Philosophyan(dPolitics BY HANNAH ARENDT

On February 19, 1954, Hannah Arendt wrote to Karl Jaspers that shewas "in a bit of a hurry" because she was "preparing another lectureseries for Notre Dame University" and that she was "deeply engulfed inthe work." What follows is an edited version of the third and final partof those lectures. The entire series originally bore a subtitle, "TheProblem of Action and Thought after the French Revolution." Thatsubtitle has not been used here, as it is misleading without the first twoparts of the lectures. The manuscript exists in two versions, one of whichwas heavily revised by Arendt. The later, revised version is publishedhere for the first time. A brief selection from the earlier version waspublished in French in Cahiers du Grif in 1986.

1 HE GULF between philosophy and politics opened histori-cally with the trial and condemnation of Socrates, which in thehistory of political thought plays the same role of a turningpoint that the trial and condemnation of Jesus plays in thehistory of religion. Our tradition of political thought beganwhen the death of Socrates made Plato despair of polis lifeand, at the same time, doubt certain fundamentals of Socrates'teachings. The fact that Socrates had not been able to persuadehis judges of his innocence and his merits, which were soobvious to the better and younger of Athens's citizens, madePlato doubt the validity of persuasion. We have difficulty ingrasping the importance of this doubt, because "persuasion" isa very weak and inadequate translation of the ancient peithein,the political importance of which is indicated by the fact thatPeitho, the goddess of persuasion, had a temple in Athens. Topersuade, peithein, was the specifically political form of speech.

Copyright © 1990 The Hannah Arendt Literary Trust.

SOCIAL RESEARCH, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Spring 1990)

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and since the Athenians were proud that they, in distinction tothe barbarians, conducted their political affairs in the form ofspeech and without compulsion, they cbnsidered rhetoric, theart of persuasion, the highest, the truly political art. Socrates'speech in the Apology is one of its great examples, and it isagainst this defense that Plato writes ih the Phaedo a "revisedapology" which he called, with iroijiy, "more persuasive"{pithanoteron, 63B), since it ends with a imyth of the Hereafter,complete with bodily punishments and rewards, calculated tofrighten rather than meriely persuade |the audience. Socrates'point in his defense before the citizens and judges of Athenshad been that his behavior was in the best interest of the city.In the Crito he had explained to his friends that he could notflee but rather, for political reasons, ^must suffer the deathpenalty. It seems that he was not only lunable to persuade hisjudges but also could not convince his friends. In other words,the city had no use for a philosopher, and the friends had nouse for political argumentation. This is part of the tragedy towhich Plato's dialogues testify. j

Closely connected with his doubt about the validity ofpersuasion is Plato's furious denunciation of doxa, opinion,which not only ran like a red thread through his political worksbut became one of the cornerstones cif his concept of truth.Platonic truth, even when doxa is not mentioned, is alwaysunderstood as the very opposite of opinion. The spectacle ofSocrates submitting his own doxa to th6 irresponsible opinionsof the Athenians, and being outvoted by a majority, madePlato despise opinions and yearn for absolute standards. Suchstandards, by which human deeds could be judged and humanthought could achieve some measure {j)f reliability, from thenon became the primary impulse of his political philosophy, andinfluenced decisively even the purely philosophical doctrine ofideas. I do not think, as is often maintained, that the concept ofideas was primarily a concept of standards and measures, northat its origin was political. But this interpretation is all themore understandable and justifiable because Plato himself was

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the first to use the ideas for political purposes, that is, tointroduce absolute standards into the realm of human affairs,where, without such transcending standards, everythingremains relative. As Plato himself used to point out, we do notknow what absolute greatness is, but experience only some-thing greater or smaller in relationship to something else.

Truth and Opinion

The opposition of truth and opinion was certainly the mostanti-Socratic conclusion that Plato drew from Socrates' trial.Socrates, in failing to convince the city, had shown that the cityis no safe place for the philosopher, not only in the sense thathis life is not safe because of the truth he possesses, but also inthe much more important sense that the city cannot be trustedwith preserving the memory of the philosopher. If the citizenscould condemn Socrates to death, they were only too liable toforget him when he was dead. His earthly immortality wouldbe safe only if philosophers could be inspired with a solidarityof their own which was opposed to the solidarity of the polisand their fellow citizens. The old argument against the sophoi,wise men, which recurs in Aristotle as well as in Plato, that theydo not know what is good for themselves (the prerequisite forpolitical wisdom) and that they look ridiculous when theyappear in the marketplace and are a common laughingstock—as Thales was laughed at by a peasant girl when, staringup at the skies, he feel into the well at his feet—was turned byPlato against the city.

In order to comprehend the enormity of Plato's demandthat the philosopher should become the ruler of the city, wemust keep in mind these common "prejudices" which the polishad with respect to philosophers, but not with respect to artistsand poets. Only the sophos who does not know what is good forhimself will know even less what is good for the polis. Thesophos, the wise man as ruler, must be seen in opposition to thecurrent ideal of the phronimos, the understanding man whose

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insights into the world of human affairs qualify him forleadership, though of course not to rul6. Philosophy, the loveof wisdom, was not thought to be the same at all as this insight,phronesis. The wise man alone is concerned with mattersoutside the polis, and Aristotle is in full agreement with thispublic opinion when he states: "Anaxagoras and Thales werewise, but not understanding men. Theyiwere not interested inwhat is good for men [anthropina agatha]."^ Plato did not denythat the concern of the philosopher was with eternal,nonchanging, nonhuman matters. But he did not agree thatthis made him unfit to play a political role. He did not agreewith the polis's conclusion that the philosopher, withoutconcern for the human good, was himself in constant dangerof becoming a good-for-nothing. The notion of good (agathos)has no connection here with what we mean by goodness in anabsolute sense; it means exclusively good-for, beneficial oruseful (chresimon) and is therefore unstatjle and accidental sinceit is not necessarily what it is but can always be different. Thereproach that philosophy can deprive citizens of their personalfitness is implicitly contained in Pericles' famous statement:philokaloumen met' euteleias kai philosophoumen aneu malakias (welove the beautiful without exaggeration and we love wisdomwithout softness or unmanliness).^ In distinction from our ownprejudices, in which softness and unmanliness are ratherconnected with the love of the beautiful, the Greeks saw thisdanger in philosophy. Philosophy, the concern with truthregardless of the realm of human affairs—and not love of thebeautiful, which everywhere was represented in the polis, instatues and poetry, in music and the Olympic games—drove itsadherents out of the polis and made them unfit for it. WhenPlato claimed rulership for the philosopher because he alonecould behold the idea of the good, the highest of the eternalessences, he opposed the polis on two grounds: he first claimed

' Nic. Eth. 1140 a 25-30; 1141b 4-8 .2 Thuc. 2. 40.

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that the philosopher's concern with eternal things did not puthim at risk of becoming a good-for-nothing, and, second, heasserted that these eternal things were even more "valuable"than they were beautiful. His reply to Protagoras that not manbut a god is the measure of all human things is only anotherversion of the same statement.

Plato's elevation of the idea of the good to the highest placein the realm of ideas, the idea of ideas, occurs in the caveallegory and must be understood in this political context. It ismuch less a matter of course than we, who have grown up inthe consequences of the Platonic tradition, are likely to think.Plato, obviously, was guided by the Greek proverbial ideal, thekalon k'agathon (the beautiful and good), and it is thereforesignificant that he made up his mind for the good instead ofthe beautiful. Seen from the point of view of the ideasthemselves, which are defined as that whose appearanceilluminates, the beautiful, which cannot be used but only shinesforth, had much more right to become the idea of ideas.'' Thedifference between the good and the beautiful, not only to usbut even more so to the Greeks, is that the good can be appliedand has an element of use in itself. Only if the realm of ideas isilluminated by the idea of the good could Plato use the ideasfor political purposes and, in the Laws, erect his ideocracy, inwhich eternal ideas were translated into human laws.

What appears in the Republic as a strictly philosophicalargument had been prompted by an exclusively politicalexperience—the trial and death of Socrates—and it was notPlato but Socrates who was the first philosopher to overstepthe line drawn by the polis for the sophos, for the man who isconcerned with eternal, nonhuman, and nonpolitical things.The tragedy of Socrates' death rests on a misunderstanding:what the polis did not understand was that Socrates did not

•* For an elaboration of this matter, see The Human Condition (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1970), pp. 225-226 and n. 65. —Ed.

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claim to be a sophos, a wise man. Because he doubted thatwisdom is for mortals, he saw the irofly in the Delphic oraclethat said he was the wisest of all men: the man who knows thatmen cannot be wise is the wisest of them all. The polis did notbelieve him, and demanded that he!admit that he, like allsophoi, was politically a good-for-nothing. But as a philosopherhe truly had nothing to teach his fellow citizens.

The Tyranny of TruthI

The confiict between the philosopher and the polis hadcome to a head because Socrates had made new demands onphilosophy precisely because he did not claim to be wise. Andit is in this situation that Plato designed his tyranny of truth, inwhich it is not what is temporally goocl, of which men can bepersuaded, but eternal truth, of yhich men cannot bepersuaded, that is to rule the city. What had become apparentin the Socratic experience was that only rulership might assurethe philosopher of that earthly immortality which the polis wassupposed to assure all its citizens. For| while the thought andactions of all men were threatened by their own inherentinstability and human forgetfulness, the thoughts of thephilosopher were exposed to willful oblivion. The same polis,therefore, which guaranteed its inhabitants an immortality andstability which they never could hope for without it, was athreat and a danger to the immortality pf the philosopher. Thephilosopher, it is true, in his intercourse with eternal things,felt the need of earthly immortality less than anybody else. Yetthis eternity, which was more than earthly immortality, cameinto conflict with the polis whenever the philosopher tried tobring his concerns to the attention of his fellow citizens. Assoon as the philosopher submitted his j truth, the reflection ofthe eternal, to the polis, it became immediately an opinionamong opinions. It lost its distinguishing quality, for there isno visible hallmark which marks off truth from opinion. It is as

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though the moment the eternal is brought into the midst ofmen it becomes temporal, so that the very discussion of it withothers already threatens the existence of the realm in whichthe lovers of wisdom move.

In the process of reasoning out the implications of Socrates'trial, Plato arrived both at his concept of truth as the veryopposite of opinion and at his notion of a specificallyphilosophical form of speech, dialegesthai, as the opposite ofpersuasion and rhetoric. Aristotle takes these distinctions andoppositions as a matter of course when he begins his Rhetoric,which belongs to his political writings no less than his Ethics,with the statement: hS rhetorike estin antistrophos te dialektike (theart of persuasion [and therefore the political art of speech] isthe counterpart of the art of dialectic [the art of philosophicalspeech]).5 The chief distinction between persuasion anddialectic is that the former always addresses a multitude{peithein ta pUthe) whereas dialectic is possible only as a dialoguebetween two. Socrates' mistake was to address his judges in theform of dialectic, which is why he could not persuade them.His truth, on the other hand, since he respected the limitationsinherent in persuasion, became an opinion among opinions,not worth a bit more than the nontruths of the judges. Socratesinsisted in talking the matter through with his judges as heused to talk about all kinds of things with single Atheniancitizens or with his pupils; and he believed that he could arriveat some truth thereby and persuade the others of it. Yetpersuasion does not come from truth, it comes from opinions,'^and only persuasion reckons and knows how to deal with themultitude. To persuade the multitude means to force upon itsmultiple opinions one's own opinion; persuasion is not theopposite of rule by violence, it is only another form of it. Themyths of a Hereafter with which Plato concluded all hispolitical dialogues, with the exception of the Laws, are neither

Rhet. 1354 a 1.Phaedrus 260A.

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truth nor mere opinion; they are desigrled as stories which canfrighten, that is, an attempt to use violence by words only. Hecan do without a concluding myth in the Laws because thedetailed prescriptions and even morej detailed catalogue ofpunishments makes violence with merel words unnecessary.

Although it is more than probable that Socrates was the firstwho had used dialegesthai (talking something through withsomebody) systematically, he probably did not look upon thisas the opposite or even the counterpart 'to persuasion, and it iscertain that he did not oppose the results of this dialectic todoxa, opinion. To Socrates, as to his fellow citizens, doxa was theformulation in speech of what dokei \moi, that is, of whatappears to me. This doxa had as its topic not what Aristotlecalled the eikos, the probable, the ; many verisimilia (asdistinguished from the unum verum, the one truth, on onehand, and the limitless falsehoods, t h | faba infinita, on theother), but comprehended the world as it opens itself to me. Itwas not, therefore, subjective fantasy and arbitrariness, butalso not something absolute and valid f6r all. The assumptionwas that the world opens up diffeijently to every man,according to his position in it; and that the "sameness" of theworld, its commonness (koinon, as thp Greeks would say,common to all) or "objectivity" (as we would say from thesubjective viewpoint of modern philosophy) resides in the factthat the same world opens up to everyone and that despite alldifferences between men and their positions in the world—andconsequently their doxai (opinions) —"both you and I arehuman." i

The word doxa means not only opinion but also splendorand fame. As such, it is related to the political realm, which isthe public sphere in which everybody can appear and showwho he himself is. To assert one's ownl opinion belonged tobeing able to show oneself, to be seen and heard by others. Tothe Greeks this was the one great privilege attached to publiclife and lacking in the privacy of the household, where one isneither seen nor heard by others. (Tjhe family, wife and

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children, and slaves and servants, were of course notrecognized as fully human.) In private life one is hidden andcan neither appear nor shine, and consequently no doxa ispossible there. Socrates, who refused public office and honor,never retired into this private life, but on the contrary movedin the marketplace, in the very midst of these doxai, theseopinions. What Plato later called dialegesthai, Socrates himselfcalled maieutic, the art of midwifery: he wanted to help othersgive birth to what they themselves thought anyhow, to find thetruth in their doxa.

This method had its significance in a twofold conviction:every man has his own doxa, his own opening to the world, andSocrates therefore must always begin with questions; he cannotknow beforehand what kind of dokei moi, of it-appears-to-me,the other possesses. He must make sure of the other's positionin the common world. Yet, just as nobody can knowbeforehand the other's doxa, so nobody can know by himselfand without further effort the inherent truth of his ownopinion. Socrates wanted to bring out this truth whicheveryone potentially possesses. If we remain true to his ownmetaphor of maieutic, we may say: Socrates wanted to makethe city more truthful by delivering each of the citizens of theirtruths. The method of doing this is dialegesthai, talkingsomething through, but this dialectic brings forth truth not bydestroying doxa or opinion, but on the contrary reveals doxa inits own truthfulness. The role of the philosopher, then, is notto rule the city but to be its "gadfly," not to tell philosophicaltruths but to make citizens more truthful. The difference withPlato is decisive: Socrates did not want to educate the citizensso much as he wanted to improve their doxai, which constitutedthe political life in which he too took part. To Socrates,maieutic was a political activity, a give and take, fundamentallyon a basis of strict equality, the fruits of which could not bemeasured by the result of arriving at this or that general truth.It is therefore obviously still quite in the Socratic tradition thatPlato's early dialogues frequently conclude inconclusively.

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without a result. To have talked something through, to havetalked about something, some citizen's doxa, seemed resultenough.

Dialogue Between Friends

It is obvious that this kind of dialogue, which doesn't need aconclusion in order to be meaningful, is most appropriate forand most frequently shared by friends. Friendship to a largeextent, indeed, consists of this kind of talking about somethingthat the friends have in common. By talking about what isbetween them, it becomes ever more coinmon to them. It gainsnot only its specific articulateness, but! develops and expandsand finally, in the course of time and lift, begins to constitute alittle world of its own which is shared in friendship. In otherwords, politically speaking, Socrates tried to make friends outof Athens's citizenry, and this indeed was a very understand-able purpose in a polis whose life consisted of an intense anduninterrupted contest of all against | all, of aei aristeuein,ceaselessly showing oneself to be the best of all. In this agonalspirit, which eventually was to bring the Greek city states toruin because it made alliances between them well nighimpossible and poisoned the domestic life of the citizens withenvy and mutual hatred (envy was the National vice of ancientGreece), the commonweal was constantly threatened. Becausethe commonness of the political world was constituted only bythe walls of the city and the boundaries of its laws, it was notseen or experienced in the relationships between the citizens,not in the world which lay between therri, common to them all,even though opening up in a different way to each man. If weuse Aristotle's terminology in order to understand Socratesbetter—and great parts of Aristotle's' political philosophy,especially those in which he is in explicit ^opposition to Plato, goback to Socrates—we may cite that part of the NicomacheanEthics where Aristotle explains that a community is not made

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out of equals, but on the contrary of people who are differentand unequal. The community comes into being throughequalizing, isasthSnai.'^ This equalization takes place in allexchanges, as between the physician and the farmer, and it isbased on money. The political, noneconomic equalization isfriendship, philia. That Aristotle sees friendship in analogy towant and exchange is related to the inherent materialism of hispolitical philosophy, that is, to his conviction that politicsultimately is necessary because of the necessities of life fromwhich men strive to free themselves. Just as eating is not lifebut the condition for living, so living together in the polis is notthe good life but its material condition. He therefore ultimatelysees friendship from the viewpoint of the single citizen, notfrom that of the polis: the supreme justification of friendshipis that "nobody would choose to live without friends eventhough he possessed all other goods."^ The equalization infriendship does not of course mean that the friends becomethe same or equal to each other, but rather that they becomeequal partners in a common world—that they togetherconstitute a community. Community is what friendshipachieves, and it is obvious that this equalization has as itspolemical point the ever-increasing differentiation of citizensthat is inherent in an agonal life. Aristotle concludes that it isfriendship and not justice (as Plato maintained in the Republic,the great dialogue about justice) that appears to be the bond ofcommunities. For Aristotle, friendship is higher than justice,because justice is no longer necessary between friends.^

The political element in friendship is that in the truthfuldialogue each of the friends can understand the truth inherentin the other's opinion. More than his friend as a person, onefriend understands how and in what specific articulateness thecommon world appears to the other, who as a person is forever

'' Nic.Eth. 1133 a 14.^ Nic. Eth. 1155 a 5."^ Nic. Eth. 1155 a 20-30.

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unequal or different. This kind of understanding—seeing theworld (as we rather tritely say today) from the other fellow'spoint of view—is the political kind of insight par excellence. Ifwe wanted to define, traditionally, the 6ne outstanding virtueof the statesman, we could say that it consists in understandingthe greatest possible number and variety of realities—not ofsubjective viewpoints, which of course also exist but which donot concern us here—as those realities open themselves up tothe various opinions of citizens; and, at the same time, in beingable to communicate between the citizens and their opinions sothat the common-ness of this world becomes apparent. If suchan understanding—and action inspired by it—were to takeplace without the help of the stateman,' then the prerequisitewould be for each citizen to be articulate enough to show hisopinion in its truthfulness and therefore to understand hisfellow citizens. Socrates seems to have believed that thepolitical function of the philosopher was to help establish thiskind of common world, built on the understanding offriendship, in which no rulership is needed.

For this purpose, Socrates relied on two insights, the onebeing contained in the word of the Delphic Apollo, gnothisauthon, know thyself, and the other related by Plato (andechoed in Aristotle): "It is better to be in disagreement with thewhole world than, being one, to be in disagreement withmyself." 10 The latter is the key sentence for the Socraticconviction that virtue can be taught and'learned.

In the Socratic understanding, the Pelphic know thyselfmeant: only through knowing what appears to me—only tome, and therefore remaining forever' related to my ownconcrete existence—can I ever undersjtand truth. Absolutetruth, which would be the same for all men and thereforeunrelated, independent of each man's existence, cannot existfor mortals. For mortals the important thing is to make doxatruthful, to see in every doxa truth and to speak in such a way

I

'" Gorgias 482C. !

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that the truth of one's opinion reveals itself to oneself and toothers. On this level, the Socratic "I know that I do not know"means no more than: I know that I do not have the truth foreverybody, I cannot know the other fellow's truth except byasking him and thereby learning his doxa, which reveals itselfto him in distinction from all others. In its ever-equivocal way,the Delphic oracle honored Socrates with being the wisest of allmen, because he had accepted the limitations of truth formortals, its limitations through dokein, appearances, andbecause he at the same time, in opposition to the Sophists, haddiscovered that doxa was neither subjective illusion norarbitrary distortion but, on the contrary, that to which truthinvariably adhered. If the quintessence of the Sophists'teaching consisted in the dyo logoi, in the insistence that eachmatter can be talked about in two different ways, then Socrateswas the greatest Sophist of them all. For he thought that thereare, or should be, as many different logoi as there are men, andthat all these logoi together form the human world, insofar asmen live together in the manner of speech.

For Socrates the chief criterion for the man who speakstruthfully his own doxa was "that he be in agreement withhimself"—that he not contradict himself and not say contradic-tory things, which is what most people do and yet what each ofus somehow is afraid of doing. The fear of contradictioncomes from the fact that each of us, "being one," can at thesame time talk with himself (eme emauto) as though he were two.Because I am already two-in-one, at least when I try to think, Ican experience a friend, to use Aristotle's definition, as an"other self" {heteros gar autos ho philos estin). Only someone whohas had the experience of talking with himself is capable ofbeing a friend, of acquiring another self. The condition is thathe be of one mind with himself, in agreement with himselfihomognomonei heauto), because somebody who contradictshimself is unreliable. The faculty of speech and the fact ofhuman plurality correspond to each other, not only in thesense that I use words for communication with those with

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whom I am together in the world, [ but in the even morerelevant sense that speaking with myself I live together withmyself.' • I

The axiom of contradiction, with \yhich Aristotle foundedWestern logic, can be traced back to this fundamentaldiscovery of Socrates. Insofar as I am one, I will not contradictmyself, but I can contradict myself because in thought I amtwo-in-one; therefore I do not live only with others, as one, butalso with myself. The fear of contrjadiction is the fear ofsplitting up, of no longer remaining ope, and this is the reasonwhy the axiom of contradiction could become the fundamentalrule of thought. This is also the reasbn why the plurality ofmen can never entirely be abolished arid why the escape of thephilosopher from the realm of plurality always remains anillusion: even if I were to live entirely by myself I would, aslong as I am alive, live in the condition of plurality. I have toput up with myself, and nowhere does this I-with-myself showmore clearly than in pure thought, always a dialogue betweenthe two who I am. The philosopher who, trying to escape thehuman condition of plurality, takes his flight into absolutesolitude, is more radically delivered to this plurality inherent inevery human being than anybody else, because it is thecompanionship with others which, calling me out of thedialogue of thought, makes me one again—one single, uniquehuman being speaking with but one voice and recognizable assuch by all others. '

Together with Oneself

I

What Socrates was driving at (and what Aristotle's theory offriendship explains more fully) is thkt living together withothers begins with living together With oneself. Socrates'teaching meant: only he who knows how to live with himself is

I

" Nie. Elh. 1166 a 10-15;1170 b 5-10. i

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fit to live with others. The self is the only person from whom Icannot depart, whom I cannot leave, with whom I am weldedtogether. Therefore "it is much better to be in disagreementwith the whole world than being one to be in disagreement withmyself." Ethics, no less than logic, has its origin in thisstatement, for conscience in its most general sense is also basedon the fact that I can be in agreement or disagreement withmyself, and that means that I do not only appear to others butalso to myself. This possibility is of the greatest relevance topolitics, if we understand (as the Greeks understood) the polisas the public-political realm in which men attain their fullhumanity, their full reality as men, because they not only are(as in the privacy of the household) but appear. How much theGreeks understood full reality as the reality of this appearance,and how much it mattered for specifically moral questions, wemay gauge from the ever-recurring question in Plato's politicaldialogues of whether a good deed, or a just deed, is what it iseven "if it remains unknown to and hidden before men andgods." For the problem of conscience, in a purely secularcontext, without faith in an all-knowing and all-caring Godwho will pass a final judgment on life on earth, this question isindeed decisive. It is the question whether conscience can existin a secular society and play a role in secular politics. And it isalso the question whether morality as such has an earthlyreality. Socrates' answer is contained in his frequently reportedadvice: "Be as you would like to appear to others," that is,appear to yourself as you would want to appear if seen byothers. Since even when you are alone you are not altogetheralone, you yourself can and must testify to your own reality. Orto put it in a more Socratic way—for although Socratesdiscovered conscience he did not yet have a name for it—thereason why you should not kill, even under conditions wherenobody will see you, is that you cannot possibly want to betogether with a murderer. By committing murder you woulddeliver yourself to the company of a murderer as long as youlive.

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Moreover, while engaged in the dialogue of solitude inwhich I am strictly by myself, I am not altogether separatedfrom that plurality which is the world of men and which we callin its most general sense humanity. This humanity, or ratherthis plurality, is indicated already iri the fact that I amtwo-in-one. ("One is one and all alone and evermore shalt be"is true only of God.) Men not only exist in the plural as do allearthly beings, but have an indication of this plurality withinthemselves. Yet the self with whom I am together in solitudecan never itself assume the same definite and unique shape ordistinction which all other people have for me; rather, this selfremains always changeable and somewhat equivocal. It is in theform of this changeability and equivocality that this selfrepresents to me, while I am by myself, ;all men, the humanityof all men. What I expect other pebple to do—and thisexpectation is prior to all experiences an.d survives them all—isto a large extent determined by the ev^r-changing potentiali-ties of the self with whom I live together. In other words, amurderer is not only condemned to the permanent companyof his own murderous self, but he will $ee all other people inthe image of his own action. He will live in a world of potentialmurderers. It is not his own isolated act that is of politicalrelevance, or even the desire to commit it, but this doxa of his,the way in which the world opens up to him and is part andparcel of the political reality he lives in! In this sense, and tothe extent that we still live with ourselves, we all change thehuman world constantly, for better and| for worse, even if wedo not act at all. i

To Socrates, who was firmly convinced that nobody canpossibly want to live together with a murjderer or in a world ofpotential murderers, the one who maintains that a man can behappy and be a murderer, if only nobody knows about it, is intwofold disagreement with himself:' he makes a self-contradictory statement and shows himself willing to livetogether with one with whom he cannot agree. This twofolddisagreement, the logical contradiction; and the ethical bad

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conscience, was for Socrates still one and the same phenome-non. That is the reason why he thought that virtue can betaught, or, to put it in a less trite way, the awareness that manis a thinking and an acting being in one, someone, namely,whose thoughts invariably and unavoidably accompany hisacts, is what improves men and citizens. The underlyingassumption of this teaching is thought and not action, becauseonly in thought do I realize the dialogue of the two-in-one whoI am.

To Socrates, man is not yet a "rational animal," a beingendowed with the capacity of reason, but a thinking beingwhose thought is manifest in the manner of speech. To anextent this concern with speech was already true forpre-Socratic philosophy, and the identity of speech andthought, which together are logos, is perhaps one of theoutstanding characteristics of Greek culture. What Socratesadded to this identity was the dialogue of myself with myself asthe primary condition of thought. The political relevance ofSocrates' discovery is that it asserts that solitude, which beforeand after Socrates was thought to be the prerogative andprofessional habitus of the philosopher only, and which wasnaturally suspected by the polis of being antipolitical, is, on thecontrary, the necessary condition for the good functioning ofthe polis, a better guarantee than rules of behavior enforced bylaws and fear of punishment.

Here again we must turn to Aristotle if we wish to find analready weakened echo of Socrates. Apparently in reply to theProtagorean anthropos metron panton chrematon (man is themeasure of all human things or, literally, of all things used bymen) and, as we have seen, Plato's repudiation that themeasure of all human things is theos, a god, the divine as itappears in the ideas, Aristotle says: estin hekastou metron he aretekai agathos (the measure for everybody is virtue and the goodman).^2 yhe standard is what men are themselves when they

h. 1176a 17.

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act and not something which is external like the laws orsuperhuman like the ideas.

Nobody can doubt that such a teaching was and always willbe in a certain conflict with the polis, which must demandrespect for its laws independent of personal conscience, andSocrates knew the nature of this confiict full well when hecalled himself a gadfly. We, on the other hand, who have hadour experience with totalitarian mass organizations whoseprimary concern is to eliminate all p'ossibility of solitude—except in the nonhuman form of solit;ary confinement—caneasily testify that if a minimum amount of being alone withoneself is no longer guaranteed, not only secular but also allreligious forms of conscience will be abolished. The frequentlyobserved fact that conscience itself no longer functioned undertotalitarian conditions of political organization, and this quiteindependent of fear and punishment,, is explicable on thesegrounds. No man can keep his conscience intact who cannotactualize the dialogue with himself, that is, who lacks thesolitude required for all forms of thinking.

The Doxa Destroyed,

Yet Socrates also came in another, less obvious way intoconflict with the polis, and this side of the matter he seems notto have realized. The search for truth in the doxa can lead tothe catastrophic result that the doxa is altogether destroyed, orthat what had appeared is revealed as an illusion. This, you willremember, is what happened to King Oedipus, whose wholeworld, the reality of his kingship, went to pieces when he beganto Jook into it. After discovering the itruth, Oedipus is leftwithout any doxa, in its manifold riieanings of opinion,splendor, fame, and a world of one's own. Truth therefore candestroy doxa, it can destroy the specific political reality of thecitizens. Similarly, from what we know of Socrates' influence, itis obvious that many of his listeners must have gone away, not

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with a more truthful opinion, but with no opinion at all. Theinconclusiveness of many Platonic dialogues, mentionedbefore, can also be seen in this light: all opinions are destroyed,but no truth is given in their stead. And did not Socrateshimself admit that he had no doxa of his own, but was "sterile"?Yet was not, perhaps, this very sterility, this lack of opinion,also a prerequisite for truth? However that may be, Socrates,all his protests not to possess any special teachable truthnotwithstanding, must somehow already have appeared like anexpert in truth. The abyss between truth and opinion, whichfrom then on was to divide the philosopher from all othermen, had not yet opened, but it was already indicated, orrather foreshadowed, in the figure of this one man who,wherever he went, tried to make everybody around him, andfirst of all himself, more truthful.

To put it differently, the confiict between philosophy andpolitics, between the philosopher and the polis, broke outbecause Socrates had wanted—not to play a political role—butto make philosophy relevant for the polis. The confiict becameall the sharper as this attempt coincided (yet it probably was nomere coincidence) with the rapid decay of Athenian polis lifein the thirty years which separate the death of Pericles fromthe trial of Socrates. The confiict ended with a defeat forphilosophy: only through the famous apolitia, the indifferenceand contempt for the world of the city, so characteristic of allpost-Platonic philosophy, could the philosopher protect him-self against the suspicions and hostilities of the world aroundhim. With Aristotle the time begins when philosophers nolonger feel responsible for the city, and this not only in thesense that philosophy has no special task in the realm ofpolitics, but in the much larger sense that the philosopher hasless responsibility for it than any of his fellow citizens—that thephilosopher's way of life is different. Whereas Socrates stillobeyed the laws which, however wrongly, had condemnedhim, because he felt responsible for the city, Arisotle, when indanger of a similar trial, left Athens immediately and without

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any compunction. The Athenians, he is reported to have said,should not sin twice against philosophy. The only thing thatphilosophers from then on wanted wiljh respect to politics wasto be left alone; and the only thing they demanded ofgovernment was protection for their freedom to think. If thisflight of philosophy from the sphere of human affairs wereexclusively due to historical circumstjances, it is more thandoubtful that its immediate results—the parting of the man ofthought from the man of action—w(!)uld have been able toestablish our tradition of political thought which has survivedtwo and a half thousand years of the most varied political andphilosophical experience without being challenged over thisfundament. The truth is rather that in the person as in the trialof Socrates another and much deepeif contradiction betweenphilosophy and politics appeared than is apparent from whatwe know of Socrates' own teachings. '

It seems too obvious, almost a banality, and yet it is generallyforgotten that every political philosophy first of all expressesthe attitude of the philosopher to the affairs of men, thepragmata ton anthropon, to which he, too, belongs; and that thisattitude itself involves and expresses the relationship betweenspecifically philosophical experience and our experience whenwe move among men. It is equally obvious that every politicalphilosophy at first glance seems to face the alternative either ofinterpreting philosophical experience | with categories whichowe their origin to the realm of human affairs or, on thecontrary, of claiming priority for phil(|)sophic experience andjudging all politics in its light. In the latter case, the best formof government would be a state ' of affairs in whichphilosophers have a maximum oppor'tunity to philosophize,and that means one in which everybody conforms to standardswhich are likely to provide the best conditions for it. Yet thevery fact that only Plato of all philosophers ever dared todesign a commonwealth exclusively from the viewpoint of thephilosopher and that, practically speaking, this design neverwas taken quite seriously, not even by philosophers, indicates

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that there is another side to this question. The philosopher,although he perceives something that is more than human, thatis divine (theion ti), remains a man, so that the confiict betweenphilosophy and the affairs of men is ultimately a confiict withinthe philosopher himself. It is this confiict which Plato rational-ized and generalized into a confiict between body and soul:whereas the body inhabits the city of men, the divine thingwhich philosophy perceives is seen by something itself divine—the soul—which somehow is separate from the affairs of men.The more a philosopher becomes a true philosopher, the morehe will separate himself from his body; and since as long as heis alive such separation can never actually be achieved, he willtry to do what every free citizen in Athens did in order toseparate and free himself from the necessities of life: he willrule over his body as a master rules over his slaves. If thephilosopher attains rulership over the city, he will do no moreto its inhabitants than he has already done to his body. Histyranny will be justified both in the sense of best governmentand in the sense of personal legitimacy, that is, by his priorobedience, as a mortal man, to the commands of his soul, as aphilosopher. All our current sayings that only those who knowhow to obey are entitled to command, or that only those whoknow how to rule themselves can legitimately rule over others,have their roots in this relationship between politics and phi-losophy. The Platonic metaphor of a confiict between body andsoul, originally devised in order to express the confiict betweenphilosophy and politics, had such a tremendous impact on ourreligious and spiritual history that it overshadowed the basis ofexperience from which it sprang—just as the Platonic divisionitself of man into two overshadowed the original experience ofthought as the dialogue of the two-in-one, the eme emauto, whichis the very root of all such divisions. This does not mean to saythat the confiict between philosophy and politics could smoothlybe dissolved into some theory about the relationship betweensoul and body, but that nobody after Plato had been as aware as

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he of the political origin of the confiict, [nor dared to express itin such radical terms. I

In the Cave

Plato himself described the relationship between philosophyand politics in terms of the attitude of the philosopher towardthe polis. The description is given in tile parable of the cave,which forms the center of his political philosophy, as it does ofthe Republic. The allegory, in which Platjo means to give a kindof concentrated biography of the philosopher, unfolds in threestages, each of them designated a turning point, a turning-about, and all three together form that periagoge holes tes psyches,that turning-about of the whole humad being which for Platois the very formation of the philosopher. The first turning takesplace in the cave itself; the future philosopher frees himselffrom the fetters which chain the caVe dwellers' "legs andnecks" so that "they can only see before them," their eyes gluedto a screen on which shadows and images of things appear.When he first turns around, he sees in the rear of the cave anartificial fire that illuminates the things in the cave as theyreally are. If we want to elaborate on the story, we could saythat this first periagoge is that of the scientist who, not contentwith what people say about things, "turns around" to find outhow things are in themselves, regardless of the opinions heldby the multitude. For the images on the screen, to Plato, werethe distortions of doxa, and he could use metaphors takenexclusively from sight and visual perception because the worddoxa, unlike our word opinion, has the'strong connotation ofthe visible. The images on the screen at yhich the cave dwellersstare are their doxai, what and how things appear to them. Ifthey want to look at things as they really are, they must turnaround, that is, change their position because, as we sawbefore, every doxa depends and corresponds to one's positionin the world. i

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A much more decisive turning point in the philosopher'sbiography comes when this solitary adventurer is not satisfiedwith the fire in the cave and with the things now appearing asthey really are, but wants to find out where this fire comesfrom and what the causes of things are. Again he turns aroundand finds an exit from the cave, a stairway which leads him tothe clear sky, a landscape without things or men. Here appearthe ideas, the eternal essences of perishable things and ofmortal men illuminated by the sun, the idea of ideas, whichenables the beholder to see and the ideas to shine forth. Thiscertainly is the climax in the life of the philosopher, and it ishere that the tragedy begins. Being still a mortal man, he doesnot belong and cannot remain here but must return to the caveas his earthly home, and yet in the cave he can no longer feel athome.

Each of these turnings-about had been accompanied by aloss of sense and orientation. The eyes accustomed to theshadowy appearances on the screen are blinded by the fire inthe rear of the cave. The eyes then adjusted to the dim light ofthe artificial fire are blinded by the light of the sun. But worstof all is the loss of orientation which befalls those whose eyesonce were adjusted to the bright light under the sky of ideas,and who must now find their way in the darkness of the cave.Why philosophers do not know what is good for them—andhow they are alienated from the affairs of men—is grasped inthis metaphor: they can no longer see in the darkness of thecave, they have lost their sense of orientation, they have lostwhat we would call their common sense. When they come backand try to tell the cave dwellers what they have seen outside thecave, they do not make sense; to the cave dwellers whateverthey say is as though the world were "turned upside down"(Hegel). The returning philosopher is in danger because hehas lost the common sense needed to orient himself in a worldcommon to all, and, moreover, because what he harbors in histhought contradicts the common sense of the world.

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It belongs to the puzzling aspects of ithe allegory of the cave_that Plato depicts its inhabitants as frozen, chained before ascreen, without any possibility of doing anything or communi-cating with one another. Indeed, the two politically mostsignificant words designating human activity, talk and action(lexis and praxis), are conspicuously absent from the wholestory. The only occupation of the cave dwellers is looking atthe screen; they obviously love seeing for its own sake,independent from all practical needs, i The cave dwellers, inother words, are depicted as ordinary rnen, but also in that onequality which they share with philosciphers: they are repre-sented by Plato as potential philosophers, occupied in darknessand ignorance with the one thing the philosopher is concernedwith in brightness and full knowledge. The allegory of the caveis thus designed to depict not so much how philosophy looksfrom the viewpoint of pohtics but how politics, the realm ofhuman affairs, looks from the viewpoint of philosophy. Andthe purpose is to discover in the realm of philosophy thosestandards which are appropriate for a jcity of cave dwellers, tobe sure, but still for inhabitants who, albeit darkly andignorantly, have formed their opinions concerning the samematters as the philosopher. |

Wonder i

I

What Plato does not tell us in the stor'y, because it is designedfor these political purposes, is what distinguishes the philoso-pher from those who also love seeing fbr its own sake, or whatmakes him start out on his solitary adventure and causes himto break the fetters with which he is cbained to the screen ofillusion. Again, at the end of the stbry, Plato mentions inpassing the dangers which await the 'returning philosopher,and concludes from these dangers that the philosopher—

I'^ Cf. Aristotle Metaph. 980 a 22-25. I

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although he is not interested in human affairs—must assumerulership, if only out of fear of being ruled by the ignorant.But he does not tell us why he cannot persuade his fellowcitizens, who anyhow are already glued to the screen andthereby in a certain way ready to receive "higher things," asHegel called them, to follow his example and choose the wayout of the cave.

In order to answer these questions, we must recall twostatements of Plato which do not occur in the cave allegory, butwithout which this allegory remains obscure and which it, so tospeak, takes for granted. The one occurs in the Theaetettis—adialogue about the difference between episteme (knowledge)and doxa (opinion)—where Plato defines the origin ofphilosophy: mala gar philosophou touto to pathos, to thaumadzein;ou gar alle arche philosophias he haute (for wonder is what thephilosopher endures most; for there is no other beginning ofphilosophy than wonder . . .)M And the second occurs in theSeventh Letter when Plato talks about those things which to himare the most serious ones {peri hon ego spoudadzo), that is, not somuch philosophy as we understand it as its eternal topic andend. Of this he says, rheton gar oudamos estin hos alia mathemata,all' ek polles synousias gignomenes . . . hoion apo pyros pedesantosexaphthen phos (it is altogether impossible to talk about this asabout other things we learn; rather, from much being togetherwith it . . . a light is lit as from a flying fire).'^ In these twostatements we have the beginning and the end of thephilosopher's life which the cave story omits.

Thaumadzein, the wonder at that which is as it is, is accordingto Plato a pathos, something which is endured and as such quitedistinct from doxadzein, from forming an opinion aboutsomething. The wonder that man endures or which befalls himcannot be related in words because it is too general for words.Plato must have first encountered it in those frequently

'•* 155D.

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reported traumatic states in which Socrates would suddenly, asthough seized by a rapture, fall into complete motionlessness,just staring without seeing or hearing anything. That thisspeechless wonder is the beginning [of philosophy becameaxiomatic for both Plato and Aristode. And it is this relation toa concrete and unique experience which marked off theSocratic school from all former philosophies. To Aristotle, noless than to Plato, ultimate truth is beyobd words. In Aristotle'sterminology, the human recipient of truth is nous, spirit, thecontent of which is without logos (hon ouk esti logos). Just as Platoopposed doxa to truth, so Aristotle opposes phronesis (politicalinsight) to nom (philosophical spirit).^^ This wonder ateverything that is as it is never relates to any particular thing,and Kierkegaard therefore interpretedl it as the experience ofno-thing, of nothingness. The specific generality of philosoph-ical statements, which distinguish them Ifrom the statements ofthe sciences, springs from this experience. Philosophy as aspecial discipline—and to the extent that it remains one—isgrounded in it. And as soon as the speechless state of wondertranslates itself into words, it will not begin with statements butwill formulate in undending variations what we call theultimate questions—What is being? Who is man? Whatmeaning has life? What is death? etc. all of which have incommon that they cannot be answered! scientifically. Socrates'statement "I know that I do not know" expresses in terms ofknowledge this lack of scientific answers. But in a state ofwonder this statement loses its dry negativity, for the result leftbehind in the mind of the person who has endured the pathosof wonder can only be expressed as: Now I know what it meansnot to know; now I know that I do no't know. It is from theactual experience of not-knowing, in \; hich one of the basicaspects of the human condition on earth reveals itself, that theultimate questions arise—not from the rationalized, demonstra-ble fact that there are things man 4oes not know, which

c. Eth. 1142 a 25.

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believers in progress hope to see fully amended one day, orwhich positivists may discard as irrelevant. In asking theultimate, unanswerable questions, man establishes himself as aquestion-asking being. This is the reason that science, whichasks answerable questions, owes its origin to philosophy, anorigin that remains its ever-present source throughout thegenerations. Were man ever to lose the faculty of askingultimate questions, he would by the same token lose his facultyof asking answerable questions. He would cease to be aquestion-asking being, which would be the end, not only ofphilosophy, but of science as well. As far as philosophy isconcerned, if it is true that it begins with thaumadzein and endswith speechlessness, then it ends exactly where it began.Beginning and end are here the same, which is the mostfundamental of the so-called vicious circles that one may findin so many strictly philosophical arguments.

It is this philosophical shock of which Plato speaks thatpermeates all great philosophies and that separates thephilosopher who endures it from those with whom he lives.And the difference between the philosophers, who are few,and the multitude is by no means—as Plato already indicated—that the majority knows nothing of the pathos of wonder, butmuch rather that they refuse to endure it. This refusal isexpressed in doxadzein, in forming opinions on matters aboutwhich man cannot hold opinions because the common andcommonly accepted standards of common sense do not hereapply. Doxa, in other words, could become the opposite oftruth because doxadzein is indeed the opposite of thaumadzein.Having opinions goes wrong when it concerns those matterswhich we know only in speechless wonder at what is.

The philosopher, who, so to speak, is an expert inwondering and in asking those questions which arise out ofwondering—and when Nietzsche says that the philosopher isthe man about whom extraordinary things happen all the time,he alludes to the same matter—finds himself in a twofoldconfiict with the polis. Since his ultimate experience is one of

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speechlessness, he has put himself outside the political realm inwhich the highest faculty of man is, precisely, speech—logonechon is what makes man a dzoon politikon, a political being. Thephilosophical shock, moreover, strikes man in his singularity,that is, neither in his equality with all others nor in his absolutedistinctness from them. In this shock, man in the singular, as itwere, is for one fleeting moment confronted with the whole ofthe universe, as he will be confronted again only at themoment of his death. He is to an extent alienated from the cityof men, which can only look with suspicion on everything thatconcerns man in the singular. ,

Yet even worse in its consequences is the other conflict thatthreatens the life of the philosopher. Since the pathos ofwonder is not alien to men but, on the contrary, one of themost general characteristics of the human condition, and sincethe way out of it for the many is to form opinions where theyare not appropriate, the philosopher will inevitably fall intoconflict with these opinions, which he, finds intolerable. Andsince his own experience of speechlessriess expresses itself onlyin the raising of unanswerable questions, he is indeed in onedecisive disadvantage the moment he returns to the politicalrealm. He is the only one who does riot know, the only onewho has no distinct and clearly defined doxa to compete withother opinions, the truth or untruth cif which common sensewants to decide, that is, that sixth sense that we not only allhave in common but which fits us into, and thereby makespossible, a common world. If the philosopher starts to speakinto this world of common sense, to ;which belong also ourcommonly accepted prejudices and judgments, he will alwaysbe tempted to speak in terms of non-sense, or—to use oncemore Hegel's phrase—to turn common sense upside down.

This danger arose with the beginning of our greatphilosophical tradition, with Plato and, to a lesser extent, withAristotle. The philosopher, overly conscious, because of thetrial of Socrates, of the inherent incompatibility between thefundamental philosophical and the fundamental political

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experiences, generalized the initial and initiating shock ofthaumadzein. The Socratic position was lost in this process, notbecause Socrates did not leave any writings behind or becausePlato willfully distorted him, but because the Socratic insights,born out of a still-intact relationship to politics and thespecifically philosophical experience, was lost. For what is truefor this wonder, with which all philosophy begins, is not truefor the ensuing dialogue of solitude itself. Solitude, or thethinking dialogue of the two-in-one, is an integral part of beingand living together with others, and in this solitude thephilosopher, too, cannot help but form opinions—he, too,arrives at his own doxa. His distinction from his fellow citizensis not that he possesses any special truth from which themultitude is excluded, but that he remains always ready toendure the pathos of wonder and thereby avoids the dogmatismof mere opinion holders. In order to be able to compete withthis dogmatism of doxadzein, Plato proposed to prolongindefinitely the speechless wonder which is at the beginningand end of philosophy. He tried to develop into a way of life(the bios theoretikos) what can be only a fieeting moment or, totake Plato's own metaphor, the fiying spark of fire between twoflintstones. In this attempt the philosopher establishes himself,bases his whole existence on that singularity which heexperienced when he endured the pathos of thaumadzein. Andby this he destroys the plurality of the human condition withinhimself.

That this development, of which the original cause waspolitical, became of great importance for Plato's philosophy ingeneral is obvious. It is already manifest in the curiousdeviations from his original concept to be found in his doctrineof ideas, deviations due exclusively, I believe, to his desire tomake philosophy useful for politics. But it has of course beenof much greater relevance for political philosophy properlyspeaking. To the philosopher, politics—if he did not regardthis whole realm as beneath his dignity—became the field inwhich the elementary necessities of human life are taken care

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of and to which absolute philosophical standards are applied.Politics, to be sure, never could conform; to such standards andtherefore, by and large, was judged, to be an unethicalbusiness, judged so not only by philosophers, but in thecenturies to come by many others, wheh philosophical results,originally formulated in opposition to common sense, hadfinally been absorbed by the public opinion of the educated.Politics and government (rulership) were identified and bothconsidered to be a reflection on the wickedness of humannature, as the record of the deeds and sufferings of men wasseen as a reflection of human sinfulness. Yet while Plato'sinhuman ideal state never became a reality, and the usefulnessof philosophy had to be defended throughout the centuries—because in actual political action it prOved utterly useless—philosophy rendered one signal service to Western man.Because Plato in a sense deformed philosophy for politicalpurposes, philosophy continued to provide standards andrules, yardsticks and measurements with which the humanmind could at least attempt to understand what was happeningin the realm of humari affairs. It is this usefulness forunderstanding that was exhausted with the approach of themodern age. Machiavelli's writings are; the first sign of thisexhaustion, and iri Hobbes we find, for the first time, aphilosophy which has no use for philosophy but pretends toproceed from what common sense takes for granted. AndMarx, who is the last political philosopher of the West and whostill stands in the tradition that began with Plato, finally tried toturn this tradition, its fundamental categories and hierarchy ofvalues, upside down. With this reversal, the tradition hadindeed come to its end. i

Tocqueville's remark that "as the past has ceased to throw itslight upon the future, the mind of man (wanders in obscurity"was written out of a situation in which the philosophicalcategories of the past were no longer sufficient for understand-ing. We live today in a world in which not even common sensemakes sense any longer. The breakdown of common sense in

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the present world signals that philosophy and politics, their oldconflict notwithstanding, have suffered the same fate. Andthat means that the problem of philosophy and politics, or thenecessity for a new political philosophy from which could comea new science of politics, is once more on the agenda.

Philosophy, political philosophy like all its other branches,will never be able to deny its origin in thaumadzein, in thewonder at that which is as it is. If philosophers, despite theirnecessary estrangement from the everyday life of humanaffairs, were ever to arrive at a true political philosophy theywould have to make the plurality of man, out of which arisesthe whole realm of human affairs—in its grandeur andmisery—the object of their thaumadzein. Biblically speaking,they would have to accept—as they accept in speechlesswonder the miracle of the universe, of man and of being—themiracle that God did not create Man, but "male and femalecreated He them." They would have to accept in somethingmore than the resignation of human weakness the fact that "itis not good for man to be alone."