Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, Existentialism Politicized - Arendt's Debt To Jaspers

Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers
Author(s): Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman

Source: The Review of Politics , Summer, 1991, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer, 1991), pp. 435-
468
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Existentialism Politicized:
Arendt's Debt to Jaspers
Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Htnchman
There has been much debate about how to locate Hannah Arendt within the
tradition of political philosophy. This article argues for an "existentialist" read
claiming that Karl Jaspers's categories reappear, politicized, in Arendt's
thought. Her language and arguments do not, in fact, become completely int
gible until read in the context ofJaspers's Existenz philosophy. The authors cont
that the apparent obscurity and ambiguity of Arendt's writings owe to her atte
to stretch the framework of existentialism to fit the milieu of classical antiqu
to which it is fundamentally alien. Conversely, Arendt appropriated only th
aspects of Aristotelian theory that suited her existentially defined concerns w
ignoring the rest, a procedure that accounts for many of the tensions and con
dictions found in her work.
In a 1964 letter to Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt re-

marked: "If I can be said to 'have come from anywhere,' it is from
the tradition of German philosophy."' Besides "classical" theorists
such as Lessing and Kant, Arendt certainly had in mind her men-
tors, Heidegger andJaspers, who shaped her thinking both directly
and through their published works. Having previously discusse
Arendt's position vis-at-vis Heidegger, we here attempt an exegesi
and critique of her key terms by interpreting them in light o
Jaspers's philosophy.2
Our thesis is threefold. First, Arendt's categories and very
method of theorizing are not fully intelligible unless read against
the background of German existentialism. Second, both Arend
1. Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: Reply to Gershom Scholem," En

counter 22, no. 1 (1964): 53.
2. See our earlier article, "In Heidegger's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Phenom-
enological Humanism," Review of Politics 46, no. 2 (1984): 183-211. Other com-
mentators who have discussed Arendt's existentialism and/or her relationship t
Jaspers and Heidegger include Martin Jay, "Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views,"
Partisan Review 45, no. 3 (1978); Bhikhu Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search
for a New Political Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981),
especially pp. 66-83, 177-85; Ernest Vollrath, "Hannah Arendt and the Method
of Political Thinking," Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977); Sheldon Wolin, "Hannah
Arendt and the Ordinance of Time," SocialResearch 44, no. 1 (1977);John Gunnell,
Political Theory: Tradition and Interpretation (Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers
1979), pp. 80-82; Margaret Canovan, "Socrates or Heidegger? Hannah Arendt
Reflections on Philosophy and Politics," Social Research 57, no. 1 (1990); an
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, "Reflections on Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind,
Political Theory 10, no. 2 (1982).
435

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436 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
and Jaspers hoped to overcome that sc

toward the isolation and self-absorption
or agent. While retaining the dichotomy
and the "authentic individual," they sough
ing individuality into a wider community
munication" (Jaspers) or action in the
Third, much of the obscurity and ambig
owes to her attempt to stretch the fram
to make it fit the intellectual-practical
antiquity, to which it is inherently alien
priated only those aspects of Aristotelian
with her own existentialist concerns while
the result being a brilliant but unstable
JASPERS'S PHILOSOPHY OF EXIST
Jaspers's philosophy can be understoo

Kantianism.3 Arendt herself would prob
once called Kant the "true, if also clandes
philosophy, its "secret king."4 Kant, of c
the pretension of traditional metaphysic
world, God, and soul through reason
he endeavored to show that scientific kn
objective cognition, though only in its p
it appears to conscious beings qua "phen
itself." Phenomenal reality consists of pe
the intuitions of space and time and give
by the categories of the understanding.
mind and nothing would remain save a
and even unperceivable. Categories such
thus should not be treated as subjective o
necting perceptions; they are woven into
enal world and so guarantee the objectivi
about it.
Certain implications of Kant's argument stood out for later phi-
losophers. Most notably, Kant had demonstrated that the concepts
3. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl employs this approach successfully in her book,

Freedom and Karl Jaspers' Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981).
4. Hannah Arendt, "What Is Existenz Philosophy?", Partisan Review 13, no. 1
(1946): 38.

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ARENDT'S DEBT TO JASPERS 437
"object" and "objectivity" suggested a subject to which o

given, and which contributed their perceived order and
or "unity." That epistemological subject itself- the "tran
unity of apperception"- could not be objectified; its act
apparent only in the coherence of our world. To focus at
this "I think" that accompanies all of one's "presenta
transform it into another object among objects, a psych
empirical entity d la Hume. For Kant, scientific kno
limited to what could be thought as object and by th
ways in which objectivity was constituted. Both the wo
and the ego that employed categories to "synthesize" re
inaccessible to scientific investigation.
Yet Kant's restriction of objective knowledge to ph
seemed to leave open avenues for nonobjective insight. A
Jaspers's Existenz-philosophy began at the limits of cogn
lished by Kant. He showed how the human mind is
inquire beyond the objective, certain knowledge it c
("scientific world-orientation"). Discovering that such k
does not answer life's most vexing questions ("philosoph
orientation"), the mind has recourse to "nonobjective
This sort of thinking seeks to illuminate Existenz (m
mode of being, the metaphysical "soul") and "read the c
transcendence (the metaphysical Absolute). Here one
tain knowledge, yet one can nevertheless proceed in thou
borderline of the objectively knowable, so as to prepare
into Existenz.5
In Jaspers, the privileged status Kant assigned to
knowledge yields to a "pluralism of perspectives."6 In
the world as an "object" means establishing a certain re
between it and the subject, understood as "consciousness
or "consciousness-in-general," a detached outlook in whi
servers are understood to be functionally equivalent.7 Bu
vidual self is more than consciousness-at-large, just as t
5. See Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, 2 vols., trans. by E. B. Asht

University of Chicago Press, 1970), 2: 3: "What we refer to in my
the soul and God, and in philosophical language as Existenz and tr
is not of this world. Neither one is knowable, in the sense of things
Yet both might have another kind of being. They need not be n
though they are not known."
6. For a fuller discussion of Jaspers's pluralism, see Charles Wa
Jaspers: An Introduction to His Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton Uni
1970), pp. 53-63.
7. See Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 298.

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more than an object to be studied by scie

"boundary situations" (Grenzsituationen),
their noninterchangeable existence. F
one's own mortality is very different th
an abstraction to be studied from the vi
physician.8 Death claims one's own uni
and, rightly understood, encourages one
a space of appearance for Existenz, rev
decisions. Thus, the scientific viewpoin
world-as-object, constitute only one (and
perspective; the intentional pair of Exi
tion-of-Existenz remains equally valid, in
mental. Jaspers therefore criticized Kant
omy of objective knowledge/nonobjective
of "two worlds," one real and objective, t
and postulated.' In truth, only one wo
different face depending on whether peo
its objective character or to act in it so a
their identities."1 This link between Exist
crucial congruence between Jaspers's an
ACTION AND AUTHENTIC SELFHOOD
Arendt admired the public realm partly because it opened up a

space within which citizens could reveal themselves. She carefully
distinguished this "who" from "what" a person was: that individual's
character traits, talents, roles, relationships, statuses, accomplish-
ments, and psychological tendencies. Needless to say, Arendt's
contention is far from obvious. People normally suppose that they
know who others are after having established at various levels what
they are. And few would allow that the public realm discloses,
better than any competing setting, the deep selves of its partici-
pants; to the contrary, contemporary politics, at least, seems per-
vaded by lies, hypocrisy, image-making, and cynicism. Arendt
8. Ibid., p. 196.
9. As Jaspers writes: "There are not two worlds lying side by side ... it only
seems [so] because we cannot avoid using objective concepts and categories as
means of expression" (ibid., p. 18).
10. "There is no freedom outside self-being. The objective world has neither
a place nor a gap for it." Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 167. For a fuller discussion of
Jaspers's approach to the Kantian "two worlds" dichotomy, see Young-Bruehl,
KarlJaspers, pp. 100-106.

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herself does surprisingly little to build a case for wh

appears an implausible argument. To understand her
must read them in the context of Jaspers's notion of E
As we have seen, Jaspers hoped to limit the pretension
tive knowledge in order to "elucidate" what exists in a d
manner. The word Existenz describes the unique self
person may become, but which is neither (psychologi
nor object,'1 and likewise is not a "property with wh
endowed by nature."" Although lying potentially within
vidual's power, it can be actualized only by a decision to
to act in such a way that one's outward life embodies th
truly is."' The detached gaze of the scientist or philosop
uncover who one is, for it bespeaks a passive attitude tha
circumstances of one's life, one's past decisions, the per
known all these years, to define the self. But one can, a
seize the initiative and "create" oneself anew by decid
differently.14
It is tempting, but wrong, to hold that Existenz refer
of entities possessing similar attributes. In fact, the ter
singles out each individual qua his or her own unique pot
Jaspers accordingly refers to it as a "sign" and not a
word: "In elucidating Existenz I speak of the self as i
universal whose structures I demonstrate, but I can mea
own self, for which nothing can substitute."" By implic
one is cannot be a matter of prior knowledge, as would
when one refers to what one is. A person may know he is
by surveying his stock of skills in woodworking, but
know "who" he is until he decides and acts.' A related p
11. See Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 3, and also p. 360, where he writes t

is not in the sense in which objects are. Nor is it in the sense of the bein
accessible to psychology. . .. The sense of being of possible Exist
observable phenomenon."
12. William Earle, trans., "Introduction" to Karl Jaspers, Reason
(New York: Noonday Press, 1955), p. 11.
13. On Existenz understood as being oneself, see Jaspers, Philos
and Philosophy, 2: 3, 135.
14. Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 135.
15. See ibid., p. 16, where Jaspers, referring to the term Existen
and not a descriptive word, remarks that, "In elucidating Existenz
self as if it were a universal whose structures I demonstrate, but I ca
my own self, for which nothing can substitute."
16. See Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, trans. Eden and Cedar
City: Doubleday and Co., 1957), p. 177: "I am not what I cogni
cognise what I am."

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no one can be Existenz all the time.'7

down in mundane Dasein, or existence in
living. They drift along, doing what
expected, rarely pausing to reflect on w
whether fundamental change would be d
to each individual to overcome such i
"boundary situations" mentioned earl
an intimate connection to the elucidatio
dissolve temporarily the encrustations o
confront the meaning of one's life as a
Adopting Jaspers's posture means re
person's life, or at least deeds that stood
emanated from a nonobjectifiable sour
rather than from empirically accessible
self is not hidden away in some secret re
it manifests itself in the story of a pers
of "existential" decisions and actions."9
The dimensions of Existenz reviewed
possibility, as sign, as action in the wor
self-being- find their fullest expression
tenz with human freedom, which Jas
omega of existential elucidation."20 Like
of freedom as autonomy: people are free
of their deeds and thus fully responsibl
spective of Existenz, the causal laws and
"objective" reality mean nothing; each E
as its world, in principle able to be sh
"Freedom," Jaspers wrote, "requires tha
17. Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 122-23. Here as els

two selves: the genuine self vs. the robot-like cl
stands in for it. How this squares with his empha
theories is not entirely clear.
18. In ibid., p. 9, Jaspers describes this proces
course of things to decide about me - vanishing
decision when everything just happens - or I deal
with the feeling that there must be a decision."
powerful literary example of what Jaspers mea
19. See ibid., p. 111: "Existenz does not appe
product; it is acquired step by step, by way of
time. Its phenomenon is not the single momen
interrelated moments."

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am into my freedom, that I make it my fault."21 In thi

orderly and tranquil objective world of the social scientis
rian is transmuted into a "seething cauldron of possibili
which Existenz strives to actualize its freedom. One can then read
the record of human events as a ledger of free actions rather tha
as the outcome of a necessary process.23
Again like Kant, Jaspers understood that one cannot demon
strate the reality of freedom to those who imagine the world as
realm of causal relationships, since "the objective world has neither
a place nor a gap for it."24 But because the world is also the space
in which nonobjectifiable Existenz must appear, one is justified in
ascribing responsibility and freedom to agents. The perspectiv
one chooses - that of Existenz or of consciousness-at-large - de
pends on one's phenomenological connection to events. Their orig-
inator cannot authentically approach them in the manner of
detached observer, as though they were objective happenings sub-
ject to causal laws. Moreover, not only are free acts autonomous,
under the agent's own control and responsibility; they are als
spontaneous and unpredictable, and therefore must not be treated
as continuations of an already-established causal chain. What Exis-
tenz decides to do rests within itself as its ultimate source.25 Thus
the freedom of Existenz implies what cannot be conceived b
consciousness-at-large, namely, radical novelty, new beginning
in the world: "Objectively, nothing new can come to be. . . . Existen
tially, on the other hand, there is no lasting definitive objectivity
there are leaps."26
Jaspers's doctrine is recapitulated in Arendt's theory of freedom
21. Ibid., p. 173. Jaspers elaborates that, "In me lies a source that is entirely
myself and from whose point of view I see my phenomenality ... as an existen
I have to mold." See also Philosophy, 1: 56.
22. Jaspers, Reason and Existenz, p. 49.
23. SeeJaspers, Philosophy, 1: 107: "mundane existence (Dasein) does become
the objectivity of Existenz- not a thing I can know in my world-orientation, only
what I have adopted and created, or rejected and destroyed, as Existenz. My world
is then no longer the world that exists, let alone the world that is known. It is
world which freedom finds and helps to bring about." (Emphasis in original.)
24. Ibid., p. 167.
25. As Jaspers explains in Philosophy, 2: 17: "The rules of reality are causa
laws; whatever happens has its cause and its effect in the course of time. Existenti
reality, on the other hand, is self-originating as it appears to itself in time--i
other words, it is free." See also Arendt, "What Is Freedom?" pp. 143-45, an
Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. II: Willing (New York: Harcourt Bra
Jovanovich, 1978), pp. 28-34.
26. Ibid., p. 18.

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Arendt sometimes spoke of political freed

principle from freedom in general. Occasi
in classical fashion, as a status held by
from metics and slaves. In this narrow de
would simply be a matter of what "I can
dered, participate in public life, etc.), no
Nevertheless, Arendt usually tried to r
freedom as such, and along the lines p
appropriated the distinction between o
being (Jaspers's Dasein) and the nonobjec
vealed in one's words and deeds. This dist
in the dichotomy of "who" and "what"
men show who they are, reveal actively t
tities and thus make their appearance in
this "who" eludes all objectifying investi
suggested--Existenz is singular, unrep
being expressed in general concepts, w
particular under the universal.29
As inJaspers, self-revelation does not si
of course. Arendt, to be sure, averred th
somebody is, is implicit in both his word
ever, not all speeches or deeds are equally
cate an emotional or physical state ma
Existenz.3" More generally, much of The H
to demonstrating that activities such
display to a significant degree the identit
for labor is compelled by physical necess
yields impersonal, opaque products.32 E
27. Arendt, Willing, p. 200. See also Hannah Ar

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p
Freedom?" in Between Past and Future, 2nd ed. (Ne
49. In the latter work, Arendt contended that "p
for "inner freedom."
28. In Human Condition, p. 179, Arendt puts it as follows: "The manifestation
of who the speaker and doer unexchangeably is ... retains a curious intangibility
that confounds all efforts toward unequivocal verbal expression. The moment we
want to say who somebody is, our very vocabulary leads us astray into saying
what he is; we get entangled in a description of qualities he shares with others
like him."
29. Ibid., p. 181.
30. Ibid., p. 178.
31. Ibid., p. 176.
32. Ibid., pp. 180-81.

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speech seldom disclose much that is self-differenti

people. Full self-revelation demands a decisive break wi
life, a leap into "the shining brightness we once call
Although Arendt disagreed withJaspers in insisting tha
sure of the agent requires a public realm, it is notewort
self exhibited in Arendtian free action possesses many
attributes Jaspers ascribed to Existenz.
For Arendt, one of the most crucial of these was the
begin "something new on our own initiative."34 She de
new beginnings in language reminiscent ofJaspers's ar
the unpredictable, contingent quality of Existenz: "The
happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical la
fact that man is capable of action means that the unex
be expected from him, that he is able to perform what
improbable."35 However, just as not every deed and
reveals a person's self, neither does every action initiate
new. Albeit in an obscure context, Arendt did retain t
tial" element of inner resolve and decision as part of h
of new beginnings. Kant had argued that when he
his chair, he begins a "new series" of events ex nihilo.
contended that a new series must be preceded by a cons
to break with the past: "Only if [Kant], arising from hi
something in mind he wishes to do, does this 'event' st
series'; . . . if he habitually gets up at this time or if h
order to fetch something he needs for his present occ
event is itself 'the continuation of a preceding series."'
that "we seldom start a new series. ... Most of our acts are taken
care of by habits."''36 Thus what began in Kant as a philosophical
argument about any deliberate action became, in Arendt, an argu
ment for action that is exceptional or spontaneous. As in Jaspers
freedom requires a resolve to act in accordance with one's true se
against the encrustation of routine and drift; it is a possibility o
Existenz, not a universal attribute of human agents.
Nevertheless, Arendt's analysis of free action differs from Ja
pers's in two important respects. First, Arendt accounted for th
possibility of initiating something new by arguing that "with eac
33. Ibid., p. 180.

34. Ibid., p. 177.
35. Ibid., p. 178.
36. Arendt, Willing, pp. 30, 32-33.

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birth something uniquely new comes in

she derived partly from classical and e
Each person embodies a "who" or possib
and words will furnish material for a s
"natality" rather than mortality - as inJa
of death - is associated with the potential
precedented. Second, although Jasper
tached, scientific outlook did not exhaus
be achieved about self and world, he nev
scientific laws or statistical correlations;
they reveal all we need to understand ab
on the other hand, sometimes placed so
tions on the same cognitive level as the f
suggesting that the latter can render inv
ties.38 On occasion, she even claimed th
science are more valid for some histori
mistake whose genesis will be examined
COMMUNICATION AND THE PUBLIC REALM
In her early article, "What Is Existenz Philosophy?", Arendt

endorsed the general direction of Existenz philosophy for having
attained "a consciousness, as yet unsurpassed, of what really is at
stake in modern philosophy"39: namely, the distinction between
human beings as objects of scientific inquiry and as free, contin-
gent, noninterchangeable selves. As Arendt remarked of Existenz
philosophy, "The individual finds himself in permanent contradic-
tion to [the] explained world, since his 'Existenz,' namely the pure
factual character of his existing in all its contingency (that, pre-
cisely, I am I and no one else, and that, precisely, I am rather
than am not), can be neither foreseen by reason nor resolved into
something purely thinkable."40
Yet Arendt took a partisan stance against Heidegger's version
of Existenz philosophy and in favor of Jaspers's. Her reasons for
doing so may be summarized under three headings: as she read (or
perhaps misread) him, the early Heidegger tended to resolve Being
37. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 178. On the intellectual lineage of this idea,
see ibid., pp. 7-9, 177, 189.
38. Ibid., pp. 178; see also pp. 42-45.
39. Arendt,"Existenz Philosophy," p. 34.
40. Ibid..

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into a kind of ontological functionalism; he made man t

of Being," especially in man's role as philosopher; and h
tion of Existenz had the effect of radically isolating the "ind
Of these criticisms, the third is most important in t
context.
In Being and Time, Heidegger described authentic

requiring withdrawal from the common world (the wo
"they" with their "idle chatter") into solitude. Participati
involved a "Fall." For this reason Arendt charged Heideg
having invented a philosophic defense of "absolute egoi
is not part of the concept of Man that he inhabits the
his fellows, then there remains only a mechanical reconc
which the atomised self is given a substratum essentially
with its own concept."42 The political undertones of Are
cism ought to be obvious. Totalitarianism, as she lat
isolates individuals so as to unify them precisely aro
stratum essentially discordant with [their] concept," su
Volk or the Communist party; Heidegger, notorious
embraced Nazism briefly, in effect had constructed a p
exculpation of the atomization promoted by such move
pers, even before 1933, reached similar conclusions. Aft
Being and Time he jotted down a three word summary: "
tionless- godless-worldless."3 Both Arendt and Ja
sensed the same potentially fatal weakness in Existenz p
To portray a person's true self as absolutely unique, un
and beyond the reach of generalizing, objective languag
the risk of defining out of existence all that humans q
have in common.44 Accordingly, both believed Existenz
main stunted and unactualized so long as people lacke
transcend their subjectivity by participating in shared
Although they initially took different paths toward th
philosophic goal, these paths converged near the end of
reers, as we will later show.
Arendt recognized "limitless communication" as the "c
of Jaspers's philosophy," commending him for movi
tialism beyond the early Heidegger's presumed self-abs
41. See ibid., pp. 46-51.

42. Ibid., p. 51.
43. Quoted in Young-Bruehl, Karl Jaspers, p. 169.
44. See Arendt, "Existenz Philosophy," p. 51.
45. See Arendt, "Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?", in Men in
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), p. 85.

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Yet she also remarked that a "new con

condition for man's Existenz" is "embedde
oped" in Jaspers's notion of communicat
had not quite overcome the inhibiting
philosophy - a criticism repeated three d
the Mind.4 Understanding why this is so
into the meaning and limitations of Jasp
an examination of its relationship to Are
So far, we have portrayed the effort, in
uine Existenz as a matter of actualizing a
decisions. But the passage from inertia t
the individual into the presence of oth
isolated being that I come to sense what I
against the accident of my empirical exist
in communication. I am never more sure
total readiness for another, when I com
other too comes to himself in our reveal
nately, the word communication has dege
with the popularization of Existenz philos
as an "existential concept" that would corr
of mutuality. Existenz must realize or ob
be at all; an Existenz that left no phen
contradiction in terms.49 But to manifes
become visible as Existenz. Since most
to the world not existentially but prag
consciousness-at-large, Existenz threaten
having no way to show itself. The value
the fact that Existenzen both provide a "
one another and encourage each other
self-being. One should not imagine comm
tional "merging of souls" in which partn
a larger totality. Rather, its paradigm w
dialogue, but including the awareness tha
prehend the most significant things.
By insisting that there can be no Existen
tion, Jaspers redeemed the existential
46. Arendt, "Existenz Philosophy," p. 56.

47. Arendt, Willing, p. 200.
49. See Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 212: "Existenz, f

78.104.80.78 on Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:53:00 +00:00
and freedom from Heidegger's supposed solipsism a

However, it must be stressed that communication is a r
enon. When Jaspers contrasted the narrow circle o
achieve true communication to the rest of society,
former sound almost like an invisible church in the midst of hea-
then: "I do live among and alongside all others; I have functions
in our state of mutual interdependence; but I know individuals
with whom I am linked unconditionally, not just in such relations.
I cannot place those with whom I communicate as myself into one
world with the relatively indifferent remainder. . . . With those few
I stand potentially outside all others."50
Jaspers's political reflections (especially before World War II)
were colored by his doubts about whether a person can actualize
or even perceive Existenz through involvement in politics, or
whether the "communicating few" must instead remain aloof: "Po-
litical intercourse [is] unavoidable and burdened with the inescap-
able guilt of untruthfulness. . . . [So] in politics one should not
touch the human essence." In this dark mood, Jaspers concluded
that politics "veils possible Existenz and makes it vanish"5' when it
becomes the predominant form of human relationship. Yet this
antipolitical strain in his thought alternates with a very different
analysis, one similar to Arendt's. Jaspers glimpsed the possibility
that political participation not only does not efface Existenz but
brings people nearer to their real freedom and selfhood: "It confers
a special dignity on a man if he ... shares in the activity or in the
knowledge, at least, of public life. This alone puts him in touch with
the power on which all existence somehow depends."52 He therefore
proposed that the tenor of political life depends on the choice of
responsible, existentially aware individuals about whether or not
to participate. If they do, they can raise the level of public discourse
and action; otherwise, politics becomes a matter of mere force, as
distinguished from power.53
In short, Jaspers's notion of communication may indeed demon-
strate that intersubjectivity is vital to the appearance of Existenz,
but the demands of authentic communication are set so high that
it can scarcely have influence beyond a small circle of associates.
50. Ibid., p. 30.

51. Ibid., pp. 91, 93.
52. Ibid., p. 328.
53. Ibid., pp. 308-309.

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In the last analysis, his approach to politi

philosophers from Plato to Mill: the coter
individuals must somehow attempt to re
promising its own integrity."4 However,
1931, was far more "democratic" than
mention Carl Schmitt, Ernst Juenger, an
ical existentialists"). He defended parlia
because its constitutional guarantees pr
uninhibited communication and freedom
itself might become, under favorable
appearance for Existenz. After the war, in
nations and hopes for political renewal p
nized, he became a truly "public personal
of taking it upon himself to "answer b
thought" and "live in that luminosity in
thing one thinks is tested."55 Specificall
a sort of public version of existential com
broadcasts on philosophy, his books on
tory, and his reflections on the implicati
the human race.
Still, Jaspers's concept of communication achieved, in Arendt's
view, only a partial liberation from the supposed "absolute egoism
and "radical separation" of Being and Time. Her own notion o
politics as the manifestation of the public realm and the "web of
relationships," by contrast, made politics seem indispensable to th
worldly actualization of Existenz. For Arendt, who a person is as
a unique self simply could not emerge in the light of day except
under the eyes of a constituted public: "[The] revelatory quality o
speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others
... that is, in sheer human togetherness. ... Because of its inheren
tendency to disclose the agent together with the act, action need
for its full appearance the shining brightness we once called glory
and which is possible only in the public realm." What is more, th
power of freedom to initiate something new is not fully intelligib
unless it can be expressed as the "unique life story of the newcome
affecting uniquely the life stories of all those with whom he come
54. See Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, pp. 54-55.

55. Arendt, "Karl Jaspers: A Laudatio," in Men in Dark Times, p. 75.

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into contact."56 Action requires spectators to appreciate

establish, the context in which its novelty may appear.
Thus, the two most notable aspects of Existenz-the
of a unique self and the power of making new beginning
explicitly tied to the public realm in Arendt's theory. M
Existenz here lost two of the attributes it had most prom
Jaspers: the "loving struggle" of communication between
and the unswerving commitment to reason and truthful
it also became far more "democratic" in the sense that th
arena does not, in principle, exclude anyone desiring gl
tion, and "public happiness," though of course in some
circumstances it may well be limited to socio-economic
must it be measured against a standard of rationality, j
morality invented by those who judge it by transpoliti
Finally, Arendt's public realm is fundamentally pluralis
makes it possible is the diversity of perspectives and op
stems from the potential uniqueness of each new arr
human community. Arendt saw no reason why acting w
should involve either an identity of wills, or an extensi
intimacy of dialogue.""5 Politics does not so much co
representation of wills as the unmediated participati
vidual agents in public events.
An important conclusion to be drawn is that critics o
"elitism"60 have not read her work in its proper context. If
56. Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 180, 184.

57. However, it must be recognized that Arendt did not entir
either criterion. She still spoke oflove as manifesting "the essence of
is" (Willing, p. 95) and of communication as a requirement of reaso
Mind, vol I: Thinking, p. 99).
58. See Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 8, 175-76; for comment
Michael Dennehy, "The Privilege of Ourselves: Hannah Arendt on
in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the Public World, ed. Melvin Hill (
Martin's Press, 1979), pp. 250-51, and Margaret Canovan, "Aren
and Human Plurality in Politics," in Journal of Politics 45 (1983). F
dissents from Canovan's, see F. Mechner Barnard, "Infinity and Fin
Arendt on Politics and Truth," Canadian Journal of Political and Social
3 (1977).
59. See Arendt, Willing, p. 200; "What Is Freedom?", pp. 156-71; and On
Revolution, pp. 71-74. Commentary on the will and plurality in Arendt is provided
by Canovan, "Arendt, Rousseau, and Human Plurality," and Suzanne Jacobitti,
"Hannah Arendt and the Will," Political Theory 16, no. 1 (1988).
60. These critics include Martin Jay, "Hannah Arendt"; Sheldon Wolin,
"Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political," Salmagundi, no. 60 (1983); and
Hanna Pitkin, "Justice: On Relating Private and Public," Political Theory 9, no.
3 (1981). An intelligent defense of Arendt is supplied by Martin Levin, "On
Animal Laborans and Homo Politicus: A Note," Political Theory 7, no. 4 (1979).

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out a genealogy of existential thinker

one would recognize that Jaspers and
democratize the philosophy of Existen
theoretical level, to some sort of transi
this a circle of communicating friend
both, though Arendt more emphatically
ical power ultimately depended on par
the Weberian definition of power as get
commands, even against their will. Perha
tenz is inherently elitist in the sense th
of values in which self-being and freed
But at least within that tradition, Aren
Jaspers, on the democratic side, and
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schmitt, and Ju
Nevertheless, Arendt and Jaspers did
sitions around a dichotomy between a
revelation and what Aristotle dismissed as concerns associated with
"mere life." Arendt articulated a parallel dichotomy, on the collec-
tive level, between "the social" and "the political." Here again,
Jaspers quite likely influenced the way she approached her histor-
ical data.
BEHAVIOR VS. ACTION: THE ANALYSIS OF MASS SOCIETY
Arendt's indictment of modernity could be summed up in one

sentence from The Human Condition: "society has conquered the
public realm."61 The statement implies that society is something
new. In premodern times, economic and managerial matters were
consigned to the private sphere, prototypically the Greek oikos,
while in the modern age they have become the main preoccupation
of government, a development that has blurred traditional distinc-
tions. On the one side, the rise of the social has diminished the
private sphere by absorbing its former functions; on the other, as
politics is inundated by economic demands, it can no longer fulfill
its role as an arena for self-disclosure, and that impulse is forced
See also Margaret Canovan's discussion in "The Contradictions of Hannah Ar-

endt's Political Thought," Political Theory 6, no. 1 (1978), and Leon Botstein,
"Hannah Arendt: Opposing Views," Partisan Review 45, no. 3 (1978): 378.
61. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 41.

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to take refuge in intimate relationships (d laJaspers), the

hold of "individuality."62 The victory of society, more
flected not only in political practice but also in the com
standing of politics as a struggle among interest group
to distribute wealth or guide the process of production
Arendt associated the advent of society with the t
animal laborans, that is, man understood as a laborer, e
cyclical, repetitive processes of production and consum
though labor has always been part of the human co
classical civilization, at least, it was subordinated to the
differentiating activities of work and action. But the t
the social, Arendt claimed, effaced the boundaries a
activities by reducing action and work to modes of lab
hallmark of the modern laboring mentality is the tend
gard society as a beehive-like organism possessing a
process and presided over by a government charged wi
its smooth operation. And as citizens are assimilated to
nomic functions, their freedom, understood as possible
recedes farther from view.
Carried to its limits, mass society makes its members "worldless."
For Arendt, the common world in which humans long participated
had been guaranteed by two achievements. First, people had been
surrounded by an environment of more or less durable artifacts
that lent stability and continuity to their affairs. Second, action had
helped sustain, and been in turn bound to, a public realm in which
citizens could act freely, disclosing their identities. As mass society
undermines both constituents of the common world, individuals
are thrown back upon themselves, their ties to others having dissi-
pated. In the extreme case of totalitarian rule, worldlessness be-
comes the typical condition of life for everyone, as individuals are
reduced to interchangeable, manipulable elements in society's life
process.63
Arendt's argument did not purport simply to account for changes
in the objective order, such as the way production is carried out,
the quality of domestic life, or the role of economic concerns in
62. Ibid., p. 41. See also p. 46: "Society is the form in which the fact of mutual
dependence for the sake of life and nothing else assumes public significance and
where the activities connected with sheer survival are permitted to appear in
public."
63. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 465-68; also Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 43, 322-23.

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politics. She asserted that these objective

by and even require a transformation i
which people make their experience in
influence of economics and the other s
her view, the ascendancy of "behavior" o
subjective and objective senses. In actual
of classes, occupations, and even intelle
make people more alike in preferences
therefore more predictable. Correspondin
developed a new vocabulary and metho
plain, and predict what large aggregates
tried to capture the significance of these
claim that "behavior has replaced action
human relationship."64
Although Arendt developed the mas
themes far beyond anything in Existenz
distinctions and even her terminology
degger andJaspers.65 The latter, especial
connection between the surface phenome
the vagaries of public opinion, the lack
and public discussion, the leveling of t
pressure of the life process upon instituti
For Jaspers, mass society had paradox
hand, the individual is "no longer his iso
in the mass, to become something other
alone." But in spite of this merging, "t
isolated atom."66 In other words, mass
community that may provide relief for
but cannot really overcome it. Jaspers
industrial societies do possess institution
tions, and universities, that claim the
service, but he dismissed them as "articu
"unspiritual and inhuman ... [exhibitin
64. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 41. See also C

tion" to issue on Arendt, Salmagundi, no. 60 (198
65. Margaret Canovan has also noted the simi
Jaspers's analyses of mass society, though in a d
Contradictions of Hannah Arendt's Political Thou
(1978): 9.
66. Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, p. 40.

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[Existenz], superstition without faith."67 The weakness of

tutions is that they do not ultimately serve ends of
but are integrated into what Jaspers termed the "un
apparatus" or "life order." Jaspers's life order strongly
Arendt's notion of a laboring society, for all of its purp
institutional arrangements presuppose that "human
supply of mass-needs by rationalised production with
technical advances."" Projecting contemporary trends in
pian future, Jaspers feared that human life wou
"worldless" as individuals were assimilated to the produc
cess, reduced to identical cogs in the machinery an
"completely dependent upon each other . . . without
being in personal touch." Their possible Existenz would th
erate into the utterly passive "freedom to watch" and c
And not only are people threatened, according to Jaspers
loss of freedom and praxis; they are also on the brink o
stable world of objects (Arendt's "human artifice") as w
because virtually everything needed and used now is
duced and will be "used up and cast aside" when people a
with it. In the end, humanity will be "bereft of the worl
adrift . . . lacking all sense of historical continuity."70
Like Arendt, Jaspers associated the trend toward a m
with a certain way of conceiving and describing hum
Whereas Arendt called this "behavior," Jaspers refer
"positivism," meaning not a particular philosophic
simply "the attitude of mind characteristic of [the] wo
vanced technique."71 On the level of observation and de
positivism - applying the methods of natural science to
of action - "abstracts from the cognitive subject and se
pure objectivities," and therefore is constitutionally ill-
gain insight into the "transparency of a world that is th
and the possibility of true being."72Jaspers's point is that
ophy of Existenz can comprehend the "objective" world n
its relations to other forms of objectivity (such as cause
or statistical correlation); it understands this same world
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., p. 33.
71. Ibid., p. 47.

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projection of something nonobjective- n

tial elucidation, communication - into
Lacking the vantage point of Existenz, "
and behavior, depicting the self as a supe
a superstition, a "black box" to be sh
behavioral explanation. In respect to a
explanations and descriptions of positiv
already rampant in mass society, towar
to act in accordance with general conv
anyone by the unusual, results in the
behavior. . . . The individual consciousness is absorbed in the
social .... He exists only as 'we.'"73
Jaspers's account of positivism, the life order, and mass c
mity foreshadows Arendt's presentation of these same t
However, unlike his protege, Jaspers never really dispu
validity of behavioristic inquiry; he merely criticized its
tionism. For him, objective reality not only consisted of disc
uous levels (matter, life, soul, mind), but must itself must be
guished from nonobjective reality, Existenz, and transcende
reduce any of these levels to another inevitably results in fa
tion. By contrast, Arendt generally took the more extreme p
that action and behavior represent alternative modes of c
standing on the same plane in respect to efforts to analyze
arguing (implausibly) that people in some ages or circum
act, while in others they behave.
Despite this crucial difference in their theories, Arendt an
pers did outline similar responses to the specter of mass soci
behavior. Both hoped to restore, in Jaspers's phrase, a "
constituted world,"74 first by unmasking the pretensions of
tarian ideology and the "life order" to redeem the individua
worldlessness, and then by elucidating the role of historically
lished communities with unique traditions in integrating
into a "we" without suppressing their "authentic" existe
Arendt proclaimed: "Human plurality, the faceless 'They
which the individual self splits to be itself alone, is divided
great many units, and it is only as a member of such a unit
is, of a community, that men are ready for action."75 In a
73. Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, p. 47-48.

74. Ibid., p. 127.
75. Arendt, Willing, p. 200.

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vein, Jaspers observed that Existenz is not to be att

abstract, transhistorical refuge from one's real circu
People always exist in a "situation"; part of that involves
"ground" in which they initially find themselves but whi
deliberately accept and transform into an element of
selfhood.76 For the early Jaspers this our "fidelity" wa
primarily toward the state, which expresses "the will t
whole";" later, he hoped to coax into being a world c
based on what he believed were similar philosophical
achieved during the "axial period" of history (the 6th cen
when Eurasian thinkers "first discovered" the "human condition."78
But what stand out when one compares the arguments ofJaspers
and Arendt are less these differences than their striking parallels
in analysis and vocabulary. Mass society, worldlessness, the tri-
umph of quasi-biological processes over authentic Existenz and of
behavior (positivism) over action constitute the common ground
of their thinking. For both, political theory had the responsibility
of recreating an awareness of what a genuine community involves.
FORM AND CONTENT IN POLITICS
One of Arendt's most controversial arguments concerns the

relationship between politics and economic issues, especially those
involving distributive justice. Critics often interpret Arendt as
having claimed that authentically political speech or action must
not address economic questions, for in doing so it would lose its
distinctive character as praxis, thus subserving an end external to
itself and becoming an instrumental activity. Most of these critics
reject as artificial any such separation of politics from economics
and justice, urging that these matters are rightly at the heart of
public debate. They charge, variously, that Arendt lacked proper
"democratic" concern for economic inequity, that she was in-
different to justice, and that action, as she understood it, would be
contentless and purposeless.79
76. See Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 122-23.

78. Arendt, "KarlJaspers: Citizen of the World?" pp. 88-89. See alsoJaspers,
"The Axial Age of Human History," Commentary 6 (1948): 430-35.
79. See Jay, "Hannah Arendt"; Wolin, "Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the
Political"; Lasch, "Introduction," p. 329; Pitkin, "Justice: On Relating Private
and Public"; Juergen Habermas, "Hannah Arendt's Communications Concept
of Power," Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977); John Nelson, "Politics and Truth:
Arendt's Problematic," American Journal of Political Science 52, no. 2 (1978): 289-

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At least one of Arendt's defenders, Jam

the critics misconstrue her position. On
asserting that political action can be "abo
that to be genuinely political it must a
self of the agent.80 In the context of Exi
arguments bear out Knauer's argument. H
do have a case. This is because she gra
theory and practice onto the main stem
consequence, her arguments about the co
economic issues and politics are ambiguou
shifting, even contradictory, interpreta
Arendt's most typical approach to this
in the public realm, agents may argue ov
justice as well as any other topic; the c
does not affect its specifically political si
matters is the form. That is, in a flou
objective content of politics will be "over
different in-between which consists of d
its origin exclusively to men's acting and
another."8' The important thing is not w
say and do, but rather the context in wh
are situated and, thus, the potential th
and self-revelation. In a sense, the conte
occasion and pretext for praxis: "Actio
their agent-revealing capacity even if th
'objective,' concerned with the matters o
Most words and deeds are about some wo
addition to being a disclosure of the acti
One could object that the illuminating
action are, at most, epiphenomenal, with
of political agents sufficing completely t
and deeds. To know what leads people to
90; Mildred Bakan, "Hannah Arendt's Concepts

Hannah Arendt, p. 59; and Benjamin Schwartz, "T
17, no. 2 (1970). For a balanced treatment of this
Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Totowa, NJ: Ro
16-22 and 43-44. Botstein, "Hannah Arendt: Op
the position that Arendtian political action is co
80. James Knauer, "Motive and Goal in Hannah
Action," American Political Science Review, 74, n
81. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 183.
82. Ibid., p. 182.

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wish to achieve is to satisfy the most important criteri

plaining action: its efficient and final causes. Arendt, an
such an objection, offered a threefold response. First, s
that judgments about a deed or speech, whether people f
instance, great or mediocre, need not take into account
motive or its actual achievement.83 The "full meaning"
must be sought in its performance; the deed is an en
In other words, Arendt did not dispute that motive
achievement sometimes may be relevant in analyzin
What she emphasized, though, was that actions posse
characteristics that constitute them as actions, and theref
be assimilated to other types of description (e.g., cause-
reasoning) without the observer's losing sight of what m
distinctive. Second, she asserted that "motives and aims
how pure or how grandiose, are never unique ... they ar
characteristic of different types of persons."84 But sinc
speech are, by definition, intended to reveal the distinc
of the agent, all ascriptions of motive necessarily fail to
action properly as action. On closer inspection, this arg
the one previously reviewed turn out to repeat somethi
already noticed about the philosophies of Arendt andJa
took the core of selfhood to be utterly unique; language,
universals, inevitably falls short of saying what it inten
ment that encompasses even poetry and philosophy. An
volving motives, goals, causes, or other such means
behavior according to type must therefore also fail, in
to illuminate action qua action (though they may perfo
useful services). Finally - sensing that actions would see
ligible without some sort of orientation about the mean
ring in them -Arendt suggested that action is "insp
caused!) by "principles," among which she listed hon
excellence, equality, fear, distrust, and hatred.85 Obviou
difficult to distinguish principles like these from motiv
certainly too general too capture the unique "who" of t
fact, Arendt differentiated principles from motives mai
ground that principles are even more general than m
83. Ibid., p. 206.

84. Ibid., p. 206.
85. Arendt, "What Is Freedom?" p. 152.

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thus cannot be said to cause a specific act.

principles, such as fear and distrust, wou
or less mechanical account of human be
To dispel the obscurity in Arendt's argum
it in the context of Jaspers's Existenz ph
Like Arendt, Jaspers asserted that the c
must be distinguished from its existenti
circumstances, a person can perform a
one whose significance lies neither in its g
preceded it.87 Such an action is related to
on principle; it is an "expression of self-c
phenomenal existence . . . what it consid
nity." What makes an action unconditiona
but its source. Seemingly ordinary action
that mundane reality is "irradiated from i
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus sea
surely would have seemed unconditional
ficially a small matter, and though surel
causes like tired feet, Parks' decision was
pressing what she deemed "essential for
Jaspers's discussion of unconditional act
ment that a deed's moral worth depends o
"inclination" (in which case it lacks moral
tional principle, such that its performan
There is thus a tradition in German p
acting-on-principle to action classified
goals. Clearly, however, Jaspers and Ka
religiously inspired action, where Arend
her "principles" (e.g., fear and distrust
quotidian inclinations to Jaspers and K
If one surveys the history of the notio
from Kant and Fichte through Kierkegaar
one finds that the idea is progressively em
In Jaspers, unconditional action still has
86. See Knauer, "Motive and Goal in Hannah A

Action," p. 725.
87. For a useful discussion of unconditional act
Young-Bruehl, Karl Jaspers, pp. 36-37.
88. Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 256-57.
89. Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of th
Thomas K. Abbott (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merri

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morality, but it is appropriately nonsectarian.' In Arend

gious and moral overtones disappear; her notions of "
"principle" are at home in pagan antiquity,91 and fear a
may function as principles for action just as effectively
sentiments. But the price Arendt pays for emptying th
principle of its moral content is lack of clarity. As an e
account of moral choice, the idea of unconditional actio
from Existenz seems reasonably well defined and consiste
distinction between objective and nonobjective mode
What remains obscure is how Arendt's principles, suppo
lated to the nonobjective, existential "who" disclosed
differ from motives and aims. It is our contention that the
results necessarily from Arendt's synthesis of existentia
with forms of thought and experience rooted in classical
Action and principle are ambiguously described so th
contexts, the existential side, with its stress on uncond
emerges quite strongly, while in other contexts the noti
sical praxis seems more decisive. The latter compone
incompatibility with Arendt's form-content distinction)
her claim that economic issues must be excluded from p
But here as elsewhere Arendt's theory becomes less
it incorporates elements of ancient polis life into an ex
framework. We shall return to this point after investiga
link between Jaspers and Arendt.
MEANING
Arendt andJaspers eschewed naturalism, postulating a vast gu

between the natural world and the distinctive qualities of huma
existence. The former, turning in endless cycles of birth and dea
is guided, on the organic level, by instinct; animals lead a "speci
life, with individuals simply recapitulating the species in their
havior. Above all, nature with its sameness and endless cycli
90. Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 257-58.

91. Arendt insists that action should not be assessed in light of normal mo
standards; see, for example, Human Condition, p. 205. Thoughtful critics of t
position include George Kateb, Hannah Arendt; Leah Bradshaw, Acting a
Thinking: The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt (Toronto: University of Toron
Press, 1989); and Joseph Beatty, "Thinking and Moral Considerations: Socrat
and Arendt's Eichmann,"Journal of Value Inquiry 10 (Winter 1976).
92. Arendt, On Revolution, chap. 2, especially p. 110.

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repetition lacks meaning. And, significan

proximate to natural patterns lack mean
a life dominated by "vital action" (i.e., by
when mediated by intelligence) and its
wealth, power and pleasure displays only
extent that people's lives do not transc
continu[e] self-reproduction" until dea
ment of this sort of drift anticipates Are
necessity-driven, essentially circular life
nated by production and consumption
wanted to discover how a distinctively hu
how people might escape from the futili
renewed desire. Arendt, following a long
tradition, argued that people possess two
(intellect) and Vernunfi (reason), having d
Where intellect seeks knowledge or cog
thus pragmatic and instrumental in it
what is of "existential interest" to huma
meaning."5
Once again, Jaspers, who also drew a distinction between truth
and meaning, helps to clarify matters. Jaspers differentiated "cog-
nition and knowledge" (roughly, scientific investigation) from
"thinking," which always weighs the implication of intellectual in-
sights for one's possible Existenz.96 Cognition and knowledge belong
to the familiar sphere of object-directed "world-orientation," while
thinking makes its proper home in the nonobjective domain of
existential elucidation. ForJaspers, and Arendt as well, the antino-
mies of reason in Kant's first Critique indicate that the questions of
meaning posed by Vernunfi cannot be resolved by the object-
oriented methods of Verstand.
Jaspers contended that the prototypical thinking activity is phi-
losophy, which "transforms my consciousness of being as it awakens

94. See Arendt, Human Condition, chap. 3, especially pp. 79-93. For a critique
of the concept of"animal laborans," see Shiraz Dossa, "Human Status and Politics:
Hannah Arendt on the Holocaust," Canadian Journal of Political Science 13, no. 2
(1980). Sheldon Wolin, "Hannah Arendt and the Ordinance of Time," p. 95,
points out that "labor" is "a description, not of a class, but of a common mentalit6"
defined by "administration, technical work, and the production of culture."
95. Arendt, Thinking, p. 15.
96. See Young-Bruehl, Karl Jaspers, pp. 114-15.

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ARENDTS DEBT TO JASPERS 461
me and brings me to myself."" This self-referential dim

philosophy has two aspects: (a) philosophic questions
mary, arising out of the philosopher's specific situation
ences qua Existenz;98 and (b) philosophy is intended to
philosopher to "grasp his meaning" and "find himsel
source."99 Not everyone can be a professional philos
Jaspers became convinced, after WW II, that "philos
everyone." Since everyone dimly feels the urge to achiev
being and act "unconditionally," thinking is a prereq
fully human life. Not to think is to be "evil" or at l
one's possible Existenz effaced by the routines of "shee
functioning."1m
The outlines of Arendt's thesis in Volume I of The Life of
are adumbrated in Jaspers's writings, especially the
between thinking and cognition, the existential import o
and the link between thinking and acting in the world
Arendt's theory of thinking remains more obscure beca
tral idea, meaning, proves extremely elusive. InJaspers
complex of thinking/Existenz/meaning/action involved
viduals and their partners in communication. For Ar
ever, meaning became ajigsaw puzzle, whose pieces are d
among actors in the public realm, spectators, poets, hist
philosophers.
Meaning is a property of the "world of appearances" to
that the world contains a thriving public realm in whi
can disclose who they are. Unless memorable words
and significant deeds are performed within this space, t
no meaning in life. Meaning would not be generated, f
in a laboring society organized exclusively around te
administrative tasks. Thus, we discover a parallel bet
vidual and political experiences. Just as an individual ca
ex-ist (stand out and achieve full personality) without s
deeds, so a society or historical period needs the illu
those same deeds for its meaning to appear.'01
But meaning cannot only be a property of the p

98. Ibid., p. 43.
99. KarlJaspers, The Future ofMankind, trans. E.B. Ashton (Chi
sity of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 196.
100. Young-Bruehl, Karl Jaspers, p. 77.
101. See Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 42-43.

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world, since agents themselves do not

closing or what the ultimate significance
For meaning to be constituted, someone
from the world of appearances, de-sensin
sions of events, and reflecting upon how
a narrative.102 For much of history, mean
informally by the spectators of public a
poets and historians who recorded and in
terity. Philosophy is a continuation of
the difference that the philosopher withd
world of appearances, generating a higher
(e.g., justice, goodness, or beauty), who
unambiguous.'03
Thus, in Arendt's account, people can d
with meaning only if public speech an
material that may be transformed into m
those who think. The absence of thinking
fatal to the constitution of meaning as th
"social" sphere, as Arendt ultimately ack
the Eichmann ("banality of evil") controv
emasculates both thought and action--
modern crisis - is the dead weight of rou
and mechanical reaction, or, in short,
phrases, adherence to conventional, st
expression and conduct have the sociall
protecting us against reality, that is,
thinking attention that all events and fac
existence."1?4 The critique of mass societ
102. As Arendt puts it in The Human Condition

fully only to the storyteller, that is, to the backw
indeed always knows better what it was all about
though stories are the inevitable results of actio
storyteller who perceives and 'makes' the story."
Arendt asserts that, "No experience yields any m
the operations of imagination and thinking. Seen fr
life in its sheer thereness is meaningless." For c
excellent article, "Explaining Dark Times: Hanna
Social Research 50, no. 1 (1983).
103. For the continuity of philosophy and oth
Arendt, Thinking, p. 78; for the peculiarity of p
52.
104. Ibid., pp. 3-4. For an extended commentar
"thoughtlessness" and totalitarianism, see Bradsh

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of Existenz that she inherited from Heidegger and Jasper

the underlying motifs in Arendt's account of the p
thinking, as they had been in her inquiry into the decl
public realm.
What seems less clear in Arendt's analysis is the meaning of
meaning. In The Life of the Mind she strove above all to clarify
the difference between truth and meaning, suggesting that speech
could be meaningful without being either true or false."'5 Here she
identified meaning in the narrow sense with intelligibility. 06 In the
larger sense, though, meaning clearly involves what Jaspers called
the elucidation of Existenz in communication. Such communication
generates no objective product; one cannot sum up the meaning
of a communication or an encounter in universally valid proposi-
tions. In communication, Existenz is illuminated and one sees who
one is and how one should live, but one can neither preserve that
brief illumination nor reduce it to a formula. The same is true of
meaning as Arendt understood it: It is, she said, energeia like actio
and thus "produces no end result that will survive the activity, tha
will make sense after the activity has come to its end."'07
The generation of meaning is essentially a transformative pro-
cess. Thinking picks out the "particulars" in events or sequences o
events and makes them "fit together and produce a harmony, which
itself is not given to sense perception."'08 A meaningful story mus
go beyond the mere compilation of facts or first-hand narratives
the poet, historian or philosopher must "straighten out" stories an
weave them together in a way that allows for communication with
the participants. This is what Arendt herself tried to do in he
profiles of Men in Dark Times, and even in her more formal philo-
sophical writings. Indeed, she carried out the very meaning-
endowing reflections she praised in her former teacher: "In .
universal communication, held together by the existential experi-
ence of the present philosopher, all dogmatic metaphysical content
are dissolved into processes, trains of thought which . . . leave thei
fixed historical place in the chain of chronology and enter a realm
of the spirit where all are contemporaries."'09
105. Ibid., p. 98.

106. Ibid., p. 61.
107. Ibid., p. 123.
108. Ibid., p. 133.
109. Arendt, "Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?," p. 85.

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ARENDT IN CONTEXT
Articulating a belief widely held among Arendt scholars, Dolf

Sternberger wrote: "Hannah Arendt's political theory is essentially
a revival of Aristotle's concept of politics, though with an admixture
of the more poetic notion of an 'agon of words.'""' To be sure,
Arendt did assimilate much of Aristotle's political vocabulary (not
to mention related borrowings from Homer, Plato, Augustine, and
other ancient sources). But we believe that a systematic comparison
of Arendt's crucial terms and distinctions with those of Jaspers
suggests that her classicism was always subordinated to, and often
in tension with, her existentialism. Indeed, the driving force behind
Arendt's appropriation of the classics was her desire to remedy
certain deficiencies that she perceived in existentialism, particu-
larly its Heideggerian version. As we have shown, Arendt was
troubled by the tendencies she detected in existential philosophy
toward solipsism, intellectual arrogance, and political irresponsi-
bility - tendencies for which Jaspers's theory could offer only a
partial corrective. Seeking a conceptual bridge between Existenz
and the life of political commitment, she discovered a seemingly
well-suited language for her project in Aristotle's Politics, with its
celebration of praxis, citizenship, and the public arena. Yet she
anachronistically gave this ancient vocabulary a thoroughly
modern meaning; in her usage, terms like "freedom" and "prin-
ciple" became laden with existential freight that, in classical times,
they did not have to bear. At best, as Bhikhu Parekh states, this
combination of existentialism and Aristotelianism remained "an
uneasy amalgam.""' We would push that judgment a step farther
by arguing that the existential side of this amalgam was always
dominant: Arendt's writings, that is, offer not so much a revival
of classicism as a politicized version of existentialism. Like contem-
poraries such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss, Arendt often
110. Dolf Sternberger, "The Sunken City: Hannah Arendt's Idea of Politics,"
Social Research 44, no. 1 (1977): 133. See also Habermas, "Hannah Arendt's
Communications Concept of Power"; Bakan, "Hannah Arendt's Concepts of
Labor and Work," pp. 49-51; Kateb, Hannah Arendt, pp. 36, 39-42; Gunnell,
Political Theory, pp. 48-49; Bradshaw, Acting and Thinking, p. 25; Noel O'Sullivan,
"Hannah Arendt: Hellenic Nostalgia and Industrial Society," in Contemporary
Political Philosophers, ed. A. de Crespigny and K. Minogue (New York: Dodds,
Mead, 1975). Many of these scholars, however, do acknowledge as well the
importance of Arendt's existentialist heritage.
111. Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the Search for a New Political Philosophy, p. 177.

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did enlist ancient theory and practice in the battles of t

bringing illumination to both. At bottom, though, s
Aristotelian, as the following considerations should serv
onstrate.
To begin with, Aristotle's Politics forms but one part

begun in the belief that politics (like human life gener
embedded in a greater totality, physis or nature, that
rational and purposeful and that embodies standards f
wrong practices and institutions. But Arendt, like m
thinkers, simply could not envision any whole into wh
conveniently fit politics or any other facet of human
stressed the fragmentation and discontinuity in pe
ences of the world and even themselves. Thus, wh
treated the public realm as the logical culmination of n
ples and associations, Arendt conceptualized it as an
that was possible only because of humanity's break wi
second difference is that Aristotle, as Arendt herself
thought of freedom as a matter of political status,
Although she sometimes professed to hold the same v
ception of freedom actually owed far more to the p
Existenz (as well as to Kant and Augustine) than to Ar
taneity, self-revelation as a unique "who," the ennoblem
contingency--all these themes belong to post-Aristote
ophy. Third, Aristotle placed great emphasis on the stu
understood as an inculcated habit predisposing people
properly in relevant circumstances, with an eye to atta
ness. Arendt herself spoke seldom about virtue and ha
cept as connected to political action), and what she had
habit was invariably critical. Habit is associated with t
of the social sphere, mass society, and behavior upon
taneity and originality; a habit-dominated commun
be a virtuous one for Arendt. A final point derives fr
that Aristotle sought to understand phenomena causall
ically. To be sure, cause meant something different
than it does today, since it included such notions as fo
Still, Aristotle could never have countenanced Arendt
that causality "is an altogether alien and falsifying cat
112. Arendt, Human Condition, p. 12, note.

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historical sciences.""3 He would have i

sality - the sort Arendt has in mind - w
actions adequately, because one always n
date these. But Arendt's efforts to extricate action from all forms
of causality reflect the intellectual pressure exerted by modern
science upon the humanities, a problem of course unknown to
Aristotle.
In brief, Arendt approached politics and the life of the mind
from a thoroughly modern phenomenological-existential perspec-
tive, despite her many selective borrowings from classical thought
and practice. The question that remains is whether one can success-
fully stretch and mold categories of Existenz philosophy to accom-
modate a vision ofpolis life as the highest expression of "self-being."
In the domain of Kant andJaspers, it makes perfect sense to postu-
late a difference between the world as objective and causally deter-
mined and again as influenced by freedom and authentic Existenz.
Holding carefully to this distinction allows one to argue that all
phenomena (even "economic" ones) can be rearranged so as to
embody freedom. Historically, dissatisfaction with railroad freight
rates, anger over food shortages, and other "social" matters have
often initiated new beginnings and opened up spaces within which
freedom can appear. But Arendt at times overlooked this existential
version of the form-content distinction, claiming that economic
and social problems should simply not influence politics."14 We
would agree with Wolin and Pitkin that Arendt was mistaken here,
but it is a mistake she could have avoided if she had not been so
eager to assimilate existential categories to the Greeks' supposed
opposition between civic freedom and slavelike, bodily necessity.
Furthermore, it is perfectly consistent with the tenets of Existenz
113. Arendt, "Understanding and Politics," Partisan Review 20, no. 4 (1953):
388.
114. See, for example, On Revolution, chap. 2, especially pp. 86-87, 105-10;
Human Condition, sections 5 and 6; Arendt, "Reflections on Little Rock," Dissent,
6, no. 1 (1959); and a roundtable interview, "On Hannah Arendt," in Hill,
Hannah Arendt, pp. 315-28. In the interview, Arendt contends that problems like
education, health, and housing all have "a double face. And one of these faces
should not be subject to debate. There shouldn't be any debate about a question
that everybody should have decent housing. .... But the question of whether this
adequate housing means integration or not is certainly a political question" (rather
than a technical or administrative one). It is not that Arendt is indifferent to social
justice, but that she thinks, perhaps naively, that the demands of justice are (or
should be) self-evident and, to that extent, unpolitical.

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philosophy to argue, as Jaspers did, that statistical scien

tify" human action, converting it epistemologically int
and thereby overlooking its important nonobjective a
Arendt, again under the influence of her polis model, as
sciences like economics somehow fit modern social reali
behavior is the norm, better than they fit the action-d
civilizations of antiquity."5 In our view, such a claim
unjustified. Any age or culture may be investigated pro
the experimental and statistical sciences, and economist
ologists studying ancient civilizations in this manne
earthed a great deal about them. Yet this need not impl
sciences, in principle or in practice, can discover all that
to know about other cultures or the consciousness of their inhabit-
ants. Arendt's image of the ancient polis, dependent upon such
"existential" concepts as self-revelation, spontaneity and communi-
cation, itself discloses aspects of antiquity that economics could not
possibly bring to light. Everything depends on the mode of inquiry,
the phenomenological status and cognitive interest of the self that
inquires.
Finally, seeking to exclude inner states such as thought and
reflection from her concept of action, Arendt accounted for
freedom on the grounds that each person, as a new birth, represents
a unique perspective on worldly affairs. That argument, however,
is largely implausible, for although all "newcomers" have the poten-
tial to develop unanticipated perspectives, they are immediately
subjected to processes of socialization that transform them from
pieces of nature into members of ongoing communities. The
danger is that socialization will succeed so well that people--as
Arendt herself feared - will be entirely absorbed by their functions
and the stereotyped responses that these demand. In practice, of
course, such complete socialization rarely succeeds, because the
very same values and norms that may induce individuals to lose
themselves in the functional totality of society may also contain
115. Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 41-45, 322. Richard H. King, "Endings
and Beginnings: Politics in Arendt's Early Thought," Political Theory 12, no. 1
(1984): 247, interprets Arendt as saying that "there are ... occasional momentous
events and periods in which human freedom bursts on the scene in the form of
collective political debate and action. On her account, . . . most human history
... would be amenable to causal explanation and analysis, subject to necessity
not freedom. It would only be in those isolated epochs of freedom that the sort
of analysis that eschews causal explanation would be appropriate."

78.104.80.78 on Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:53:00 +00:00
the seeds of refusal, rebellion, withdr

noncooperation, if thinking takes hold o
into their meaning. In other words, the
in itself permits but hardly guarantee
innovation. More likely to do so is the
meaning and the existential resolve to be
a finely tuned instrument of the prevail
And Arendt herself, in belated apprecia
of political existentialism, came to rega
toward the end of her career. Her ideal o
engagement seems to have become th
figure -Jaspers broadcasting to the Ge
refraining from political evil so he can c
self- rather than the ancient citizen disc
or the Senate. Arendt's Life of the Mind
was a partial and somewhat contrived c
existentialist tradition in which its autho
home.

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Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers

Author(s): Lewis P. Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1407858

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In a 1964 letter to Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt re-

1. Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: Reply to Gershom Scholem," En

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and Jaspers hoped to overcome that sc

JASPERS'S PHILOSOPHY OF EXIST

Jaspers's philosophy can be understoo

3. Elisabeth Young-Bruehl employs this approach successfully in her book,

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"object" and "objectivity" suggested a subject to which o

5. See Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, 2 vols., trans. by E. B. Asht

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more than an object to be studied by scie

ACTION AND AUTHENTIC SELFHOOD

Arendt admired the public realm partly because it opened up a

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herself does surprisingly little to build a case for wh

11. See Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 3, and also p. 360, where he writes t

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no one can be Existenz all the time.'7

17. Jaspers, Philosophy, 2: 122-23. Here as els

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am into my freedom, that I make it my fault."21 In thi

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Arendt sometimes spoke of political freed

27. Arendt, Willing, p. 200. See also Hannah Ar

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speech seldom disclose much that is self-differenti

33. Ibid., p. 180.

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birth something uniquely new comes in

COMMUNICATION AND THE PUBLIC REALM

In her early article, "What Is Existenz Philosophy?", Arendt

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into a kind of ontological functionalism; he made man t

In Being and Time, Heidegger described authentic

41. See ibid., pp. 46-51.

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Yet she also remarked that a "new con

46. Arendt, "Existenz Philosophy," p. 56.

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and freedom from Heidegger's supposed solipsism a

50. Ibid., p. 30.

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In the last analysis, his approach to politi

54. See Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age, pp. 54-55.

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into contact."56 Action requires spectators to appreciate

56. Arendt, Human Condition, pp. 180, 184.

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out a genealogy of existential thinker

BEHAVIOR VS. ACTION: THE ANALYSIS OF MASS SOCIETY

Arendt's indictment of modernity could be summed up in one

See also Margaret Canovan's discussion in "The Contradictions of Hannah Ar-

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