Lewis P. Hinchman

In Heidegger's Shadow: Hannah Arendt's Phenomenological Humanism

Hannah Arendts political theory gains in clarity and resonance when it is placed in the context of German phenomenology and Existenz philosophy. In this essay, the authors examine the points of contact (on the level of ideas rather than personal ties) between Arendt and Martin Heidegger. The argument holds that Arendt followed Heidegger in grafting traditional humanism onto an untraditional, self-consciously antimetaphysical body of thought. Yet almost from the beginning, she struck out in a direction peculiarly her own, seeking to escape a certain contemplative aloofness and remoteness from public affairs which she sensed in Heideggers fundamental ontology. Against Heidegger, Arendt tried to show that the core values of human rights and dignity cannot be sustained unless one explicitly recognizes the “plurality” of human life and the importance of the public realm in revealing who we are as individuals.

Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers

There has been much debate about how to locate Hannah Arendt within the tradition of political philosophy. This article argues for an “existentialist” reading, claiming that Karl Jasperss categories reappear, politicized, in Arendts own thought. Her language and arguments do not, in fact, become completely intelligible until read in the context of Jasperss Existentz philosophy. The authors contend that the apparent obscurity and ambiguity of Arendts writings owe to her attempt to stretch the framework of existentialism to fit the milieu of classical antiquity, to which it is fundamentally alien. Conversely, Arendt appropriated only those aspects of Aristotelian theory that suited her existentially defined concerns while ignoring the rest, a procedure that accounts for many of the tensions and contradictions found in her work.

Aldo Leopold's hermeneutic of nature

Reprising an ancient strand of philosophical reasoning, contemporary environmental theorists often argue as if nature (the land, ecosystems) were a repository of value in itself, establishing guidelines for human conduct in moral and political matters. John Stuart Mill supposedly discredited such reasoning in his 1854 essay, “Nature.” But modern intrinsic-value-in-nature theories differ from those that Mill attacked, as a careful reading of Leopolds A Sand County Almanac reveals. Leopold, whose thought provides the inspiration for most of the intrinsic-value-in-nature theorizing within environmental philosophy today, tacitly rejects the modernist, physics-derived view of nature as a realm of timeless, abstract laws. He replaces it with a view of the land and its creatures as historically concrete, unique totalities that can almost be read as “texts,” and thus may inspire respect and love (rather than detached theorizing alone) on the part of the ecologically-aware person. The key virtue for Leopold is “perception,” a blend of training, hermeneutic skill, and identification with the natural world.

Is Environmentalism a Humanism

Environmental theorists, seeking the origin of Western exploitative attitudes toward nature, have directed their attacks against ‘humanism’. This essay argues that such criticisms are misplaced. Humanism has much closer affinities to environmentalism than the latter’s advocates believe. As early as the Renaissance, and certainly by the late eighteenth century, humanists were developing historically-conscious, hermeneutically-grounded modes of understanding, rather than the abstract, mathematical models of nature often associated with them. In its twentieth-century versions humanism also shares much of the mistrust of consumerism, instrumental reason, and ‘worldlessness’ that marks environmentalist literature. Nevertheless, humanism is indeed committed to the principle that human beings are and ought to be free, and opposes theoretical approaches that suppress freedom. Reconciling humanism and environmentalism thus involves two steps: resisting the former’s tendency to treat nature and freedom as metaphysical polarities, and drawing environmental theory away from flirtation with deterministic, biologistic worldviews. The essay concludes by suggesting Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac as the paradigm case of environmental thought with roots in humanist approaches.

The Idea of Individuality: Origins, Meaning, and Political Significance

The contemporary liberal/communitarian debate depicts the self as essentially static and unspontaneous: in the first instance, as a detached agent of choice equipped with de facto unexamined desires; in the second, as (optimally) the embodiment of virtues and narratives imbedded in socially established practices. The notion of individuality, as it developed from Goethe and Mill to the present, suggests a way to rethink this dichotomy. Individuality--as distinguished from individualism--evokes the notion of personal identity constituted both through reflective reexamination of the givens of life and through the continuous integration of diverse traditions and influences into a coherent whole.

Should Environmentalists Reject the Enlightenment

Among environmentalists today, there is a widespread opposition to the Enlightenment project. Deep ecologists, in particular, aspire to ground environmental ethics and politics in premodern modes of life and thought. This move fails to account for the myriad important connections between Enlightenment themes and those of contemporary ecophilosophy. Notions of a public sphere, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and deep time, as well as new approaches to the self and doubts about the market, persist from the Enlightenment into current environmental theory and practice. The essay warns against severing environmentalism from its Enlightenment antecedents and urges instead an ethic drawn from the revered nature writer and ecologist Aldo Leopold, who was profoundly indebted to Enlightenment ideals.

Begriffe und Konzepte

Das Agonale, von gr. agon (Wettstreit), ist ein von Arendt an der griechischen Polis entwickelter Aspekt der Offentlichkeit als Erscheinungsraum Handelnder. Der Begriff selbst findet sich bei Arendt nur gelegentlich, und zwar adjektiviert (als »agonaler Geist« VA 187), wurde aber von der Sache her fur die Arendt-Rezeption bedeutsam (so unter Abzug der maskulinistischen Komponenten bei Honig 1995, 1993; kritischer Villa 1999; Benhabib 1998, 201 unterscheidet zwischen einem agonalen und einem kommunikativen Handlungsmodell bei Arendt). Arendt zufolge eroffnete die Polis ihren Mitgliedern einen Erscheinungsraum »des heftigsten und unerbittlichsten Wettstreits« (VA 42), in dem jeder in Tat, Wort und Leistung Vortreffliches zu leisten hatte, um sich vor den anderen auszuzeichnen. Dieses Sich-Auszeichnen durch Sich-an-Anderen-Messen (VA 187) unterscheidet die griechische Polis von der modernen Gesellschaft, in der das Sich-Verhalten freies Handeln weitgehend verdrangt hat.