AristotleorBurke?SomecommentsonH.Schnaedelbach's"WhatisNeo Aristotelianism?

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AristotleorBurke?SomecommentsonH.Schnaedelbach's"WhatisNeo Aristotelianism?"

byMaurizioPasserind'Entreves

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3+4/1987,pages:238245,onwww.ceeol.com.
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ARISTOTLE or BURKE? Some comments on H. Schnaedelbach's "What is NeoAristotelianism?"

Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves
The history of the revival of traditions is, almost inevitably, the history of transformation, modification, and selective appropriation of the original corpus of texts taken to be paradigmatic for the traditions in question. It is not surprising, therefore, that any "renaissance", whatever the claims made on its behalf to be an original and undistorted reactualization of a long-forgotten or marginalised tradition, is always, in some respect, an artificial reconstruction of such tradition, a selective recombination of those elements that fit the perceived needs or the unacknowledged assumptions of the contemporary interpreter. The history of Aristotelianism is an example of this, having been identified successively with Scholasticism and the medieval writings on natural law (St. Thomas Aquinas), with the Renaissance tradition of civic humanism (Leonardo Bruni, Lorenzo Valla, Ermolao Barbaro, Pietro Pomponazzi, Francesco Guicciardini, Niccolo Machiavelli, Donato Giannotti, Gasparo Contarini), with the revival of republican thought in Puritan England and Revolutionary America (James Harrington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson), with the philosophies of Hegel and Marx, with Trendelenburg's critique of Hegel's logic, and today with the so called "Rehabilitation of Practical Philosophy". We might agree, therefore, with Schnaedelbach's assertion that "contrived re-births are somewhat absurd, particularly when the new-born bears little resemblance to that which has developed naturally or historically. The simulated, artificial quality of all renascences since the Renaissance is characteristic of philosophical ones as well."! But precisely this simulated and artificial quality should make him aware of the impossibility of reducing a philosophical framework to a specific interpretation of it which happens to be motivated by conservative political and cultural values. The fact that neoconservatives have appropriated some elements of Aristotle's political philosophy for their own politically motivated purposes does not, ipso facto, disqualify the principles and categories of Aristotelian practical philosophy. Indeed, of the three pairs of concepts analysed by Schnaedelbach, only the third-the ethics-ethos relatIon-is recognised to be distinctive of the neo-conservative appropriation of Aristotle, 2 and what proceeds from it is not a transformed Aristotle but a refurbished Burke. It is therefore very rash of Schnaedelbach to collapse a tradition of reflection on political matters inspired by Aristotelian categories and distinctions to the political stance of contemporary neoconservatives in Germany, with the aim of discrediting the validity of the
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former. It is also somewhat implausible to claim a causal connection, rather than a contingent one based on an ascribed affinity, between the renaissance of Aristotelian thought in practical philosophy and the current neo-conservatism in Germany since Helmut Kohl took office in 1982. 3 The history of radically divergent interpretations of Aristotle's political philosophy, which Schnaedelbach himself acknowledges with respect to Arendt4 , to anarchism5 , and to early Critical theory6, should induce moderation in this respect. Establishing causal connections between theoretical frameworks and political standpoints is a dangerous enterprise, since it can always be used to demonstrate the necessary relation obtaining between Jesus and the Inquisition, Rousseau and the Revolutionary Terror, Hegel and Prussian militarism, Marx and the Gulag, Nietzsche and National Socialism. With respect to Aristotle's political philosophy it would seem therefore more advisable to investigate the contingent connections that have obtained historically between certain of its theoretical components and specific political standpoints, without prejudging the issue from the outset or short-circuiting the connections in question. We might now consider Schnaedelbach's reconstruction of NeoAristotelianism in terms of ideal-types. At first sight this seems the most appropriate strategy, since it enables one to highlight, albeit in a somewhat stylized form, the 4>distinctive features of a theoretical system. But as a presentation of the Neo-Aristotelian position, especially with respect to its political implications, it is inadequate, since it does not allow for any discrimination between the claims advanced by the various representatives of Neo-Aristotelianism, nor for their differerit political standpoints. Ideal-typical reconstructions are highly useful for analytical purposes i.e. as heuristic devices for the ordering of a segment of reality, but cannot be employed as substitutes for concrete empirical investigation. What Schnaedelbach's reconstruction ends up doing, in effect, is reducing a complex and multifaceted theoretical constellation to three pairs of concepts which are said to characterize Aristotelianism in political philosophy: (1) theory and praxis; (2) praxis and poiesis; (3) ethics and ethos. The distinctiveness of NeoAristotelianism is then made to rest entirely on the third pair, the ethics-ethos relation, so that for the purpose of Schnaedelbach's critique the first two become almost redundant. Neither the theory-praxis distinction nor the praxis-poiesis one are in fact shown to lead to Neo-Aristotelian (i.e. neoconservative) conclusions. The claim that praxis cannot conform to the principles of a strict science (episteme) does not, by itself, result in a scepticism that benefits the status quo; it can equally lead to a democratic conception of politics based on common deliberation and collectively reached insights. Similarly, the claim that political rule should not be the prerogative of philosopher-kings has usually been made by the critics of the status quo; the neo-conservative twist is only made possible by the spurious identification of philosopher-kings with the Left in general. The same can be said of the praxis-poiesis distinction: a praxis model of politics implies the utopia of a self-determining community based on intersubjectively recognized needs and interests; the neo-conservative version of such model is made possible only by illegitimately unburdening praxis of strong normative claims. 7

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Schnaedelbach therefore acknowledges that his account of the theory-praxis and praxis-poiesis distinctions does not engender Neo-Aristotelianism in the strict sense (i.e. in the neo-conservative sense). This is the case, he says, "only when we add the Aristotelian model of the ethics-ethos relation"g, a model in which the role of experience is raised to a paradigmatic status. "The NeoAristotelian ethicist", he claims, "views the recourse to experience as a reflective confirmation of life-contexts in which ethical reasoning has always been embedded. "9 The moral emphasis is thus entirely on the side of endorsement (however reflective) of our practices and normative beliefs, rather than their transformation. The political implications of Neo-Aristotelianism then become clear: since it interprets and grounds every ethics from the standpoint of a given lived ethos, it is highly distrustful of utopias and rejects any ultimate (i.e. ethos-transcendent) foundation for ethics. Utopias are distrusted because they posit an image of the beyond which is abstract (i.e. has no purchase on the present), dangerous (since its realization would require the intrusion of techne into the domain of praxis), and finally unnecessary, since the Good is already in the world (i.e. it is embodied already in our practices and institutions, even if only potentially). Ultimate ethical foundations are rejected because every ethics, or every normative criterion of action, must be grounded in the concrete reality of the life-world, that is to say, in the lived ethos of a community. As in the case of utopias, ultimate ethical foundations are illusory (they will always end up drawing upon the given moral resources of a society), harmful (in attempting to challenge the deep structure of our moral life) and in the end dispensable (since hermeneutic insight and prudence will suffice to orient and justify our lifepraxis). The critique of utopia and of ultimate foundations implies in this respect a reflective endorsement of the status quo, a conscious relegitimation of the given ethos. At its best, such critique can indicate those possibilities that await realization in the present, in so far as they are already partially embodies in our practices. But there is no escaping of the fact that, as Hegel put in The Philosophy of Right: "To recognize reason as the rose in the cross of the present and thereby to enjoy the present, this is the rational insight which reconciles us to the actual."IO The reconciliation effected by the modern Neo-Aristotelian is, however, much deeper than the Hegelian one: since he abandons the guarantee offered by a teleological conception of history, he is forced to place a much greater trust in accumulated practical experience (i.e. tradition). If history has no goal, no inscribed telos, then reason in history is essentially reason in tradition. The shift could thus be characterized as that from a teleological conception (reason in history) to an archeological one (reason in tradition). For Neo-Aristotelianism reason appears only in its retrospective guise, history is reduced to tradition, and tradition becomes traditionalism. How far this if from an authentic understanding of tradition can be gleaned from a memorable aphorism of Jaroslav Pelikan: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."11 Moreover, if reason itself is restricted to tradition, this should not be taken as merely a confirmation of the extant tradition (or the given ethos), but as an

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extension, amendment and transformation of tradition. Indeed, since tradition is never singular but always plural, the notion of tradition itself is misleading: not one but many traditions are constantly undergoing modification, extension and revision. 12 It comes as no surprise, then, to find neo-conservative appeals to tradition as both anachronistic (the tradition in question being no longer available) and antiquarian (attempting to sustain the dead faith of the living). Schnaedelbach's formulation of the neo-conservative dilemma is correct:
One cannot hide the dilemma encountered by attempts to resurrect the historical past and to serve it up as something "re-born". Neither a simple traditionalism fixated on what has been historically transmitted, nor a conceptual decisionism decreeing what and how we should think, are desirable paths at the present. 13

Equally correct is his formulation of the other dilemma of conservatism, which consists in the fact that conservatives are forced to argue, and thus to employ the intellectual means of their opponents:
The conservative reacts not blindly but thoughtfully; he reacts conservatively with deliberation. This means that, since the Enlightenment, all conservatives have been enlightened about the true nature of the Enlightenment, and today they consider being
enlightened about the end of the Enlightenment as the most enlightened thing of all.

Not to champion the Enlightenment, but - in the reaction against the Enlightenment-to champion the enlightened denunciation of the Enlightenment: this basic pattern of conservative thought from Edmund Burke to Arnold Gehlen unavoidably leads to the problem often described as the "dilemma of conservatism".14

In trying to defeat the Enlightenment with its own weapons, the conservative is forced to fight against himself, or rather, against his better judgment that reason should not play too great a role, lest tradition (i.e. custom) be destroyed. His only escape is to resurrect tradition artificially (to imitate substantiality, in Habermas' phrase), or to become a traditionalist in Jaroslav Pelikan's sense (defending the dead faith of the living). Either way, the authentic notion of tradition is lost, and with it, a genuine sense of the past and an active notion of historical consciousness. For tradition, properly understood, means tradere, an active passing on, a living transmission of the resources of the past into the present so as to enable us to consciously shape the future, not a passive acceptance or re-endorsement of everything that is merely given. "Ill every era", wrote Benjamin, "the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it".15 Without a conscious reappropriation of the past, the conformism that lurks behind the conservative's notion of tradition will emerge triumphant. In this respect:
to articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it "the way it really was" (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memoryy as it flashes up at a moment of danger. . . . Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. 16

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To preserve the genuine meaning of the past requires therefore the breaking of the hold that traditionalism has imposed upon it, the rediscovery of those moments that have been silenced or marginalised, the refusal to go along with the verdict of the victorious. 17 And the crucial resource that enables us to re-appropriate the past in this way is an active historical consciousness that legitimizes the choices we make vis-a-vis competing traditions (accepting some and rejecting others). The appeal to tradition can never rest on tradition itself, as Burke maintained; rather, it always has to be made on the basis of a critical historical perspective that selects from the past those moments worth preserving. In its role as a vehicle for the legitimation of traditions historical consciousness stands opposed to the forces of traditionality and to all those who would uphold the status quo. If the foregoing characterization of tradition and historical consciousness is accepted, then it becomes clear that Schnaedelbach's critique of NeoAristotelianism is actually a critique of Neo-Burkeanism. The restriction of normative criteria to the conditions of a given lived ethos, the subsumption of private morality under the political ethics of institutions, the reduction of praxis to a matter of practical (i.e. conservative) prudence: all these features of Neo-Aristotelianism have no intrinsic connection to Aristotle's practical philosophy, but are rather a reformulation of Burke's political vision. It is in Burke, in fact, that we find a prescriptive notion of tradition, an understanding of the past as an inheritance passively transmitted rather than actively appropriated, and a presumption of validity for the norms and customs of a given community. As he declared in a speech that he composed in 1782:
Our constitution is a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose sole -authority is that it has existed time out of mind ... Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only to property, but, which is to secure that property, to government . . . It is accompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the human mind-presumption. It is a presumption in favour of any settled scheme of government against any untried project, that a nation has long existed and flourished under it. 18

Burke's prescriptive constitution (for which read: tradition) has two characteristics: it is immemorial, and that is what makes it prescriptive and gives it authority, and it is customary, rooted in something better than choice, since "it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time."19 Burke's attitude toward the past as an inheritance to be handed down rather than reclaimed critically can be found in many of his writings, but especially in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. The following passage is instructive:
The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished at the period of the [Glorious] Revolution, and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon alien to the nature of the original plant ...

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You will observe, that from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assert our liberties as an entailed inheritance derived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity ... We have an inheritable crown; an inheritable peerage; and a house of commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises, and liberties, from a long line of ancestors. This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection; or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. 20

The understanding of the past as an inheritance that we receive and transmit according to the wisdom of nature; the prescriptive attitude toward tradition that disallows conflict and innovation21 , the presumption that customs and habits are inherently valid, that the persistence in time of certain practices and beliefs constitutes by itself an argument for their retention-these are the cornerstones of Burke's philosophy of sceptical conservatism and of his politics of traditionalism. They are also, to a surprising degree, the domain assumptions of Neo-Aristotelianism or, rather, of that version of NeoAristotelianism put forward by conservative political thinkers in Germany, whose individual pronouncements and specific standpoints are unfortunately not provided in Schnaedelbach's ideal-typical reconstruction. It would have been much preferable, therefore, if Schnaedelbach had acknowledged that his critique of Neo-Aristotelianism actually pertained to that model of the ethics-ethos relation in which Burke, rather than Aristotle, plays the leading role. Had he done so, it would have been impossible to collapse a tradition of thought inspired by Aristotelian categories Ca tradition, incidentally, that is undergoing a profound and stimulating revaluation in the writings of A. MacIntyre, C. Taylor, S. Hampshire, P. Foot, M. Midgley, J. Wallace, J. Flynn, M. Walzer, M. Sandel, R. Beiner, R. Bellah, W. Sullivan, B. Barber, W. Galston, J. Charvet, S. Salkever, T. Spragens, R.M. Unger, C. Larmore, T. Pinkard, J. Budziszewski, A. Brown, to name the most important)22 to the political stance of contemporary neo-conservatives in Germany. The criticisms Schnaedelbach offers of the latter, and in particular of their identification of ethics with the lived ethos and of the lived ethos with the institutional order, are pertinent and valid; nothing I have said is meant to diminish their force. My main disagreement centers on whether Aristotelian practical philosophy, with its distinction of theory and praxis and praxis and poiesis, is necessarily responsible for the political outcomes that Schnaedelbach has so incisively criticized.
NOTES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. H. Schnaedelbach, "What is Neo-Aristotelianism?", p. 225. Ibid., p. 228; p. 232. Ibid., p. 226. Ibid., p. 228. Ibid., p. 231.

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Ibid., p. 232. Cf., Ibid., p. 232. I say illegitimately, since the normative presuppositions of action, after the loss of an objective teleology, can be reformulated in terms of a communicative model of action, as Habermas has shown. The criteria of successful action (eu prattein) would neither be functionalist, nor external to action. Rather, they would be normative and immanent, linking action to internal validity claims (e.g. truth, rightness, sincerity). Ibid., p. 232. Ibid., p. 233. It may be open to dispute to what extent this is the only legitimate interpretation of Aristotle's appeal to experience. In Aristotle's practical philosophy experience does indeed play a central role, but not necessarily on the side of the endorsement of the given ethos. In some circumstances it may justify the breaking of certain conventions for the sake of a higher good (for example, in those cases where looking back to precedents indicates that extraordinary action is needed). Moreover, experience by itself is not sufficient to guide action or to determine our moral reasoning; for this we need also the intellectual faculties (or virtues) of sunesis (understanding), gnome (judgment), bouleusis (deliberation) and phronesis (practical wisdom). In exercising these faculties or intellectual virtues it is always an open question whether we will end up reaffirming the status quo or our given ethos--we may also decide on rational grounds that it requires changing. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, translated with notes by T.M. Knox, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 12. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 65. As Maclntyre has correctly remarked: "Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead." A. Maclntyre, After Virtue, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 206. H. Schnaedelbach, op. cit., p. 225, emphases mine. Ibid., p. 227. W. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History", in Illuminations, edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 255. Ibid. This enterprise of reclamation of the past has been aptly characterized by Hannah Arendt, who used the following quote from Cato: "Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni" ("The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated one pleases Cato") H. Arendt, The Life of the Mind, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), vol. 1, p. 216. E. Burke, "On a Motion Made in the House of Commons ... for a Committee to Enquire into the State of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament", in Works, (Bohn's Libraries ed., London: George Bell and Sons, 1877), VI, pp. 146--147, cited in J.G.A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, (New York: Atheneum, 1973), p. 226, emphases mine. Ibid. E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited with an introduction by Conor Cruise O'Brien, (Penguin English Library, 1982). pp. 117-119. "A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views", in E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, op. cit., p. 119. A. Maclntyre, After Virtue, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). C. Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, Vo!. 2, (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1985). "Justice after Virtue," in M. Benedikt and R. Berger (eds.): Kritische Methode und Zukunft der Anthropologie, (Vienna, 1985). "Sprache und Gesellschaft," in A. Honneth and H. Joas (eds.): Kommunikatives Handeln: Beitraege zur Habermas' Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, (Frankfurt, 1986). S. Hampshire, Morality and Conflict, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). P. Foot, Virtues and Vices, (Berkerley: University of California Press, 1978). M. Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). J.D. Wallace, Virtues and Vices, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978). J .R. Flynn, Humanism and Ideology: An Aristotelian View, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973). M. Walzer, "Philosophy and Democracy," Political Theory, 9, 3, (August 1981), 379-399. Spheres of Justice, (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Interpretation and Social Criticism, (Cambridge, Mass.:

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

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Harvard University Press, 1987). M. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). R. Beiner, Political Judgment, (London: Methuen, 1983). "On the Disunity of Theory and Practice," Praxis International, 7, 1, (April 1987), 25-34. R. Bellah et aI., Habits of the Heart, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). W. Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). "Shifting Loyalties: Critical Theory and the Problem of Legitimacy," Polity, 12, (Winter 1978), 253-272. B. Barber, Strong Democracy, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). W. Galston, Justice and the Human Good, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980). J. Charvet, A Critique of Freedom and Equality, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). S. Salkevher, "Virtue, Obligation and Politics," American Politcal Science Review, 68, (March 1974), 78-92. "Freedom, Participation, and Happiness," Political Theory, 5, 3, (August 1977), 391-413. "Aristotle's Social Science," Political Theory, 9, 4, (November 1981),479-508. "Beyond Interpretation: Human Agency and the Slovenly Wilderness," in N. Haan et aI., Social Science as Moral Inquiry, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). "The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: Liberality and Democratic Citizenship," in K. Deutsch and W. Soffer (eds.): The Crisis of Liberal Democracy, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987). T. Spragens, The Irony of Liberal Reason, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). R.M. Unger, Knowledge and Politics, (New York: The Free Press, 1975). Law in Modern Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1976). C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). T. Pinkard, Democratic Liberalism and Social Union, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987). J. Budziszewski, The Resurrection of Nature: Political Theory and the Human Character, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). A. Brown, Modern Political Philosophy, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986).