what appears to all to be so with what is. The reasons for this equetion of appearance with reality, doubtless shocking in a post-Cartesten ege, will hopefully becone clear in the sequel. Even then, certain quite legitimate metaphysical and epietenological questions will have to be "bracketed" here, perforce they are in The luman Condition. Finally, lest this paper become too unwieldy, I ial nake definitions as brief, arguments as skeletal, and examples as few as I think I con get avay with, reserving further clari- fication, qualification, and defense for the discussion period. Ts Action and Speech The basis of the hunsn condition {s hunon pluralsty, a plurality that Aiffers fron that of inorgonie as well as of orgenic entities. Unlike the sheer otherness of a multiplicity of inorganic objects, unlike even the variations and distinctions between specinens of the sane organic species, human plurality is the paradoxical plurslity of unique beings, Man slone has the capacity to distinguish hinself and to expr this distinction to comantcate hinsolf and not nerely sone shared attribute or drive or feeling-state. le shares sheer nuserical otherness with everything thet 13, and qualitative distinctness with everything alive; but the ability to reveal who he uniquely end warepeatably 1s 4s « pover that he alone has. Men reveal thet uniqueness by acting into the hunen comunity, the world of their fellow nen. In essence, uheress Leber for biological sur vival 1s under the sway of necessity and involv: endlessly repeatedC0627 eyeliesl process of production and consunption in netabolien with the world of nature; whereas work directed tovards the production of nore or less durable human ertifeets for use and enjoywent is governed by standards of utility ond involves @ process of harnessing known.means to predictable ends; action manifests itself in the initiatfon of unprecedented processes whose outcone {8 uncertain end unpredictable and whose meaningfulnees lies in the revelation of the identities of the agents themselves. e Intinately related to ond in fact inseparable fron the power of action fs the pover of speech. Speech is the distinctive wey in which men iden= Uify thenselves as actors, onnouncing whet they do, have donc, and intend doing. Tt is also the distinctive way in witch men answer, respond, and neasure up to vhat happens and vhat is done by others in the hunn world. Because many, perhaps most actions are porforned in the node of speech, speech has a still closer affinity with revelation than docs action, just action hes a closer affinity with beginning or initiation than does speech. In any event, action without speech would lose ite power to reves! a human agent; and, dependent as it is upon the pover of 9) ech to {1lunt= nate its neaningfulness, action without speech tends to becoue violence. The non-vttlitarion charecter of action perteins to specch as wells Doubtless man's pover to act {s highly useful in the pursuit of his sundry interes! a6 his power to act in concert is indLepensable at tines for Lf-defense- Dut behavior, especially orgenized behavior, ts considerably more effective in the pursuit of definite ends than is initistery action with all of its inherent spontaneity, uncontrollability, and unpredictability. 1. Clearly, it isn't that simple. In our experience the conceptual distine~ tions between Labor, work, and action easily become blurred. There has alvays been overlap, and technological developments may before long require a reformulation, perhaps even an abandonnent, of the time-honored distine= ‘tion between labor and work.606271 ae By the same token, specch is highly useful in the coamunication of infor nation; but fron the point of view of sheer utility, it 1s a poor substitute for the efficiency and precision of sign Longuage.. Action and speech require initiative, but the failure to take such initiative 1s tantemount to the failure to be hunan. Men may live lives that are human, however unjust, without laboring---by compelling others to totl for their ovn physical survival. They may live Lives that are human, hovever parasitical, by merely using and enjoying the things thet make up that world. But a life without action and speech 4s "dead" to the huaan world; it is not a husan life because it te not lived whan anong men. Ti. Sho and hat Our distinctive physical identities---the particular chepe of our bodies end the peculiar sound of our voice: | | the world of hunon artifacte---without thenselvee contributing anything to | appear in the world by the nere fact that we are there, without any special effort on our part. In addition to our physical identities, ve possess certain qualities, character traits, talents, gifts, virtues, shortconings, and the like, and we maintain cer= tain positions and play certain roles---banker, father, taxpayer, etes--in society. Over these characteristics and roles we have a considerable meas Se eee eee ee ee PLD ob nstasl stectouecs, mstitins wae 5 Wes ee oe Giles aes pfos ao ectenn (oar “eral eA ge) We iotiiet says oc ed pg Sle iplaie soiuias w se al ay 10 ee passivity and silence. On the other hand, the disclosure of who we are tsG0627% rarely if ever achieved with purposeful deliberateness: ve do not possess. and cannot therefore dispose of who we sre in the way that we possess ond control t characteristics that make up vhat we ar Jn fact, it {9 rather the case that who we are, while it appears clearly and unnistekably to those we encounter, rensins relatively hidden fron ourselves. By 0 someuhat different strategy of analysis, we my pursue the Atetinetion previously susgested betveen human behavior and human action. Behavior is in principle precedent-laden ond stereotyped, imitable if not folly copiable, conditioned if not determined, and to a great extent pre- dictable, controllable, and manipulable. Action Cand speech), on the other hand, is by nature original and originative, spontaneous and inimitable, stimilable by the presence of others whose coupany we may seek but never determined by then, end radically unpredictable snd uncontrollable. Thus Af men always behoved ond never acted, we would require no distinction between what they are and who they are. jorcover, we vould encounter none of the difficulties vhich in fact ve do meet in attempting to define "hunan natures" ‘As matters stand, there probebly 1s no such thing as a definable humen netures even Af there were, only @ god could know and define it---provided, ve mist add, that he chose to regard « "who" es though 4t were a twhate! A mants pottern of behavior, then, does not tend to single hin out unique individual, vhereae the exercise of his capacity to set Cand to speak) does just that. Naving seid that much about the “who,” hovever, it night be best to say no core, Tt in one thing to adunbrate this singular dinension of i human experience by way of negation, t.e., by focussing attention on what ie fe not. Ie ite another antter te aim at direct conceptual articuletion.j | cos2z7ze The manifestation of who the speaker snd doer unexchangeably 4s, though 4t ir plainly visible, Feteins © curious tntengibility that confounds all efforts tovard unequivocs) verbs) expression. The ronent sve want t0 soy who somebody 4, our vory vocabulary lends ws astray into saying what he t5 ve get entangled in description of qualities he Necessarily shares vith others Like him; ve begin to deseribe type or a "charecter” in the old meaning of the vord, vith the result thet his specific uniqueness’ escapes usey (University of Ghicego Frese edition, p. 181.) ‘The notortous intangtbtlity of the "who," the frustreting unreliability of {ts revelation, is perhaps the main reason why the world of human effatre in general, and the public, politicel realm in porticular, is so beset with uncertainty. Gur inability to none, that is, to fix in vords the distinctive essence of the person as it manifests itself in the living flow of action and speech entatls that we cannot hondle the realn of huasn affairs (in which after «ll we exist primarily as actors and speakers) in the way we can handle things hose nature fs so much at our disposal just because ve are able to nane thens To be sure, nost action and apecch has on “objective” content or reference. It te largely about @ tangible vorld of things in which men are interested 2 world which exists, so to speak, "in-between" then, relating, separating, and binding them together. But no matter how energetically one's deads and words concentrate on this tangible world of objects, they continue to reveal a who as their subject. That {s because no matter shat one's action and speech 4s about, its significance {s still a matter of direct address to other nen. Thus there arises a second, "subjec- tive" in-between, appropriately called the web of hunan relationships" because of its intangibility. For ell its intengibility it is no less reel 2+ the reader who at this point fe still sympathetic with what Arendt hae to say might try for hinself the experiuent of deseribing a MuhoM=--say that of his best friend---to vey his second-best friend.006274 than is the tangible in-between of a connonly experienced world of things. Dut it fs, 25 its none suggests, dismayingly fragile. The remainder of this paper will focus on sone ressons for, end sone consequences of, the fregility of the realn of speech and action. TIT. Freedom and soveretgaty Initiotory action and revelatory speech are the forne in which men most fully manifest their freodon and disclose their unique identities, Dut men do not ct and spesk by the mere fact that they are men, no nore then they are free nerely by virtue of their being mens Action and speech specifically and freedon generally are potentislitice of nen, potentialities whose actualization cannot be taken for grented. What Kant seid of hunen freedom---nanely, that it is a task and not a given: As teve a fortiont and for the sase resson) of hunan self-revelation, ieting and spesking {nto human comantty, into the web of hunan relationships, requires « as ‘sure of courage and a willingness to take risk: Courage 1s needed to expose and disclose one's self in publi risk is involved in that one is not the master of what he thus reveals. It has already been pointed out that we do not possess and control the "iho! we reveal. Our deeds and words fall into a pri ‘existing web , Of human relationships within which, indeed, they begin new processes; but these processes irmediately are affected by, as they affect, the innunerable conflicting wills end intentions of other actors ani speakers. Because of this web, action rarely achieves its purpo: ©n the other hand, since action is nesningful and real only within this web, 1t Asses in “Life stort: with @ renerkcble naturalness ond inevitability. The difficulty is that we are neither singly and unequivocelly responsible for the con= sequences of vhat ve do ond say, nor sre ve in fact the authors of our owGo627& 8 Life stories. hen we act and speck, wo reveol at best an identifiable initiator of a process. Sut the processes we initiate are inherently boundless, irreversible, and unpredictable. toreover, we disclose ourselves pieceneal during the entire course of our Lives, outliving what we do end say even while these deeds and words in turn outlive us ‘Thus the full meaning of vhat we initiate can be known, {£ at ell. and the full story of wito we are can be told, if at all ‘only in retrospect, after ve are dead, by the historian and the storyteller. For the agent himself, the meaning- fulness of what he does and says does not lie in the story thet follows hime In short, it quickly becones apparent that he who acts never quite knows what he is doing, that he always becomes "guilty" of consequences he never intended or even foresaw, that however disastrous or unexpected the consequences of his deed he can never undo it, that the process he starts ie never consuanated unequivocally in one single deed or event, and that ite very meaning never discloses itself to the ector but only to the backvard glance of the historian who himself does not act. (p. 233) To the conteaplative eye, what inescapably nanifests itself here is the baffling paradox that men are nost free when they are least sovereign. Bxereising their capacity for freedon, they create a web of hunsn relation= ships which so thoroughly entangles them that they seem nore the helple: victins than the masters of vhat they have done. When it appears that men forfe{t their freedom at the very instant they evail thenselves of it, that hunan freedon exists only to lure men into necessity, the tenp- tation to condemn action---and thereby to retreat fron or even to destroy the web of hunsn relationships altogether---becones alnost irresistible. One readily concludes that the burden of action and speech, of revealing ‘and witnessing vho sen ere under the haphazard’ end hcos-ridden conditions of human plurality, is im Ly too great.06276 IV. Reality and Appearance Nevertheless, it seens to be the case that whereas a life of acting and speaking in human cormunity is perilous and to,a great extend frustratin, the abandonment of 1ife~in-conmunity in favor of a life of supposed eelf- sufficiency and self-nastery in isolation proves disastrous. For apart from the web of human relationship: action and speech, initiation and self- revelation are utterly futile, They lose their capacity for endurance as they lose their very meaning. They fa{l to eppear-. snd from a human point of view, what does not appear is not real. In fact, intersubjective con firmation is the ground of our assurance that anything vhatever---ourselvé our fellow nen, the world of natural objects and the world of man-made thinge-—-is reel. This reality is certified, as {t were, in end through our relationships with other hunan beings vho are Like us in thet they are all hunen, but who are all hunan in that each {s uniques In the hunsn world, which may fittingly be called the "space of appearances," each individual, apart from being an actor and specker, is witnes: testifying to vhat takes place from the vantage point of his ova irreducibly unique perspective. Yet because each individual shares common hunenity with every other, he is able to coumnicate his perspectives to others. This pover to communicate sakes posetble a continulty of perspectives. hen perspectives are multiple yet continuous, they illunine more or less fully, "from all sides," as it were, a single person or object perceived in commons : As a dramatic depiction of the plight of the individual isolated fron hhunan comnunity, on the other hand, Dostoevoky's Notes from Undersround is probsbly still without peer.? Unwitnessed and unconfirmed by others, 3+ mts paragraph is my first "sustained" departure from a fairly close rendition of Arendtisn material.006275 =10- Dostoevsky's anti-hero acts and speaks exclusively for his om benefit---into and to hinself alone. Playing out an endless, tedious drana within the confines of his om ogo, he alnost succeeds in becoming what he cannot be: the mantpulater of his om identity and the cuthor of his om Life story. But of course he ts not actuelly an actor and speaker. Rather, he is a Puppetmaster. At the ends of his strings are hallucinetory internalizations of “others! who are as he would have then be, not as they really ares "They" do not stand over against him, against "th s" he does not have to measure up, since he has created then in the firet place and can annihilate then at his Pleasure. Similarly, vhen he does energe from the Underground into the "light of day," he 1s not, as Plato vould have it, blinded by the radiance of what appear: Instead, he sees perfectly well. But what he sees is not he sees nothing but the fantastic projections of his ova inner .es only what he wants to see ond wants only what he sees. To efron srtin Duber, He "gives the Me to being" wherever he goes. He is the nan vho wills rather than discovers, nonufsetures rather than discloses, his self. He is the nan who dictates vist the other shall be, instead of recognizing who he, or what {t, actually ie. He appears to be a solipsist in the fullest sense of the tern, for he lives, he does not merely theorize about, his solipaien. Unfortunately, Lived soltpsisn does not conform to its traditional philosophte definition. then solipstsn 4s experienced, rather thon cpeculated on, it is not the case that only one's Lf Ae real. Wothing 15 real, one's self ineluded. But the lose of roolity does not occur only when nen ere radically Isolated from one anothers It occurs Just as readily witen mon become assifted, shen they behave x thoush they vere a1 but nunertesty indistinguishable, vhon each nerely multiplics and prolongs his neighbor'sGO627E ait perspective. In both instances, men have becone entirely private, that is, they have been deprived of seeing and hearing others, of being seen and being heard by them. They are all imprisoned in the subjectivity of their om. singular experience, vhich does not cease to be singular if the sane experience is aultiplied innuserable times. The end of the comon world has cone when it is seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one perspective. (p. 58) When men are together without being distinct, just as much as when they are distinct without being together, they lose their eormon sense," their sense of reality. Only when what {s can be confirmed by many in @ dive ity of aspects without changing ite essential identity, so that those vho surround it know that they see sameness in diversity, con reality truly appear. V. The Polis and the Necning of Politics Western history preserves the clear menory of at leset one community of men who, for a tine, prized the web of hunsn relationship: frail, frustrating, and paredox-ridden as it is---se highly that it can alnost be id they lived for it elon: The {deal Athenian eftizen during the "Golden Age" of Pericles was, to our understanding, a strange sort. Leaving the administration of his household to his wife, the cultivation of his fields to sl 8 and the conduct of his comercial affairs to foreigners, he allied forth into the polis to act and to speak in the conpany of his true peers. Here alone he could breathe the air of freedon, because he had eft behind everything that had to do vith hie nerely "privat those governed by the stondards of utility as well ce those under the ovay of necessity. Here alone he found hinself released from the need both to rule end to be ruled. Ifere alone did the opportunity to reveal his60627 “1 individuality, to distinguish hinself from all others, fully present iteclf. If we judge by the sheer "quantity" of greatness that manifested itself 4m that small and relatively isolated Greck efty during #0 short a period of Line, he did not waste his opportunities. But more to the point, and still stranger to our ways of thinking, was his understanding of vhat political Life means. For him, the public revelation of men's unique identities through action and speech was the very content of politics. Nistrusting expertise and holding professtonalien in sosevhet lov esteem, he took upon hinself the burden of legislation, adjudication, and the administration of Public affeirs in general. But it never occurred to him thet these exercts of civic responsibility were anything but pre-political activities. tle Fegarded then at best as necessary procedures in the creation and maintenance ‘of the housing, so to speak, of the yece"" in which the outhenticslly political activities of acting and speaking were te appear. When Pericles in hi Funeral Oration assured the Athenian citizens thet "wherever you go, you vill be a polis," he was merely reminding then of something they already knew: the substance of politics is the space of appearances which distin= gutohes yet binds men together and vhich in its living essence ts independent of time, place, and physical efreunstences. In the Athenian conception the polis, as the space of appearance, vas understood to have a double political function. In the first place, it we to multiply the oceasions of action and speech, thereby affording every citizen repeated opportunity to distinguish hinself in the eyes of his fellows.* In the second place, it was to overcoue the futility of action “+ wone, if not the chief, resson for the incredible developaent of gift and genius in Athens, as well 2s for the hurdiy lese surprising avift decline of the city-state, was precisely that from beginning to end its forenost aim yas to make the extrsordinary an ordinary occurrence of everyday Life” (p. 197)0628C 24 ise and speech through commnal renenbronce, thus ensuring that those deeds deserving of “ismortal fame" would never be forgotten. Together, the two functions of the polis would assure sortel actors thet their pe: ing existence and their fleeting greatness vould be accorded the reality that comes fron being seen end heard by their contenporaries, and Fecenbered by those who cane after then. If to us this conception of the meaning of politics seens tonishing, we nay well be aghast when we read that Ferfcles (or Thucydides) eleined the glory of the Athenians to lie in their legacy of "good and evil deeds," ‘as though these were fully on a pars In point of fact, the “thenians apparently did regard conventional moral and utiliterien standards as being to a large extent inappropriate in the donain of action and speech. These standards legitimately apply only to ordinary hunan behavior, where: it fs im the very nature of action and speech to be extraordinary, unprece- dented, and sui generis. Conventional norclity's double focu: won notiv and ains on the one hend and on consequences and schievenents on the other=== 4s of Limited relevonce in the politieal roaln just because the forner are non-unique and the Letter cre generally beyond the power of the agent to predict and to Sontcols: The specific meaning of each deed lies exclusively fn the perfornance ttself, ond con be assessed by one criterion stone: greatnes The supreme Fericlean confidence in the power of the polis to enact and, at the sane tine, to preserve greatness was short-lived indeed. Yet At sufficed to elevate action and syeech to the highest renk in the hierarchy of hunen sctivities end to confer upon polities a disnity viteh has still not been entirely 2 + Mevertheless, the tradition of Western politic theory, already beginnins with, and never entirely f¥ee fron, the enornous006281 ae influence of Plato, may well be regarded as a nore or less progressive ‘undernining of the Athenian political experience and its articulation. We might conclude with a fev indications of how, according to Miss Arendt, this came about. VI. The Escape from Politics ‘There is nothing self-evident about the conviction that man's grei conststs of his ovn disclosure, for its om scke, in action and in speech. Nor has this conviction ever been universally shared. Opposed to tt stand both man-the-producer's conviction that wat he nukes my be greater then what he 10, as voll as nan-the-leborer's belief that Life itself ts the greatest of all value: Both are naturally inelined to view action ond speech as vain idleness, and to evaluste public activities on the basis Of their subservience to allegedly higher ende: the utility and beouty of the world in the eyes of the former, the ease and length of 1ife as euch in the eyee of the latter. Both, therefore, are un-politically and even anti-politically oriented, Yet it is the gradual accession of the attitudes ond activities, first of the former and then of the Latter, to pre-eninence in the hierarchy of hunan values that h: marked the course of Western political history. Tt would be an unders ‘tenent to say that this political history's conceptusl counterpart has not reflected Pericles' politics) optimism « Exasperated vith the perplexities inherent in action-. the irreversibility Of its processes, the unpredictability of its consequences, and the relative anonywity (and hence tnevitably the moral irresponsibility) of its author: to name only the most salient---thinker after thinker hee proposed solutions ‘that vould replace the Life of action and speech with souething else. The2ng2R¢ = wwoual pattern hav been to urge that the content of politics be entrusted to one or a few nen, relatively {solated from the rest, who would be and remain masters of vhat they did. Conceptually underlying. these proposals has been the replacenent of categories pertaining to action and speech by categories appropriate to fabrication or work. The result throughout has been a degradation of politics fron the position of being the substance, or at 2 le: ft the arena, of whet men do and say for their om 2, to a mere moans ©f securing soue other and supposedly loftier end. Fron the Periclean point 9f view, the organization of the politics) realm, in late antiquity, to protect the best (especielly the philosophers) roa the tyranny of the nob; in the middle ages, to further the age, to guarantee © productive, progressive "society" equally as forns of escape fron politics as such. On the conceptusl level, the figure of Plato loons so large in the Post-Periclean tradition because he may have been the first, and probably was the greatest, philosopher to introduce the categories of fabrication and making into the political realm. In the veb of humon relationships, action has validity and ueaning only so long as tt 1s inseporebly united with thought. But in the experience of fabrication, knowing ond doing are arate "moments," os it were, in 2 process divisible into parte. As Plato understood the fabrication process, the craftenan first apprehonds the model or fora of his" \d-produet"; only then does he begin the actual, work of carrying out his design by organizing the appropriate weans. The first ge of this process requires knowledge, and it is this knowledge a "Society {s the form in which the fact of mutual deyendence for the ke of Life and nothing else assunes public significance end where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in public." (. 46) Society “nornslizes" ite nenbers, requires that they behave. Aiscourages and oven tends to exclude spontaneous action. -- The reason for the quotes should now be obvious.00628¢ mies which accounts at once for the eraftsnan's dignity and for his elain to exercise sovereign mastery over a reliable process he clone, indeed, could begin and should oversee, but witch others, with a-nodieun of instruction, could then carry through to ite predeternined end. Plato, a post-Periclean deeply disenchanted with the isononte speech-action cocmmntty, saw in the master craftsman the nodel of a ruler~ expert fit to govern en orderly, function oriented state. By sheer force of conceptualization and philosophical clarification, the Platonic identification of know ledge with comand and rulerehip, and of action with Obedience end execution, overruled all earlicr expe- riences and articulations in the political reeln and becane authoritative for the whole tradition of politicsl thought, even after the roots of the experi= enee fron which Plato derived hie concepts had long, been forgotten. (p. 225. 1 have inserted an extra set of coumas in order to make this sentence little easier to read.) Within thie frane of reference, the emergence of @ utopian political system viich could be construed im accordance with e model by somebody who has mastered the techniques of hunan affair becomes almost a matter of course; Plato, who was the first to design s blueprint for the making of political bodies, has renained the inspiration for all later utopias. (p, 227) According to Arendt, then, our very conception of polities hes been almost definitively ped by the pecultar wedge Plato saw fit to drive in this domain between thought end action= wedge that helped legitimate for two millennia the notion that there should be rulers who think for subjects who ict" (execute orders). Hence the well entrenched notions that polities feed not be everyone's concern, thet it fe a necessary evil or even a dirty business. VII. An Inconelusive Consent Tive no doubt msde it clear that I find Mise Arendt's cearticulation of| | | I 90828, the ideals of the Pertelean political community a refreshing departure from Mpolitics as usual," and nore importantly from political thought ueual. But T must add that I pave found £t difficult to reconefle her “agonal” conception of politics with one which is not merely nore faatliar to us, Dut which 1s at least as attractive: polities as the instituttonalization of the arts of persuasion and coapronise. Interestingly enough, Arendt herself has tended, since Tho lusan Condition, to accentuate the latter conception. Her study of the Anerican politiesl experience in On Revolution (1963) is in the final anslyeis o tribute to © polities of compromise much nore than a polities of individual excellence. How Af ve juxtapose The Hunan Condition and her later work, a recon= eflictory schema something like the folloving might be tried: Politics, the range of activities pertinent to the public realm (the spsce of appearances winfch con= cerns all of us in coimon), may be understood as having two distinct but ultimately inseparable dineneions: (1) Substontivoly, the content of politics is the realn of personel initiatives individually enacted and plurslly responded to. (A vartant formulation: the content of polities is huson distinctiveness expressed through the witnessed deed and the coummi- cated word.) (2) Procedurally, politics ts the realm of (ideally isonomic) decisionemaking with respect to the best way to pronote ond preserve (1). The procedural stuff of polities fs opinions, wheress the procedural style consists in the classic foras of non-violent