(Contributions To Phenomenology, Vol. 7) Bernard P. Dauenhauer-Elements of Responsible Politics-Kluwer (1991)

BERNARD P.
DAUENHAUER
Elements of
Responsible
Politics
%
C O N T R IB U T IO N S T O P H E N O M E N O L O G Y
ELEMENTS OF RESPONSIBLE POLITICS
CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHENOMENOLOGY
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Volume 7
Editorial Board:
William R. McKenna, Miami University (Editor)

David Carr, University of Ottawa
Lester Embree, Duquesne University
Josi Huertas-Jourda, Wilfred Laurier University
Joseph J. Kockelmans, The Pennsylvania State University
Algis Mickunas, Ohio University
J. N. Mohanty, Temple University
Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz
Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University
Scope
The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy

through creative research. Contemporary issues in philosophy, other disciplines and in
culture generally, offer opportunities for the application of phenomenological methods that
call for creative responses. Although the work of several generations of thinkers has
provided phenomenology with many results with which to approach these challenges, a truly
succesful response to them will require building on this work with new analyses and
methodological innovations.
ELEMENTS OF
RESPONSIBLE
POLITICS
by
BERNARD P. DAUENHAUER
University o f Georgia, U.S.A.
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Daue n ha ue r, B e r n a rd P.
Eleitents of r e sp on si b le p o litics / by B a rn a rd Dauenhauer.
p. c«. — ( C on tr ib u ti on s to phenomenology)
I nc lu de s bibliogr ap hi c al references and index.
ISBN 0-79 23 -1 3 29 -1 (HB : printed on acid free paper)
1. Pol it ic a l science. 2. Political s c i e n c e — Philosophy.
I. Title. II. Series.
J A3 8 . D 3 8 1991
3 2 0 ' . 0 1 — dc20 9 1- 22 69 5
C IP
ISBN 0-7923-1329-1
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,

P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates

the publishing programmes of
D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada

by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed

by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322,3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
EX UBR1S
U N IV E R SlT A T tS
NOV1QMAGENSI5'
ggoo/25'c>
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved

© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Printed in the Netherlands

To the memory of
Edward Goodwin Ballard

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements............................................................................... ix
Preface .................................................................................................. xi
PARTI
Renovating the Problem of Politics ............................................... 3
One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of

Language and His Political Thought .......................................... 19
Merleau Ponty’s Political Thought: Its Nature and

Its Challenge ..................................................................................37
Merleau-Ponty on Politics, History, and V iolence....................... 51
PART II
Relational Freedom and Its Political Consequences ...................65
I and M in e .........................................................................................85
The Interpretation of the Human Way of Being and Its

Political Implications...................................................................... 97
PART III
Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics ........................................117
The Place of Hope in Politics ........................................................ 139

viii Table o f Contents
PART IV
Politics and Coercion ...................................................................... 161
Ideology, Utopia, and Responsible P o litics................................... 175
Does Anarchy Make Political S e n s e ? .............................................191
On Institutions and Power: Deconstruction and an Alternative . 207
N o te s .......................................................................................................227
In d e x ....................................................................................................... 279
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge with gratitude the permissions I have received from pub

lishers to use in this volume work which first appeared in their publications.
These publishers are: (a) State University of New York Press, for “Merleau-
Ponty’s Political Philosophy: Its Nature and Its Challenge,” from McBride
and Schrag’s Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context and for “I and Mine”
from Welton and Silverman’s Critical and Dialectical Phenomenology, (b) The
Review o f Metaphysics for “Renovating the Problem of Politics” and “Rela
tional Freedom”; (c) Philosophy Today for “Politics and Coercion”; (d) Tu-
lane Studies in Philosophy for “One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s
Philosophy and His Political Thought”; and (e) Kluwer Academic Publishers
for “Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics” and “Ideology, Utopia, and
Responsible Politics,” both of which first appeared in Man and World, and
for “Does Anarchy Make Political Sense?” which first appeared in Human
Studies.
Further, I am especially happy to acknowledge Lester Embree’s role in
the coming-to-be of this volume. He made the initial suggestion that I pre
pare it and continued his encouragement to its culmination. I am deeply
grateful to him.
Preface
This collection of essays draws together work done during a period of

more than fifteen years. In the course of these years much has changed,
including much about politics. Patterns of political activity have been trans
formed. Ways in which we had been accustomed to construe politics have
been substantially modified and sometimes replaced. Some apparently in
tractable conflicts have been resolved. Other, apparently more manageable,
conflicts have shown shocking durability. A number of political doctrines
once considered indefinitely serviceable have lost all relevance. And the
material and technical resources at our disposal look strikingly different than
they did just a few years ago. Practical politics of whatever stripe encounters
at every turn ever more grave environmental degradation.
But, or so this collection assumes, not everything political has changed.
Some political issues, both “theoretical” and “practical,” remain persistently
trenchant. Questions like the following demand ever renewed consideration.
What is the point and worth of belonging to a political community? What
entitlements and responsibilities follow upon such membership? Or even
more fundamentally, what conditions are required for there to be politics at
all?
Taken together, the essays collected in this volume propose a way both
to understand and to engage in politics which is properly responsive both to
perennial political issues and to the peculiar exigencies of our era. Some of
them present criticisms of widely held, warmly cherished ways of addressing
political matters. Others propose constructive alternatives.
This collection, to be sure, does not contain a comprehensive political
doctrine applicable to all issues nor does it propose a definitive solution to
any particular one of them. But it does claim to specify elements that are
always pertinent to dealing responsibly with any political issue, conceptual or
xii Elements o f Responsible Politics
practical. In specifying these elements, this collection in effect presents a

case for a distinctive mode or orientation of thought and action as that which
is most appropriate for responsible politics. In so doing, it itself thereby
enters the political lists.
I make no pretense that these essays articulate a “view from nowhere.”1
They all arise within the context of a long, well-developed tradition of West
ern thought about the conditions and objectives of the complex ways in which
people order their interactions with one another. Unsurprisingly, this tradi
tion is not all of a piece, not a seamless whole. In many respects, it keeps
available a multiplicity of voices discordant with one another. More often
than not, it poses problems rather than giving answers. But in doing so, it
nonetheless circumscribes in a helpful, if not precise, manner the field in
which reflection on political thought and practice takes place. It also fur
nishes valuable concepts and distinctions with which to articulate this reflec
tion.
Not a few contemporary thinkers either explicitly or implicitly denigrate
this Western tradition. They claim to subvert, overcome, or replace it. I
grant that this tradition is not perfect. But neither is it a disaster. It can and
has undergone changes, some of which are arguably for the better. It can
and does provide sustenance for fresh, benign reflection.
But even though the Western tradition provides both a reasonably well-
developed conception of the domain of politics and valuable conceptual re
sources with which to articulate political issues, it has also spawned two
widespread competing, and dangerous, paradigms for both political discourse
and practice. Both paradigms, by what they emphasize as well 'as by what
they slight, deform both discourse and practice. One of these paradigms
promotes a rationalistic politics, a politics of vision. Utopian thought of
various kinds exemplifies this paradigm. But not all political rationalism, as
the example of Hegel shows, is utopian. The other paradigm promotes a
voluntaristic politics, a politics of will or might. Conventionalist and contrac-
tualist thought exemplifies this latter paradigm. Not only are these para
digms at odds with each other. Each also contains its own internal fatal flaw.
Neither can simultaneously preclude both tyranny and anarchy, the twin
antitheses of responsible politics.
This collection of essays points toward a “third way,” an alternative to
both rationalism and voluntarism. This “third way” does not require a com
Preface xiii
plete repudiation of either rationalism or voluntarism. Rather, it salvages

from each of them what gave them their plausibility.
The “third way” I develop in these essays owes a great deal to many
contemporary thinkers, each of whom in his own way has rethought and
thereby revivified the tradition. Prominent among these thinkers are Heideg
ger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Marcel, and Sartre. But I must single out for special
mention Merleau-Ponty. It is his influence which is most pervasive here.
Indeed, this collection taken as a whole amounts to a commentary on
and extension of Merleau-Ponty’s achievements. Because each of these
essays is self-contained and because his influence is so pervasive, a reader
who starts at the first page and reads straight through will find some repeti
tion. Given the nature of this volume, this repetition is unavoidable. And it
has the merit of keeping each essay fully intelligible in itself.
Given the recent, startling collapse of Communism as a political force, it
is not necessary to dwell on the sharp opposition between the “third way”
toward which I point and the rationalist collectivism which orthodox Com
munism propounded. But it is probably useful for me to complete the stage
setting for these essays by pointing out just what it is about contemporary
individualism that sets it so much at odds with this “third way.” For the
search for a “third way” is prompted in large measure by the conviction that
individualism leads to political irresponsibility. Whether rationalistically or
voluntaristically interpreted, individualism promotes a depreciation and even
a trivialization of concern for the community’s well being in favor of atten
tion to one’s private interests. As a consequence, under neither interpreta
tion can individualism cope successfully with such urgent contemporary glo
bal problems as pollution, population size and distribution, and species-
threatening weapons.2
Both rationalist and voluntarist politics, whether championing collectivism
or individualism, have regularly been presented as definitively established
doctrines. The “third way” I propose denies that it makes sense in politics
to seek either a practice or a theory which is definitive. As Merleau-Ponty
saw, there is no perfect political practice or thought. The cautions and rec
ommendations embodied in these essays all deal with how we are to engage
in politics responsibly in the absence of a perfect politics. It follows, then,
that these essays, whether taken singly or together, invite response. They are
contributions to a conversation whose termination would necessarily be a
disaster.
xiv Elements o f Responsible Politics
I have divided this collection into four parts. Part I, fittingly, contains
essays devoted to making explicit Merleau-Ponty’s own contributions to con
temporary political thought. These essays provide a crucial point of depar
ture for the rest of the studies in this collection. Whatever merit or lack
thereof the reader finds in the other essays in this volume, I hope that the
essays in this part will make clear to him or her just how important Merleau-
Ponty’s contribution is to efforts to develop a responsible politics.
The essays in Part II deal with questions concerning what it is to be an
agent. They seek to articulate at least the minimal conditions for political
agency and responsibility. In effect, they contribute to what one might call,
in a Ricoeurian vein, the philosophical anthropology that underpins respon
sible political thought.
The two essays which make up Part III set forth crucial features of the
basic orientation, namely hope, that I claim is required for maximally respon
sible political thought and practice. This specific sort of hope is political
rather than religious or “familial.” It undercuts both optimism and pes
simism. There is, I admit, nontrivial overlap between these two essays. But
I include both of them because in “Hope and Responsible Politics” I provide
important support for the concept of hope that I propose which I do not re
peat in “The Place of Hope in Politics.” On the other hand, the latter, and
later, piece presents a stronger and more precise case for the importance of
hope in politics.
It is true of all political thought that, sooner or later, the “proof of the
pudding is in the eating.” Accordingly, Part IV presents some of the ramifi
cations of the general position I develop in Parts II and III. On the one
hand, I will show how the orientation I propose would affect the way in
which some perennial issues in political thought are dealt with. On the oth
er, I will spell out some of the implications of my proposal for criticizing
some contemporary alternatives.
Several of the essays collected here have not been previously published.
And I have made nontrivial revisions of some of those that have already
appeared. In the remarks introducing each of the four parts I will indicate
which are the new essays and which are the revised ones.
Part I
The four essays which make up Part I set forth the principal and most
durable features of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy. Unquestionably,
there are important differences between his political reflections prior to his
complete rejection of Soviet-style Marxism in mid-1950 and his later thought.
But there is also substantial continuity between them. Some of the same
elements in his general philosophical orientation which once made Soviet
Marxism attractive to him figured in his subsequent repudiation of it. None
theless it remains true that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in general changed in
crucial ways throughout his career. Unsurprisingly, some of those changes
affected his political thinking.
The first of these four studies, “Renovating the Problem of Politics,”
appeared initially in The Review o f Metaphysics in 1976 and was reprinted in
Crosscurrents in Phenomenology, edited by Ronald Bruzina and Bruce Wil-
shire in 1978. In it, I draw upon Heidegger’s work as well as on Merleau-
Ponty’s. At the time I wrote this essay studies in English of Heidegger’s
political thought were in their early stages and discussion of it on the Con
tinent was much less intense and informed than it is today. The extent of
Heidegger’s reprehensible involvement with Nazism was largely unsuspected.
Nonetheless, I take it that it is permissible to try to salvage parts of a think
er’s work without thereby endorsing the whole of it. In that spirit, I have
made revisions in this essay to acknowledge the deep problems that recent
scholarship has shown Heidegger’s work to contain while still proposing that
what I extract from that work remains of substantial import for responsible
political thinking.
The other three pieces of which Part I is composed concentrate ex
clusively on Merleau-Ponty. The second essay in the part, “One Central
Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Language and His Political
2 Elements o f Responsible Politics
Thought,” ties my reflections on silence and the restraint involved therein to

these two parts of Merleau-Ponty’s work. It was published in Tulane Studies
in Philosophy in 1980. The third, “Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thought: Its
Nature and Its Challenge,” was included in Phenomenology in a Pluralistic
Context, edited by William L. McBride and Calvin O. Schrag, published in
1983. I have not significantly revised either of these two essays. The final
piece in Part I, “Merleau Ponty on Politics, History, and Violence,” was
written in 1989 and has not been previously published.
Renovating the Problem of Politics
Robert Sokolowski in Husserlian Meditations, writes:
Heidegger situates Husserlian themes within the wider context of the

question of being, but he does not sufficiently consider the context of
political philosophy. And even the question of being appears dif
ferent if the political context is taken into account. Heidegger advan
ces beyond Husserl by ... raising the issue of publicness in a more
appropriate way than Husserl, with his stress on the discourse of
science, was able to do. But Heidegger’s conception of the public is
not adequate for political life; in terms of the kinds of human as
sociation distinguished by Aristotle in Politics 1.2 - family, village, city
- Heidegger’s thoughts are most appropriate for the village, not the
city. A village is not based on any kind of constitution or “social
contract.”1
Given the discoveries during the decade of the 80s of the depth and extent of
Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazis, Sokolowski’s comment can now be
seen to be strikingly mild.2 But these discoveries notwithstanding, one has
no justification for regarding Heidegger’s thought as wholly discredited.
Even his thought about political matters remains of value.3
In this paper, I will argue that Heidegger, along with another student of
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, have contributed substantially to the renovation of
the problem of politics. Neither of them, to be sure, has provided a com
prehensive theory of politics. But each, despite his own limitations, flaws,
and in Heidegger’s case, reprehensible political judgments, has bequeathed
to us much of substance for our efforts to make sense of politics.
Their contributions are of two sorts. First, they have destroyed, in Hei
degger’s sense, the metaphysical base that has dominated Western political
thought since Plato. And second, they have provided insights into and clues
pointing toward elements that any defensible politics must embody. In so
doing they open a way for us to retrieve and renovate what is sound in the
political thought that developed under the sway of metaphysics.
Western philosophy, from Plato onward, has been marked by at least a

tension and at worst a cleavage between the demands of what is to be
thought and the demands of what is to be done or achieved. An especially
acute form of this tension appears in the relation between speculative
thought and political conduct or statecraft.4 Philosophy since Plato is sup
posed to deal with knowledge, certainty, and truth. But politics is concerned
with power, which rests on opinion.5 One simply cannot have certitude con
cerning what his political action will bring about. This tension between the
demands of what is to be thought and the demands of what is to be done
mirrors that found already in Greek tragic figures, e.g., Creon and Antigone.
At issue, of course, from the outset is the question of the legitimacy of
the exercise of political power. What entitles one man to command and
requires another to obey? Plato’s resolution of this issue consisted in locat
ing the source of legitimate authority beyond the sphere of power, beyond
men. Plato has the philosopher turn away from the polis and then return to
impose upon human affairs the standards he had seen.6 Whether Hannah
Arendt is right or not in holding that Plato announces the philosopher’s
claim to rule not so much for the sake of the polis and politics as for the
sake of philosophy and the safety of the philosopher,7 it is the case that for
Plato the source of the right to command must transcend the realm of hu
man history.
Aristotle already saw the danger of tyranny lurking in Plato’s exaltation
of the expert, the philosopher, and in Plato’s conception of statecraft along
the lines of fabrication. Nonetheless, in defending the intrinsic supremacy of
the contemplative realm, Aristotle established the right of the thinker to
independence, but left unclarified the foundation of the right to command.
He rejects Plato’s resolution of the tension between what is to be thought
Renovating the Problem o f Politics 5
and what is to be achieved in politics. But he can hardly be said to have

provided a new resolution.®
In post-classical times repeated attempts have been made to definitively
resolve this tension either to the advantage of philosophy, by dissolving the
tension, or to the advantage of politics, by transforming the tension into a
cleavage. The approach which gives philosophy the decisive word rests on
the claim that there is some knowable, anterior, fundamentally ahistorical
order which serves as standard, criterion, or guiding principle for political
conduct. The problem of politics, then, is basically one of translating an
ahistorical order into the worldly affairs of men. The other approach, which
gives politics the decisive word, denies such a knowable anterior order. But
it claims for men a prior, radically non-political, freedom on the basis of
which they construct the polis on their own terms, at their own discretion,
and for their own purposes.
In reality, at the level of reflection, the politics-favoring approach has
tended to collapse back into the philosophy-favoring approach. But at the
level of practice the philosophy-favoring approach has tended to collapse
back into the politics-favoring one. What I want to call attention to here,
however, is that on both of these approaches, the realm of politics is a deriv
ative realm. And the legitimacy of conduct in this realm is determined by
principles which do not, in the final analysis, belong to it.
From another angle, it can be said that most post-classical attempts to
resolve the classical tension between what is to be thought and what is to be
achieved politically either explicitly or implicitly assume the possibility of
radical human autonomy. (Machiavelli is an important exception.) Whether
this autonomy is claimed for the divinely elected king who makes God’s will
his own, for the Rousseauian man who expresses the general will, for the
Lockean man in the state of nature, or for the Marxian man of the future
but foredestined classless society, the right to command belongs to the man
who transcends, at least in part, the realms of history and politics. Either by
reason of his vision of eternal verities or by reason of his radical, natural,
pre-political, ahistorical free-will, whatever the autonomous man commands
is either what should be commanded or at least what is unquestionably per
missible for him to command. Thus the autonomous man in principle ei
ther eliminates contingency from the political realm by deducing political
conduct from ahistorical rational norms he knows, or grounds political con
duct in a will which sets standards at its own discretion.9
Thus, on one approach, the classical tension between philosophy and

politics is dissolved. On the other, it is converted into an absolute cleavage.
But the conceptual quandaries besetting the post-classical theories, and even
more the tyrannical or anarchical interpretations which have been justified in
the name of each of them, call into question the entire project of handling
the classical tension on the basis of some version of a claim of radical human
autonomy. Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have, I think, provided deva
stating criticisms of the notion of radical human autonomy. In so doing, they
have in effect undercut all of what Heidegger would call the metaphysical
theories concerning the relation between what is to be thought and what is to
be done or achieved politically.
There is no need here for a detailed rehearsal of their well-known criti
cisms. Let me only briefly recall that both of them seek ultimately to pro
vide a unified foundation upon which to ground both speculative thought and
deliberated practice. Merleau-Ponty provides this foundation through his
notions of etre-au-monde and chiasm. Heidegger does so through his Dasein
analysis and his notion of meditative thinking. What they both show is that
man is radically and exhaustively finite and historical. Thus it makes no
sense to claim either that he can achieve an ahistorical spectatorial grasp of
the world or that some dimension of man, e.g., his free will, is radically in
dependent of the influence of the world. Man is in no sense radically auton
omous.
Given such foundations, it becomes impossible to maintain, in the realm
of politics, that some political form, ideal, norm, or institution is definitively
and exclusively correct either for some specific time or locale or in perpetuity
and everywhere. But all theories of politics which are, in Heidegger’s sense,
metaphysical rest on some such claim. Thus all such theories are in effect
undercut. It does not follow that all the elements of these theories likewise
collapse. But it does follow that confrontations between political doctrines
which are both metaphysical in this sense, e.g., between communism and
capitalism, or between communism and liberalism, are confrontations be
tween doctrines both of which are devoid of defensible foundations.10
It would, of course, be exorbitant to claim that either Heidegger or Mer
leau-Ponty has provided us with a well-developed new politics. But is would
also be wrong to think that the only significant contribution their work makes
to the problem of politics is a negative critique of modern political theories.
Both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty have provided elements for a possible
new politics in which the classical tension can be converted from stumbling
block to stepping stone.11
II
I turn first to the work of Merleau-Ponty, whose concern with the prob
lem of politics is more obvious, if not more pervasive than is Heidegger’s.12
Let me recall three related parts of his political thought. In Adventures o f
the Dialectic, he writes:
If history does not have a direction, like a river, but a meaning, if it

teaches us, not a truth, but errors to avoid, if its practice is not de
duced from a dogmatic philosophy of history, then it is not superficial
to base a politics on the analysis of political man. After all, once the
official legends have been put aside, what makes a politics important
is ... the human quality that causes the leaders truly to animate the
political apparatus and makes their most personal acts everyone’s
affair.... In politics, truth is perhaps only this art of inventing what
will later appear to have been required by the time.13
Second, in this same work, Merleau-Ponty proceeds to argue for a non-

communist left which rejects the supposedly exhaustive alternatives posed by
the rivalry between what can, for convenience, be labeled liberalism and
communism. The noncommunist left, working through a parliamentary
structure which is “the only known institution that guarantees a minimum of
opposition and truth,”14 undertakes the constant task “of evading the antag
onists’ hostility, of springing the traps that one prepares for the other, of
thwarting the complicity of their pessimisms.”15 This noncommunist left
recognizes that its approach is not definitive solution. But this is so because
in politics there is no definitive solution. There are only timely ones.16
Finally, in “A Note on Machiavelli,” Merleau-Ponty claims that Machia-
velli was right in holding that for a truly humanistic politics, values and prin
ciples are necessary but not sufficient. In fact, “it is even dangerous to stop
with values, for so long as we have not chosen those whose mission it is to
uphold these values in the historical struggle, we have done nothing.”17
What Machiavelli lacked was a guideline to enable him to distinguish
between political virtu, that political virtuosity which is excellence in discern
ing the fortune provided by the moment and in wielding power to make the
most of the opportunity, and political opportunism, which is nothing more
than a make-shift accommodation to the pressures of the moment made in
the name of mere survival. Marx saw something of the same problem.
What is needed is the invention of political forms which can keep power in
check without annulling it. This need, Merleau-Ponty says, is still unful
filled.18 “The remedy we seek does not lie in rebellion, but in unremitting
virtu. A disappointment for whoever believed in salvation and in a single
means of salvation in all realms.”19
Taking these citations as representative of Merleau-Ponty’s political
thought, several positive, overlapping elements for a legitimate politics can
be found in his work. First, by reason of a necessity belonging specifically to
the political realm, as opposed to some non-political realm, the distinction
between the leaders and the led is irreducible. This does not imply that
there is some “natural” oligarchy or some Nietzschean aristocracy foredes
tined to rule. On the contrary, any political theory which claims that legiti
mate exercise of command amounts simply to having the so-called true will
or true insight of the body politic express itself to itself is a concoction which
rests on a fiction. Whatever political rights may be ascribed to each mem
ber, it is simply not the case that all have equal title to rule. All may well
have the right to obey by way of critical response rather than by way of mere
compliance. But initiative always resides with some rather than with all.
Second, those who have the right to command hold this right by reason
of their political virtuosity, and not by reason of some putative radical auton
omy. Virtuosity consists in grasping the opportunities of the historical mo
ment and handling them dexterously to stamp the moment with the distinc
tive mark of the virtuoso. Of course, the factual hopes, fears, and resources
of the led enter into the constitution of the opportunities provided by a spe
cific historical moment. But these are determinative only of a field of play,
not of a precise course of action.20 To this extent, any concrete right of
command can be said to presuppose a field of play circumscribed by the led.
But without the virtuoso’s play, the field is pre-political. And should the
virtuoso lose his virtuosity, he thereby loses his right to command.
The next three elements are perhaps derivable from the first two. But
for present purposes, it is enough to take note of them without working out
the logical relationships obtaining among them. The third element is that
whatever political correctness is, it comes to be in the actual doing of politi
cal deeds. And so, neither he who commands nor he who obeys can know
ahead of time that what he is embarked upon doing is unquestionably cor
rect. Political undertakings are intrinsically risky.
There are hopeless, and thus unquestionably wrong, political endeavors.,
e.g., endeavors which deny some or all of these elements. These can be
recognized as wrong ahead of time. But the most assurance that one can
have in embarking upon a political act is that there is a prospect that once
the political deed is under way, it can be said that “things are going well,”
and that later generations in looking back at the deed may be able to say
“things worked out well.” But there is always the danger that the political
deed be untimely. And untimeliness in politics, no less than hopelessness,
thoroughly vitiates the deed.
Fourth, legitimate political conduct does not have as its task the redemp
tion of men from their historical condition. Rather, the task is so to manage
the opportunities afforded by the present moment that a space is opened and
preserved in which future opportunities for human achievements of all sorts
can arise. Thus the legitimate exercise of command is not directed toward
bringing the body politic to a condition of radical completion or stasis. It is,
rather, aimed at effecting a displacement away from the repetitious perfor
mance of routines toward performances which respond to the ever distinctive
proximate and remote possibilities which each historical moment grants.
Fifth, one of the possibilities which our times present us is so distinctive
that it can well be given the status of a constitutive element for all contem
porary and foreseeable politics. Merleau-Ponty says:
There is no serious humanism except the one which looks for man’s
effective recognition by his fellow man throughout the world. Conse
quently, it [serious humanism] could not precede the moment when
humanity gives itself its means of communication and communion.
Today these means exist ....21
I take it from the general thrust of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought that

he would claim that both communism and economico-political liberalism are
political phenomena whose day is essentially over. But what they have be
queathed to us is the opportunity for a world politics. Political virtuosity can
no longer take as its field some isolated or privileged corner of the globe.
What counts as legitimate political conduct and legitimate command must
henceforth be judged in global and not in local terms. Vague though this
fifth element is, its effective weight is in no way thereby reduced.
These five elements which I have extracted from Merleau-Ponty’s work,
elements which renovate the classical tension between philosophy and poli
tics, can be corroborated and supplemented by elements extractable from
Heidegger. And so, it is to Heidegger that I now turn.
Ill
It is now unmistakably clear that one can make no easy distinction be
tween Heidegger’s thought and its articulation on the one hand and his poli
tical commitments on the other. Nonetheless there is much good sense in
Habermas’ judgment that
questionable political conduct on the part of a thinker certainly

throws a shadow on his work. But the Heideggerian oeuvre, espe
cially the thought in Being and Time, has attained a position of such
eminence among the philosophical ideas of our century that it is
simply foolish to think that the substance of the work could be dis
credited, more than five decades later, by political assessments of
Heidegger’s fascist commitments.22
In what follows I do not claim to present Heidegger’s own views. My

claim, rather is that his work, or at least parts of it, prompts one to think
afresh about the constituents of responsible politics.
Let me briefly recall some of Heidegger’s reflections on thought, technol
ogy, and art. First, thought is that action which reaches out to the Unen-
compassable (das Unumgangliche) that reigns over every science, whether
natural or human. Thought, as thought of Being, is superior to and founda
tional both for practice and for contemplation or theory in its modern sense.
A science as such can bring to light only one sort of presence of whatever its
theme is. Meditative thought in no way rests on a faith in the irresistible
power of reason and its principles. Rather it always remains historical, as
signed or destined by Being to the place of its historical sojourn.23
Second, in the reign of technology and calculative thought, Being is for
gotten and the world is simply raw material for exploitation. One key conse
quence of this technological era is that it excludes in advance as irrelevant
the distinctions between nations and peoples. “Just as the distinction be
tween war and peace has become vacuous, so has the distinction between the
‘national’ and the ‘international’ been effaced.”24 “Nature and spirit have
become two objects for self-consciousness, whose absolute domination forces
these objects from the outset into a uniformity from which there is no meta
physical way of escape.”25 The technological movement thus denies the Un-
encompassable and claims for human action autonomy and absolute right of
domination.
Third, and of capital importance for my purposes, is Heidegger’s “The
Origin of the Work of Art.” He says there that one of the essential ways in
which truth establishes itself is in the work of art. Another essential way is
in the deed which grounds a political state. Permit me to quote at length
what “truth establishing itself’ in art amounts to.
The establishing of truth in the work is the bringing forth of an entity

such as never was before and will afterward never be again .... Truth
is present only as the conflict between lighting and concealing in the
opposition of world and earth .... In the conflict the unity of world
and earth is won .... In the creation of a work, the conflict must be
set back, as rift, into the earth, and the earth itself must be set forth
and used as the self-closing factor .... As little as a work can be with
out being created, so little can the created itself become an entity
without preservers .... Preservation of the work means: standing with
in the openness of what is that happens in the work. This in-stand-
ing of preservation, however, is a knowing. Yet knowing does not
consist in mere acquaintance with and representation of something.
He who truly knows what is, knows what he wills in the midst of
what is .... Volition is the sober resolution of existing self-transcen
dence which expresses itself to the openness of what is as posited in
the work .... Preservation of the work does not narrowly enclose
people within their experiences, but transports them into a condition
of belonging to the truth happening in the work and so provides the
ground for being for and with one another as Da-sein’s (there-be-
ing’s) historical standing-out or exposure in connection with uncon
cealment.26
Heidegger goes on to show that the essence of art is poetry and the
essence of poetry, which involves projective speech, is the institution of truth.
Projective speech is speech which in preparing the sayable simul

taneously brings the unsayable as such into a world. In such saying,
the concepts of an historical folk’s essence, i.e., of its belonging to
world-history, are preformed for that folk.27
Heidegger understands institution in a three-fold sense: as bestowing

(Schenken), as grounding (Grunden), and as beginning (Anfang). But there
is no actual institution without preservation. He says:
In the work ... truth is thrown toward the coming preservers, i.e., an
historical humanity. What is thus cast is, nevertheless, never an ar
bitrary demand. Genuinely poetic projection is the opening up or
disclosure of that into which Dasein as historical has already been
thrown .... Art is history in the essential sense that it grounds history
.... The origin of the work of art, i.e., at the same time of the creators
and preservers, and this means of the historical existence of a people,
is art.28
If one translates what Heidegger says here about art to the domain of
politics and then ties it to the remarks about meditative thought and technol
ogy that I have cited, then he can extract the following elements for a defen
sible politics.29 These elements basically corroborate the elements that I
have drawn from Merleau-Ponty’s work. But they are not redundant. They
contribute something distinctive in their own right.
First, every theory of politics, every political institution, and all political
conduct, like every science, are under the reign of the Unencompassable.
They are all historical. Thus any pretense to any sort of ahistorical validity
or legitimacy is at bottom nonsensical.
Second, any politics which claims either the existence or the desirability
of fundamentally uniform politics among all men, peoples, and nations is
finally either inefficacious or destructive. Attempts at such a politics flow
from the modern technocratic exploitation of the world. These attempts are
basically the political expression of an exclusively calculative thought, which
in turn is a manifestation of an unbridled will-to-will.
Third, the realm of politics, like that of art, belongs to the domain of
projective speech and not to that of fabrication. The truth appropriate to the
domain of projective speech is a truth which emerges only in the doing and
preserving of the deed. This doing and preserving always has the character
of struggle or conflict. Thus the work done is always under the threat of
collapse.
Fourth, the origin of the political deed and thus of politics, is politics
itself. The political is not grounded in something pre-political. Man neither
falls into nor elects to move into the political realm. He is always already
there.
Fifth, politics, though its orientation is always toward the future as the
new, never fails to refer to the old. At bottom, politics is the institution of a
world on the ground of both the earth and earlier worlds. It is a projection
rooted in a preservation. It is the working out of a people’s destiny that is
cast before it by its heritage. Any politics which claims either to negate or
even definitively to decide the weight of the past whence it arises is blind to
its own possibilities and threatens man’s very existence. Defensible politics,
to be sure, does involve volition. But this volition is a self-trancendence
which exposes itself to what-is as a heritage that bestows upon man both a
destiny and a present field of play. As such, volition stands opposed to the
will-to will that claims to dominate what-is and thereby to determine autono
mously what can come to be.
Let me recapitulate the elements that I have thus far extracted from the
works of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. A defensible politics must embody
these six overlapping elements:
1) The distinction between rulers and the ruled is irreducible.30 But this is so
by reason of a political rather than a natural necessity.
2) Rulers hold their right to command by reason of their virtuosity in acting,

not by reason of some ahistorical human autonomy.
3) The truth of political conduct comes to be in the actual doing of political

deeds.
4) Political conduct has as its authentic task not the redemption of man from
the exigencies of his historicity, but rather the management of the oppor
tunities of the moment in such a way that future opportunities for human
achievements o f all sorts (not merely political achievements) can continue to
arise.
5) Political conduct and the virtuosity involved therein must hence forth be
judged in global terms.
6) Far from being autonomous, political conduct is the expression of the

present opportunities bestowed by the earth and a people’s heritage in the
working out of a people’s destiny.
These elements, to be sure, do not yield a complete political theory. So

far as I can see they do not even provide a comprehensive basis for the de
velopment of a complete political theory. For example, I do not see how
they should be supplemented to handle the towering issues of 1) the tenden
cy of power to grow and to become centralized,31 and 2) what constitutes the
limits of the legitimate use of coercive power or violence.32 In fact, it is hard
to see that either Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty provides a full delimitation of
the realm of politics from other realms of human expression or speech.
Nonetheless, both of them spur us to resituate politics in the general
realms of speech and history.33 By so doing, they in effect renovate impor
tant elements in both Greek and Roman political traditions. Their emphasis
on politics as primarily a mode of speech renews the Greek distinctions
between persuasion and despotic command, between doing and making, and
between the free play of public deed and discourse and the constraint of
physical and biological necessity. Their emphasis on politics as irrecusably
embedded in history and heritage provides resources for renewing the Ro
man sense of authority as that weight, beyond persuasion and coercive force,
which provides the ground and unevadable test for the legitimacy of either
persuasion or coercion.34
IV
As I noted at the beginning of this paper, the classical political tradition

was never brought into harmony with the requirements of speculative
thought. Modern thought has claimed to overcome this tension. But its
efforts have succeeded only in obscuring the scope of the issue. To retrieve
the scope of the issue, as Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger prompt us to do, is

no trivial matter. Indeed it is the necessary pre-requisite to a more satisfac
tory response to, though not dissolution of, the dissonant claims of politics
and philosophy.
But the elements I have taken from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty do
more than renovate the classical political tradition. They also help one to
retrieve crucial contributions from modern attempts to harmonize politics
and philosophy. For example, under their tutelage one can regard Rous
seau’s distinction between the always valid general will and the often mis
guided will of the multitude as an attempt to express the two-fold insight that
politics is 1) an affair of volition and excellence in doing rather than of intel
lection and excellence in seeing, and 2) that the volition involved in any par
ticular political conduct should not be merely the will of some present mo
ment uprooted from a larger historical context.
Similarly, the Marxian distinction between the communists and the prole
tarians and the Lockean notion of executive privilege, coupled with their
common requirement that rulers rule by leave of the ruled, can be regarded
as a deficient attempt to articulate the realization that political leadership is
a form of virtuosity, the existence of which can be guaranteed neither ahead
of time nor by the virtuoso himself. Virtuosity exists only in the deed. Only
those who witness the display can certify the existence of virtuosity. And
there is always something retrospective in such certification.
Or again, divine or natural right theories of rulership can be regarded as
halting expressions of the irreducibility of the distinction between rulers and
ruled.
These examples of how modern political insights can be refurbished
through the recognition of the elements that I have drawn from Heidegger
and Merleau-Ponty can and should be multiplied. But they suffice to show
that one can extract from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty grounds not for
mere refutations of previous theories of politics, but rather for re-thinkings
of the realm of politics in a context in which the positive accomplishments of
previous thinkers are preserved and renovated.
But something more can emerge from this re-thinking. Using the six
elements I have extracted from Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s works, one
can make more precise just how to mark off the realm of politics from other
realms of human expression. One can detect through these elements at least
one essential characteristic of defensible, effective political conduct.
Defensible political conduct is a doing-anew-with-a-difference-in-the-

doing-of-what-has-already-been-done. And that which is the field of this
doing is the totality of the already organized material and cultural resources
of the community. That is, what has already been done both authorizes and
elicits the present doing. The present doing is not merely a redoing. It must
be a doing-with-a-difference, lest it deny the intrinsic historicality of every
such doing. Likewise, the doing must elicit another doing which supercedes
it, which it itself authorizes but does not rigorously control.
In effect, legitimate political conduct must have the characteristic of
authentic speech. Authentic speech must draw upon an already sedimented
language and yet rise to a new saying, which is in turn destined to rejoin the
sedimented base for future sayings. So, too, must legitimate political conduct
draw upon the sedimented political deeds in a community’s heritage and
express them anew with a difference determined by present possibilities.
And this expression itself is recognized as destined to rejoin the sedimented
base for future political deeds.
Political conduct, however, can be distinguished from the modes of au
thentic speech which are expressed in either art or religious ritual. Like
political expression, artistic expression arises from the sediment of previous
human doings, artistic or otherwise. But unlike political expression, no par
ticular artistic expression as such points toward a future artistic expression it
could lay claim to authorizing. Such future artistic endeavors are irrelevant
to either the performance or the preservation or the assessment of the pres
ent artistic expression. But superseding political endeavors are crucial to the
performance, preservation, and assessment of defensible political conduct.
Similarly, ritual expression, like political expression, is a doing based on
what has already been done. But unlike political expression, it necessarily
eschews doing-with-a-difference. Ritual expression does point toward anoth
er doing. But this subsequent doing is not to supersede the present doing.
Rather, it is to renew it as the same.
Undoubtedly, the characteristic of defensible political conduct which I
have just formulated provides no complete delimitation of the realm of poli
tics. But it is by no means trivial. At the very least it establishes:
1) Revolution, in the sense of a radical rupture with a people’s past, owing

nothing of its own resources to possibilities opened up for it as a political
enterprise by positive accomplishments of that past, is political nonsense.
2) A politics which claims ahistorical justification is either blind or menda

cious.
3) A definitive politics, a politics whose saying claims to have left nothing

sutvtfantial unsaid and nothing substantial yet to be said, is no politics at all.
4) A defensible politics for today and the foreseeable future must take into
account the relentless, often ruthless, expansion and intensification of tech
nology’s grip on human affairs that apparently renders impotent both major
offshoots of classical Enlightenment political thought, namely Marxism and
liberal capitalism.
In conclusion then, my claim is not that either Merleau-Ponty, or much
less Heidegger with his Nazi entanglements, has shown us how to bring the
persistent tension between the demands of Western political thought and
defensible political conduct to final resolution. Rather, what one can learn
from them, and this lesson is of radical importance, is that this issue is not a
soluble problem. It is, instead, an “Unencompassable” tension, a tension
that is ineradicable because it springs from man’s irremovable finitude.
Neither perception, nor speech, nor meditative thinking overcomes the im
plications of that finitude. Finitude, then pervades all theory and practice.
Insisting upon this irrecusable finitude significantly reshapes the tension
between thought and political conduct. Neither the demands of speculative
thought nor the demands of political conduct can claim radical dominion
over the other. Henceforth both a defensible philosophy and a defensible
politics must acknowledge the requirements that each imposes on the other.
The renovated task is now set: How and to what extent can these reciprocal
requirements be specified?
One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s
Philosophy of Language
and His Political Thought
Through much of his career, Merleau-Ponty was concerned both with the
topic of language and with the topic of politics. But he himself never ex
plicitly connected these two strands of thought. Nonetheless, at least one
central link binds these strands together and, in so doing, strengthens each of
them. This link is provided by his recognition of the importance of the phe
nomenon of silence.
I will begin this essay by noting something of the range of the contexts
in which Merleau-Ponty employs the term ‘silence’ and its cognates. From
this survey it will be clear that Merleau-Ponty did not explicitly thematize the
phenomenon of silence even though he obviously recognized it. Then I will
argue that, when the phenomenon of silence is properly thematized, it pro
vides evidence for some of Merleau-Ponty’s principal claims concerning both
discursive expression and political action.
The term ‘silence’ appears in many different contexts in Merleau-Ponty’s

Phenomenology o f Perception.1 There are regions of silence in a body which
has lost a limb (PP, 364); there is the tacit or silent cogito which lies behind
the spoken cogito (PP, 302ff); there is the silent language whereby percep
tion communicates with us (PP, 48-49); there is the tacitly understood body
image which is the background against which gesture, perception, and speech
unfold (PP, 100-102); there is the primordial silence which lies beneath the
chatter of words and which the action of speaking breaks (PP, 184); there is
the silence of primary, ante-predicative consciousness in which appear both
what words mean and what things mean (PP, xv).
Consider next his The Visible and the Invisible} There is my body which
silences the buzzing of appearances (VI,8); there is the silence of the world
which must be made to say what it means to say (VI, 39); there is the silence
from which language lives (VI, 126); there is the silence and speech which
philosophy reconverts into one another (VI, 129).
These lists, and similar lists could be compiled from other works of Mer
leau-Ponty, show both that throughout his career Merleau-Ponty regularly
resorted to the term ‘silence’ to point to key features of many phenomena
and that the phenomenon of silence itself, though it played a large role in his
thought, was not explicitly thematized by Merleau-Ponty. That is to say,
Merleau-Ponty did not distinguish in any precise way between the muteness
of that which is other than expressive and the silence which is fundamentally
ingredient in all expression.
In fact, there are uses of the term ‘silence’ in Merleau-Ponty which point
to that which is in principle beyond thematization. In his discussion of spati-
ality in Phenomenology o f Perception, Merleau-Ponty says:
Thus, since every conceivable being is related either directly or in

directly to the perceived world, and since the perceived world is
grasped only in terms of direction, we cannot dissociate being from
oriented being, and there is no occasion to ‘find a basis for’ space or
to ask what is the level of all levels. The primordial level is on the
horizon of all our perceptions, but it is a horizon which cannot in
principle ever be reached and thematized in our express perception
(PP, 253, my emphasis).
In some cases, Merleau-Ponty uses the term ‘silence’ in just this same way,
namely to point to that which in principle cannot be dealt with thematically.
In the same vein, he speaks in Phenomenology o f Perception of an “original
past, a past which has never been present”(PP, 242), of one’s history which
must be the continuation of a prehistory (PP, 254), and of a primary opinion
which antedates all opinions (PP, 396).
Philosophy o f Language and Political Thought 21
But Jacques Taminiaux has called to attention an evolution of capital

importance in Merleau-Ponty’s thought about both perception and expres
sion.3 One finds in Phenomenology o f Perception the juxtaposition of two
themes between which there is an insoluble tension. On the one hand, Mer
leau-Ponty speaks of a natal place of sense which resides in the silence of an
originary, pre-predicative consciousness. With respect to this pre-predicative
consciousness, expression is secondary and derivative. On the other hand,
Merleau-Ponty speaks of a pure expressiveness without support in a primor
dial silence, an always new realization of meaning without guarantee in any
fundamental locus of meaning.
The first theme, which Taminiaux calls the positivist theme, would have
it that there is a primordial experience, namely perception, which precedes
expression. The perceived precedes language “as an original text precedes
its translation, which translation is of second rank in comparison with the
original (RE, 103).”
The second theme, which Taminiaux calls the theme of art, would have it
that, in Merleau-Ponty’s words, “the phenomenological world is not the
bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of
being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, is
the act of bringing truth into being (PP, xx).”
According to Taminiaux, the tension between these two themes is over
come in Merleau-Ponty’s later work. In The Visible and the Invisible, neither
expression nor the world of silent perception is independent of the other.
Rather, they necessarily encroach upon one another. In Taminiaux’ words:
The world of silence is the perceptual world, the Lebenswelt, which

calls for an expression which in a sense it already contains but which
is nonetheless a creation of it. Expression, then, produces meaning,
creates meaning, and unveils an already-there meaning. Expression
so to speak precedes itself in such a way that there is no place for
positing on the one side an originary domain of silent experience and
on the other side expression itself as a second stratum .... The ex
perience of Being, then, is not on the hither side of expression. It is
thanks to expression that experience comes about. Experience is just
as much a matter of expression as it is of perception. And likewise
expression is just as much a matter of perception as it is of speech
(RE, 107).
In this new conception of the chiasm, the intertwining of perception and

expression, each of them is understood as a field of differences in which
there can be no fully positive or simply present entity. Perception involves a
latent invisibility in the visible. And expression involves a latent silence in
the expression itself.
Though I have some reservations both about the completeness of Mer
leau-Ponty’s eventual overcoming of the tension found in the Phenomenology
o f Perception and, to a less significant extent, about some of Taminiaux’
formulations of the problem and its solution, in the main I find in Tamin
iaux’ essay some warrant for the basic legitimacy of the approach I wish to
take in this essay. I find warrant for attempting to thematize the silence
which is latent in expression. This thematizing of silence gives rise to the
central theses I wish to defend here.
My primary thesis is: The phenomenon of silence, when properly thema
tized, both requires and provides evidence for some of Merleau-Ponty’s prin
cipal claims concerning two major forms of expression, namely, discursive
expression and political action. A preliminary thesis is that, though Merleau-
Ponty himself did not present us with an explicit thematization of silence, his
works do show that he did take note of several of the basic features of the
silence which pervades and bounds the field of discursive expression.
II
Let me defend now this preliminary thesis. The intentional analysis of

the phenomenon of silence, as I have shown elsewhere,4 reveals that silence
has at least the four following characteristics. First, silence is an active in
tentional performance which is required for the concrete clarification of the
sense of intersubjectivity. Second, in its pure occurrences, silence does not
directly intend an already determinate object of any sort. Third, silence,
motivated by finitude and awe, is a cut or suspension which interrupts an “et
cetera” of some particular stream of intentional performances intending
determinate objects of some already specified sort. Fourth, silence is not the
correlative opposite of discourse, or expression, but rather establishes and
maintains an oscillation or tension among the distinguishable levels of discur
sive expression and between the zone of discursive expression and the zones
of non-discursive experience.
Perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s most concise articulation of the scope of the

phenomenon of silence is found in The Prose o f the World. He says:
Languages are so sensitive to the interventions of general history and

to their own using only because they are secretly starved for changes
that give them means of making themselves expressive once again.
Thus there is indeed an interior of language, a signifying intention
which animates linguistic events and, at each moment, makes lan
guage a system capable of its own self-recovery and self-confirmation.
But this intention exhausts itself to the extent that it is fulfilled. For
its aim to be realized, it must not be completely realized, and for
something to be said, it must not be said absolutely.5
Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that this essential incompleteness in dis

cursive expression is like the essential incompleteness of perception. But
further, expression is revivified in and through its renewed contact with per
ception. Thus, between concrete perceptual performances and concrete
discursive performances there is a gap which is required for the vivacity of
both streams of performances. This gap had already been pointed to in
Phenomenology o f Perception when Merleau-Ponty wrote: “The real has to
be described, not constructed or formed. Which means that I cannot put
perception in the same category as the syntheses represented by judgments,
acts, or predications (PP, x).” This gap, insofar as it is sustained and main
tained in the interest of the vivacity of both perception and discursive expres
sion, is silence.
The importance of silence within the zone of discursive expression is
manifested by the phenomenon of hearing or listening which is an essential
ingredient in discourse. In a passage in Phenomenology o f Perception which
bristles with the tension singled out by Taminiaux, Merleau-Ponty says:
Just as the sense-giving intention which has set in motion the other
person’s speech is not an explicit thought, but a certain lack which is
asking to be made good, so my taking up this intention is not a pro
cess of thinking on my part, but a synchronizing change of my own
existence, a transformation of my being (PP, 183-184).
The same point, in a less perplexing context, is made in the “The Child’s
Relation to Others.” There he says:
There is a sort of indistinction between the act of speaking and the

act of hearing. The word is not understood or even heard unless the
subject is ready to pronounce it himself, and inversely, every subject
who speaks carries himself toward the one who is listening. In a
dialogue, the participants occupy both poles at once, and it is this
that explains why the phenomenon of ‘speaking’ can pass into that of
‘hearing.’6
This same phenomenon, from another vantage point, is described in

“The Philosopher and His Shadow.”
Just as the perceived world endures only through the reflection, sha
dows, levels, and horizons between things (which are not things and
are not nothing but on the contrary mark out by themselves the fields
o f possible variation in the same thing and in the same world), so the
works and thought of a philosopher are also made of certain articula
tions between things said.7
What holds true of philosophers and their discourse holds true for the
discursive expressions of all men.
Finally, the phenomenon of silence in question here shows itself at the

termination of discursive expression. Each man’s discursive expression must
be consigned to others for its own perdurance. As Merleau-Ponty concludes
in his late “Introduction” to Signs:
Thus things are said and are thought by a Speech and by a Thought
which we do not have but which has US...A11 those we have loved,
detested, known, or simply glimpsed speak through our voice....Our
traces mix and intermingle; they make a single wake of ‘public dura
tions’ (S, 19).
These references to many parts of Merleau-Ponty’s work are sufficient to

establish my preliminary thesis. That is, the phenomenon of silence, with the
four characteristics I identified above, was recognized by Merleau-Ponty.

What he said about silence, even if he did not develop the topic thematically,
is consistent with the account of silence I have proposed. I can now turn to
the development of my primary thesis, namely that the phenomenon of si
lence both requires and provides evidence for some of Merleau-Ponty’s prin
cipal claims concerning two major forms of expression, namely, discursive
expression and political action.
Ill
It is well known that from his earliest period Merleau-Ponty denied the
sensefulness or possibility of perfect or complete expression.® I will not,
therefore, belabor this point. But it is useful to stress that this denial is not
based on an experienced or inferred defect in expression. Rather, it is of the
very being of expression to preclude completion or settled perfection. All
expression must be permeable to interruption and renovation. This funda
mental position of Merleau-Ponty’s is both required by and supported by the
experience of silence as an essential constituent in all interruption of a prior
“et cetera.” And each expression finds its full sense only when held in ten
sion both with other expressions and with non-expressive experience. It is
silence which both interrupts expressions and joins them to other expressions
and to non-expressive experience.
The denial of the possibility of perfect and complete expression has sev
eral facets which are worth recalling here. First, there can be no pure
thought which expression only haltingly and defectively manifests. Already in
Phenomenology o f Perception, Merleau-Ponty denied that thought could be
some internal thing which existed in independence from both words and the
perceptual world. “‘Pure’ thought,” he says “reduces itself to a certain void
of consciousness, to a momentary desire (PP, 183).” And in reflecting upon
Husserl’s inachievable attempt to develop universal rigorous science, M er
leau-Ponty saw that in man’s investigation both of things and of himself,
there is no formal a priori which assures him of mastery in advance. The
idea of philosophy as a rigorous science must always appear with a question
mark.9
Just as there cannot be pure thought, so, secondly, there cannot be an
ideal language. An ideal language would not only capture some pure and
perfect thought but it would be completely at the disposal of the speaker. In
fact, however, we always speak a language that transcends us. Even our own
sayings defy our complete control. “To give expression ... is to ensure, by
the use of words already used, that the new intention carries on the heritage
of the past, it is at a stroke to incorporate the past into the present, and weld
that present to a future (PP, 392).” Analogously, since nothing is ever defini
tively acquired and thereafter permanently possessed, there can be no univer
sal painting.10
Merleau-Ponty succinctly summarizes the sort of connection he finds
between thought and language in The Prose o f the World:
Language is not the servant of meaning and does not govern mean
ing. There is no subordination or anything but a secondary distinc
tion between them....In speaking or writing, we do not refer to some
thing to say which is before us distinct from any speech. What we
have to say is only the excess of what we live over what has already
been said (PW, 112).11
Not only is there neither a pure thought nor an ideal language, but thirdly,
there is likewise no unequivocally privileged type of expression. (There are
modes of expression, e.g., dance, speech, political action, etc. And there are
multiple types of expression in each mode. Thus there is scientific discourse,
familial discourse, moral discourse, philosophical discourse, etc., each of
which is a type of expression belonging to the discursive mode.) It is true
that there are passages in Merleau-Ponty’s works where a preeminent status
is apparently allotted to philosophical discourse. I think, though, that it is
inconsistent with the main thrust of Merleau-Ponty’s thought to assign an
unequivocal primacy to any particular type of expression. Perhaps the pas
sages in which Merleau-Ponty apparently accords such a primacy to philos
ophy are to be regarded as remnants of that early strand of Merleau-Ponty’s
thought which sought to anchor expression in something fundamental and
irrecusable. But perhaps, as I think more likely, the difficulty is rooted in
that basic oddity of philosophy, namely that its own task is an issue for itself.
However such passages are to be explained, there is substantial textual
support for denying that there is any uniquely privileged type of expression.
On the one hand, though there are distinct modes of expression, there is no
unequivocal primacy that is to be assigned to any one of them. As Merleau-
Ponty puts it in Phenomenology o f Perception:
There is no fundamental difference between the various modes of

expression, and no privileged position can be accorded to any of
them on the alleged ground that it expresses a truth in itself. Speech
is as dumb as music, music as eloquent as speech (PP, 391).
Not only is there no privileged mode, but, on the other hand, there is no
unequivocally privileged type of expression within any particular mode.
From the standpoint of form or structure, Merleau-Ponty’s claim that there
is no means of expression which, once mastered, can resolve the problems of
painting or transform painting into a technique12 can be generalized to cover
all modes and types of expression.
Similarly, from the standpoint of topics and perspectives on topics, there
is no uniquely privileged type of discursive expression. The special types of
discourse proper to the special sciences and disciplines and that of philoso
phy are just so many parts, not pieces, of the complex articulation of that
unitary relation obtaining among the world, others, and myself which makes
all expression of any sort possible.
Further, this fundamental relation is thoroughly historical. Thus the
truth we attain and express is achieved not in spite of but rather by virtue of
our inherence in history. Our contact with others in history, finite as it is, is
the point of origin of all truth, including philosophical and scientific truth.13
“Somehow politics and culture, anthropology and sociology, psychology and
philosophy are all related, intertwined with one another, together disclosing
the unity and meaning in the lives of men.”14 What holds here for discursive
expression in its multiple types can be generalized to cover all modes of
expression in all of their several types.
The phenomenon of silence, when properly thematized, requires, if not
these very claims made by Merleau-Ponty, then at least claims very much
like them. Since this is the case, then the phenomenon of silence provides
substantial evidence in favor of these claims of his. Specifically, the fact that
performances of silence both interrupt non-discursive experience to open the
way for expression and interrupt expression to allow for an encounter with
some dimension of non-discursive experience reveals that we are never in
volved either with pure thought or with ideal language. Whatever stream of
performances we are engaged in is always experienced as being in need of
supplementation drawn from performances of some other sort. This is the
experience of finitude and awe which motivates the performance of silence.

Further, the oscillation among levels of discursive expression and between
the zone of discursive expression and those of non-discursive experience
which is maintained by silence undercuts the pretension of any mode or type
of expression to unequivocally privileged status. Finally, since silence does
not intend already determinate objects of any sort, it is not performed to
open the way either for addressing any uniquely privileged topic, e.g., God,
or for employing any uniquely privileged style, e.g., the epic poetic style.
There is, of course, a positive aspect to Merleau-Ponty’s acknowledgment
of human finitude and consequent rejection of pure thought, ideal language,
and unequivocally privileged modes and types of discourse. Since, as I have
mentioned above, Merleau-Ponty does not regard finitude as a defect to be
endured but rather as the very condition for being and performing, silence
does not defeat discourse by frustrating some aim for completeness. Rather,
silence permits discourse to flourish by being differentiated. This vie\y led
Merleau-Ponty to two important, closely related insights. The first is that
each lively particular expression, each expression of something genuinely
new, whatever its mode, type, topic, or style effects an opening for further
expression rather than brings to conclusion a line of endeavor. Second,
man’s fundamental way of living and expressing the world is interrogatory.
Taken together, these insights claim for irreducible openness and the finitude
ingredient therein the accolade of achievement rather than the opprobrium
of failure.
To appreciate the first insight, one should recall that, for Merleau-Ponty,
expression is action. So, for that matter, is perception.15 Diversified expres
sion is diversified action. By reason of this diversification, the way is kept
open for other expression, for other action, for other perception. Thus ex
pression, in its diverse performances, manifests the historical character of all
action, including that action which is expression.
The fact that each particular expression belongs to one among many
types and modes of expression and that even within its own type and mode it
is only one of several expressions in no way indicates weakness or deficiency
in the particular expression. That it has not ‘said the final word’ about its
topic is not a flaw, but rather is its glory. In Merleau-Ponty’s words:
As for the history of art works, if they are great, the sense we give to
them later on has issued from them. It is the work itself that has
opened the field from which it appears in another light. It changes

itself and becomes what follows; the interminable reinterpretations to
which it is legitimately susceptible change it only in itself (EM, 254).
What holds good for art works, holds good for all expressive achieve
ments which are lively or fresh. Here again Merleau-Ponty is explicit:
...If no work is ever completed and done with, still each creation
changes, alters, enlightens, deepens, confirms, exalts, recreates, or
creates in advance all the others. If creations are not a possession, it
is not only that, like all things, they pass away; it is also that they
have almost all their life still before them (EM, 286; see also 274).
The phenomenon of silence with its basic characteristics provides sub

stantial corroboration for this insight of Merleau-Ponty’s. By virtue of its
interrupting the inertial “et ceteras” of particular streams of performances
and its maintaining an oscillation and tension among the various kinds of
performances, silence performs three related functions. First, it clears the
way for genuinely new works to take their place within a history of works.
Second, it is appropriately intercalated with expression to constitute a work
as something sufficiently distinct to belong to some specific type and mode of
expression. And third, by pervading the work silence preserves it from defin
itive fixation and so grants it the openness requisite for a life which is in
fluential over an extended period of time.
Moreover, by reason of the clarification of the sense of intersubjectivity
effected through variegated performances of silence, there is engendered the
motivation for acknowledging and responding to the historical possibilities
that arise from each genuine work. The work is not a definitive assertion.
Rather it is a call for a response which is sufficiently reticent in itself to
permit answers. Each answer, like the work itself, is not a private possession
of its author but rather is a communal spring for continued endeavor.
Appreciation of the sense of intersubjectivity leads to Merleau-Ponty’s
capital insight that man’s fundamental way of living and expressing the world
is interrogatory. Men exist as so many interrogations addressed to a world
which does not speak but which itself exists in the interrogative mode.16
Reflection, Merleau-Ponty says, “must question the world ... must enter into
the forest of references that our interrogation arouses in it ... must make it
say, finally, what in its silence it means to sayQfl, 39).”
It is useful here to make explicit the constituents of the act of interroga
tion. First, interrogation presupposes that whatever discourse may have
preceded it is somehow unfinished. Second, in its usual, routine occurrences,
interrogation takes place through positing some distinct elements or entities.
This feature of interrogation is at the root of the truism that the question
already contains the answer within itself. Third, interrogation itself responds
to something encountered as at least partially opaque to the interrogator.
Thus the question itself, and not merely the answer, has the character of a
response. Fourth, though interrogation involves initiative on the part of the
interrogator, as responsive it also involves his dependence upon or belonging
to that which elicits his response. Fifth, interrogation which initiates new or
lively expression interrupts the inertial “et cetera” of some previously es
tablished stream of expression.
Reflection on these characteristics of interrogation reveals that the very
sense of interrogation requires that it be constituted by both silence and
expression. Given the pervasive intercalation of silence and expression in all
of its modes and types, and given that man is the unitary totality whose es
sential moments are perception, thought, expression, and action, then there
is substantial warrant for Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that the interrogative is
not a form of either negation or affirmation. It is in no way derived from
the indicative. Rather, it is that basic way of aiming at something which
cannot be exhaustively satisfied by any statement or answer. For Merleau-
Ponty, man not only manifests this sort of interrogation in all of his expres
sion, man is such an interrogation.
Man as interrogator does not engender his interrogation ex nihilo. It
springs from and responds to desire, especially, but not exclusively, the desire
to share with other people. Once I see another who sees, “movement, touch,
vision, applying themselves to the other and to themselves, return toward
their source and, in the patient and silent labor of desire, begin the paradox
of expression (VI, 144).”17
To make fully explicit the motivated, responsive character of interroga
tion, I would like to propose here an amendment to Merleau-Ponty’s ac
count. Though his position can readily accommodate this amendment, it is
non-trivial. I suggest that in those manifestations of interrogation which
inaugurate new discourse, there is an essential constituent which can be
Philosophy o f Language and Political Thougfit 31
called the exclamatory.1® The exclamatory springs from an encounter with

the surprising, the intruding. The exclamatory as such neither posits nor
achieves anything. Like interrogation, the exclamatory involves both expres
sion and silence. In questioning, however, expression is mature. In exclama
tion, expression is primitive and fresh. In the exclamatory, man does not yet
instigate an inquiry. Rather he hears a call to which it makes sense to re
spond. This hearing exclamation is indeed responsive but it has not yet forg
ed its own response.
My amendment does not assert that the exclamatory is more fundamen
tal than the interrogatory. Rather it understands the fundamental interroga
tive itself to be exclamatory. Merleau-Ponty comes close to saying precisely
this in his essay “The Metaphysical in Man,” in Sense and Non-Sense:
From the moment I recognize that my experience, precisely insofar

as it is my own, makes me accessible to what is not myself, that I am
sensitive to the world and to others, all the beings which objective
thought placed at a distance draw singularly nearer to me. Or, con
versely, I recognize my affinity with them; I am nothing but an ability
to echo them, to understand them, to respond to them (SNS, 94).
But even if my amendment is left aside, Merleau-Ponty’s claims concern

ing fundamental interrogation find corroboration from the pervasive inter
calation between silence and discursive expression. As I noted above, si
lence, motivated by finitude and awe, interrupts “et ceteras.” It interrupts
the non-expressive desire to open the way for expression. But expression is
not all of a piece. The “et ceteras” of each kind of expression must also be
interrupted for the exploration, the interrogation, to proceed. As my analysis
of silence would imply, these interruptions are not performed in an effort to
achieve a final, determinate object of any sort. Rather they serve to establish
and maintain an oscillation among the zones of expression and those of non-
expressive experience. Within and through the oscillation which charac
terizes the multiple facets of interrogation, the full sense of intersubjectivity,
first encountered in desire, is elucidated.
What I have said thus far is sufficient to substantiate one part of my
principal thesis, namely that the phenomenon of silence provides evidence
for some of Merleau-Ponty’s claims concerning discursive expression. I turn
now to the second part of my thesis which claims that the same thing holds
true for his principal claims concerning political action.
IV
Just as Merleau-Ponty denies the possibility of pure thought and com

plete discursive expression, so he explicitly denies the possibility of pure
action, perfect moments, and permanent revolutions. These denials, found
both in Humanism and Terror and in Adventures o f the Dialectic19 form the
basis of his positive insights concerning the structure of genuine political
action. Much political conduct, of course, consists of discourse. And there
is no political action which is radically divorced from discourse. Violence
unmediated by discourse is not political action. But not all of political action
is reducible to discourse, even though all political action is expressive. What
I am concerned with here is this non-discursive expressivity ingredient in
political action. This kind of expressivity, like discursive expressivity, cannot
sensibly aspire to purity or perfection.
Action indeed involves initiative but is it always an initiative whose out
come is not completely determined by the initiator. In this sense there is no
pure action. One the one hand, all political action both creates civilization
and opportunities for community and at the same time encroaches upon
one’s fellow men. There is an important sense in which law, the instrument
of peace and order, is intrinsically violent.20 On the other hand, courage and
sacrifice are not radically separable from masochism and the death instinct.21
Merleau-Ponty concludes:
But what if our actions were neither necessary in the sense of natural
necessity nor free in the sense of decision ex nihilol In particular,
what if in the social order no one were innocent and no one ab
solutely guilty? What if it were the very essence of history to impute
to us responsibilities which are never entirely ours? What if all free
dom is a decision in a situation which is not chosen but assumed all
the same? We would then be in the painful situation of never being
able to condemn with good conscience, although it is inevitable that
we exercise condemnation (HT, 166-167).
All actions, even war, have a symbolic component and no action can
/■laim as its own all that transpires after it. Pure action is, for the most part,
a myth.22 Pure action is either suicide or murder. “Generally, it is an imagi
nary (and not, as Sartre believes, an ideal) action (AD, 118).”
It follows from the denial of the possibility of pure action that there are
neither perfect moments nor permanent revolutions. Though Merleau-Ponty
does not expressly draw these conclusions in Humanism and Terror, and
though he does claim there that Marxism as a critique of the present world
and alternative humanisms, cannot be surpassed, nonetheless, his recognition
that history has sundered the Marxist synthesis of humanism and collective
production and there is no test moment for the claims of either the later
Hegel or the young Marx23 points in the direction of these conclusions. In
Adventures o f the Dialectic, however, these conclusions are explicitly ac
knowledged. There he points out the impossibility of the idea of permanent
revolution. This idea, which Merleau-Ponty finds at work in Trotsky and
Sartre among others, is, like pure action, a myth.24 Revolutions which suc
ceed must degenerate when they become regimes. They “are true as move
ments and false as regimes (AD, 207).”
Perfect moments in political conduct would be those in which constraint
is unnecessary. It may be that there are privileged moments in which con
straint is minimal. But these moments can neither last nor be reproduced at
will. And even in these moments the traces of constraint which remain her
ald the institutions of coercion which necessarily follow.25 This is not to deny
that there are indeed privileged moments. But it is to deny these moments
are absolutely privileged.
Again, the denial of the possibility of pure action, perfect moments, and
permanent revolutions is not the admission of a fatal flaw. Rather it is the
acknowledgment of the actual conditions which make human political a-
chievement possible. As Merleau-Ponty concludes in Humanism and Terror.
The human world is an open or unfinished system and the same

radical contingency which threatens it with discord also rescues it
from the inevitability of disorder and prevents us from despairing of
it, providing only that one remembers its various machineries are
actually men and tries to maintain and expand man’s relations to
man (HT, 188).
The ineluctable intercalation of silence and expression forestalls the

possibility of pure action, perfect moments, or permanent revolutions. There
can be no pure silence, no pure interruption. Nor can there be pure expres
sion. The finitude and awe which motivate the interruptions effected by
silence do not merely prevent the achievement of some ideal condition.
They rather reveal that the ideals of purity and completeness are idols if they
are taken to be immutable and absolute.
Again, Merleau-Ponty’s denial of pure action, perfect moments, and
permanent revolutions opens the way for substantial positive claims concern
ing political conduct. I wish to look at these and note their connection with
silence.
The first claim concerns political freedom, a liberty which is inherently
finite. Liberty, Merleau-Ponty says, has to be made in a world which is not
predestined to it.26 Liberty is to be made. But it is not made against the
world. Rather the world is its necessary context. No politics simply accepts
events. No politics “renounces the right of posing the problem in a different
way than it is posed in the moment .... A politics which would lack any re
course against the factual situation and its dilemmas would not be a living
politics (AD, 104).” But this does not imply detachment from situations. To
the contrary, political conduct is effective and true only if the led ratify the
deeds of the leader. And there is no one who is either exclusively leader or
exclusively led.27 What provides for the tension between the situation and
the deed on the one hand and the tension between the leaders and the led
on the other is the silence which establishes and maintains the oscillation
within levels of discursive expression, between discursive expression and
political conduct, and between the zones of expression and non-expressive
experience. In and through the intercalation of silence and expression the
complex sense of intersubjectivity can unfold. In fact, freedoms interfere
with and require one another. No man “by himself is subject nor is he free
(AD, 205).”
The next claim of Merleau-Ponty’s which I wish to mention here is close
ly tied to the ones concerning political liberty. It has to do with political
commitment. For genuine commitment, one commits himself to learn con
tinually more about that to which he commits himself. The motto of this
kind of conduct is Clarum per obscurius. (The clear through the more ob
scure.) If I am to go beyond the structured situation into which I have been
born, “it is not by deciding to give my life this or that meaning; rather, it is
by attempting simply to live what is offered me, without playing tricks with
the logic of the enterprise, without enclosing it beforehand inside the limits
of a premeditated meaning (AD, 197).” Commitment, then, requires heark
ening as well as initiating. It requires silence as well as positive expression.
Most fundamentally, for Merleau-Ponty, the standard against which poli
tical conduct is to be measured is whether it acknowledges and sustains the
interrogative dialectic which alone allows history, if not to achieve truths, at
least to slough off errors. Dialectical praxis, like dialectical thought, extracts
from each situation and event a truth which goes beyond it. History is, then,
a permanent, open interrogation.28 Already in Humanism and Terror, M er
leau-Ponty recognizes the danger of the dialectic collapsing into a non-dialec-
tical positivism.29 His justification in Adventures o f the Dialectic for a non
communist left is precisely that it would keep open dialectical interrogation,
keep open self-criticism.30 It is by virtue of the power of interrupting, the
power of not doing, that both the sheer fiat and the representation of some
ideal terminus or goal of action disappear.31 The living interrogatory dialec
tic is the manifestation of their absence.
The characteristics of the phenomenon of silence which I identified a-
bove clearly require and provide evidence for something like the interrogato
ry dialectical political action called for by Merleau-Ponty. Political action is
always conduct with others. As such it requires and is made possible by the
silence of yielding to others as well as by the initiating expression. This
conduct is neither rootless nor directed to an already determinate goal. In
its pursuits it is restrained and awaits confirmation from beyond itself. This
conduct, as perpetually interrogatory and self-critical, interrupts any “et ce
tera” which would reduce the dialectic to positivism or mechanism. It is
silence, motivated as it is by finitude and awe, which requires and makes
possible political action of this sort. And the oscillation which silence main
tains among kinds of expression and between the expressive and the non-
expressive makes possible the continued revitalization of this dialectical ac
tion. Thus, as the second part of my main thesis asserts, the phenomenon of
silence, when properly thematized, both requires and provides evidence for
some of Merleau-Ponty’s principal insights into political action.
My argument in this paper has not tried to establish that the claims of
Merleau-Ponty discussed here are precisely the unique claims which atten
tion to the phenomenon of silence requires and substantiates. It is of the
very sense of silence that it could not establish any such exorbitant claim.
But my argument has shown that Merleau-Ponty was alert to the phenome
non of silence and that, even though he did not treat it thematically, it in
fused and sustained some of his fundamental claims concerning both discur
sive expression and political action. Thus, the phenomenon of silence pro
vides a central link between these two major strands of Merleau-Ponty’s
philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thought:
Its Nature and Its Challenge
In the preface to Signs, Maurice Merleau-Ponty explicitly directs us to

think history according to the model of langage (parlance) or of being. We
are, he says, “in the field of history as in the field of parlance or of being.”1
That is, we are born into history as we are born into both parlance and per
ceptual being. These fields are neither chaotic nor fully determinate. Rather
they all both manifest previously established structures and at the same time
provide the resources and opportunities required for us to make our own
distinctive contributions.
Less explicitly but nonetheless clearly Merleau-Ponty also thinks politics

according to this same pattern. This is indicated by the regularity with which
his remarks on politics are connected with a discussion of history. In this
paper I want to show just how this pattern is at play in his political thought.
The politics that emerges from such an approach is properly characteriz-
able as a politics of hope. Such a politics is, to be sure, subject to substantial
challenges. But a politics of hope also provides a striking alternative to some
prevailing approaches to politics. The last remarks of this paper will try to
sketch the major lines of the challenges that a politics of hope both poses
and is subject to.
Politics is a special case of both history and parlance.2 Like both, politics
is constituted in its actuality by an agency that is always situated. On the one
hand, though Merleau-Ponty does not, to my knowledge, say so explicitly, the
specific character of concrete political situations consists of the particular

intertwining of men and things that obtains at some juncture of time and
geography. On the other hand, political agency is the endeavor to preserve
or modify directly the prevailing shape of the intertwining. That is, whereas
productive industry works on the intertwining through working on things and
thought works on the intertwining through working on men, politics works on
both men and things through working on their intertwining.
To be more specific about the consequences of thinking politics as a
special case of both history and parlance, let me detail how the central ele
ments of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought are structurally comparable to the
principal features of parlance that Merleau-Ponty appropriated from Saus-
surean linguistics. These features are: (1) the distinction between langue
(language) and parole (speech), (2) the distinction between the synchronic
and the diachronic dimensions of language, and (3) the essentially intersub-
jective character of all parlance.3
Consider first the political counterpart of the distinction between lan
guage and speech. Just as no speech can be articulated apart from the back
ground of the language in which it is uttered, so no political accomplishment
can be achieved apart from the previously established background of “things”
and institutions. The things in question here are not, of course, mere things.
They are things recognized as available or unavailable material or cultural
resources. That is, they are institutionalized things. Thus, there can be no
genuine political enterprises today that ignore the presence or absence of
such cultural resources as the prevailing legal, educational, and religious
institutions. Nor can the relative availability of material resources such as
oil, grain, cobalt, or copper be overlooked. And the same holds good for
both the level of technology and industry and the quantity, quality, and dis
tribution of military might. All these elements, and more, enter into the
constitution of the political language that both makes possible and constrains
the political speech. Any putative political initiative that pretends that the
specific background whence it arises is irrelevant is mere babble.
But just as language neither dictates nor necessitates some specific
speech, so neither does the political situation decree or necessitate a specific
political undertaking. No living politics simply acquiesces in the factual situa
tion as it finds it. Every politics, Merleau-Ponty says, insists upon its right to
alter the way in which its tasks and problems are posed.4 Indeed, this altera
Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thougfit 39
tion is not merely a right that a politician may exercise at his discretion. The
transformation of the situation is constitutive of politics itself.
Precisely what Merleau-Ponty praises in Machiavelli is the latter’s recog
nition that we need never be mere victims of fortuna, of some given political
situation. Political action consists in a grasp of the concrete possibilities that
the situation presents coupled with a bold effort to actualize them.5 Thus,
genuine politics requires not merely the acknowledgement of the weight of
the determinate political situation, the language in which one finds oneself
located, but also the risky endeavor to transform that situation, to revivify it
by the exercise of virtu, the uttering of the new speech.
Nothing, of course, guarantees ahead of time that the new political en
deavor will either succeed or be appropriate. Even if, as the Marxists have
it, men make their own history, still they often do not and cannot know the
history they are making.6 In Merleau-Ponty’s words, “If everything counts in
history we can no longer say as Marxists do that in the last analysis historical
logic always finds its ways, that it alone has a decisive role, and that it is the
truth of history.”7 For one thing there is no last analysis. For another, con
tingency and not merely logic is ineliminable from human affairs.
Political situation and political initiative, then, like language and speech,
belong together. Each has its sens, its meaning and direction, only by reason
of its reference to the other.
II
The ramifications of thinking politics according to the language-speech

model become clearer when one takes note of the counterpart in Merleau-
Ponty’s political thought to the Saussurean distinction between the synchronic
and the diachronic dimensions of language. Here I want to call particular
attention to one feature of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought that emphasizes
the synchronic dimension of the political situation and two features that
emphasize the diachronic dimension.
First, the synchronic feature. For Merleau-Ponty it makes no sense to

attempt to divide the elements of the political situation into unqualified
blessings and unmitigated curses. As is the case with language, in political
situations there are no elements that have full sense apart from the context
in which they are located. Every element of the political situation is simply
a component of a whole. None is self-subsisting with an independent posi

tive meaning. Any responsible political initiative, like any speech, must ac
knowledge the irreducible complexity of the context against which it arises.
Responsible initiative must avoid what Merleau-Ponty calls, in a somewhat
different setting, the cops and con-men conception of history and politics.8
Thus, for example, capitalism cannot be regarded as unmitigated evil nor
does Soviet Communism deserve simplistic, virulent denunciations. Each has
its meaning in function of the other.9
The diachronic features of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought, however,
introduce subtle but substantial modifications into this conclusion. First,
however systematically intertwined the elements of the political situation may
be, none of them is so definitively fixed in its meaning and bearing that it
preserves some identical sense regardless of all temporal considerations.10
This fact is, of course, a necessary condition for any political initiative. But
more to the present point, this fact requires that political initiative not at
tempt either to reverse history or to annihilate the effective weight of any
thing brought by history to the present situation. Such attempts would be to
plan for an imagined world that can no longer exist.
For example, Western men and Third World peoples have already come
into contact with one another. Even though the terms of this context have
been nothing for either side to boast about, that is no sufficient reason for
either side to try to withdraw and perhaps start afresh. It makes no sense to
consider this contact simply evil. And, as Merleau-Ponty puts it, “In any
case, it is something settled; there can be no question of recreating archaism;
we are all embarked and it is no small matter to have begun this game.”11
But, of course, as Merleau-Ponty makes clear in his essay on Indochina, this
does not mean that a failed specific policy must be clung to simply because it
has been the policy.12
But no one can guarantee that an initiative which acknowledges both the
synchrony of the elements in the political situation and the uniqueness of the
temporal movement that each of the elements inhabits will succeed and be
preserved intact as part of a new situation, a new political language. This is
a second diachronic feature. All shifts in the situation are indeed brought
about by external influence, here specific initiatives. But the outcome of
these influences is always not only particular but also in some measure un
predictable. What Merleau-Ponty says of history is likewise applicable to
politics. Politics “works on a question that is confusedly posed and is not
Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thought 41
sheltered from regressions and setbacks.”13 As a consequence neither a

science nor an intuition can prescribe an undertaking whose outcome can be
guaranteed. This fact disappoints those who believe in a definitive salvation
and a single means to salvation.14 But his fact does not make initiative ab
surd. To the contrary, it calls for unending initiative, virtu without resigna
tion of any sort.
At least two other significant aspects of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought
can be seen to be entailed by the necessity of considering the political situa
tion both synchronically and diachronically. First, Merleau-Ponty recognizes
that all political initiative that is efficacious must be timely. Though there is
no ideal or perfect moment for initiating some specific action, there are
timely and untimely ones. What once could have been a solution to a prob
lem ceases to be one. Or a problem that once had a likely solution no long
er does but may in the future again do so. From another standpoint a par
ticular agent’s capacities to engender solutions can both wax and wane. And
do what one may, neither the appropriateness of the solution nor its timeli
ness can be guaranteed in advance.13
Second, and of major importance for Merleau-Ponty, the consideration
of both the diachronic and the synchronic dimensions of the political situa
tion leads to a distinctive view of the institutions that men inhabit. Institu
tions, he insists, are not inert. With Marx, Merleau-Ponty holds that there is
a coming-to-be of meaning in institutions.16 Sartre notwithstanding, institu
tions, as social apparatuses, are human and cannot be set over against man
as something less than human.17
Rather, institutions endow our experiences with durable dimensions and
allow them to form a history. At the same time, they invite us to further
experience and thus make possible a future.18 Indeed, far from regarding
institutions as obstacles to freedom and political creativity, Merleau-Ponty
maintains that one of the most crucial political tasks for our era is “to find
institutions which implant this practice of freedom in our customs.”19
Ill
When one considers parlance in a Saussurean fashion, one realizes that

parlance necessarily involves a historical community of speakers. There is no
isolated individual speech.20 All parlance is intersubjective. Genuinely to
speak is also to hear.21
This feature of parlance, too, has its structural counterpart in politics.

All politics, whether domestic or international, is necessarily intersubjective:
political leaders and the people they lead are ordained to one another. They
meet and address each other by virtue of the interworld constituted by in
stitutions and the cultural and material resources that the institutions pro
vide. No one, Merleau-Ponty says, either commands or obeys absolutely.22
When one attends to the fact that political activity is not only intersub
jective but also embedded in some unique situation that involves institutions,
one realizes that politics is essentially dialectical. This dialectic, of course,
neither moves toward some pre-established terminus nor does it subsume
everything under itself. Contingency is never banished from it.23 As is true
of all history, in politics there is no immunity from error. The rational al
ways remains to be imagined and created. Politics never gains the power of
simply replacing the false with the true.24
One consequence of the open dialectic that genuine politics is is that it is
always appropriate to consider complicating or altering the terms of the
prevailing dialectic precisely to further the dialectic. Thus, it made sense for
Merleau-Ponty to promote a new left force that would transform the inter
changes between the United States and the Soviet Union by becoming a full
participant in the expanded dialectic.25
Further, because politics involves an open dialectic, genuine politics re
quires forebearance. It necessarily takes people as they are, with their preju
dices, notions, and so forth.26 This forebearance is not a matter of strategy.
It is required because no agent can be a pure presence either to itself or to
some object.27 No one alone can possess the truth either about him- or
herself or about the world.
Dialectical politics thus demands an opposition that is free. Truth and
action can never come together, Merleau-Ponty says, “if there are not, along
with those who act, those who observe them, who confront them with the
truth of their action, and who can aspire to replace them in power.”28 These
and similar considerations lead Merleau-Ponty to his well-known endorse
ment of parliaments. Whatever its limitations, and clearly it has limitations,
parliament is the significant institution, a proven element in the political
situation, against which fresh, free, and living political initiative, political
speech, can stand forth. “Parliament,” according to Merleau-Ponty, “is the
only known institution that guarantees a minimum of opposition and truth.”29
It likewise preserves the opposition needed to insure an intersubjectivity

worthy of the name.
However forebearing and dialectical politics may be, it still involves the
amassing and wielding of power. There can be no effective freedom, the
freedom necessary for dialectical politics, without power.30 Those who amass
this power do so without the benefit of some unimpeachable prior title to it.
Their power can only find its legitimation in their exercise of it.31 In wielding
power one necessarily impinges upon others. But political abstention is no
solution. It simply yields the initiative to others. Merleau-Ponty therefore
concludes, “I would rather be a part of a country which does something in
history than of a country which submits to it.”32 Unless people risk the revi
talizing “speech” of political initiative, the institutions from which they have
drawn their sustenance will either ossify or grant their opportunities to oth
ers, others who will be left without the benefit of appropriate opposition.
What I have said thus far about politics, on the basis of thinking it ac
cording to the model of parlances, takes on another dimension when one
attends to the fact that there is no universal parlance. There is only a multi
plicity of parlances that undergo translation into one another. Similarly there
is no universal politics. There are only multiple concrete politics. Different
times and lands have different institutions and stocks of cultural and material
resources. These differences call for and make possible different initiatives.
It is idle to weigh situations against some abstract standard. Situations are to
be lived through, not judged from some putatively independent spectator’s
vantage point.33
But even if the appropriate political initiative, the concrete political
speech, is always geared to a specific, more or less local, situation, Merleau-
Ponty holds that today all responsible politics must be resolutely internation
al. “The main concern of our time is going to be to reconcile the old world
and the new.”34 This intertwining of the local and the global is not the
achieving of a teleologically ordained ideal. It is simply a contingent fact of
our era. But today it is a fact of consummate importance.
These two considerations, namely that there is no single universal politics
but that today responsible politics must be international, are summarized by
Merleau-Ponty in this way:
There is no universal clock, but local histories take form beneath our
eyes, and begin to regulate themselves, and haltingly link themselves
to one another and demand to live, and confirm the powerful in the
wisdom which the immensity of the risks and the consciousness of
their own disorder had given them. The world is more present to
itself in all its parts than it ever was.35
Politics, like parlance, then, is not a seamless, stable whole. Rather it is a

vibrating, moving complex.
IV
When politics is thought according to the model of parlance, the charac

ter of political judgment must be thought in a distinctive way. Merleau-Pon
ty has made this explicit. He says:
Political and historical judgment will perhaps never be objective; it

will always be a bastard judgment. But precisely for this reason it
escapes morality as well as pure science. It is of the category of
action, which makes for continual oscillation between morality and
science.36
Political judgment, that is, is not to be identified with the sort of moral judg
ment that would spring from some Kantianesque categorical imperative a-
dopted without regard for material circumstances. Political judgment does
not pretend to have the sort of autonomy that moral judgment of this kind
must presuppose. On the other hand, political judgment is no mere ac
knowledgment of some already established state of affairs and the conse
quences derivable therefrom. Unlike scientific judgments, political judg
ments are neither mere predictions nor mere retrodictions. They are inven
tive. They issue in actions that modify the prevailing state of affairs. This
distinctive character of political judgments makes sense, Merleau-Ponty
maintains, because the world to which they refer is dense and mobile and
not, as Sartre would have it, opaque and rigid 37
But even if politics is not reducible to morality, it is nonetheless not
contrary to morality. In fact, there must be a positive relationship between
them.38 Granted that values and principles are insufficient for genuine poli
tics, they are nonetheless necessary. There must be, Merleau-Ponty recog
nizes, a guideline to distinguish between political virtu, the excellence in
Merieau-Ponty’s Political Thought 45
acquiring and wielding power to make the most of the opportunities provi
ded by fortuna, and political opportunism, the make-shift accommodation to
prevailing pressures aiming merely at survival.39
For Merleau-Ponty, I think, this guideline consists in making the preser
vation and extension of the dialectic the overarching objective of all political
initiatives. Political judgments, for all their regard for the situation to which
they are inextricably linked, must all issue in action that has this as its ul
timate objective. This guideline warrants Merleau-Ponty’s conclusion that
reform, far from being outmoded, “alone is the order of the day.”40 This
conclusion in turn provides the basis for Merleau-Ponty’s support for par-
liamentarianism as the best candidate for that form or institution that can
keep power in reins without annulling it.
In brief, then, political judgment inhabits an interworld. It draws upon
and oscillates between imperatives of will and acknowledgment of facts.
Thus, on the one hand, it itself has structural features like those of parlance.
On the other hand, the specific content of genuine political judgments re
veals that they refer to a world that is appropriately thought according to the
model of parlance.
Before I attempt to assess the results of Merleau-Ponty’s thought about
politics, it is worth noticing that his approach to both politics and parlance is
simply an application of his general philosophical position to these two do
mains. Or from another standpoint the ways in which Merleau-Ponty han
dles the topics of politics, history, and parlance are the ways in which he
handles all philosophical topics. He says:
It is true that in the last resort there is no judge, that I do not think
according to the true alone, nor according to myself alone, nor ac
cording to the other alone, because each of the three has need of the
other two and it would be a non-sense to sacrifice any one. A phil
osophical life always bases itself on these three cardinal points. The
enigma of philosophy (and of expression) is that sometimes life is the
same to oneself, to others, and to the true. These are the moments
which justify it. The philosopher counts only on them. He will never
accept to will himself against men, nor to will men against himself,
nor against the true, nor the true against them.41
Let me now turn to an assessment of the consequences of Merleau-Pon

ty’s thinking politics according to the model of parlance. As a first step, I
want to show that this way of thinking politics yields what can appropriately
be called a politics of hope. Then I want to raise the issue of whether a
politics of hope, as an alternative to other kinds of politics, is an acceptable
basis for political conduct.
In calling Merleau-Ponty’s politics a politics of hope, I am using the term
‘hope’ in a sense much like that developed by Gabriel Marcel in his essay,
“Sketch of a Phenomenology and a Metaphysic of Hope.”42 Hope, Marcel
points out, has no antecedently determinate object, no ultimate accomplish
ment or state of affairs that would terminate it. Hope involves, rather, an
abiding union of persons. Its proper formulation is: I hope in you for us.43
Further, Marcel holds, hope always implies a connection between a return
and something completely new. Preservation or restoration, on the one
hand, and renewal on the other, are two aspects of one and the same unitary
movement. What hope aspires to, according to Marcel, is the paradoxical
“as before, but differently and better than before.”44 Merleau-Ponty’s poli
tics, I suggest, both rests upon this sort of hope and aims at having as many
people as possible embrace this hope. It is a politics whose ultimate aim is
to free as many people as possible to take part in a dialectic that has no
terminus.45
The sense of the hope that inspires Merleau-Ponty’s politics takes clearer
shape when it is contrasted with attitudes contrary to hope. First, hope is
opposed both to fideism and to sheer voluntarism. These are two vices that
have shown up rather often in both Communist and capitalist practice. Both
of them, at times, have dogmatically taken their own principles and insights
to be exhaustive of political wisdom, disregarding in the process available
evidence to the contrary. At other times both of them have pursued policies
recognizably inconsistent with their own principles simply for the advantage
of those amassing and wielding power. The former vice is tantamount to
fanaticism, the latter to cynicism.
By contrast, a politics of hope preserves and protects opposition to itself.
Without opposition the dialectic that constitutes politics would be truncated,
in effect terminating politics. Without such opposition there would be no
you in whom I could hope for us. But with opposition both criticism and
Merieau-Ponty's Political Thought 47
self-criticism can flourish. And criticism is a sine qua non if errors are to be
sloughed off.
Second, a politics of hope avoids the twin pitfalls of presumption and
despair. It avoids presumption by keeping constantly in mind that its own
policies and principles need defense. The mere communication of its own
position is not sufficient to ensure its acceptance. Its opponents do not sim
ply need to be enlightened. They must be coerced into accepting the prac
titioners of hope as fellow actors on the political scene. Even a politics of
hope cannot afford to eschew all violence. A politics of hope, then, avoids
the smug presumptuousness of merely enunciating high-sounding sentiments,
a pose which lacks all seriousness.
On the other hand, a politics of hope never yields to the temptation to
deny freedom. It never despairs. Even if the specific circumstances in which
one lives at present do not furnish a basis for initiative, the practitioner of
hope waits expectantly for changes in that situation that will allow him room
for action. No situation is ever accepted as definitely foreclosing the pos
sibility of exercising virtu. Similarly, the practitioner of hope never consigns
an opponent to the ranks of the perpetual enemy. Today’s opponent may
become tomorrow’s ally. A politics of hope, then, rises above both the trivia
lizing of the differences among men and the absolutizing of any specific set
of those differences.46
In avoiding both presumption and despair, a politics of hope reveals the
essential role that forgiveness occupies in its makeup. What Merleau-Ponty
says about Claudel is applicable to his own standards for responsible political
conduct. Claudel, Merleau-Ponty says, forgives readily after the deed, even
though he lays stringent requirements on both the prospective conduct and
the actual prosecution of the deed.47 Because of the contingency and am
biguity of all human enterprises, Merleau-Ponty saw, this forgiveness is ex
tended not only to others but also to oneself. If one is to pursue a politics
of hope, one must not exempt oneself from the ranks of those who need
pardon for their deeds.
But a central question remains. Is a politics of hope an acceptable basis
for political conduct? I will limit my response here to preliminary remarks
concerning how politics of this sort would fare when confronted with two
tests. Merleau-Ponty himself recognized that a defensible political doctrine
must satisfy these tests. First, does Merleau-Ponty’s politics of hope, unlike
the politics of Machiavelli for example, possess a sufficiently strong guideline
for distinguishing between political virtu and mere opportunism? Is it e-

nough to say that a politics is justified if it tends to preserve and extend the
dialectic, if it tends to promote reform rather than either revolution or the
status quo? At first, it might appear that this is too permissive a standard,
that it permits too much. But I think that this appearance is deceptive.
Given Merleau-Ponty’s view of the dialectic in question here, this guideline
turns out to be stringent. To satisfy this guideline, the policy or deed in
question should in principle be recognizable to everyone as something that
each person or state could rationally endorse being carried out by someone,
even if not by oneself. If I am correct about this matter, then Merleau-Pon-
t / s guideline is hardly too lax. If anything, it could be challenged as being
so rigorous that it cannot in practice be observed. On my reading, Merleau-
Ponty’s position does not fall victim to the same fault from which Machiavel-
li’s politics suffered. It might, however, fall victim to the opposite fault, the
fault of legitimating too little instead of too much.48
This possibility leads to a consideration of a second test proposed by
Merleau-Ponty. Can a politics of hope successfully compete against other
types of politics? Though success is not a sufficient condition for justifying a
politics, it is, for Merleau-Ponty, a necessary one.49 The praxis endorsed by
Merleau-Ponty must, if it cannot be true, at least not be false.50
Failure can threaten a politics of hope from two directions. From within,
political agents who adopt the delicate posture of a politics of hope may lose
their footing and collapse into the less demanding positions of complete or
attenuated fideism, voluntarism, presumption, or despair. Given the evi
dence of history, can it be prudently expected that enough people with e-
nough power will risk adopting a politics of hope so that such a politics has
a reasonable prospect of success? To defend Merleau-Ponty’s position, one
would have to hold that the evidence of history, mixed as it is, when coupled
with the new possibilities of global interaction does have such a prospect.
Indeed it may be, and I am inclined to think that it is the case, that in the
novel circumstances that constitute our age, to risk a politics of hope may be
a far slighter risk than is the risk involved in lapsing into any of the available
alternatives.
A politics of hope can also be threatened with failure from without.
How will the practitioners of such a politics fare when confronted with prac
titioners of competing alternatives? To mention only one aspect of this
problem, will not the criticism, from both self and others, to which a politics
of hope is resolutely and unremittingly committed, so weaken it in the execu

tion of its politics that it cannot withstand assaults from fideists or volun
tarists?
No firm rejoinder can be made to this challenge. The available historical
evidence that supports the practical wisdom of living a politics of hope is far
from conclusive. But it is not trivial. Consider, for example, the widespread
and long-standing penchant for federations, leagues, compacts, and so forth.
And there is reason to say that both some Marxists and some capitalists, in
phases of their political conduct that have won approval from diverse quart
ers, have been practicing a politics of hope under another title. At the least,
this evidence is strong enough to permit one to claim that a politics of hope
is not fatuous, that it has not already been refuted by history.
The conclusion, then, to which I am led is that Merleau-Ponty’s politics
of hope does not satisfy beyond all plausible questioning his own tests for a
legitimate politics, a politics that both preserves and extends the dialectic.
But the presently available political alternatives can only pass these tests at
the expense of abandoning this dialectic. If these tests and this objective are
appropriate, and I take it that they are, the failure of its competitors is rea
son enough for adopting a politics of hope. In fact, one would probably be
mistaken if one looked for a stronger conclusion, for politics, like history, has
only errors to be avoided. The truth of politics, as Merleau-Ponty pointed
out, consists in nothing but the “art of inventing what will later appear to
have been required by the times.”51
Merleau-Ponty on Politics, Histoiy, and Violence
Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy readily lends itself to division into

two main periods. The first, Marxian, period began in 1944 and ended in
mid 1950. The second, post-Marxian or “liberal,” period began in mid 1950
and lasted until his death in 1961.
In his recent book, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation o f an Existential
Politics, Kerry Whiteside argues that in his later period Merleau-Ponty pur
chased increased philosophical consistency at the cost of some “political
percipience.” For Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty’s later political thought no
longer conveyed the belief “that there was something vitally important that
could yet be achieved in politics.”1 The loss of this belief, Whiteside con
tends, was a consequence of Merleau-Ponty’s having adopted a Saussurean
philosophy of history according to which history’s meaning can be deter
mined only retrospectively. But, as Merleau-Ponty himself had recognized in
his earlier period,
successful political action requires a mode of thought that, at a mini

mum, grasps the unique nature of human freedom and violence. At
a higher level political thinking becomes a philosophy o f history, since
successful action requires grasping the probable direction o f cultural
development.2
In this paper I want to present reasons for rejecting Whiteside’s judg

ment on the relative inferiority of the second period of Merleau-Ponty’s
political philosophy to the first. His later period, I claim, more faithfully
reflects his appreciation of the finitude, historicality, and intersubjectivity of
the human condition. In doing so, it articulates a more responsible politics.3
To make my case, I will concentrate on the topics of history and vio

lence, topics to which Whiteside rightly gives extensive attention. To them I
will add the topic of history’s “vehicle” or “leading thread,” its vanguard.
After showing how Merleau-Ponty handles these matters in each period of
his political thought, I will give reasons for holding that the later political
position is superior to the former.
It will be helpful, before I begin my argument proper, for me to specify
just what violence, in the context of Merleau-Ponty’s thought, consists in.
The violence in question through both periods is the organized, more or less
systematic, effort of one group of people either to prevent members of an
other group from actualizing possibilities available to them or to eliminate at
least some of those possibilities. This effort is governed by rules and jus
tified by some rationale. In short, it is institutionalized somehow. This ef
fort may be direct, as it is when physical force or psychological pressure is
directed against specific targets. Or it may be mediated, as it is when rules
or social arrangements are established or maintained which lead to the re
pression of the targeted persons or groups.4
During the first period of his political thought, Merleau-Ponty is une

quivocal about the ineliminability of violence. Drawing on Hegel’s Phenome
nology, he holds that, by reason of the human condition itself, history is es
sentially a struggle. History does not just happen. It has to be made, and
made through violence.5 When confronted with the issue of revolutionary
violence we cannot fall back upon “the principle of absolute nonviolence
which ultimately rests on the [untenable] idea of a world that is well and tmly
made” (HT, 87). Because we are incarnate beings, we impinge upon one
another. We are necessarily involved in struggle with others. Violence is
thus our lot. All regimes originate and persist in violence. Thus our choice
is not between purity and violence but only between different kinds of vio
lence (HT,109).
But “he who condemns all violence puts himself outside the domain to
which justice and injustice belong. He puts a curse upon the world and
h u m a n i t y (H T , 1 1 0 ).” Just because violence is inevitable, it does not follow
that the differences among kinds of violence are negligible. Revolutionary
Marxism wagers that the violence it perpetrates in its struggles against bour
Politics, History and Violence 53
geois society is superior to the violence inscribed within the structure of that
society because it can lead to a future in which humanism can flourish.6 The
Marxist does not, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes, justify his violence by affirming
a future that is necessarily better. Rather, the Marxist’s wager is based on “a
judgment of the present as contradictory and intolerable (HT, 105).”
With the Marxist, then, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes “progressive” vio
lence from “regressive” violence. Violence is progressive if it tends toward
its own supersession, if it tends to diminish either the intensity or the extent
of subsequent violence. It is regressive if it tends toward self-perpetuation
or, worse, exacerbation (HT, 1). Thus the essential task for Marxism— and,
Merleau-Ponty clearly implies, for any responsible politics- is to find a vio
lence which is progressive, a violence which
recedes with the approach of man’s future. This is what Marx be
lieved he had found in proletarian violence, namely, the power of
that class of men who, because they are expropriated in present so
ciety from their country, their labor, and their very life, are capable
of recognizing one another aside from all differences, and thus of
founding humanity. Cunning, deception, bloodshed, and dictatorship
are justified if they bring the proletariat into power and to that extent
alone (HT, xviii-xix).
But Merleau-Ponty explicitly acknowledged that this “approach of man’s

future,” a future to be brought about by progressive violence, was by no
means guaranteed. There is no sure method, no science, by which to insure
either that one’s violence will certainly be progressive or that “man’s future”
will ever come into being. In his words: “Even if we assume that there is,
strictly speaking, a science of the past, no one has ever held that there was a
science of the future, and the Marxists are the last ones to do so (HT, 55).”
There can be no science of the future because no theoretical schemas
can foretell either the occurrence or the character of human interventions
(HT, 89). Thus there is not only uncertainty about the future but also a
certain ambiguity about the past and its meaning.
As we consider what is to be done in the future on the basis of what we
know of the past, we must admit that all we can have is a perspective on the
future, a perspective tied to our past (HT, 55). And as we consider what
supposedly progressive interventions we are to make into the flow of history,
we also have to recognize that “there is always the unforeseeable. There is

tragedy (HT, xxxiii).” Indeed, Merleau-Ponty says:
There is a sort of maleficence in history: it solicits men, tempts them

so that they believe they are moving in its direction, and then sud
denly it unmasks, and events change and prove that there was anoth
er possibility (HT,40).
Nevertheless, we cannot do nothing. In history there can be no absolute

neutrality (HT,39). Nor can one legitimately conclude that we can do what
ever we please. Even if our view of the future and its possibilities yields no
certitudes, it does provide us with likelihoods or probabilities. There are
degrees of probability about the future and these are not negligible. None
theless, whatever we do will necessarily involve risk (HT, 65). Helice M er
leau-Ponty concludes:
Since, in respect of the future, we have no other criterion than prob

ability, the difference between a greater or lesser probability suffices
as the basis of a political decision, but not to leave all the honor on
one side and the dishonor on the other (HT, 31).
Given that there can be no science of the future, that history is am
biguous, that at most we can act only on the basis of probabilities or likeli
hoods grasped only perspectivally, and therefore that we cannot avoid risks,
what Marxism provides is an analysis of events which allows us to orient
ourselves. It does so by recognizing “a leading thread (HT, 98),” namely the
proletariat, which has a historical mission to bring about the advent of a
universal class in which all people acknowledge one another’s humanity.
“Perhaps,” Merleau-Ponty says, “a universal class will never emerge, but it is
clear that no other class can replace the proletariat in this task (HT, 156).”
The proletariat’s mission is historical and not providential. This means
that Marxism does not claim either for the party or for the proletariat a
“true vision” or a “mystical predestination” on the basis of which to justify
beyond challenge the violence it perpetrates in the course of its struggle to
bring about the universal class. But Marxism does privilege the proletariat
because of the “internal logic of its condition .... The proletarians ‘who are
not gods’ are the only ones in a position to realize humanity (HT, 111).”
Only they can be history’s vehicle (HT, 118). It is their violence alone which
has the possibility, or perhaps even the likelihood, of being progressive.
In sum, Merleau-Ponty’s early position claims: (a) that there must be
both violence and history; (b) that though there can be no science of either
the future or history, nonetheless we must act, for there can be no neutrality,
since violence is already in progress; (c) that the only reasonable bet to make
violence progressive is the proletariat; (d) that since there is no alternative
on the horizon, one should accept the proletariat and its struggles as a “guid
ing thread” to appropriate future conduct; but (e) that nonetheless one must
never forget either the counterfmality that besets human activity or history’s
sometime maleficence.
Or to use his own words, responsible philosophizing
cannot tell us that humanity will be realized as though it possessed

some knowledge apart and were not itself embarked upon ex
perience, being only a more acute consciousness of it. But it awak
ens us to the importance of daily events and action. For it is a phil
osophy which arouses in us a love for our times which are not the
simple repetition of human eternity nor merely the conclusion to
premises already postulated. It is a view which like the most fragile
object of perception- a soap bubble, or a w ave- or like the most
simple dialogue, embraces indivisibly all the order and all the disor
der of the world (HT, 188-189).
II
In the second period of his political philosophy, Merleau-Ponty continues

to stress both the historicality and the ineradicable violence of politics. So
neutrality is still not an option. And there is still a chance for violence to be
progressive. But unlike his earlier position, his later position does not posit
any specially privileged group of people who are history’s “leading thread” or
vehicle. To admit such a privileged group would be inconsistent with the
Saussurean view of history at work in this latter period.
Whether, as Whiteside apparently holds, Merleau-Ponty had to abandon
the notion of a vanguard group because he had adopted the Saussurean view
of history (MPF, 264-265), or whether the Saussurean view became attractive
to him once he had rejected the notion of a “leading thread” with a unique
historical mission is not of great consequence. But the cumulative result of
rejecting the latter and accepting the former is of considerable importance.
Unlike Whiteside, for reasons I will give in Part III, I hold that this second
period of Merleau-Ponty’s political philosophy makes a marked advance over
his earlier period.7 But now let me recall relevant features of that second
period, the period of “a ‘new liberalism’ which drew on Max Weber as much
as on Marx.”8
In this second period, Merleau-Ponty finds no reason to change his ear
lier view about the ineradicability of violence from politics and hence from
history. Commenting on Weber, he says: “All politics is violence- even, in
its own fashion, democratic politics.”9 People, in their freedom, not only
need one another. They also inevitably interfere with one another. “History
is the history of their dispute, which is inscribed in institutions, in civiliza
tions, and in the wake of important historical actions (AD ,205).” This is true
of individuals and, in politically more important ways, it is also true of clas
ses. So long as there are classes there must be class struggle.
But at the same time, Merleau-Ponty now challenges the notion that
history has either an overarching direction or unity. This challenge bears
directly upon the possibility of progressive violence. First, he rejects the
Marxist notion that there is a logic to history that is in the last analysis deci
sive and that discloses history’s fundamental truth. Such a notion, Merleau-
Ponty argues, both unjustifiably disregards some persons and events and
pretends that there can be some “last analysis.” But we know nothing of
history’s end. Hence there can be no last analysis. And whatever logic his
tory may have, it cannot eliminate radical contingency.10 Second, it is a mis
take to claim that there is a single history. Rather, “there is no universal
clock, but local histories take form beneath our eyes, and begin to regulate
themselves, and haltingly link themselves to one another and demand to live
(5, 35).”
This later, more modest view of what can be gleaned from history re
quires Merleau-Ponty to modify his assessment of what progressive violence
might be. Violence can be progressive only in the same way that the history
in which it takes place is progressive.
Though he continues to admit the possibility of progressive violence,
even of progressive revolutionary violence, Merleau-Ponty now insists that
progress is never absolute, only relative. On the one hand, any historical
progress is always accompanied by loss, indeed by destruction. On the other,

each progressive movement, however much it succeeds, always preserves
itself through institutions which never fail to endanger subsequent progress
(AD, 220-221).
But just because no violence can be absolutely progressive, one should
not conclude “that everything is in vain and that nothing can be done: each
time the struggle is different, the minimum of demandable justice rises (AD,
220).” And so, what is called for is a new liberalism.
This new liberalism in no way diminishes our obligation to play active
roles in politics, to seek to make the unavoidable violence in history progres
sive, even if only relatively so. Already in Humanism and Terror Merleau-
Ponty had remarked: “Only children imagine that their lives are separable
from the lives of others, that their responsibility is limited to what they them
selves have done (HT, 59).” Even if history, and therefore politics, “works
on a question that is confusedly posed and is not sheltered from regressions
and setbacks (AD, 23),” there is no basis for pretending that we are simply
at the mercy of fortuna. Rather, the fact that there is no definitively salvific
politics calls for unceasing initiative, virtu without resignation (S, 35).
What Merleau-Ponty says in 1958 in favor of continued French activism
in Madagascar is generally applicable. It is impossible to wipe the slate
clean of colonialism. “There can be no question of recreating archaism; we
are all embarked and it is no small matter to have begun this game.” And
he adds: “I would rather be a part of a country which does something in
history than of a country which submits to it (S, 336).”
Because there is no overarching single direction to or unity of history,
not only can violence never be more than only relatively progressive. Neither
can there be any particular group of people who hold a uniquely privileged
position as the vehicle of history, who have the unique historical mission to
make history’s violence progressive. As a consequence, Merleau-Ponty with
draws his Pascalian wager on the existence of a vanguard party or group. No
person or group will fully embody historical rationality. And no one will be
wholly and irrevocably divorced from it. “The relationship of one historical
formation to another, like that of one type of man to another, will never be
simply the relationship of true to false (S, 131).”11
The noncommunist left, to which Merleau-Ponty now looks for the pro
motion of the new liberalism, has “given up the philosophical guarantees of
the dictatorship of the proletariat (AD, 227).” It looks for political and his
torical progress only through judgments and actions that prevail in a society
after they have been tested by a free, articulate opposition. The only institu
tion which guarantees at least a minimum of opposition and free truth tell
ing, Merleau-Ponty concludes, is Parliament (AD, 226). Through the system
of parliamentary liberalism which allows all to participate, including both
Communists and capitalists, one has the best hope for a politics whose in-
eliminable violence will be as progressive as history permits.
Ill
This brief account of Merleau-Ponty’s later political philosophy is, I trust,

sufficient to show that at least part of Whiteside’s assessment of it is mis
guided. There is no good reason to say, as he does, that when Merleau-
Ponty
talks of democracy’s “own way” of violence, he can be interpreted as

suggesting that it is not worth trying to eliminate violence wherever it
occurs because some is inherent in the system. By regarding violence
as a universal aspect of politics, he diminishes the incentive to push
at the social system in order to find the inessential forms of violence
it harbors (MPF, 267).
Were there some way, in the absence of a unifying overarching direction to

history, unequivocally to distinguish “essential violence” from “inessential
violence” Merleau-Ponty would surely call for the elimination of the inessen
tial. But even without being able to make such a distinction, Merleau-Pon
ty’s later political thought gives no license for acquiescence in the presence
of violence.
A second part of Whiteside’s criticism, though also mistaken in my view,
deserves more careful consideration. That consideration, I argue, shows that
Merleau-Ponty’s later politics is not only philosophically more consistent than
is his earlier politics but also gains in “political percipience.”
Whiteside claims that since Merleau-Ponty “no longer supposes any
group to prefigure an ethically superior form of social existence, there is no
obvious reason why leaders must observe a dialogical check on their truthful
ness (MPF, 267-268).” Further, even though Merleau-Ponty’s later position
still recognizes the political importance of considering the consequences of
an action in assessing its worth, Whiteside finds it hard to understand “just

how one can act as a consequentialist without being able to foresee the de
velopment of events (MPF, 268).” And worse yet, Merleau-Ponty’s call for
political leaders to invent “what will later appear to have been required by
the time” (AD,29) seems to allow for every kind of political adventurism
(MPF, 268).
Both early and late, Merleau-Ponty emphasized the essentially finite,
historical, intersubjective character of human existence.12 His later politics,
as Whiteside admits (MPF,278), is more consistent with his view of the hu
man condition than is his earlier position. Singling out the proletarian class
as history’s vehicle and as endowed with a uniquely valuable historical mis
sion which allows one reasonably and responsibly to wager that its violence is
unquestionably progressive fits poorly with the doctrine that all human exis
tence is essentially finite, historical and intersubjective.
What makes human action finite is, in part, the inescapable counterfi
nality that affects it. The proletariat, like everyone else, is not exempt from
this limitation. Part and parcel of what it means to say that persons or e-
vents are historical is to say both that they always realize some possibilities
at the expense of leaving others unfulfilled and that their meaning and sig
nificance changes by reason of what transpires after them. Thus, the proleta
riat can have no settled, single mission, direction, or sense. Similarly, inter-
subjectivity is not thoroughgoing unless the perspectival character of all hu
man existence is such that every perspective, whether the proletariat’s or
anyone else’s, stands in need of modification and supplementation by all
other perspectives. In short, if human existence itself, like history, is a per
manent, open interrogation (AD, 56-57 and 204ff), there can be no absolutely
privileged individual or group. For the proletariat as well as for everyone
else a word or judgment of theirs to which there can be no reply is nonsense
and their freedom “is interwoven with that of others by way of the world
(SNS, 147).”
But further, and arguably more importantly, Merleau-Ponty’s later politi
cal philosophy shows, Whiteside notwithstanding, a gain in “political per-
cipience” in at least one crucial respect. It shows a major advance in dealing
with the issue of political violence.
To say as Merleau-Ponty does, both early and late, that violence is in-
eliminable from history and politics, is not to utter a conceptual truth. It is
rather to make a claim about what has always, so far as we know, charac
terized human existence. Further, no matter how ingredient violence is in

human existence, we are still not entitled simply to acquiesce in it. We must
struggle against it. Amelioration cannot be assured. But it must be sought.
Unless we admit that violence can be mitigated, we can make no sense
of Merleau-Ponty’s support in his later period for one regime, namely par-
liamentarianism, over against others. His support presumes that either the
extent of the violence, the sheer number of its victims, or the intensity of the
violence, or both can be reduced even if not abolished. Responsible politics
always aims to reduce it.
But what policies and practices give hope of mitigating violence and what
sort of basis do we have for adopting or maintaining them? Merleau-Ponty’s
later position permits no more than a relatively tenuous justification of the
specific provisions, either substantive or procedural, of any particular policy
or practice. Substantively, there can be no privileged group, e.g. the prole
tariat, which, by virtue of its mission, is in a uniquely favorable position to
determine what is to be done. There is neither a uniquely privileged vantage
point which one can occupy nor a unique set of personal endowments and
traits that one can possess which makes him or her uniquely qualified to
ascertain which policies and practices most effectively minimize violence.
As a consequence, the justification that one can give for the substance of
any concrete political undertaking is never conclusive. There is no absolute
standard to which one could appeal to justify it. One can reasonably claim
no more than that the undertaking in question is better than any presently
available alternative for reducing violence to its minimum. This means that
one can reasonably adopt a policy or practice only hypothetically, only for so
long as nothing more promising is available. Thus the proffered justification
for any particular policy or practice always calls for further open interroga
tion.
Interestingly, the very limited force of the justification for the substance
of any particular policy or practice contributes great strength to the justifica
tion which can be advanced for the root requirement Merleau-Ponty propo
ses in his later period for determining all specific substantive and procedural
matters.13 His root requirement is that political matters should be deter
mined through the workings of an institution that at least “guarantees a
minimum of opposition and truth (AD, 226).”
As a matter of contingent, historical fact, Merleau-Ponty judges that
parliamentary democracy is the only known institution that satisfies this re
quirement. But at bottom what matters is that the institution in and through
which concrete political undertakings are determined is to be one which
maintains and fosters a constant critique of all of its specific determinations.
Precisely because none of us can either foresee all the consequences of our
political activity or determine unmistakably whether a policy or practice does
in fact reduce violence, we need an institution which constantly tests all poli
cies and practices by confronting them with an opposition. We need an
institution which is perpetually permeable to procedural as well as substan
tive change. Even parliament as a form is open to constant critique to deter
mine whether it still satisfies the root requirement.
Though to my knowledge Merleau-Ponty does not explicitly say so, the
logical thrust of his later position apparently requires an institution whose
root requirement guarantees not merely a minimum of opposition to any
political undertaking but rather one which provides for as extensive participa
tion, whether of support or of opposition, as is feasible. Nothing less, or so
it would seem, can satisfy the root requirement that our political discourse
and action always respect the essential finitude, historicality, and intersubjec
tivity of human existence. For who could be excluded without loss if their
inclusion excluded no one else?
Merleau-Ponty’s root requirement has at least two, related, significant
consequences. First, it alleviates whatever weaknesses follow from the fact
that the only way it makes sense to embrace a policy or practice is to do so
hypothetically and not categorically, to embrace it only unless or until a more
promising one becomes available.14 It does so by providing both proponents
and opponents recurring opportunities to reassess it. Even if no particular
policy or practice can fail to cause some harm, the root requirement, by
including as many people as possible and giving unqualified privilege to
none, serves to keep the harmed in constructive cooperation with those who
have profited from their harm.
Second, Merleau-Ponty’s root requirement provides a criterion for moni
toring the efficacy of any policy or practice which purports to reduce vio
lence. By reason of this requirement, one policy or practice is better than its
alternatives to the extent that it promotes the preservation and extension of
maximal participation in the formulation and implementation of all substan
tive and procedural policies and practices. Thus this requirement, Whiteside
notwithstanding, exonerates Merleau-Ponty from any complicity with un
bridled political adventurism. At the same time, it clears him from the
charge of acquiescing in political passivity. Rather, it provides the basis for

his strong conclusion that a major task for our era is “to find institutions
which implant [the] practice of freedom in our customs (5, 349).”
These two consequences, when coupled with his abandonment of any
proposal giving unique political privilege to one group of people over against
all others is enough to justify the conclusion that Merleau-Ponty’s later poli
tical philosophy gains rather than loses in “political percipience” vis-ik-vis his
earlier thought.
Part II
Taken together, Nietzsche and Heidegger constitute a watershed for

criticisms of the Cartesian concept of the ego, subject, or self. These two
major thinkers and more recent thinkers influenced by them have, I believe,
shown this Cartesian concept to be untenable. But some of the criticisms
have unjustifiably, in my view, gone so far as to deny that there is anything at
all like a free self or agent. They have reduced the self to nothing more than
the product of some set of nonpersonal material or cultural forces. But so
reduced an agent cannot be the bearer of political or moral responsibility,
cannot be the addressee of calls for political or moral initiative. This reduc
tion of the agent, is, I believe, an exaggeration.
The three essays which constitute Part II present efforts of mine to ar
ticulate a conception of what it is to be human which both acknowledges the
untenability of the Cartesian concept of the self and yet allows for respon
sible, initiating agency.
The first two essays of this Part have already been published, “Relational
Freedom” appeared in The Review o f Metaphysics, Vol. XXVI, no. 1, 1982,
77-101 and “I and Mine” is included in Critical and Dialectical Phenomenol
ogy, ed. by Donn Welton and Hugh J. Silverman (Albany: SUNY Press,
1987), 216-229. I have not substantially revised either of them. The third
essay, “The Interpretation of the Human Way of Being and Its Political
Implications,” is a new essay written expressly for this volume. Two other
essays, not included here, which address this same general issue are my
“Structuralism and the New Subjectivity,” Man and World, Vol. 15, 1982,
299-310 and “The Ego Revisited,” Journal o f the British Society for Phenome
nology, Vol. 21, 1990, 48-52.
Relational Freedom and Its
Political Consequences
Probably the most pervasive doctrine of freedom today has roots extend
ing back at least to Descartes and Hobbes. But it reached its full develop
ment during the French Enlightenment and now still dominates both popular
and scholarly thought. According to this dominant doctrine, the basic char
acteristic and measure of freedom is autonomy. Each person is said to be
free precisely insofar as he is independent of every Other.1
There are, however, good reasons for rejecting this position. It, and its
consequences, cannot be squared with a proper appreciation of the intersub
jectivity, discursivity, and historicality which are constitutive of human life.
These phenomena suggest rather that freedom should be described in rela
tional terms.
My purpose in this essay is three-fold. First, I want to show just how the
view of freedom as autonomy runs afoul of pertinent evidence. Then I want
to argue for an alternative conception, one which fits the same evidence that
undercuts the doctrine of freedom as autonomy. Finally, I will point to some
of the political consequences of adopting the conception I propose.
So prevalent is the doctrine of autonomous freedom that it is regularly

presented as obvious and noncontroversial. Consider, for example P. H.
Partridge’s entry entitled “Freedom” in the Encyclopedia o f Philosophy.
Using the widely adopted distinction between negative and positive freedom,
perhaps best articulated by Sir Isaiah Berlin, he presents this doctrine with
out a hint that there are sufficient problems with it that might well prompt
one to seek an alternative account.2
Partridge describes negative freedom as a condition characterized by the
absence of constraint or coercion. One is free just insofar as he can select
his own goals and course of conduct from the set of available alternatives
and is neither compelled to act nor prevented from acting as he chooses by
the decision of any person, state, or other authority. Positive freedom, on
the other hand, is the capacity to make one’s own choices and act on the
basis of one’s own initiative.3
Man is free, on this view, only if he is under no coercion. And coercion,
for Partridge, includes not only commands and prohibitions backed by effica
cious power or sanctions. It also encompasses the indirect forms of control
whereby some persons mold or manipulate the conditions which determine
or restrict the alternatives available to others.4
This overall view of freedom, taken both negatively and positively, ob
viously assumes that it is both possible and desirable for people either to
achieve or to approximate radical independence from one another. This
independence is what one means by autonomy. Further the doctrine of
autonomous freedom usually also regards man as a fundamentally discrete,
self-contained individual, one who is complete in himself.5
An important set of contemporary ethical and political claims rests on
the doctrine of autonomous freedom. Negative freedom, on the one hand,
serves to support claims that participation in the projects and workings of
social institutions is, at bottom, optional. Only those who through their own
choice personally benefit from a social institution are obligated to contribute
to its functioning. Once one no longer benefits and has somehow paid for
what he received, he has no further obligation to it. Positive freedom, on the
other hand, can and has been used to argue that men, or at least some of
them, are entitled to be lords and possessors of nature.6 One’s first respon
sibility, then, would be to preserve as unfettered as possible his ability to act
just as he chooses.
The political implications of the doctrine of autonomous freedom are
momentous. For example, there is good reason to think that a basic feature
of much modern democratic theory, namely that supreme political power
belongs to the people and that governmental power gets its legitimacy from
their consent, makes sense only if they are autonomously free in both the
negative and the positive senses.7 Linking this democratic theory with the
Relational Freedom 67
doctrine of autonomous freedom opens the way for contract theories of the
state. On such theories, as espoused, for example by Hobbes, Rousseau, and
in our own day, Rawls, men, of their own initiative and at their own discre
tion, establish and circumscribe all political power.® They do so on the basis
of personal resources they possess prior to their political engagements. As
Charles Taylor notes, one substantial part of the Hobbesian legacy is the
conviction that
political obligation [is] grounded in a decision, to submit to a sover

eign, dictated by prudence (calculating reason). For a self-defining
subject obligation could only be created by his own will. Hence the
great importance of the myth of the original contract.9
But perhaps the spirit animating the interpretation of freedom as auton

omy appears best in Descartes’ remark that among extremes to be avoided
are “all promises by which one restricts something of his own liberty.”10
Even though social contract theorists have gone to great pains to discourage
or even to rule out the dissolution of the contract establishing the state once
it has been instituted, they have not met with grand success. The modern
spirit regards the social contract as at least in principle always revocable at
will. That is, it refuses to admit that the contractors have ceded or even
attenuated their sovereign autonomy.
In a somewhat different way one finds this spirit expressed in terms of
positive freedom. Sartre, for example, expresses this spirit in the preemi
nence he gives to the fused group over the pledged group and other forms of
communal life.11
A striking consequence of insistence upon unmitigated autonomy is that
the only defensible use of coercion is retaliatory or rectificatory. One could
not, on this view, legitimately employ coercion to stimulate someone to act.
That is, coercion could only be legitimate if it is a response to a prior exer
cise of positive freedom. It would never be permissible to coerce a person to
act instead of refraining from acting, for the non-acting person does not
infringe upon anyone else’s autonomy.
And if one defines coercion, with Partridge, so broadly that it encompas
ses any shaping of the conditions which affect the alternatives available to
others, then any institutional pressure to enlist people’s participation in its
work would be unwarranted. Institutions could have no abiding authority.
Their legitimation would need constant renewal by the unfettered choice of

those who elect to establish and maintain them. Either choosing to continue
institutions or to let them lapse would be, from the standpoint of autonomy,
a matter of indifference.
The fundamental ethical implication of the doctrine of autonomous free
dom is that one has an inalienable right and quite probably a basic duty to
maintain his own autonomy itself. Thus each person is bound to keep him
self free from anything which would attenuate his lordship not only over
nature but also over himself. One can take this ethical requirement to imply
that, though it is possible for one to act in such a way that he restricts his
own freedom, it is never permissible to do so. Or one can take it, as in the
early Sartre’s doctrine of bad faith, to imply that since it is not possible really
to restrict one’s own freedom, all claims to such restrictions are necessarily
fraudulent.12 On either of these interpretations an essential ingredient in any
warranted conduct is that it either preserves or promotes the agent’s auton
omy.
If autonomy is the principal characteristic and measure of freedom then,
at bottom, a person either is or should become radically independent of
others. And if this is so, then one is a social being only either derivatively or
per accidens. Sociality, on this view, could make no fundamental positive
contribution to freedom.13
Widespread though the doctrine of autonomous freedom has been, at
tempts to formulate it so that it can withstand tests have not had notable
success.14 One person’s autonomous freedom would always and necessarily
clash with others’ freedom. Whoever acts freely in the world would always
either actually impinge upon others’ autonomy or surely threaten to impinge
upon them.
The failure of efforts to formulate a conceptually satisfactory account of
autonomous freedom is no surprise when one takes note of the experiential
evidence that testifies to man’s essential sociality. The closely related phen
omena of intersubjectivity, discourse, and history give good grounds for hold
ing that human existence is equiprimordially and essentially both social and
individual.
Even though all three of these phenomena display the activity of in
dividual agents, each of these agents always appears as one who can exercise
initiative only in circumstances which are never wholly of his own devising.
However much truth there is to the claim that “the greater one’s ability the
less one needs in the way of opportunity,”15 the need for opportunity never
vanishes. Indeed the evidence of these phenomena supports the claim that
at least some increases in ability themselves depend upon both material
circumstances and other persons. They depend upon opportunities which the
agent is incapable of providing for himself.
Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and the later Sartre, among others, have recog
nized that no one, alone, can be free. A necessary condition for freedom is
involvement with other and different persons on the one hand, and with
materiality on the other. On this general view, a view having non-trivial
similarities to classical Greek thought concerning what constitutes human
excellence, freedom requires an appropriate context which only others can
provide. And in many, if not in all cases, freedom also presupposes as Sartre
has strikingly noted, need or lack.16
Husserl, for example, shows that a wakeful person is necessarily involved
in a surrounding world populated with both things and other human beings.
Even if he thematically deals with some of these other human beings only as
objects, he recognizes that at least some of them are persons like himself.
They are co-subjects. With these co-subjects, he constitutes a community of
actors, thinkers, makers, and perceivers. Though a person can and often
does retain his own distinctive activity in the world, he nonetheless always
also shares in common activity with others, thereby constituting his surround
ing world as a common world. In turn, this common world makes possible
the development of distinct cultures and civilizations as well as global enter
prises such as natural science.17
Husserl’s analysis shows that many, if not all, human achievements gene
rally accounted as positive accomplishments require a person’s involvement
in the lives of others. This involvement is at the root of the arts, of science
and technology, of customs and laws. Each person does, to be sure, engage
in praxis which is distinctively his own. But this individual praxis is not
something extracted or preserved from communal praxis. Nor is it the pre-
established basis for communal praxis. Communal and individual praxis
mutually implicate one another. Neither sort of activity can be identified for
what it is except by reason of its differences from the other.18 On this view,
radical human autonomy, if achieved, would be a defeat rather than a tri
umph.
In addition to Husserl, Merleau-Ponty also makes important contribu
tions to the theme of essential human intersubjectivity. One of these con
tributions springs from his analysis of language in terms of his adaptation of

Saussure’s distinction between language (langue) and speech (parole). Every
person, Merleau-Ponty notes, is bom into a pre-established language, a lan
guage he receives from others. No one is bom alingual. Merleau-Ponty
develops this insight in his discussion of dialogue. Participants in a dialogue
seek for and find one another’s meanings. A dialogue is not, at bottom, a
display of rivalry. If there is struggle, it is not a struggle for independence.
Nor is it necessarily a struggle for control. To the contrary, the participants
are active both in speaking and in hearing. Thus dialogue is a joint venture
aimed at bringing to light something that makes sense.
In fact, Merleau-Ponty implies, dialogue brings forth a sense which no
participant, acting alone, could have achieved. Moreover, the participants
experience their dialogue as something which they have not, strictly speaking
created ab initio. They speak an already established language and refer to a
world that is not wholly their construct. Thus they admit, at least ipiplicitly,
that their dialogue continues a discursive movement whose beginning long
antedates their own utterances.19
Something of the same sort holds true for writing and reading. Writers
and readers, at least in principle, do not struggle for supremacy over one
another. Their enterprise is one they share in common. Without an audi
ence capable of responding and not merely absorbing, neither writing nor
speaking makes full sense. Without writers and speakers doing more than
articulating what the audience already knows, listening and reading cannot
make full sense.20
For Merleau-Ponty, the intersubjectivity which makes dialogue possible is
not a characteristic pertinent only to discourse. The same kind of intertwin
ing among participants underpins the performances of perception, thought,
and action.21 But performances of these sorts, along with discursive perfor
mances, are precisely the performances which display the distinguishing char
acteristics of existence that is human. A human being is that open-textured
unity whose fundamental moments are perception, thought, action, and sig
nification. If, then, all of these distinguishing characteristics presupposes
intersubjectivity, and if, as appears clear, every discernible exercise of free
dom - and trying to discuss indiscernibles is pointless - manifests itself in
one or more of these moments, then there is no experiential evidence for
claiming that radical autonomy is the primary characteristic and measure of
freedom.
Merleau-Ponty himself goes on to claim that every distinctively human

performance is, at bottom, interrogative. Interrogation, in turn, is a response
to that which elicits questioning. Thus man, in his very being as human, is
fundamentally a respondent. He responds both to other men and to the
world they inhabit together.22 It follows from Merleau-Ponty’s insights, and
Husserl’s too, that since to respond is not merely to react but is rather to
amplify and extend by introducing something distinctively one’s own, then all
human performances are at one and the same time both free and ineluctably
linked not only to other persons but also to the world.
A still further reason for rejecting the doctrine of autonomous freedom
is that it ignores the essentially historical character of human existence.
Freedom is esteemed and cherished because of what it allows one to accom
plish. It is honored because of its efficacy. The efficacy intrinsic to freedom
is of two sorts. It is on the one hand what enables a person to transcend the
press of immediate circumstances upon him. On the other, it is what makes
him able to stamp the prevailing circumstances with his own distinctive abid
ing mark.
These two parts of efficacy are not both necessary for each and every
free performance. But if one considers a span of human activity esteemed
for the freedom manifest in it, then he does find both sorts of efficacy. For
example, dancing or concocting fanciful fictions may show no more than a
transcending of preoccupation with life’s necessities. But if the only free
activities a person performed were of this sort, the sort which have no conse
quences perduring beyond the duration of the performance itself, then he
would be considered to have led an impoverished life, a life either trivial or
insignificant.
The doctrine of autonomous freedom captures only the first sort of ef
ficacy, the capacity to transcend prevailing circumstances. Its failure to cap
ture the second sort of efficacy not only leads to a gap in its account but also
leads the doctrine to distort the sort of efficacy it does recognize. It leads to
the view that freedom consists in an exemption from full-fledged interaction
with the world with others. It fails to acknowledge the thoroughly historical
character of human existence.
A satisfactory doctrine of freedom must allow one to see it at play in the
multiple ways in which man mediates his encounters both with others and
with the world. This mediation occurs in one’s performances of saying, do
ing, or making. Everyone is born and reared into a world in which media
tions of these sorts have long been exercised. Each sort of mediation has its
own history which instructs newcomers in its performance. Newcomers do
not, of course, simply repeat mediations. But neither do they invent them
from whole cloth. They learn both from others and from their own previous
mediations.
For a person to be able to impress his own abiding mark on the cir
cumstances in which he lives, he must take up some mediational pattern as
he finds it, contribute something of his own to it, and leave it available to
others. That is, fully efficacious mediations require that the mediator both
engage in a mediational pattern already somewhat familiar to others and
yield to others some control over the consequences of his intervention. This
is just to say that all efficacious human mediations are temporal. They both
constitute and are constituted by history.
In summary, then, involvement in intersubjectivity, discourse, or history is
not essentially a symptom or source of weakness. All positive human ac
complishments display involvement in at least one of them. Though they all
undercut any pretense to radical autonomy, and though they all show that
men are thoroughly finite, they are also ingredient in the expression of free
dom. They show that man’s essential finitude is not a restriction on his
freedom, but is rather a condition of its possibility.23
These foregoing considerations seriously undermine the doctrine of free
dom which makes autonomy its primary characteristic and measure. At the
same time they furnish guidance for formulating a concept of freedom more
faithful to experience. What follows is my attempt to articulate such a con
cept. Then, since every concept of freedom has considerable ethical and
political ramifications, I will point to a few of these which would follow from
my proposal.
II
To begin articulating an alternative concept of freedom, I want to turn

again to Merleau-Ponty’s work, this time specifically to his account of free
dom in his Phenomenology o f Perception™ Let me cite two passages. First:
“Our freedom does not destroy our situation, but gears itself into it: as long
as we are alive, our situation is open, which implies both that it calls up
specially favored modes of resolution, and also that it is powerless to bring
one into being by itself.”25 And second:
What then is freedom? To be born is both to be born of the world

and to be born into the world. The world is already constituted, but
also never completely constituted; in the first case we are acted upon,
in the second we are open to an infinite number of possibilities. But
this analysis is still abstract, for we exist both ways at once. There is,
therefore, never determinism and never absolute choice.26
These insights and the evidence adduced above concerning the phenome
na of intersubjectivity, discourse, and history supply the grounds for the con
cept of relational freedom I propose. Baldly put, my proposal is that free
dom in its full sense consists in both the possession and the exercise o f the
capacity simultaneously both to participate in and to maintain oneself as a pole
o f multiple distinct kinds o f relationships in order to perform mediations which
are reflectively and, in principle, mutually acceptableF Freedom, on this pro
posal, is an activity or process, rather than a settled property or a relation.
It is an activity marked by both continuity and constant change, a process in
which the agent’s prior condition is both preserved and altered.
My proposal is, of course, not without precedent. In several respects it
resembles important parts of classical Greek thought. And it has obvious
affinities with some themes stemming from Hegelianism.28 But the fun
damental justification for the concept of relational freedom which I propose
is that it respects the fact that history, discourse, and intersubjectivity are
essential, irreducible constituents of all human efficacy.
Let me explain my proposal. Freedom can be exercised well or badly.
Just as one can use his power of sight either well or badly, so can one exer
cise his capacity for relationships either well or badly. Similarly, as the pow
er to see can wax and wane, so can freedom wax and wane. How one exer
cises his capacity for relationships rebounds to affect the quality and strength
of the capacity. Though freedom can neither wax to the point of its apothe
osis, its radical independence from situations, nor wane to the point of its
annihilation, its absolute impotence in the face of situations, the capacity for
freedom, for involvement in relations with others, is not immutable.
If this is indeed the case and freedom is truly of positive worth, then it
does make sense to admit responsibilities and duties to freedom itself. They
are to be discharged in the very course of exercising freedom.29 A person,
then, can be duty bound to preserve or develop his freedom. In short, free
dom is both a fact and a task.
On my view, freedom is a kind of oscillation. It has a centrifugal mo
ment by virtue of which we can reach beyond ourselves to participate in
relationships which can achieve richer results than any of us could bring
about by acting alone. But it also has a centripetal moment by virtue of
which each of us can reinforce and maintain himself as a distinct pole having
resources of his own with which to enrich what is to be effected. By virtue
of our freedom, then, we are “eccentric.”30
The term ‘oscillation’ here of course does not imply a mechanical alter
nation. Rather it refers to a two-fold emphasis in the unitary movement
which is freedom, an emphasis on both participation and self-maintenance.
Neither emphasis can be consistently neglected without the favored one also
suffering. In a far from transparent way, each emphasis strengthens the
other, but only if there are sufficient shifts of emphasis. The sort of oscilla
tion I refer to here is similar to something St. Thomas Aquinas pointed to in
a different context. In discussing three sorts of religious life, he distinguished
the active life of helping other people (here the centrifugal moment), the
contemplative life of solitude and prayer (here the centripetal moment), and
the mixed life which blends periods of the other two (here the life with shift
ing emphases). The mixed life, he said, is the most perfect. Similarly, on my
proposal the maximally free life is one with appropriate shifts of emphasis.
My understanding of freedom does not imply that we absolutely originate
our participation in relationships. Nor does it not imply that we begin our
career of freedom as already well-defined poles which we then either seek or
should seek to maintain. From the outset, freedom is in every respect both
individual and communal. There neither is nor can be a freedom which is
not simultaneously both individual and communal. We are individuals only
within a social context. And we are social only as distinct individuals among
other individuals. Thus, if we are indeed free, we are so just to the extent
that we can shift between emphasizing our participation in something richer
or more efficacious than any of us alone can accomplish and emphasizing
our own self-maintenance as a distinct person who has a unique contribution
to make to relationships.
We have, of course, no set of rules to determine precisely what sorts of
shifts of emphasis are sufficient and appropriate for maximal freedom. But
this lack is not fatal. Even though there are no formulas for appropriate
both exemplary people and traditional practical wisdom do serve as

s h iftin g ,
guides. Paraphrasing Aristotle, one can say that appropriate shifting of em
phasis is the sort of shifting that the eminently free person does. Neither
exemplars nor traditional practical wisdom supply precise norms. But they
do furnish just the sort of testimony that we can accept and still maintain
ourselves as distinct poles in relationships with others. If precise, com
prehensive norms for shifting emphasis could be specified, then the maximal
ly free person would merely be one who followed a script.
Correlatively, the point or object of freedom is not the acquisition or
maintenance of some attribute or trait. Rather, the object of freedom is
activity or exercise of one’s capacity for freedom which is, at least in prin
ciple, acceptable to all. A necessary condition for rationally endorsing some
particular activity is that it does not constrict the field of endorsable activity.31
The proper object of freedom, then, is concrete free activity in a maximally
extensive field open to free activity.
The object of freedom, on my account, is inseparable from its perfor
mance. In Husserlian terms, it is the noematic moment whose noetic coun
terpart is the agent’s act of reflectively involving himself in relationships with
others. Freedom, in sum, constitutes itself as its object in its own perfor
mance.
There are three distinct kinds of relationships involving freedom, namely
“hegemonic,” egalitarian, and subsumptive relationships. In each of these
kinds of relationship there are two or more well defined roles. In any rela
tionship involving freedom, participants can periodically swap at least some
of these roles. The type of connection holding among the roles within a
relationship determines its kind. Thus, in hegemonic relationships the roles
are organized hierarchically. In egalitarian relationships the roles all have a
basically equal status. They are linked horizontally rather than vertically. In
subsumptive relationships, all roles are subordinated to some norm or prin
ciple freely recognized by the participants as already established and not
subject to the discretion of the participants. Because this norm or principle
is not itself a role, no participant can aspire to hold its place. The norm or
principle assigns weight to the subsumed roles. It may also, but need not,
assign participants to their specific roles.32
Some relationships among people, of course, do not manifest freedom.
Neither genetic, nor chronological, nor geographical relationships, for ex
ample, require that any of their participants be free. The only relationships
which embody freedom are those which one or more persons establish or
maintain in order to engage in mediational activity which is reflectively and,
in principle, mutually acceptable.33
If freedom is of positive worth, then its absence in a participant in medi
ational activity is either a deplorable deficiency calling for rectification or, if
irremediable, regrettable. There can be relationships involving freedom
when only one or some of the participants can or do engage in reflective
activity. But the relationship is deficient until or unless all of its participants
engage in such activity. For example, the physician-patient relationship is a
free one even if the patient is unconscious. But the aim of the physician’s
activity should always be to bring the patient back into conscious participa
tion.34
Just because the free relationship exists for the sake of some reflective
and mutually acceptable activity does not mean that the relationship is a
means to some extrinsic end. To the contrary, one has reason highly to
esteem as manifestations of freedom precisely those relationships whose
activity consists primarily in enjoying the relationship. Further, to be mutual
ly acceptable, the activity aimed at obviously does not have to be mutually
accepted. But a person’s claim to membership in a relationship aimed at an
activity he reflectively accepts has two consequences. First, it entails that
those with whom he is so related ought to accept the activity. And second, it
entails, that if they do not, they fail to do so because their freedom is either
culpably or nonculpably impaired. It does not, of course, follow that what is
acceptable in one set of circumstances is always acceptable. But it does
follow that whatever is acceptable is so because it fits the relevant cir
cumstances.
My interpretation of freedom as relational fits all the evidence I adduced
above to show the insufficiency of the doctrine of autonomous freedom. It
also finds support in reflection on concrete practice which embraces not
merely one or a few performances but a significant stretch of a person’s life.
This reflection reveals the existence and necessity for the sorts of oscillations
and shiftings which I claim belong to the very constitution of freedom. If a
relationship which lasts long enough for its relevant surrounding circumstan
ces to change markedly does indeed display freedom, then it must be perme
able to moments or stretches of time when some other kind of relationship
holds sway.
Consider, for example, the hegemonic relationship between the political

ruler and the ruled. If this relationship is genuinely to embody freedom,
there must be occasions when all, both ruler and ruled, relate to one another
in egalitarian or subsumptive ways. This requirement could be satisfied if,
for example, there are occasions when all the participants have equal voting
rights. Or when they unite to respond to some natural disaster in a way that
approximates Sartre’s fused group. Thus Aristotle appears correct in saying
that since no discernible class of people is so markedly superior to other
classes that its members have an indisputable title to rule permanently, “it is
obviously necessary on many grounds that all the citizens alike should take
their turn of governing and being governed.”35 For, as he asks, how could
those who have no share in governing be loyal citizens?36
This requirement of permeability holds for egalitarian and subsumptive
sorts of relationships as well as for hegemonic ones. Without it, every sort
of relationship could embody only an impoverished freedom. But this per
meability is incompatible with autonomy.
By contrast, my proposal of freedom as relational makes clear that it is
the capacity both to establish and maintain permeable relationships. So
understood, freedom is at the root of both initiative and receptivity in the
face of both other people and the material and cultural world we jointly
inhabit.37 It is the capacity to exist as one who is never wholly lost in or lost
from his surrounding world.
One has reason to adopt the doctrine of relational freedom rather than
that of autonomous freedom not only because it squares with the historical,
intersubjective, discursive character of human existence, but also because it
can so fruitfully be applied to the domain of politics. Let me in conclusion
show its fruitful implications for the constitution of the political domain it
self.
Ill
It would be an easy task to show that the doctrine of relational freedom

rules out the legitimacy of the worst of politics, namely tyranny, anarchy, and
totalitarianism. Both tyranny and totalitarianism impoverish even the free
dom of the ruler because they both give unqualified preeminence on the one
hand to the centripetal moment of the ruler’s activity, and, on the other, to
the centrifugal moment of the ruled’s activity. Anarchy gives unqualified

preeminence to the centripetal moment of everyone’s activity and thus like
wise impoverishes freedom.
But here I want to concentrate on a more complex and perhaps more
important application of the doctrine of relational freedom. Not uncommon
ly one hears the claim that moral requirements stand apart from, and some
times in opposition to, political requirements. Thus one hears of a sup
posedly acceptable Realpolitik which is amoral, if not immoral. Supposedly
one cannot, in principle, make a specific political application of moral re
quirements because the latter are necessarily universal whereas politics deals
with the particular and the expedient.
This purported gap between the moral and the political domains has
severe conceptual as well as practical consequences. But my concept of
relational freedom provides the wherewithal with which to eliminate this gap.
Freedom, as I said above, is a process which one can either improve or
allow to degenerate. The sort of involvement in which freedom flourishes is
always one which is characterized by respect. For respect is an essential
condition for all manifestations of efficacious freedom, whether moral or
political.38
Respect is not a mere attitude. Nor is it essentially linked to some emo
tion. It is a relation marked and observed by established social practices.*
It is connected with deference and dignity. Since the practices associated
with respect are not competitive, it does not bring about exclusions. If A
respects B, either or both can still respect C. It is thus a relation in which in
principle all people can share.40
Unlike esteem, respect is a normative notion. It depends upon a specific
interpretation of persons and their social places.41 When one acknowledges
the intersubjective, discursive, historical character of human existence and
the relational freedom by virtue of which men engage in mediations, then
one sees that everyone is a member of a community, which, in principle,
cannot definitively exclude anyone. The proper way to acknowledge these
features of the human condition is to respect all persons. This respect does
not depend upon any particular social status. It springs from the fact that to
be human is to belong to and have standing in a community. One accords
respect to someone “not as a person simply but as a person effective in such
and such a setting, a full and equal member, an active participant.”42 The
conditions for respect for others are not different than those for self-respect.
“Self-respect can not be an idiosyncracy; it is not a matter of will. In any

substantive sense, it is a function of membership, though always a complex
function, and depends upon equal respect among the members.”43 In re
spect, people recognize themselves in mutually recognizing one another.
And in this recognition one finds intimations of cooperation rather than
competition. Mutual respect, thus, implies mutual agency and responsibility.
Contempt is the opposite of respect. If I hold someone in contempt, he
either accepts my verdict as his sentence and grovels or rejects it with resent
ment and sometimes retaliation.44 In neither case can he who is subjected to
contempt genuinely endorse the efficacy of his disparager’s mediational ac
tivity in other matters. Contempt, then, always serves to thwart efficacious
freedom.
But just because respect is essentially ingredient in all political exercises
of efficacious freedom does not mean that all political relationships should
be of the same sort. As I noted above, mediation can take place in any one
of three basic kinds of relationship, hegemonic, egalitarian, and subsumptive.
Each of these types of relationship is compatible with and indeed calls for
respect. The requirement of respect neither challenges the legitimacy of any
of these types nor does it give any of them unqualified priority over the oth
ers.
Further, respect is crucial for the preservation of all relationships involv
ing freedom. It is at the root of invitations to new or lapsed members to
enter these relationships. Through respect one can recognize new members
as those who can embrace the relationship. Unless new members could do
so, there would be no point to permitting their participation. Were it not for
respect for what newcomers can contribute, what w ould'be the political
point, for example, of accepting immigrants as full fledged citizens?
Similarly, respect makes it senseful to hold open to lapsed members the
opportunity to participate once again. Whether they are present enemies or
simply uninterested former members, respect lets them be seen as people
who can still, if they will, contribute positively to the relationship and the ac
complishments of its present active participants. Thus, there is nothing es
sentially condescending about forgiveness. Forgiveness presupposes that the
one to be pardoned is of positive worth. It is not, therefore, only a moral
act. It is also a thoroughly sensible political act.45
Respect’s central role in efficacious relationships shows up even in such
perverted forms as extorted confessions. Consider, for example, the Moscow
Trials of the 1930s. The prosecutors sought the confessions as crucial, ir
replaceable testaments to the mutual acceptability of the activity they were
engaged in. Though it may mask respect, disdain nonetheless regularly has
to pay it.
Respect need not be confined only to contemporaries. Because it is in
the service of freedom, it is concerned with efficacy. If there is to be maxi
mal efficacy, we must solicit our successors to endorse and to continue the
activity we either initiate or sustain. That is, we can only be maximally ef
ficacious if we so behave that others, including successors, can join in our
activity without loss of respect for either themselves or others. Similarly,
maximal efficacy requires that we respect our predecessors as well. We have
all been reared in a world largely furnished by our predecessors’ efficacious
performances. Insofar as they have bequeathed that furniture with respect,
insofar as they have not attempted to thwart our initiative, they have provi
ded us with opportunities to link our performances with earlier performances
of demonstrated efficacy.46
Attending to and respecting our predecessors’ and successors’ activities
or capacities for activity does not necessarily restrict us. The contributions
they can make to relational freedom are important to all. To respect others’
contributions to freedom elicits a reciprocal respect from others for what we
do.
Even what we call we-relationships have respect at their foundations.
We-relationships, under one description or another, are often thought to
stand at the pinnacle of all possible human relationships. They are regularly
regarded as those against which all positive relationships are measured. In
their supposed excellence, they are sometimes thought, mistakenly, to em
body a love which makes respect superfluous.
But as I showed above, there is no basis for attributing unequivocal pri
macy to any particular type of relationship. Thus, it makes no sense to hold
up we-relationships as either panacea or last desperate therapy for political
ills. For one thing, it is simply a fact that we-relationships always have only
a few members. Their very exclusiveness necessarily circumscribes their
efficacy.
The exclusiveness ingredient in we-relationships does not, of course,
vitiate them. They are undoubtedly good. But they are good precisely in
sofar as they instantiate respect. In we-relationships, perhaps more clearly
than in other relationships, the participational moment of freedom is most
visible. But at the same time they give minimal display to freedom’s pole-
maintaining moment. For freedom to be fully displayed and fully efficacious,
both of these moments must be in play. Respect on the one hand insists
upon the irreducibility and necessity of both of these moments for freedom.
And on the other hand it forbids us to assign unequivocal primacy to any
relationship whether that assignment be made, in pride, to a relationship in
which we participate, or in envy or despair, to a relationship in which we
have no part.
Respect, then, is a crucially important virtue in both the moral and the
political domains. It informs whatever is well done in either of these do
mains, for it acknowledges the full scope and complexity of freedom. On the
one hand, respect reflects recognition of the capacity each of us has to par
ticipate as a distinct pole in different sorts of free relationships. But on the
other hand, it also reflects recognition that each of us contributes nontrivially
to the conditions for others to flourish. Respect, in short, shows that we can
and should promote both our own freedom and that of others.
Thus, for example, in the domain of morality respect shapes the way we
should apply norms and deal with excuses. It is true both that we should
observe norms and that we can proffer or accept excuses. In brief, mercy
and justice, whether distributive or rectificatory, do not necessarily conflict if
respect guides their exercise. Respect prevents the unequivocal subordina
tion of the concrete person to some general idea or program of activity. But
it likewise prevents the unqualified subjection of all common requirements to
the idiosyncracies of the individual person’s condition or preference at the
moment.
Similarly, respect can and should range over the entire length and
breadth of the domain of politics. In domestic politics, for example, respect
should inform and govern the dialectic between law and custom. Though
laws can and should be devised and obeyed, not everything is to be subjected
to the law. Custom is often an acceptable, even better, guide. Respect calls
for a cherishing of law while still acknowledging law’s limitations. It blocks
the radical dissociation of the present lawmaker’s performances from the
benign efficacy of at least some performances of predecessors which custom
embodies.
In international politics, respect informs and governs the dialectic be
tween insistence upon a state’s right to self determination and its involve
ment with other states. Consider for example, the matter of establishing or
maintaining alliances. Alliances in their practical application cannot justifiab

ly disregard the concerns of states which are not parties to the alliance. But
neither can a policy or program of self-determination justifiably lead to isola
tionism.
In all of these matters, political as well as moral, respect requires that we
take both ourselves and others seriously. That is, respect requires both in
dividuals and political bodies to admit both their riches and their poverty,
their strength and their impotence, their knowledge and their ignorance. It
also requires that all others be acknowledged to be blessed and burdened in
similar ways. As Walzer suggests, the ultimate objective of distributive jus
tice is to promote mutual respect, or, in his terms, self-respect for all.
“When all social goods, from membership to political power, are distributed
for the right reasons, then the conditions of self-respect will have been es
tablished as best they can be.”47 But, he continues, even after such a dis
tribution there will still be men and women who do not get the respect they
deserve, for no distribution is perfect. The respectful man will confess that
whatever blessings human doings bring about, these same doings never fail
to bring burdens as well. And he will also admit, with Herbert Spiegelberg,
that there is another distribution of benefits and burdens which is beyond
human control. This latter distribution is sheerly an accident of birth.48
Thus respect, like freedom, can either flourish or wither. It needs cul
tivation. The capacity for respect is intrinsic to normal human existence but
it prospers through discipline. This discipline, whether administered by one
self or by others, aims to educe a vigorous respect and ultimately to enhance
freedom. Respect, then, can sometimes call for coercion which is not retalia
tory.49 Some coercion obviously impairs freedom. But other coercion facili
tates it. Coercion, therefore, is not an unqualified moral or political evil
either for one who administers it or one who suffers it. Like acquiescence,
coercion is simply one of the many types of human performance which re
spect should inform and govern.
Through respect, then, one finds a way to harmonize basic moral and
political requirements. Respect can effect this harmonization because it
involves an acknowledgement of the finitude of freedom.
The doctrine of autonomous freedom does not sufficiently thematize
freedom’s finitude. As a consequence, whatever sense respect could have in
that doctrine would be incapable of insuring that all basic requirements for
responsible politics be met. For example, the doctrine of autonomous free
dom cannot require that we work to preserve the political community into
which we have been inducted. Hence there is no way to insure the harmoni
zation of the fundamental requirements of both the moral and the political
domains.
The concept of relational freedom, however, does lay a foundation for an
account of respect which is sufficiently strong to produce this harmonization.
In this crucial way, then, the concept of relational freedom is more fruitful
than that of autonomous freedom.50
The harmonization of the moral and political domains closes the ap
parent gap between freedom and authority. Unlike the concept of autono
mous freedom, the concept of relational freedom does not tend to delegiti
mate authority. To the contrary, it clearly allows for the establishment and
maintenance of authority. It does so by letting one see that participations in
subsumptive and hegemonic relationships can be just as genuine exercises of
freedom as is participation in egalitarian relationships.
Subsumptive relationships are of particular importance for responsible
politics. In them, one recalls, each participant freely acknowledges his subor
dination to some principle, norm or cause which is already in place and
which is not, in the final analysis, subject to the discretion of any or all par
ticipants. In these relationships, if Doe obeys Roe it is not because Roe is
the individual person he is, but because both of them are so subsumed under
this principle or cause that Doe’s obedience is part of the way he stays part
of the relationship. Since the subsumptive relationship, by hypothesis, en
hances the efficacy of each of them, it likewise enhances their freedom.
Thus when institutions embodying principles of subsumption impose require
ments and aims on their members, they do not handicap their participants
but rather provide opportunities for accomplishments which would not other
wise be feasible. Therefore, when one understands that freedom is relation
al, he can see that the claims and requirements of institutions and their lead
ers upon their members can be fully compatible with the undiminished free
dom of each participant.
In summary, then, the concept of relational freedom which I propose
here finds support in precisely the evidence of the phenomena of intersubjec
tivity, discourse, and history which weighs against the concept of autonomous
freedom. This alone is enough to justify adopting the concept of relational
freedom. But further, this latter concept is exceptionally fruitful. It permits
one to harmonize two apparently irreconcilable sets of basic demands, name
ly moral demands and political demands. This sort of fruitfulness makes the
case for replacing the concept of autonomous freedom with that of relational
freedom particularly strong.
I and Mine*
For centuries, one of the staples of Western thought has been a rather
specific conception of what a human person is. On this conception, the
person is understood, as Clifford Geertz has put it, as “a bounded, unique,
more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center
of awareness, emotion, judgment and action organized into a distinctive
whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against a
social and natural background.”1 Though Descartes was by no means the
father of this conception of the human person, the self, the Cartesian cogjito
provided it with a powerful and influential articulation. In the wake of Des
cartes, Enlightenment thought in its various dresses has often exalted the self
to quasi-divine status, or at least ascribed to it an angelic independence from
the physical and cultural context in which it acts.
Recent years, however, have witnessed a considerable reassessment of
what is to be claimed for and about selves. A number of influential argu
ments have been advanced which deny that the individual human person is
the source of any significant originality. Rather, according to these analyses,
the human person, the self, is fundamentally a product or a result of some
other set of forces or factors. The self is, to use Cartesian terminology,
nothing more than a particular intersection of basically extensional proper
ties.
Thus, one finds today analyses of man in terms of his genetic make-up,
or in terms of his social functions or roles, or in terms of power relations of
some sort. For sociobiologists, all of a person’s performances are ultimately
explicable in terms of survival of gene pools. The individual person is no
*
James Bemauer's comments on an earlier version of this essay were most helpful.
thing but the bearer of a particular configuration of genes. For L6vi-Strauss,

the self is not an historically located actor, but rather is simply a set of struc
tural transformations.2 For Althusser, human actors do no more than occupy
positions within effectively self-contained structures.3 For Benveniste, at least
on one reading, the I is not the author but is the effect of the act of speak
ing.4 Or, turning to the Anglo-American philosophical scene, for Anthony
Kenny, the pronoun “I” does not refer. Citing Wittgenstein, Kenny argues
that mind is simply a second order ability which consists totally in the ability
to acquire first order abilities.5
The ultimate sense of any analysis of these sorts is that, in principle,
either alone or with other analyses also dealing exclusively with extensional
properties, it can deal exhaustively and comprehensively with its subject
matter, namely human beings and their performances. On all such analyses,
what Geertz calls the Western conception of the person, the. self, appears
nowhere. The self, if it is mentioned at all, explains nothing. Rather, it is
itself simply an explanandum, something to be explained by factors other
than itself.
In this paper, I have no intention of trying to reinstate some Cartesian-
esque Western conception of the self. But the recent reaction against that
conception appears excessive. Some version of the traditional Western con
ception of the person, the self, seems to me to be indispensable for a thor
ough account of human phenomena.
Following clues to be found in Heidegger, Ricoeur, and others, I want to
argue that though structures and causal sequences of various sorts are admit
tedly necessary conditions for the occurrence of any human phenomenon,
they are not sufficient conditions for the occurrence of qualitively new human
phenomena. Even if all human performances, once they have occurred, are
fully analyzable in extensional terms, there is genuine novelty in human mat
ters and this novelty is not fully explicable without resort to something like
the Western conception of the self. After having defended this thesis, I will
briefly suggest a way of characterizing this self.
The sort of self for which I intend to argue is in all respects historical.
History is not without structures. But these structures do not constitute a
closed field, a field which precludes genuine initiative. As Anthony Giddens
has said,
I and Mine 87
every process of action is a production of something new, a fresh act;

but at the same time all action exists in continuity with the past,
which supplies the means of its initiation. Structure thus is not to be
conceptualized as a barrier to action, but as essentially involved in its
production.6
The possibility of novelty does not require a self which stands outside of
history and episodically intrudes itself into the historical field. It does not
require a Cartesian subject. It does, however, require an agent who can
constitute events by causally intervening in the ongoing processes which
make up the world. Intervention of this sort entails that the agent could
have acted otherwise.7
Before proceeding to present evidence in support of my thesis, let me say
something about the logic of my argument. First, I do not claim that I can
definitively prove that selves exist as sources of novelty. So strong a claim
risks falling into the fallacy of ignorance. I must admit that even if presently
proposed sets of necessary conditions for the occurrence of all human phe
nomena do not amount to sufficient conditions, it is not logically impossible
that some as yet unformulated proposals might articulate both necessary and
sufficient conditions for all human phenomena.
Rather, my argument claims that, given the set of phenomena that I will
point out, it makes sense to acknowledge the existence of selves to account
for them. My argument, therefore, deals with “contingent necessities.” It
has both factual and conceptual elements. None of the phenomena which I
will point out exists or occurs of necessity. But since they do occur, then
there is good reason to acknowledge the existence of selves.
Second, the evidence supporting my thesis, because it is drawn from
relatively independent lines of inquiry, can be said to be “robust.” In scien
tific investigations, a result is called robust to the extent that it is invariant
under a multiplicity of at least partially independent processes across which
invariance is shown.8 There is more reason to have confidence in robust
results than in those issuing from just one line of investigation. Considera
tions of robustness are applicable to the determination of both entities and
properties.9 I take it that they are applicable to the question of the existence
and character of things like traditionally conceived selves.
One last caution. My claim that we should admit the existence of some
thing like a self does not entail either that every member of the biological
species homo sapiens is a self nor that a self is of intrinsic moral or aesthetic
value. Though I happen to believe both of these things, they are fundamen
tally unrelated to the argument that I wish to make here.
Let me begin my case by turning to Being and Time. Heidegger provides
there the ontological characterization of the sort of self for which I wish to
argue. Consider first his discussion of mineness. Mineness, along with exis
tence, is a distinguishing characteristic of Dasein’s way of being. Dasein is
always mine to be in one way or another. It is always a decided upon way of
comporting itself toward its ownmost unique possibility. That Dasein can be
either authentic or inauthentic is rooted in its essential mineness.10 Because
of its essential mineness and existence, Dasein cannot be treated as merely a
special case of entities in the world. “Because Dasein has in each case mine
ness” Heidegger says, “one must always use a personal pronoun when one
addresses it: ‘I am,’ ‘you are’.”11 On this basis Heidegger can go on to dis
cuss Dasein’s way of Being-in-the-world in such a way that though it is never
worldless, neither is Dasein just another constituent item in the world. In
the final analysis, if the things of the world are to make sense, they can do so
only by reason of Dasein’s distinctive way of being, by reason therefore of its
mineness.
The mineness characteristic of Dasein is made fully explicit when it is
considered in terms of death. “Death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s
ownmost possibility - non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be
outstripped. Death is, as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its
end.”12 And Heidegger continues:
Death does not just “belong” to one’s own Dasein in an undifferen

tiated way; death lays claim to it as an individual Dasein. The non
relational character of death [as opposed to the context of relations
making up significance or meaning], as understood in anticipation,
individualizes Dasein down to itself. This individualizing...makes
manifest that all Being-alongside the things with which we concern
ourselves, and all the Being-with-Others, will fail us when our own-
most potentiality-for-Being is the issue.13
Later, in “Was Heisst Denken?” Heidegger gives further specificity to

man’s distinctive way of being when he distinguishes between capability and
possibility. Only men are capable. To be capable of something means: to
I and Mine 89
allow something to be close to us in accordance with its own being and con
stantly to look after what has been allowed close. That of which we are
capable (vermogen) is always what we desire (mogen), that to which we are
devoted in that we let it come.14 Man’s way of being, then, is not merely to
be the outcome of some set of antecedent conditions upon which he de
pends.
These ontological considerations of Heidegger’s, inimical though they
clearly are to any doctrine positing Cartesian subjects, by no means require
that the Western conception of the person be completely jettisoned. Rather,
they point to a distinctive entity, a self, which can act into the world and take
responsibility for what it does. Further, these same considerations can be
filled out and made robust by paying attention to a cluster of phenomena all
having to do somehow with language and its deployment. Let me con
centrate here on four of these sorts of phenomena.
Consider, first, Alasdair MacIntyre’s arguments, in After Virtue, for the
systematic unpredictability of human affairs. These arguments, as he points
out, do not preclude the logical possibility of the universal predictability of
human affairs. But no available material evidence buttresses this mere logi
cal possibility. Indeed, just what could count as material evidence for univer
sal predictability is conceptually opaque.15
Of the four arguments which MacIntyre marshals to defend this thesis,
let me focus on the one he presents against the possibility of predicting spe
cific conceptual innovations. He asks us to imagine a discussion in the Old
Stone Age concerning the possibility of predicting the invention of the wheel.
Someone asks: “Wheel? What’s that?” The forecaster then describes the
wheel. His interlocutor can then reply: “No one is going to invent the
wheel. You have just done it.” As MacIntyre explains:
In other words, the invention of the wheel cannot be predicted. For

a necessary part of predicting an invention is to say what a wheel is;
and to say what a wheel is just is to invent it .... [Thus] the notion of
the prediction of radical conceptual innovation is itself conceptually
incoherent.16
The point I wish to stress for purposes of the present argument is that
since there have in fact been conceptual innovations, there have been un
predictable events in human history. But if analyses of human activity in
terms of antecedent structures or causal sequences could be exhaustive, then

one would expect at least the prospect of total predictability. In the absence
of such a prospect, however, there is no basis for insisting that all human
phenomena can be accounted for without admitting human initiative. There
is, then, room for an efficacious self.
MacIntyre goes on, however, to set forth a refinement of considerable
importance. Unpredictability, he notes, does not, by itself, entail inexplicabil
ity. Unpredictability, he says, is logically compatible with a strong version of
determinism. Nonetheless, it is logically impossible that anyone be able to
predict his own decisions, innovations, etc. Therefore MacIntyre concludes:
Insofar as the observer cannot predict the impact of his future ac
tions on my future decision-making, he cannot predict my future
actions any more than he can his own; and this clearly holds for all
agents and all observers.17
Determinism, then, is not logically refuted by the unpredictability of

innovations. Yet one could give a coherent deterministic account of his own
innovations or decision, and its impact on others, only if he abandoned first-
person descriptions of what he had done in favor of third-person accounts.
But this shift itself begs for explanation. To give a complete, comprehensive
deterministic account of his total conduct, one would have to explain his
shifting from one sort of description to the other sort in a third, “neutral”
language. There is, however, no material evidence to support the claim that
such a neutral language could be discovered.
MacIntyre’s reflections on conceptual innovations, and the evidence they
provide for an initiating self, bear striking similarities to central features of
Paul Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor. And Ricoeur’s metaphor theory also
points to a self capable of efficacious agency.
In The Rule o f Metaphor, Ricoeur shows that genuine, fresh metaphors
are not merely decorative or ornamental. They are cognitively significant.
They both introduce new meaning and necessarily claim to articulate some
thing true.18 Such metaphors, according to Ricoeur, hold in abeyance direct
or ordinary linguistic reference. They promote, and are themselves part of,
a redescription of reality, a redescription which alters the way in which men
inhabit the world. The truth articulated in fresh metaphor is not that of
straightforward correspondence with an already established, routinized con
I and Mine 91
cept of reality. Rather, the truth of metaphor is that aletheia, that uncon-
cealing of the previously hidden, of which Heidegger speaks. In Ricoeur’s
terms, the truth of metaphor is a tensive truth, a truth that says of p both
that it is and that it is not q. The tensive truth of metaphor does not pretend
to simply mirror the world. Rather, it effects a fresh relation between man
and world.
These metaphors involve a semantic impertinence. They thus overstep
the bounds of established linguistic usage. Once fresh metaphors have been
produced, they may, Ricoeur acknowledges, be analyzed in terms of antece
dent structures or causes. But these analyses cannot account for the event of
the actual production of new meaning. And, I would add, the fresh meta
phors, rather than being simply the consequences of antecedent patterns and
structures, themselves modify the antecedent conditions whence they spring.
Unless one reifies these conditions, there is no reason to think that the fresh
metaphor for which they supply necessary conditions will not, when actual
ized, affect their own efficacy. To the contrary, such a modification is pre
cisely what one would expect.19
The existence of fresh metaphors points to the existence of an author.
This author is not, of course, Descartes’s imperial ego. Nor is he the roman
ticist’s genius. He always inhabits a language and a social matrix containing
numerous elements whose functions are predictable. But this author is not
merely an intra-systematic functionary. While living within the system, he
both keeps the system from total closure and modifies the system by bringing
something distinctive, namely his semantic initiative, to the structural resour
ces of the system.
Once the author has effected an innovation, that innovation can be stud
ied and analyzed without reference to him. But without his initiative there
would be nothing new to be analyzed. All of this is simply another way of
saying that a) if language can be said to have a history, and b) if history is
something other than mere process, if history involves novelty as well as
routine,20 and c) if history is intelligible qua history, then authorial initiative
must be acknowledged.21 But to acknowledge the authorial initiative is in
fact to acknowledge the existence of selves.
Let me shift now from discussion of initiatives and novelties within lan
guage to a consideration of certain features of language and discourse them
selves, which also point to the existence of a self as a sort of entity fun
damentally distinct from other kinds of things. Attention to these features is
particularly appropriate inasmuch as arguments relying on certain results of

linguistic investigations have furnished a large part of the impetus for the
movement to dismantle the traditional Western conception of the self.
For some years now, analyses of language employing the techniques of
modal logic have concluded that the first person singular pronoun enjoys a
special status among linguistic elements. Hector-Neri Castaneda’s conclusion
is representative of the results of these studies. He says:
The first-person pronoun has...an ontological priority over all names,

contingent descriptions of objects, and all other indicators; a correct
use of “I” cannot fail to refer to the entity to which it purports to
refer; moreover a correct use of “I” cannot fail to pick up the cate
gory of the entity to which it refers. The first-person pronoun, with
out predicating selfhood, purports to pick out a self qua. self, and
when it is correctly tendered, it invariably succeeds.22
What can and cannot be said consistently about the I to which the first
person pronoun refers shows that the I never has properties, e.g., weight, in
the same way that other entities have them. And so, Castaneda concludes:
“The I is not an entity that either exists contingently or necessarily. It is not,
in that sense, an entity in the world but an entity outside the world that must
be identified in terms of entities in the world.”23
One need not subscribe to Castaneda’s talk of the I as an entity “outside
the world” to find evidence in his analysis for the existence of selves. But it
is useful for present purposes to notice his conclusion that the I must be
identifiable in terms of entities in the world.
Further, to find evidence for the existence of selves, one need not claim,
as Castaneda does, that the first person pronoun has an ontological priority
over all other indicators. It is sufficient to notice the linguistic irreducibility
of what Colin McGinn calls “the subjective view.” McGinn argues that the
indexicals “now” and “here” are just as secure against reference failure as is
the I.24
One of McGinn’s central theses is that perceptual experience and direct
cognitive awareness cannot be articulated in a language devoid of indexical
concepts and concepts of secondary qualities. He argues that we must distin
guish between two sorts of thought. Non-indexical thought is the sort of
thought employed in mathematics and the sciences. In such thought, “the
I and Mine 93
world is conceptualized without selecting any particular point of view as

privileged.”25 Indexical thought is the sort of thought connected with engage
ment in practical affairs in the world. In McGinn’s words;: “What phenom-
enologists would call ‘being-in-the-world’ presupposes indexical thought.”26
And he adds: “Similarly, to have perceptual experience of an object the
object must be perceived to have qualities whose instantiation conditions
make essential reference to properties of the perceived, i.e., to the kinds of
experience he enjoys.”27 Thus if secondary qualities are to be ascribed in any
way to the world, then this ascription must proceed through reference to a
subject of awareness from which they spring.28 And this reference to a sub
ject cannot fail.
In McGinn’s general argument there is a somewhat latent dimension
which is particularly pertinent to the case I am presenting here.29 If indeed
there are these two distinct sorts of thought with their respective appropriate
vocabularies and grammars, and if one and the same entity deploys each of
them in turn, then there is reason to claim that this entity, if it can switch
from the one to the other, must be relatively independent of each of them,
must, in effect, be a self.
One might of course say that because an entity is independent of each
sort of thought does not entail that it is independent of their conjunction.
True enough from the purely logical standpoint. But just what the conjunc
tion of these two distinct sorts of thought would amount to is fundamentally
opaque. Until this opacity is removed, there is no reason to discredit this
sort of evidence for the existence of selves.30
One finds the kind of switching indicative of selves in other guises. Con
sider the following feature of discursive practice. All discourse has the fol
lowing form: A says p about x to B.31 In any deployment of discourse, the
emphasis can be placed primarily either on saying what is most appropriate
about the topic x or what is most accessible to the audience B. So far as I
can tell, no actual instance of discourse avoids emphasizing one rather than
the other, though neither emphasis necessarily obliterates concern for the
unstressed constituent. The apparent necessity for selecting one emphasis
rather than the other constitutes one of the principal problems for all peda
gogy. When and how are these emphases to be distributed?32
The relevant point here is that discursive practice shows the possibility of
selecting and shifting emphases. Though there are customary guides to ap
propriate selections and shifts, these guides are both questionable and regu
larly questioned. Specific selections and shifts are made possible by but are
not fully determined by either discourse, the topic, or the audience. In their
concrete specificity they point to an agent, a self exercising initiative, a self
who is responsible for the shifts and selections actually made.33
This consideration provides a basis for challenging Kenny’s claim that a
pronoun “I” does not refer to anything. Kenny would analyze the human
being into a set of first-order abilities and their exercise, together with a
second-order ability to acquire first-order abilities. The exercise of every
first-order ability involves some bodily vehicle, e.g., eyes for seeing. His
analysis, however, does not account for the person’s ability to switch from
exercising one ability, of either order, to exercising another ability. This
ability to switch is not of the same sort as either the first-order or the se-
cond-order abilities recognized by Kenny. The ability to switch from one
sort of ability to another, an ability which is applicable to all the abilities
Kenny acknowledges, points to a responsible agent, a self who deploys its
several specific abilities on its own initiative.
This ability to switch among abilities, each of which has a determinate
field of exercise, is closely connected with the ability to perform silence.
Silence is a complex, positive phenomenon.34 It does not, however, have a
well defined object belonging to a determinate field of activity. As such,
performances of silence show that their performers possess a relative in
dependence from each determinate field of human endeavor. They show
their performers to be selves.35
This congeries of evidence, drawn from several relatively independent
lines of investigation, yields the robust result that there are indeed selves.
The powers of these selves resemble in important respects those connected
with what Geertz has called the “Western conception of the person.”
None of the evidence I have adduced, however, implies that the self can
be the topic of direct inspection or study. On the contrary, the thinkers
upon whose results I have drawn hold, either explicitly or implicitly, that
however this self is to be described, its description is achieved indirectly, by
examining the contexts into which it is born, in which it lives, and from which
it expires. Many of the contexts are “extensional” contexts. All of these
results are consistent with Heidegger’s description of how a self comes to
grasp itself. He says:
I and Mine 95
Because as existents we already understand world beforehand, we are

able to understand and encounter ourselves constantly in a specific
way by way of the beings which we encounter as intraworldly .... In
understanding itself by way of things, the Dasein understands itself as
being-in-the-world by way of its world.36
Unlike Cartesianesque selves, then, the historical self can be understood

only in the worldly inscriptions of its doings and sufferings. The evidence I
have assembled here by no means warrants any claim that the positive es
sence of the self has been disclosed. Nonetheless, it does furnish non-trivial
grounds for proposing something like the following sketch of the self.
The self appears in its linguistic, fabricational, and actional performances.
None of these performances is uniquely privileged or radically decontextual-
ized. There is, therefore, no “key” to the self. Nonetheless, the self is
experienced and encountered in and through its multiple performances as an
abiding complex agent. The self is a sort of story. It has a theme, but the
theme is, as long as it lives, never irrevocably settled.
This self neither shows nor knows itself as a whole. But neither is it a
mere product of a fabrication or the outcome of a process to which it con
tributes nothing. What has it, it also has. It cannot be without being had by
antecedent contexts. But it, in turn, stamps these contexts as at least partial
ly its own.37 The self somehow both works on its context, which presents
itself as either problematic or malleable, and authenticates the results of its
work. The self, in Giddens’s terms, reflexively monitors both its own perfor
mances, the performances of other actors, and the setting of their interac
tion.38 To quote Giddens:
The communication of meaning in the processes of interaction does

not just “occur” over time. Actors sustain the meaning of what they
say and do through routinely incorporating “what went before” and
anticipations of “what will come next” into the present encounter.39
The selfs power to monitor both its own performances and its setting
makes it possible for the self to seek absent or new meanings. It can move
beyond the traditional certainties and confident beliefs into which it was
born. In living out its own undoing of its established sense of itself, the self
discovers that its unity is, in Edward Ballard’s terms, a dramatic unity.40 Its
unity is one of “non-identity.”
Such a self, of course, has no private knowledge. What it knows of itself
is, in principle, knowable for others. But it always knows itself as something
other than an empty frame upon which the structural and causal contexts it
inhabits can inscribe just whatever they will. This self can both address and
be the addressee of spatio-temporally specific moral, political, religious, and
artistic claims. For example: “Will you help me now?” It is capable of both
freedom and responsibility. And of alienation. It is autarchic, but never
angelic.
In sum, then, the evidence I have adduced gives robust support for the
conclusion that selves, in the traditional Western sense, exist. These selves
and their doings cannot be exhaustively analyzed in purely extensional terms.
This same evidence provides no succor to those who would defend a Car-
tesianesque, substantial self. The self described in this evidence is a curious
tale, a tale which tells itself. It finds itself already begun, and though it sen
ses its ending, it must leave the sense of its ending as well as of its beginning
to its equally curious fellow tales.41
The Interpretation of the Human Way of
Being and Its Political Implications*
One would be hard-pressed to maintain that one’s view of politics, with

its possibilities and requirements, is conceptually independent of one’s inter
pretation of what it is to be human. At the very least, “ought” implies “can.”
Most Western political thought since the seventeenth century has rested
on some version of an interpretation of human beings, the political agents
and patients, as more or less well defined, self-possessed entities which are in
crucial respects independent both of one another and of their material and
cultural contexts. Accordingly, human beings either possessed or could at
tain stability and totalized self-integration. Indeed, this stability and self
integration were marks of the fully developed, accomplished person. They
were characteristics which did or should provide the basis for one’s political
activity. And that activity either did or should preserve or enhance this sta
bility and totality.
The Cartesian doctrine of the ego is a prime example of this view of
human beings. But many of the principal competing views, e.g., those of
Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Mill, also emphasize stability and self
integration of this sort.1 Even Hume emphasizes at least stability, if not
totality.
The stable, totalized person is, for the tradition, the responsible agent of
politics, the one who acts in his own name for his own purposes in pursuit of
his own objectives. Because he is stable and whole, he can be identified and
held responsible for what he does or fails to do. He is likewise the one to
Calvin Schrag’s comments on an earlier version of this essay were most helpful.
whom political appeals can be addressed and who can respond at his own
discretion.
Heidegger, however, with his critique of the Cartesian doctrine of the
ego initiated a line of criticism that can be and has been extended to show
that all versions of a stable, self-sufficient, self-contained human person are
untenable.2 Among the most prominent thinkers to have taken up and am
plified the Heideggerian critique are those who are today called post-struc
turalists.
Post-structuralism is at most a movement. It is surely not a doctrine.
Each of its leading figures - e.g., Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Fran^ois Lyotard, Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - has articulated a distinctive position differing
in important respects from the others. Nonetheless, they are linked by a
common foe. They are all unremittingly hostile to the claims of stability and
totality.3 And their critiques of traditional interpretations of human exis
tence, as they explicitly recognize, likewise vigorously challenge traditional
Western political thought.
Given the force of the post-structuralist attacks, is there nonetheless a
defensible interpretation of what it is to be human that provides grounds for
attributing political responsibility? What must a human being be if he is to
bear responsibility of this sort?
In this paper, I will first briefly explore a few post-structuralist proposals
for understanding human beings and their transactions, linguistic and other
wise. Proposals of this sort, I will argue, are insufficient to support an ap
propriately strong attribution of political responsibility. I will therefore pro
pose and defend an alternative. This alternative does not seek to restore the
now discredited emphasis on stability and totality. But it does provide
grounds for an appropriate sense of political responsibility. I do not claim
that I can definitively establish the proposal I advance. But the evidence in
its favor is strong and, for want of a sufficiently comprehensive and articu
lated competitor, compelling.4
In general, post-structuralist accounts of the ego, the subject, or the self

have treated it as a construct or an effect, as something derivative, something
constituted by more elementary processes or forces. In place of the modern
The Human Way o f Being 99
view, according to which the ego, subject, or self is a fundamental, indepen

dent given which grounds or constitutes cultural processes and artifacts, the
post-structuralist or post-modernist treatment stresses its dependence upon
factors logically or conceptually, if not temporally, prior to and independent
of it.
Nietzsche’s critique of the notions of the ego or the subject foreshadows
that of the post-structuralists. In The Will to Power he says:
The “subject” is not something given, it is something added and

invented, and projected behind what there is .... Is it necessary to
posit an interpreter behind the interpretation? Even this is invention,
hypothesis .... Our belief in the concept of substance ... is simply a
formulation of our grammatical custom that adds a doer to every
deed .... The concept of substance is a consequence of the concept of
the subject: not the reverse! If we relinquish the soul, the “subject,”
the precondition for “substance” in general disappears .... “The sub
ject” is the fiction that many similar states in us are the effect of one
substratum .... Everything that enters consciousness as “unity” is
already tremendously complex: we always have only a semblance of
unity .... The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unneces
sary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of
subjects whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought
and our consciousness in general? A kind of aristocracy of “cells” in
which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals, used
to ruling jointly and understanding how to command? My hypothesis:
The subject as multiplicity.5
Echoes of Nietzsche’s critique have reverberated and continue to rever

berate in many recent theoretical discussions in literary criticism, historiog
raphy, and philosophy. For a sample, let me draw upon remarks of Barthes,
Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, and Stanley Fish.6
In “The Death of the Author,” Barthes speaks of the author as a product
of modern society with its emphasis on the individual “human person.” For
modern society, the author is one who gives expression to a thought, point of
view, etc., which has its source within the depths of his consciousness. But in
truth, Barthes claims, “to write is ... to reach that point where only language
acts, ‘performs,’ and not ‘me’.”7 The same holds for the I which in speaking
says I. This subject, this /, is not a ‘person.’ Apart from the enunciation
which defines it, it is empty. Thus “the modern scriptor is born simul
taneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or
exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate.”8
Instead of an author, a text, which is made of multiple elements drawn
from multiple sources, has a reader. But this reader is not an independent,
self-sufficient ego or subjectivity either. Rather, Barthes says:
The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a
writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies
not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot
any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography,
psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single
field all the traces by which the written text is constituted.9
The ego, subjectivity, or self, then, is simply a function or product of lan

guage and its deployment.
Deleuze and Guattari, in their turn, consider the subject to be at most an
ephemeral, ultimately insignificant, thing. The subject has no fixed identity
and is always peripheral to the organic body, the desiring-machine. It is
never more than a function, a transient function, of the transient sensuous
states of the body.10 The subject is produced
as a residuum alongside the machine, as an appendix, or as a spare

part adjacent to the machine .... This subject itself is not at the cen
ter, which is occupied by the machine, but on the periphery, with no
fixed identity, forever decentered, defined by the states through which
it passes.11
At the beginning of A Thousand Plateaus, they playfully reiterate this

view of the subject, the I. They say:
The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was

several, there was already quite a crowd .... We have assigned clever
pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own
names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves un
recognizable in turn .... To reach, not the point where one no longer
says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether

one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own.
We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.12
For Stanley Fish, all objects with which we deal, linguistic or otherwise,
are made and not found. But they are not made by individual subjects draw
ing upon their own inner resources. Rather, they are the products of social
or communal conventions. In fact, Fish says, we ourselves as individuals are
products of social and cultural patterns of thought. The notion of an in
dependent, unconstrained self is incomprehensible, for the self is a social
construct whose performances and activities are delimited by the systems of
intelligibility informing it. Hence “the self does not exist apart from the
communal or conventional categories of thought that enable its operations
....”13 It is a function of one or more interpretative communities.
Foucault, at least during his middle period (1966-1975), similarly rejected
any notion of a subject or self which in any sense constituted the discourse
or practices in which it was implicated.14 In The Order o f Things Foucault
entertains the possibility that man is no more than the contingent product of
a particular historical configuration of language. Man, he says, is a recent
invention, an invention perhaps nearing its end. If the conditions which
brought man into being disappear, as it is easy to imagine, “then one can
certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the
edge of the sea.”15
More clearly, in The Archeology o f Knowledge, Foucault holds that dis
cursive formations and practices are historical, determinate bodies of rules
which define for some spatio-temporal period and some social, geographical,
linguistic, or economic zone the conditions for enunciation.16 This domain of
enunciation
refers neither to an individual subject, nor to some kind of collective

consciousness, nor to a transcendental subjectivity; but ... it is de
scribed as an anonymous field whose configuration defines the pos
sible position of speaking subjects. Statements should no longer be
situated in relation to a sovereign subjectivity, but recognize in the
different forms of speaking subjectivity effects proper to the enun-
ciative field.17
Discourse, then “is not a language {longue), plus a subject to speak it. It is a
practice that has its own forms of sequence and succession.”18 Inasmuch as
what we do is a function of what we know and inasmuch as what we know is
indistinguishable from what we can say, our practice, like our enunciation,
and hence our very selves are effects of the discourse or discourses which
define us.
These examples illustrate the roots of the widespread contemporary
critique of any interpretation of what it is to be human that is couched in
terms of a stable, totalizable, independent subject or self. They stress the
importance of either langauge or desire, both of which desplay discontinuity
and inconstancy. There is good reason to agree that this critique has served
to call attention to features of human existence which have all too often been
overlooked. And in doing so, it has shown the indefensibility of any view of
the self like that of the Cartesian ego. Whatever it is to be human, it is
surely not to be sovereignly in control of either language or desire.
But not infrequently those who espouse this critique make the further
claim that the human subject or self is wholly constituted, wholly an effect or
product of intersecting forces and circumstances all of which are in some
respect prior to it, either logically or temporally. It is this further claim
which I believe to be ultimately indefensible. And the error it embodies is
not innocuous. For it undercuts the sensefulness of either making or trying
to accede to calls for rationally warranted political conduct. That is, if the
human self or subject is wholly constituted, is wholly a product or effect, how
could it be held responsible for engaging in or acting on the basis of a cri
tique of the conditions in which it itself lives? Even if Lyotard is right in
claiming that there is no politics of reason but only a politics of opinion, the
self must, as Lyotard himself sees, have the ability to decide among opinions,
to adopt some and to reject others.19 An “opinion” which one cannot help
but hold or reject is an obsession, not a genuine opinion.
Writing specifically of Foucault, Charles Taylor asks whether not only
can there be, but even must there be something between maintaining on the
one hand so total a constituting subjectivity that every pattern discernible in
history is necessarily attributed to conscious designers and holding, on the
other hand, that no patterns or structures owe what they are to purposeful
human action. Taylor grants the importance of emphasizing that every hu
man act “requires a background language of practices and institutions to
make sense; and that while there will be a particular goal sought in the act,
those features of it which pertain to the structural background will not be

objects of individual purpose.”20 But still one must explain diachronic chan
ges in these structures. One cannot do so by giving unqualified priority to
structure or language over action or speech. Rather:
Structures of action or languages are only maintained by being re

newed constantly in action/speech. And it is in action/speech that
they also fail to be maintained, that they are altered .... To give an
absolute priority to the structure makes exactly as little sense as the
equal and opposite error of subjectivism, which gave absolute priority
to the action as a kind of total beginning.21
Taylor’s critique of Foucault fits well with the critique Ian Saunders has
made of the widespread tendency shared by post-structuralists and others
totally to reduce the subject, self, or ego to a function or effect wholly deter
mined by some impersonal system. And Saunders explicitly ties his critique
to the matter of politics.
This widespread tendency, Saunders claims, rests upon some version of
two, or sometimes three, assumptions which, taken together, are inconsistent.
He gives two versions for the first two assumptions. The first version is:
1. Our thoughts and perceptions are fundamentally determined by the

semeiotic system in which we operate. 2. It is possible to specify the
mechanics of that system.22
The second version is:
1. The subject, and the sense it makes of the world, is fundamentally

determined by the universe of discourse in which it is embedded. 2.
It is possible to specify the mechanics of that discourse and the pro
cedures by which sense is produced, and the way in which the subject
is imbedded in it.23
If one takes the term ‘determined’ in a strong sense and not merely as
the equivalent of the weaker ‘influenced,’ then, Saunders persuasively argues,
assumptions 1 and 2, in either version, are inconsistent. If the former is true,
then the latter is false and vice versa. If the subject is wholly determined by
its linguistic context, then it cannot explicate the mechanics of the way the
context works. Any so-called explication could only be something just as
fully in need of explication as the initial explicandum. Conversely, if the
subject can give an explication which is genuinely distinct from the initial
explicandum, then it is not wholly determined in its performances by its
linguistic context, the initial explicandum.
More pertinent to my present concerns is Saunders’ further claim that
the widespread third assumption, namely that “political change is possible
only where that mechanism is itself identified and changed,”24 is possible only
if either assumption 1 or assumption 2 is false. If both assumptions 1 and 2
were true, there could be no intentional change, political or otherwise. That
is, if assumption 2 were true, assumption 3 could also be true only if the
outcomes of the mechanics of discourse and its procedures were not wholly
determined by the universe of discourse whose mechanics are in question. If
they were wholly determined, then the system would be absolutely closed and
hence impervious to intentional change. For intentional change, if it is any
thing at all, is at least partially extrasystematic.
Saunders, however, is mistaken when he says that if we substituted ‘in
fluenced’ for ‘determined’ in both of the first two assumptions we would
reduce them to triviality. Much contemporary study of both individual and
social human existence, whether by post-structuralists or others, has helpfully
specified these influences and constraints. Just to know that human beings
are not Cartesian egos is, of course, important. But it is no small matter to
be able to go further, as these recent studies have made possible, to see the
multiple ways in which we are subjected to constraints we cannot remove.
Saunders’ mistake notwithstanding, his work and Taylor’s each in its own
way prods one to look for an interpretation of what it is to be human which
is compatible with the possibility of deliberately initiated or fostered political
change. The requisite interpretation, however, must not surreptitiously rein
troduce a Cartesianesque self. I turn now to propose a candidate for this
interpretation.
II
Though it is necessary to interpret the human condition as one which is

not wholly determined by “extrinsic” forces if deliberately sought political
change is to be possible, an interpretation that did no more than allow for
change would be insufficient to provide the basis for distinguishing respon

sible from irresponsible political thought and action. A sufficiently com
prehensive interpretation is one which also accounts for the persistent, ap
parently intractable tension between the individual and the social and/or
communal dimensions of human existence. This tension subtends the more
specific tensions among such matters as freedom, authority, and justice, how
ever they are defined. Thus an acceptable interpretation of what it is to be
human must construe this fundamental tension in such a way that it can
make sense both of oppositions and conflicts on the one hand, and of con
vergences and cooperation on the other. And it must account for the ir-
reducibility of this tension’s polyvalency.
The interpretation that I propose of what it is to be human has its roots
in the works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. I concede that not everything
that either of them says supports my account. This is particularly true of
Heidegger, expecially the post 1930 Heidegger.25 Nonetheless, if there is
merit in my account, it is owed largely to them.
To be human is always to be implicated in a world of things and other
people. But it is to be implicated in this world in a specific way. To be
human is to be in the world interrogatively. To interrogate is to struggle,
though not necessarily with hostility. This interrogatory struggle constitutes
the human being as one who is always and essentially en route.26
In Being and Time, Heidegger repeatedly insists upon Dasein’s implica
tion in a world with others. Dasein’s way of being is such that it can both be
and understand itself as being assigned to a world of things with which it is
unavoidably concerned.27 Among the worldly entities with which Dasein
finds itself involved are other Daseins. This involvement with others is not
something that Dasein, once already constituted, achieves or recognizes. For
Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein even when no

Other is present-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein’s Being-alone is
Being-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and for a
Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with.28
Thus, Being-with Others, in solicitude, is constitutive of Dasein’s very way of

being.
These involvements, which constitute Dasein, induce anxiety in it. This
anxiety is anxiety precisely about Being-in-the-world itself. In anxiety Dasein
finds itself as free, free for authenticity. Anxiety thus individualizes Dasein.
But, in so doing, it does not isolate it. Rather, “what it does is precisely to
bring Dasein face to face with its world as world, and thus bring it face to
face with itself as Being-in-the-world.”29
Heidegger’s treatment of these themes in The Basic Problems o f Phen
omenology is, if anything, even more clear. Though there can be Nature
even if there is no Dasein, world as that wherein things and people can ap
pear and be understood can only be so long as Dasein exists. But because
Being-in-the-world is constitutive of Dasein’s way of being, Dasein can dis
cover and understand itself only by way of its encounters with the world and
its entities. Thus:
Because as existents we already understand world beforehand we are

able to understand and encounter ourselves constantly in a specific
way by way of the beings which we encounter as intraworldly .... In
understanding itself by way of things, the Dasein understands itself as
being-in-the-world by way of its world.30
As being-in-the-world Dasein is likewise being-with other Daseins. Da

sein does not just discover among the things of its world some other Daseins.
Instead,
as the being which is occupied with itself, the Dasein is with equal
originality being-with others and being-among intraworldly beings.
The world, within which these latter beings are encountered, is ...
always already world which the one shares with the others.31
Thus, equiprimordially existent Dasein is always and essentially being-with

others as being-among intraworldly entities.32 Hence human freedom can in
no wise consist in either establishing or maintaining independence either
from things or from other people.
What deserves emphasis for present purposes is the irreducibility of the
human way of being to that of intrawordly entities. They do not come to be
what they are in the same way as things do. In whatever way they are effects
or products, they are not such in the same way as intraworldly beings might
be.
The political pertinence of Heidegger’s Dasein analysis is enhanced by

his “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Politics, like art, requires both crea
tors and preservers who are in turn made possible and constituted, as crea
tors and preservers, by politics as they are by art.33 The creation and preser
vation of the political community, like that of the work of art, takes place in
an enduring struggle in which the work, here the body politic, is continually
wrestled from the earth upon which it must nonetheless always rest and back
into which it always is in danger of collapsing.34 The political domain, like
that of art, is always possible but also always historical and precarious. It is
possible only because there are people and equiprimordially people are what
and as they are because politics, like art, is possible.
Heidegger’s Dasein analyses can be fruitfully linked to Merleau-Ponty’s
interpretation of the human way of being as fundamentally interrogative.
This interrogation is not directed toward a world to which the interrogator is
irrelevant. Rather interrogating, and hence the human way of being itself,
responds to a world which does not merely confront us but which elicits our
questioning.
Interrogation, Merleau-Ponty says, presupposes nothing more than an
indubitable encounter between “us” and “what is.” Without this encounter
we could not ask questions. This inaugural encounter requires interpretation
both of the “us” and of the “what is.” At the start we must interpret this
encounter neither as an inclusion of what is in us nor as an inclusion of us in
what is.
From the outset we address ourselves to our experience
because every question is addressed to someone or something and

we can choose no interlocutor less compromising than the whole o f
what is for us. But the choice of this instance does not close the field
of possible responses; we are not implicating in “our experience” any
reference to an ego or to a certain type of intellectual relations with
being, such as the Spinozist “experiri.” We are interrogating our
experience precisely in order to know how it opens us to what is not
ourselves. This does not even exclude the possibility that we find in
our experience a movement toward what could not in any event be
present to us in the original and whose irremediable absence would
thus count among our originating experiences .... We situate ourselves
in ourselves and in the things, in ourselves and in the other, at the
point where, by a sort of chiasm, we become the others and we be

come world.35
This inaugural encounter between “us” and “what is” is not the en
counter between “probers” and “the inert.” What we encounter is no naked
thing, but rather the thing ready to be encountered. We interrogate it, Mer
leau-Ponty says, “according to its own wishes.”36
The chiasm, the intertwining, of which Merleau-Ponty speaks, does not
merge either me with the rest of humanity or humanity with things. But it
holds us together in such a way that neither we nor things can either be nor
be thought except as intertwined. It is as intertwined that both people and
things both have their distinctiveness and affect one another.
If the human way of being is fundamentally interrogative, and if human
interrogation is essentially responsive to a world which in effeqt asks to be
interrogated in certain ways (perceptually, imaginatively, memorially, cogni
tively, in productive enterprises, etc.), then both we and the world interplay
in a domain of openness. But this openness is not without bounds, even if
the bounds cannot be named.
If my interrogation is indeed a response, it cannot be wholly determined
in advance by that to which it answers. But neither can it ignore what calls
it forth. What calls forth my response today includes not merely things ready
for interrogation but also previous responses both of my own and of other
people.
Thus when I think or act I am responding to a world already bearing the
mark of prior human questioning. There is neither a distinguishable first call
issued by something showing no trace of the human nor a first response
wholly innocent of antecedents.
Pressing these leads provided by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, I pro
pose that we interpret the human way of being as that of being en route.
This interpretation gives perhaps more emphasis to the distinctiveness of
each person as initiating doer than either Heidegger or the later Merleau-
Ponty explicitly does. But given the difference between their rhetorical situa
tion, namely a situation in which Cartesianism is not yet overthrown, and
ours, instructed as it is both by them and by post-structuralist work, I believe
that my proposal is consonant with their positions.
In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt makes two points concerning

human action which, taken together, epitomize the interpretation that I offer.
She says, first:
Because the actor always moves among and in relation to other

acting beings, he is never merely ‘doer’ but always and at the same
time a sufferer. To do and to suffer are like opposite sides of the
same coin, and the story that an act starts is composed of its conse
quent deeds and sufferings .... Since action acts upon beings who are
capable of their own actions, reaction, apart from being a response,
is always a new action that strikes out on its own and affects others.37
Second, she links action and the unpredictability of its outcome with the
doer’s self-disclosure. She says:
This unpredictability of outcome is closely related to the revelatory

character of action and speech, in which one discloses one’s self
without ever either knowing himself or being able to calculate be
forehand whom he reveals .... This unchangeable identity of the per
son, though disclosing itself intangibly in act and speech, becomes
tangible only in the story of the actor’s and speaker’s life.38
But whereas Arendt distinguishes both thought or contemplation and labor

from this account of action, my proposal takes what she says about action to
hold good for all aspects of the human way of being.39
All the performances of those who are en route - perceptual, imaginative,
cognitive, volitional, etc. - are nondefinitive. They are essentially finite. But
to say that they are finite is not to say that they are either immature or flaw
ed. Nor is it to say that they are finally futile. Rather, it is simply to ac
knowledge that each of us is always involved with other people in a material
world not of our own devising. The context we inhabit always presents itself
as already articulated into other people and entities which are not human.
All of these, and each of us in our own ways, have their own specific weights
or differentiated “gravitational pulls.” Each of these weights is reciprocally,
but not uniformly, correlated with the others.
To be en route, is not, however, to have a clear cut destination which is
fundamentally distinct either from oneself or from one’s context. There is
no fixed anterior goal which one either misses or hits or approximates.

There is no terminus ad quern whose achievement would eliminate one’s
routedness. On my interpretation, the specific telos of the human way of
being is to persevere willingly, in both thought and deed, in one’s essential
routedness.
Thus, to be en route is to find oneself always already linked to a route
which is there to be trod and tended. Without route, there is no human way
of being. Without people, there is no route. A person fails to achieve his
telos if he insists upon trying to bring his routedness to an end. Even should
there be some ultimate terminus ad quem, some heaven that comes after this
life, one who would insist that only such a well defined culmination can give
point to our path treading, would effectively deprecate human existence.
Deprecation of this sort is tantamount to nihilism. It denies that human life
as presently constituted is of intrinsic worth.40
To be en route is to walk a path, to be a path dweller.41 To walk a path
is, of course, to follow it. But it is also to break it. Path walking both brings
about something new and preserves something old. It is also to be sustained
by the path. To be en route then is to struggle with and for the path.
This struggle with and for the path is, of course, a struggle in which each
person is inextricably involved with other people. It manifests itself in the
three-fold sorts of mediational performances people engage in, namely dis
cursive, actional, and productive-destructive performances. And among these
three types of performances, the discursive holds a certain pride of place
because without discursive performances, actional and productive-destructive
performances, if they would be possible at all, would be fundamentally
opaque. And when actional or productive-destructive performances are
discursively articulated, they acquire a durability they could not otherwise
achieve.
To be a path dweller is not to be a Sisyphus, condemned to futile exer
tions. The world elicits our interventions. Thus, both they and time matter.
It is through our interventions that both what the path is and what each of us
is can come to be and to appear. Our interventions, however, whether they
are innovative or preservative, are not necessarily “progressive.” The meta
phor of linear progression is inappropriate to the interpretation of the hu
man way of being as being en route.
What Paul Ricoeur says of political experience is a special case of our
fundamental experience of being en route. Political experience, he says,
is never an acquired experience; both progression and regression are

possible. The same pretensions, the same illusions, the same faults
can be repeated at different moments of history .... History - as his
tory of power - is uncertain. It is the collection of chances and per
ils, the possibility of gaining everything or losing everything.42
But at the same time, each of us is the beneficiary of a specific heritage

which, though we can corrupt it, we can also enhance to bequeath to our
successors.
In plying our path(s) each of us is constantly confronted by the con
fluence of the settled and the open, the old and the new. This confluence
constitutes the unique present which in effect interrogates us. In turn, it
elicits from us an interrogating response. This double interrogation thus
constitutes our basic encounter with the world and others. That encounter
gives rise to our path treading, our play-struggle, in a world which both in
vites our interrogation and yet remains finally ungoverned by any of our
particular interrogations and the control they tend to aim for.
We path dwellers are thus not coequal to the world. We reply to a path
that the world itself plies. Willy-nilly, all human replying both springs from
and interrogatively responds to the world and its path. This replying is in the
service of the world plying its path. Whether we recognize it or not, tending
the world on its path is the intelligible point of human performances of any
sort.
To be human, then, is to be for the world. This does not mean that the
world so dominates people that what they do is really its doing and not
theirs. We can be for the world and serve it only if we remain its other.
The world allows, at least for a time, its other to be genuinely other. In
maintaining our otherness, we remain for the world. Our otherness from the
world is finally for the world.43
This interpretation of the human way of being as being en route fully
respects the achievements of recent critiques of the Cartesian subject. It
acknowledges the ineluctable finitude, historicality, and intersubjectivity of
human existence.44 But it does so in such a way that it shows how it is that
we can be and are responsible both to the world and to others. We are in
some measure always responsible both for the way they are and the way we
are. Our interrogatory response to our ongoing encounter with the world
and others is never so tightly constrained that it is effectively their response

which we merely enact. It is our response, one in which we pose a new
question to them. But at the same time our question is responsive to a
world which allows us to be and which furnishes both the stimulus and the
resources with which we respond.
The interpretation of the human way of being as being en route has wide
spread consequences for thinking and practicing politics responsibly. Let me
simply mention, in conclusion and without argumentation, just a few topics,
central for politics, for which this interpretation has important implications.
I do not, of course, mean that this interpretation solves specific political
problems or mandates specific policies. Rather, it provides a crucial orienta
tion for addressing political issues of all sorts, both conceptual and practical.
My proposal to interpret the human way of being as being en route pro
vides a sound basis for considering ecological issues, for if we are to serve
the world, we must preserve it. And we must preserve it as habitable for
other preservers. My interpretation also shows how and why considerations
of economics are always relevant to politics. Economics always depends in
part upon available material resources. These resources are constitutive of
the path available for treading. But inasmuch as economics is not merely a
matter of available material resources but also always involves human en
deavors, it is always in some important respects at the disposal of politics.45
Further, my proposal accounts for why whatever we do has consequences
which never perfectly match our intentions. All of our sayings and doings
are interventions in a game which is already under way before we arrive on
the scene and which will continue after we die. The path we have for trea
ding both goes its own way and is fashioned in part by other treaders. And
the effects of our own treading are never fully isolable from those of other
treadings.
And finally, understanding the human way of being as being en route
shows why it is impermissible and ultimately impossible either to seek at all
times and in all respects to be independent and autonomous or, on the other
hand, to surrender ourselves wholly and without reserve to that which is
other than us. To be en route is to maintain oneself, in struggle, both as a
unique individual and as one who belongs with and to the world and other
people.
Responsibly lived, this struggle respects the historicality and finitude
characteristic of everything human. As a path treader, when I struggle re
sponsibly I struggle for myself against the stasis of self-satisfaction. I strug

gle against myself for the sake of being available to and for my fellows.46 I
struggle for others against their oppressors, always however struggling for all-
encompassing reconciliation. I struggle against those who would coopt me
lest I fail either to maintain my own distinctive treading or to do what I can
to support others in their struggles. The struggle constitutive of the human
way of being, then, is the struggle to abide as path dweller with other dwell
ers.
This interpretation provides underpinnings, and in some aspects, correc
tives for studies showing the ineliminability of certain tensions and struggles
in social life. The struggle for autonomy or radical democracy against he
gemony, for example, which Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe speak of
unifying is not the struggle of the good, the diversifying, against the bad, the
unifying. It is the always ambivalent and ambiguous struggle to preserve and
elaborate a tension whose reduction, in either direction, would be destruc
tive.
To be sure, I have not proven, in any strong sense, that we should inter
pret the human way of being as being en route. But the argumentation I
have presented on its behalf and the light it sheds upon the perplexities of
political thought and practice give one good reasons for adopting it. No
competitor, so far as I can see, has comparably strong credentials.
Part III
Taken together, the essays in Part II propose a distinctive interpretation

of what it is to be a human agent. This interpretation stands as a “third
way” between interpretations that treat humans as atomic individuals and
those that regard them as products of some more basic set of forces or caus
es. On the interpretation I propose, the human agent enjoys a freedom that
is always and necessarily intertwined both with other free people and with
material reality. The situatedness of all human freedom is not primarily a
limit imposed upon it from elsewhere. It is rather, constitutive of that free
dom. ^
If situatedness is indeed part and parcel of human freedom, then how
does one best live out his or her freedom in the face of the freedom of other
persons? How best does one bear oneself toward others? Assuming that
Husserl is right when he says that each person always has some habitual style
or way of willing that is itself freely adopted, I argue that at least in the
domain of politics, the most reasonable and hence the most responsible
attitude to adopt is one of hope.
The sort of hope I have in mind is irreducible to either wish or desire.
It is not essentially tied to the emotions. Rather, it is a deliberately adopted
orientation which in turn modifies or modalizes particular decisions to per
form or abstain from the sorts of deeds usually taken to be political.
The two essays belonging to Part III clarify both just what characterizes
a hope that is specifically political and just how this hope affects political
thought as well as practice. Properly thematized, hope appears as the most
appropriate orientation for engaging in political life.
The first and earlier essay, “Hope and Responsible Politics,” provides
evidence that the concept of hope for which I argue is neither idiosyncratic
nor ad hoc. It is quite well attested to in the West and either it or some
thing very much like it shows up with regularity in the East. This essay ap
peared first in the special issue of Man and World, Vol. 17, no. 3, 1984, 453-
476 and was reprinted in Phenomenology and Human Sciences, ed. by J. N.
Mohanty (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1985), 213-236. The second essay in Part III
is “The Place of Hope in Politics.” In it, I spell out in some detail the rele
vance to contemporary politics of the political hope for which I argue. In so
doing I defend a stronger thesis about hope than I do in the first essay. It
appears here for the first time. I have omitted from this collection a con
siderably earlier piece of mine on this same general theme, namely “Fini
tude, Hope and the Human Community,” Humanitas, Vol. 16, 1975,133-138.
Hope and its Ramifications for Politics
Since the seventeenth century, at least, Western political philosophy has

for the most part been articulated in terms of one or the other of two incom
patible positions. One position would claim that there is some knowable,
anterior, fundamentally ahistorical order which serves as standard, criterion,
or guiding principle for political conduct. One this view, politics can reason
ably aspire to being a science, in the classical sense of that term. Orthodox
or scientific Marxism is an example of this position.
The opposite position denies that there is any such knowable anterior
order. But it claims for men a natural, radically non-political, freedom on
the basis of which they construct the body politic on their own terms, at their
own discretion, and for their own purposes. On this view, politics is simply
the expression of a radical human autonomy bound to consider nothing but
its own preferences. Hobbesianism, if its “geometry” is disregarded, ex
emplifies this position.1
Both of these positions, however, suffer from substantial defects. Each
of them disregards or misconstrues critically important data concerning the
nature of both intersubjectivity and history. A crucial consequence of these
defects is that neither of these versions of political philosophy provides a
secure bulwark against tyranny. As a matter of historical fact, each of these
versions of political philosophy has been used to buttress tyranny. Each is, if
not prone to such use, at least amenable to it. On the one hand, if the ruler
can achieve science and thus be in possession of the truth, why should he
give ear to those who oppose him? Or indeed why need he bother even to
find out whether others agree with him? On the other hand, if the ruler is
already in possession of might, why should he heed the weak, unless it be to
insure his strength and their weakness? Tyranny, however, is the worst of
politics. It is that which is least deserving of the name, regardless of whether

it is benevolent or malevolent.2
Several recent thinkers have, with greater or lesser systematic effort,
sought for some alternative to these two positions, some third way which
does effectively exclude tyranny. Merleau-Ponty is one of the most helpful of
these thinkers.3 He argues for a dialectical politics. Such a politics gives full
weight to the density and complexity of three fundamental phenomena,
namely history, intersubjectivity, and language.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that Merleau-Ponty’s position can be charac
terized as a politics of hope.4 As such, it stands in contrast, on the one hand,
to a “politics of vision” which would claim “scientific knowledge” about what
specific forms of political activity can or will accomplish. On the other hand,
it stands opposed to a “politics of might” which can claim no justification for
specific political conduct other than that of superior or sufficient force.
But Merleau-Ponty’s helpful suggestions notwithstanding, the sense of a
“politics of hope” has still to be developed. The objective of this paper is to
contribute to that development. The term ‘hope’ itself is vague. The first
part of this essay will attempt to give it some precision. With that precision
in hand, I will then show some of the ways in which hope fits into and makes
possible a non-tyrannical politics. Hope, I will show, is incompatible with
tyranny. As such, it is a sufficient condition for a non-tyrannical politics.
Whether it is also a necessary condition for non-tyrannical politics is a ques
tion not fully addressed here, though there is evidence to suggest that it is.
A first purchase on the concept of hope can be obtained by taking note

of the meanings associated with the term ‘hope’ in traditional Western Chris
tian usage. These meanings have antecedents in both Greek and Hebraic
thought and are not radically foreign to at least some traditions of Eastern
thought. The exploration of the several uses of the term ‘hope’ and of the
terms which belong to the semantic field in which it has in fact functioned
will provide a basis for fashioning not merely an empirical generalization
about the use of the term but a well formed concept of a specific kind of
possible human performance.
Let me note in passing that my approach to a concept supposedly of
substantial import for political thought through the use of a term most ob
Hope and Its Ramifications fo r Politics 119
viously associated with religion is not so odd as might initially appear. The
putative radical divorce of politics from religion is a comparatively recent,
and Western, arrangement. Most human thought has taken place in a con
text where such a radical divorce was not conceived of.5 Thus there was not,
and in fact there is not now, any appropriate way to segregate religious vo
cabulary from political vocabulary and vice versa. I will occasionally return
to this point in what follows.
In summarizing his discussion of the understanding of hope found in the
writings of the Church Fathers, S. Harent concludes; “In sum, the act called
‘hope’ encompasses, in its complete development, love, desire, courage, and
c o n f i d e n c e As St. Thomas had made explicit, hope always has the four
following conditions. First, hope differs from fear inasmuch as hope’s object
is some good, not an evil. Second, hope differs from joy inasmuch as joy
arises from a present, possessed good whereas hope always bears upon the
future. Third, hope always implies that the good it seeks is difficult to ob
tain. In this respect, hope is different from ordinary desire. Fourth, hope
differs from despair inasmuch as it believes that its object is attainable.7
But the belief in the attainability of its object, which is ingredient in
hope, always and necessarily lacks certitude. In fact, hope is incompatible
with either an exorbitant demand for or claim of certitude. Hope, then, is
opposed not merely to a despair which does not believe in the attainability of
the object. Hope is also opposed to presumption, to the excessive certitude
that one will obtain the object of one’s aspirations. Thus, though hope is
supported by intelligence, its proper locus, as St. Bonaventure taught, is in
the will.
Since hope is essentially lacking in certitude and since it bears at least in
part upon a future at some non-trivial remove from the present, hope also
requires patience. Thus Harent can say:
Just as patience helps hope to continue and to endure, so, in return,

hope helps one to be patient, to resist, to struggle. There is a recip
rocal influence. Courageous in its desire, serene in its courage, hope is
a principle o f action .*
This traditional Christian understanding of hope, together with its related

notions, is continuous with, though not identical to, the notion of hope found
in the Bible. Though the term ‘hope,’ with the senses just discussed, is pro
minent in the Epistles attributed to Peter and in some of those attributed to

Paul, namely Romans and I Corinthians, the term ‘hope’ does not occur in
the Gospels. Its partial equivalents, “do not fear” and “seek” however, occur
regularly.
According to Rudolf Bultmann, the Greek elipzein is used in the Sep-
tuagint version of the Old Testament for the Hebrew verbs meaning to trust,
rely, or depend upon. The noun form elpis is used for security and quiet
ness. Either elpis or pepoithesis is used to translate “confidence” or “bold
ness.” Elpizein is also occasionally substituted for hypomenein which regular
ly renders the Hebraic “to abide patiently,” “to stand firm,” “to wait for.” It
is also used for “to seek refuge,” “to cause to hope,” and “to tarry.”9
Bultmann’s summary of the notion of hope in the Old Testament calls
attention to the emphasis there on yearning, patient waiting, or fleeing for
refuge. Hope is not a consoling dream designed to distract people from
their present miseries. Rather, it springs from the awareness both that there
is a future which can be different from the present and that things are well
with those who hope. But “hope is not directed to anything specific, nor
does it project its own view of the future, but it consists rather in general
confidence in God’s protection and help.”10 On the Old Testament view,
then, hope is primarily a way of bearing oneself toward another person, here
God, rather than primarily as a way of bearing oneself toward a specific
desired state of affairs.
The Greek word elpis used in the Septuagint has, of course, connections
with non-biblical Greek thought and literature. In the Philebus, Plato main
tains that human existence is determined not merely by the aisthesis which
receives the present but also both the mneme of the past and the elpis (ex
pectation) of the future. Aristotle, too, notes a link between elpis and
mneme. Bultmann describes the significance of this connection as follows:
Like recollection of the past, expectation of the future is not an ob

jective assessment but a subjective expectation in fear and hope,
whose content arises from what man considers to be his own pos
sibilities. ‘Man’s own being thus determines what he hopes and how
he hopes ....’ Expectations and hopes are man’s own projections of
his future.11
Elsewhere in Greek literature, hope is presented as a comfort for a man

in a difficult present (Odyssey, 16 and 19). Hope is golden (Sophocles, Oedi
pus Tyrranus, 158). Without hope, man’s thymos or spirit is defeated (Aes
chylus, Agamemnon, 994). And, at least on H. Frankel’s reading of Heracli
tus 18, elpis is the suprarational power of eckeurein (discovery or invention).
“H e who does not expect what cannot be expected (i.e., what transcends all
expectation) will not make the unattainable attainable.”12
Not all Greek thinkers, though, regarded elpis as necessarily benign or
sensible. Pindar speaks of it as reckless and dangerous, as opposed to fore
sight (Nemean Odes 11, 44ff.). For Democritus (Fragment 176), elpis should
not rely on chance, which by definition precludes foresight. It should rather
be restricted to that which can be expected on the basis of a scientific inves
tigation of phusis.
This lack of enthusiasm for hope is also characteristic of both Greek and
Roman Stoics. They took it to be self-evident that hope is simply man’s
projection of the future.13 Seneca’s summary remarks about hope draw toge
ther several themes of considerable relevance to this study:
Though they are so dissimilar, these affections march together: after

hope comes fear. Why should this occasion surprise? Both suppose
that the soul is in suspense; both are solicitous for the future. But
what especially gives birth to both of them is that without confining
ourselves to the present we carry over thoughts to the distant. Thus
foresight, one of man’s greatest goods, is turned into an evil. The
animal flees the danger which he sees; the danger passes and then he
is tranquil. But as for us, the future tortures us at the same time as
does the past. The miseries of the present do not suffice for us.14
This review of the way the notion of hope has been incorporated into
Western and Hebraic thought provides the basis for discerning some of its
constant features. Whether hope is blessed or damned, it is understood to
have the following features:
(1) Hope as an act is connected with the conviction that the future need
not be like the present. It is in this respect that hope is linked with memory.
If memory shows that the past and the present are different, for better or
worse, then the future can also be different, again, for better or worse.
(2) Hope is connected with the conviction that the character of the fu
ture can somehow be influenced by the activity of free agents. The influen
tial agent may or may not be the one who hopes. But he who hopes thereby
allies himself to the influential agent and thus can benefit from that agency.
At least, then, in the minimal sense of allying oneself with the efficacious
agent, hope, too, claims to be efficacious. At the very least, it gives the “pri
mary” agent an appropriate audience.
(3) The object of the act of hope both is never fully determinate and is
always complex. It is never fully determinate inasmuch as hope is distinct
from both certitude about its own outcome and foresight into some well-
defined future state of affairs. Hope is always complex insofar as it is always
directed both toward some other person, either human or divine, and toward
some state of affairs, ill-defined though the state of affairs necessarily is. In
this sense, hope is a double-rayed act.
Reflection on these constant features of hope allows one to discern some

additional facets of hope. First, hope is indeed an act in its own right, hav
ing its own object and temporality. It is not a mere “adverbial” modification
of some other act. That is, hope is not merely a modalization of acts, which
acts could be modalized otherwise. For example, a person does not marry
hopefully or cynically. He hopes and marries. Or he is cynical and marries.
The temporal duration of one act of hope can embrace that of several acts oi
other sorts. And conversely, more than one act of hope may be performed
during the temporal duration of some other single act. For example, during
the duration of a single belief that the future will be transformed for the
better, one might perform several acts of hope whose object is to ally onesell
with the agent of that transformation. Thus, within Rabbinic Judaism there
was apparently great confidence that the Messiah would come to inaugurate
his reign, but no comparable confidence about one’s own participation in the
glories thereof. It is easy to imagine the possibility of multiple acts of hope
concerning one’s own participation in those glories performed in the course
of the duration of one steady conviction about the Messiah’s coming.
A peculiarity of the act of hope, though, Is that it can endure for long
stretches of a person’s life.ls It can be reaffirmed when threatened or noted
when its absence in another person becomes evident. Thus, for the most
part, the act of hope provides the latent background against which more
patent acts are performed. In times of crisis, however, the act of hope can
either be brought to focal presence or renewed by being performed again.
A second facet of hope revealed by reflection on its constant features is
bound up with its double-rayed character. Hope always introduces a polyva
lent tension into the flow of experience. On the one hand, in its orientation
toward one or more other persons, hope implies some expectation concern
ing the outcome of the agency of others. The fundamental expectation is
that if the other person acts as a genuine agent, then his so doing is what is
of chief value both to him and to me. That is, hope involves both the convic
tion that it is necessarily better for a man to be associated with other agents
rather than with puppets, even if he were the puppeteer, and a yearning for
them to exercise that agency. Hope involves the courageous confidence that
one’s own agency will not be compromised by the agency of others.16
On the other hand, in its orientation toward states of affairs, hope ack
nowledges the finite, situated character of all agency. States of affairs do
matter. They weigh upon agency, particularly in providing either favorable
or unfavorable conditions for its efficacy. Hope must take into account and
bear upon something other than the agency of persons. It must bear upon
those circumstances which either advance or retard the efficacy of agents,
circumstances whose precise bearing on agency the one who hopes cannot
know. For if he knew their bearing, he would have that kind of certain fore
sight which would make hope otiose.
If a human performance lacks either of these rays, it cannot be hope. If
it lacks orientation toward other efficacious agents, then it is mere desire. If
it lacks orientation toward states of affairs, present and to come, then it is
either presumption or fanaticism, both of which regard the concrete circum
stances in which human activity occurs as fundamentally inconsequential.
These rays, however, are not of equal weight. The primary ray is that
directed toward other agents. Whatever the importance of circumstances, no
present or future circumstance, so long as there is hope, can be taken to
render the agency both of the one who hopes and of him in whom one hopes
fully impotent. At least one agency, capable in principle of restoring the
other agency no matter what the circumstances are, must be admitted.
Otherwise hope has lapsed into despair. The agency in question of course is
an agency which is efficacious within and upon circumstances.
The survey of meanings associated with the term ‘hope’ and reflections
thereupon provide the warrant for proposing the following characterization
of the phenomenon of hope: Hope is a double-rayed act (1) whose object is
both complex and never fully determinate, but whose complexity is ordered
with priority given to the person or persons in whose efficacy one hopes over
the states of affairs for which one hopes, and (2) which is inseparable from
the conviction that the future is open to efficacious activity in which he who
hopes, by the very fact of hoping, either does or can participate. For those
who have the conviction that the future is open to efficacious human agency,
hope makes sense. For those who do not have this conviction, hope makes
no sense.17 Hope, then, is essentially an act of a self-acknowledged finite
agent acknowledging his intersubjective, historical involvement with some
other agent or agents in a world and comporting himself with courage and
confidence toward the future taken as open.
The account of hope which I have presented here is in the main consis
tent with Gabriel Marcel’s description of it.18 He, too, notes that hope tran
scends all particular objects and is expressive of a fundamental appreciation
of man’s intersubjective condition. To hope is to be ready both to give to
others and to receive from them. Further, hope is not a mere modification
of other performances. Rather, to hope is to involve oneself in a unique
process. In so doing, one weaves his experience in a specific way. Hope
involves both a relaxed patience and liberty. Both hope and liberty, he says,
take for granted the power of one’s judgment to override the claims made
upon him not only by the perception of present circumstances but also by the
limited scope of imagination. But however oriented it is toward an open
future, hope does not involve disdain for either the past or the future. Hope
says, “as before, but differently and better than before.”19
On one crucial point, however, Marcel’s account is not clear. He says
that he who hopes effectively says: “I hope in thee for us.”20 Is this “thee”
necessarily the Absolute Thou who is, whether explicitly recognized or not,
God? Though Marcel’s description can readily lead one to this conclusion,
my account suggests no such claim. Rather, as will be seen below, my claim
is that hope can be directed toward either divine or human others or toward
both. And the kind of hope with which I am here concerned is explicitly that
which is directed toward other human beings.
Thus far, my discussion of hope has been confined to a consideration of
its sense in Western and Judaic sources. For a fully satisfactory account of
hope, one would also have to inquire into its sense and place in the several
traditions of Eastern thought. My own limitations prevent me from complet
ing this inquiry. But at least on the surface, my results do not appear to
conflict with at least some important strands of Eastern thought.
If Mahatma Gandhi can be taken as a faithful articulator of Hindu
thought, then hope in the sense I have specified, though perhaps not explicit
ly named, is not foreign to Hinduism. Gandhi takes the fundamental mes
sage of Hinduism to be: Renounce everything and the reward of renuncia
tion is the enjoyment of all you need. But renunciation is connected to ser
vice of others, is connected to a ceaseless striving to benefit others. “Re
nunciation made for the sake of such service is an ineffable joy of which
none can deprive one ....”21
Renunciation, however, is not passivity. It is of a piece with the ideal of
Satyagraha, whose meaning includes patience, serenity, freedom, and justice.
Further, renunciation goes hand in hand with dutiful action. In the words of
Bhagavad-Gita: “Thy right is to work only; but never to the fruits thereof.
Be thou not the producer of the fruits of (thy) actions; neither let thy attach
ments be toward inaction.”22
For Gandhi, there is no incompatibility between dutiful political action
and religion. In fact, there is no genuine, life giving politics apart from reli
gion. And religion, in turn, primarily consists in service to the helpless.
For me the road to salvation lies through incessant toil in the service
of my country and therethrough of humanity. I want to identify
myself with everything that lives .... So my patriotism is for me a
stage in my journey to the land of eternal freedom and peace. Thus
it will be seen that for me there are no politics devoid of religion.
They subserve religion. Politics devoid of religion are a death-trap
because they kill the soul.23
This view led Gandhi constantly to oppose the social forces which sought
to maintain a class of people as untouchables.24 This opposition had as its
positive goal the establishment of a living equality among all men. The ben
efits of this equality were expected to ramify throughout the entire earth.
“The moment we have restored real living equality between man and man,
we shall be able to establish equality between man and the whole creation.
When that day comes we shall have peace on earth and goodwill to men.25
It is reasonable to think that Gandhi is not insisting that the object of his
striving-renunciation is some well defined state of affairs whose presence
would vindicate his life and whose absence would render it sterile. Rather,
with patience, confidence, and courage, he addresses a future open to human
influences. Further, he seeks to expand the number of agents who do like
wise.
Evidence of the phenomenon of hope, even if not explicitly named, is
found also within Buddhism. According to Buddhism, there is a two-fold
sacred mission. In addition to the primary mission which stems from the
veneration of the career of the Buddha, there is also the important example
of the career of the great king Asoka.26 Asoka’s career exemplifies an essen
tial dimension of Buddhism. Among the major interpretations of the sig
nificance of this dimension is that presented in the Mahavamsa or The Great
Chronicle o f Ceylon. The Chronicle presents
the sacred history of a people destined with a sacred mission, name

ly, to maintain the purity of the Dhamma in a world of imper
manence and self-seeking .... The primary intent is twofold: to pro
vide paradigmatic models for the present and the future and to en
gage in anamnesis or cultic reawakening of a people to the high
points in its past and present destiny.27
On this view, the state is not an ultimate end. It is the servant of a high
er end. “This higher end is always partially obscure and is never permanent
ly reached.”28 Even so, the life of Asoka himself exemplifies the possibility
of efficacious human agency. The total image of Asoka manifests the Bud
dhist doctrine about man.
Asoka ... is not the only Great Man (the Mahapurisa); he is also
Everyman. Asoka, the wicked and cruel becomes Asoka, the just
and righteous. In one human life we have the crystallization of two
contrasting images, that of classic brutality and that of classic toler
ance .... Here is not the renunciation of power but its transformation.
It is this metanoia which makes him a compelling model throughout
the Theravada world.29
Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics 127
For Asoka, the true Dhamma could be brought into being in the midst of
the daily personal and social lives of his people.30 Asoka’s unique contribu
tion consisted in his recognition that Nibbana cannot be pursued when the
basic needs of people are ignored. His approach issues in a Nibbana in this
world which consists in “the compatibility, even interdependence, between
social concern on the one hand the quest for tranquility on the other.”31
This approach yields two general convictions. First, there is a framework
of relationships by virtue of which all the actions, words, and desires of each
person affect everyone. Second, royal power, when properly purged, can
bring about much good. This “is essentially a view of human nature which is
realistic yet supremely sensitive to man’s potential.”32
For my purpose, which is to show that the sense of hope is not unknown
in Eastern thought, this sketch of Theravada Buddhism is sufficient. One
can discern there a conviction that what men do does matter for a future and
that beneficial doing is always the sort of doing which seeks to provide room
for others to be efficacious as well. These are the central constituents of the
concept of hope I have specified above.
At first glance the concept of hope appears to be alien to Confucian
thought. It seems that Confucianism supports a political absolutism or des
potism which would preclude a basic feature of hope, namely the expectation
that the Other’s initiative is of importance for both the Other and for the
one who hopes in him. Closer inspection, however, shows that hope does
plan an important role in Confucianism, even if the concept itself remains
implicit rather than explicit. Two strands of evidence support this claim.
Consider first two passages from the Analects. First, in speaking of a
man’s duty to his prince, Confucius says: “Never deceive him and then you
may stand boldly up to him.”33 Second, Confucius cites Tzu Chang with
apparent approval:
Tzu Chang said: “A servant of the State, who in the presence of

danger offers his life, whose first thought in the presence of personal
gain is whether it be right, whose first thought in sacrifice is rever
ence, and whose first thought in mourning is grief, - he commands
respect.34
These two passages, and they are not discordant with a number of other
passages, indicate that there is room for important initiative from the ruler’s
Other. Since the ruler rules by virtue of the Mandate of Heaven which he
will possess only so long as he retains his moral power (te), he can and
should expect to benefit from the Other’s initiative.35
The second strand of evidence is found in the history of Confucian
thought. At one level, it is true, Confucianism accepts a version of predes
tination and fate (ming) which would appear to provide a basis for a despo
tism which could expect nothing from the ruler’s Other. But in practice, this
tendency toward despotism was mitigated in several ways. Rulers accepted
codes of law developed by their predecessors. And at least institutionally,
the promulgation of a code implied an act of agreement between ruler and
ruled. In the establishment of these codes Confucianist scholars played a
decisive role.36 Though the ruler had and exercised wide-ranging control,
Chinese absolutism “was tempered by an all-pervading concern with human
relations and social stability. In spite of the theories and devices of autocra
cy, the Chinese tradition distinctly did not put the state above mankind.”37
Confucianist opposition to absolutism can be seen in the criticism direc
ted by Huang Tsung-hsi (1610-1695) against the despotism that arose in the
Ch’in and Han dynasties. Huang argued for a system of government which
both served the interests of the people and conformed to the moral law, a
system which would not require regular resort to force, extensive legislation
or constant litigation.38 To implement such a system of government, Huang
recommended institutions which would perform some of the functions per
formed by organs of representative government. Among these, he em
phasized the schools. The schools, Huang maintained, could and did serve
as the forum where political ideas could clash. It was also through schooling
that individuals could gain the resources with which to exercise efficacious
initiatives.39
This brief discussion of Confucianism suggests that here too there is
room in practice for a performance much like that of hope on the part of
both the ruler and the ruled. Within Confucianism, education, with the clash
of ideas involved therein, is always esteemed. And everyone, even the ruler,
both has expectations of others and is subject to others’ expectations. Both
schooling and these expectations, however, have no fully determinate state of
affairs as their unique objective.
The purpose of this sketch of some important traditions of Eastern
thought has been to show that the phenomenon of hope is not necessarily
confined to the Judeo-Western world. Even if the concept of hope is not
explicitly elaborated in Eastern thought, it is not dissonant with at least some

major Eastern traditions. Indeed, there is reason to claim that the notion of
hope is implicit in these traditions. This modest result is sufficient to sup
port the claim that hope is not a merely intra-systematic function of Judeo-
Western modes of thought and action. If hope is not universal, nothing in
principle prevents its universalization.
Nonetheless, for present purposes let it remain questionable whether
hope as a senseful performance is compatible with Eastern thought as it has
actually been constituted in history. Further, let it be granted that even
without hope the principal traditions of Eastern thought have the resources
with which to establish the unacceptability of tyranny. Even so, hope in the
sense specified here can be shown to be incompatible with tyranny. As such,
it is a sufficient condition for a non-tyrannical politics.
Hope, as I have shown above, is an act of a self-admitted finite agent
acknowledging his intersubjective, historical involvement with some Other in
a world and comporting himself with courage and confidence toward a future
which is regarded as open. The task to which I now turn is that of describ
ing some of the political implications of performances of hope.
II
A distinction of capital importance must be made at the outset. Hope, I

have said, is a double-rayed act, one ray of which is directed toward the
person or persons in whose efficacy one hopes. This ray holds priority, in
hope, over that which is directed toward some state of affairs which is de
sired and sought for. One must, however, distinguish whether the person or
persons in whom one hopes are human or superhuman. If the person or
persons are human, then the hope can be political. If superhuman, then the
hope is religious.40 For the hope to be political, those in whom one hopes
must be seen as co-participants in the activity of establishing or maintaining
a structured context, or world, in which multiple sorts of human activity can
find space in which to appear.
Politics is a “totalizing” totality. That is, it lays claim to the responsibi
lity for providing the framework within which other sorts of activities, e.g.,
educational, economic, artistic, religious activities, can occur. It takes its task
to be that of allotting to each of these its “space.” Thus politics on the one
hand gives place to other sorts of activities, while on the other it regulates
them to prevent the unwarranted encroachment of one of these sorts of

activity upon another. It likewise works to preserve itself as the appropriate
source of such allocations.
This view of politics is consonant with Aristotle’s discussion of communi
ties. He writes:
All communities are like parts of the political community .... We

think of the political community as having initially come together and
as enduring to secure the advantage of its members .... Now, all other
forms of community aim at some partial advantage .... But all these
communities seem to be encompassed by the community that is the
state; for the political community does not aim at the advantage of
the moment but at what is advantageous for the whole of life. Thus
all associations seem to be parts of the political community.41
Similarly, the view I have presented in consonant with Michael Oake-

shott’s claim that every mode of utterance, including poetic utterance, is
properly construed in the context of a society of conversationalists rather
than in a society devoted to scientific inquiry or one engaged in practical
enterprise. For Oakeshott, politics is a conversation and political education
involves learning how to be a participant in a conversation.42
As a matter of historical record, politics has not been the sole claimant
to being the preeminent community, the totalizing community, of which all
other associations are part. Religion, too, has claimed this grounding func
tion. In fact, throughout much of recorded history, both East and West,
religion and politics have been closely intertwined, often to the point of being
regarded as two facets of one and the same fundamental reality. Theocra
cies and civic religions are not counterexamples to this generalization. They
are simply two among the many shapes which the connection between reli
gion and politics has taken on.43
The thesis I wish to defend is that when politics is properly construed,
then if it is intercalated with hope, tyranny is effectively eliminated. More
specifically, The place o f hope in politics is both to develop and maintain the
political community as a totalizing community while at the same time to fore
stall all attempts to convert the activity o f any human community, political or
otherwise, into the activity o f a totalized community. In performing this func
tion, hope shows itself to be a sufficient condition for insuring against tyran
ny.44 Precisely how this is so can be shown first by making clear the relation
ship between hope and freedom. Then, with this clarification in hand, the
bearing of hope upon the way in which such central phenomena as social
institutions and patriotism are to be interpreted is clarified. These clarifica
tions, in turn, cast further light on the status of hope itself and its incom
patibility with tyranny.
Hope, as mentioned above, is primarily directed toward persons rather
than toward states of affairs. And what it looks forward to in persons is the
exercise of efficacious agency. This agency is not simply that of the one in
whom hope is reposed. It is a looking forward to the agency of both the one
who hopes and those in whom he hopes.
Insofar as it is an activity which involves both courage and confidence on
the one hand, and an acknowledgement of the finitude of all human persons
on the other, hope tends of its nature to be extended to all actual and poten
tial efficacious agents. As such, it essentially tends to totalize. But by reason
of its orientation toward an open future which can be made better than eith
er the past or the present, hope is antithetical to totalized totalities. All
politics is totalizing. Rightly or wrongly, some politics have been presented
as either already totalized or en route to totalization.45 But no politics prac
ticed in hope can pretend to accomplish or even approach totalization. Nei
ther can it legitimately exclude definitely any efficacious agent nor can it seek
to prevent the emergence of all new efficacious agents. Likewise, it cannot
treat as definitive any particular arrangement of other sorts of activities,
artistic, educational, etc., which find place within the framework it provides.
Thus, for example, in a politics of hope no particular shape of the relation
ship between education and religion can be taken as canonical.
To engage in hope is at least implicitly to understand freedom in essen
tially relational rather than individualistic terms. Hope makes either no
sense or only uncertain sense if he who hopes would take his own efficacious
freedom to be essentially independent from that of others. Given such in
dependence, hope could be no more than one plausible strategy among o-
thers. But if efficacy is admitted to be ingredient in freedom, then individu
alistic notions of freedom run afoul of substantial problems. Such notions
are undercut by the phenomena of history, intersubjectivity, and discourse, all
of which phenomena support instead both the sensefulness of hope and a
relational notion of freedom. Relational freedom can be described thus:
Freedom is the capacity simultaneously both to participate in and to maintain
oneself as a pole o f multiple distinct kinds o f relationships involving either

hegemony, equality, or subsumption in order to engage in reflectively and, in
principle, mutually acceptable activity.46
All human performances, whether perceptual, discursive, or actional, are,
as Merleau-Ponty has shown, fundamentally interrogative.47 The description
of freedom as essentially relational respects the interrogatory character of
experience. Man as free is a respondent. And part of his responsiveness
springs from his desire to share with other people.48 Freedom is precisely
the capacity both to participate in and to maintain oneself as a pole of rela
tionships. So understood, freedom does not require the capacity to be the
unqualified source of the relationships in which it participates. Rather, free
dom is the capacity to establish and maintain relationships permeable to
initiatives both of its own and of others. It is the capacity to overcome both
enslaving dependence and isolating, enervating independence.
Relational freedom, then, unlike Cartesian freedom, is essentially finite.
When lived out in the context of performances of hope, relational freedom
generates respect. And respect, in turn, is a necessary condition for all man
ifestations of freedom which are genuinely efficacious, manifestations whose
efficacy endures beyond the time of the performing of the act in question.
The respect involved here is both self-respect and mutual respect. It extends
both to the efficacious activity of which each participant is capable and to the
specific shape of the finitude which is constitutive of each participant. Re
spect acknowledges the truth of Aristotle’s observations: “Friends enhance
our ability to think and to act,”49 and “friendship is noble as well as neces
sary.”50 Relational freedom, then, lived out in hope and respect, finds fini
tude no mere fault or defect. It is rather the condition for efficacious human
community.
Understanding freedom as relational permits one to have a judicious
appreciation of the interplay between an individual and the social setting in
which he lives. Not only does one work out his life in the context of other
contemporary individuals. He also does so in the context of institutions.
Institutions embody the sedimentation of previously performed activity. This
sedimentation can perdure precisely because it is localized somehow in mat
ter. Literature is both preserved and presented in books and libraries. Laws
are both preserved and presented in archives and courtrooms. These institu
tions and their expressions or presentations are regulated by norms. It is the
task and objective of institutions to initiate new individuals into their prac
tices and discourse.51
Unquestionably, institutions can obstruct human freedom. This pos
sibility has led Louis Althusser, among others, to consider institutions as
naturally malign. For him, institutions naturally propagate illusion and ob
struct freedom.52 This view, however, rests upon a notion of freedom as a
characteristic lodged within a fundamentally atomistic individual. When
freedom is construed relationally, the thrust of institutions is seen to be am
bivalent. Not only can they thwart freedom. They can also enhance free
dom. This is so because, as Merleau-Ponty has emphasized, institutions do
not rise over against men. They themselves are man-made. “Man is every
where, inscribed on all the walls and in all social apparatuses made by him.
Men can see nothing about them that is not in their image .... Everything
speaks to them of themselves.”53
If this is so, then institutions, like all human achievements, are permeable
to new initiatives. When these initiatives are seen to spring from a relational
freedom lived out in hope, then both the individual and the custodians of the
institutions can look forward to initiatives - and acquiescences - with cour
age and confidence. The institution will be seen as that which can be rein
vigorated and given new substance by initiatives. The initiatives can be un
dertaken with both the desire and expectation that somehow their efficacy
will gain a durability, through the institutions, which the individual agent
alone cannot give to them. Institutions, whose existence is inevitable, can
then appropriately be understood as structures which can endow a series of
experiences with the intelligibility requisite for there to be a history. They
are structures which likewise can invite subsequent individual initiatives and
thus make concrete the openness of the future. Institutions, then, do not
necessarily alienate men either from their own freedom nor from other men.
Rather they are “the consequence and the guarantee of our belonging to a
common world.”54 Indeed, institutions can be a source of a criticism and
even of a self-criticism which it is not possible for individuals to make. Jo
hannes Metz has said: T h e socio-critical task of the church becomes the
task of criticizing religion and church as well.”55 Whether what Metz says
about the church is accurate or not, it is the case that the state and its in
stitutions have the task of criticizing both politics in general and themselves.
Institutions do not, of course, abolish human finitude. But specific in
stitutions, as lived through by specific people, do shape what people can and
do accomplish. What hope contributes to the encounter between individuals

and institutions is a distinct way of understanding this ineluctable shaping.
Hope ensures against two mis-takings of this encounter. First, it ensures
against taking any moment of that encounter as final. There is, with hope,
no definitive outcome of this encounter. Second, hope ensures against any
moment of this encounter being taken as absolutely devoid of redeemable
value either to institutions or individuals.
In the light of hope, then, one recognizes that the histories of both the
institution and the individual are not histories of one seeking to render the
other irrelevant to its own well-being. Rather, they are histories whose sense
calls for unremitting transactions of both initiatives and acquiescences be
tween them. These transactions in their unremittingness are understood as
the life blood of each. Similarly, the aims and objectives of each are under
stood, in hope, to be always open to and in need of modification by those
unremitting transactions. In the light of hope, it makes sense to adopt a
specific aim only if one recognizes that it is revisable and that, if its senseful-
ness is to be maintained, it stands in need of periodic revision.
The contributions made by hope to the judicious understanding of the
relationship between individuals and institutions have their analogue in an
appropriate understanding of patriotism. In recent years patriotism has often
been regarded as atavistic. But this view presupposes that freedom is atom
istic. When the relational character of freedom is appreciated, patriotism
can be seen to be part of the necessary background against which acts of
individual initiative can be performed. The structure of this required back
ground likewise gives sense to the moment of acquiescence to which the
individual yields.
Hope interprets this background as a heritage bequeathed by predeces
sors. A person’s heritage is a fundamental, irreplaceable source and re
source for his efficacy. To accept this heritage in hope is to bear it into the
future with confidence and courage.56 Hope makes one understand that his
specific heritage (national, ethnic, etc.), as lived through by him, has some
thing of value to contribute to the human community. This contribution
does not furnish the human family merely with an optional ornament. It
provides something which is somehow needed. Though he who hopes in his
heritage cannot fully specify either what this contribution can be or what the
community’s need is, he takes it as unimpeachable that by living out his heri
tage he will make this contribution.57
Relational freedom, of course, entails that if I and my heritage have this

importance, then so does the other person and his heritage. There is no
unequivocally privileged heritage. To appreciate one’s heritage is to appreci
ate it as one among many appreciable heritages. Patriotism, when seen in
the light of hope and relational freedom, is incompatible with jingoism. Far
from confining one to a narrowly conceived nationalism or provincialism,
patriotism is resolutely international in its orientation. This internationalism
is not imperialistic. Rather it is rooted in the recognition of the contribu
tions one hopes to receive from, as well as to make to, others through mu
tual patriotism. When understood in the relational sense, freedom by no
means rules out legitimate recourse to coercion. Even when conjoined with
hope to yield respect, freedom does not preclude the imposition of restraints.
A politics animated by hope is not necessarily an anarchist politics. Respect,
hope, and freedom all need cultivation. They can either flourish or be stun
ted. They flourish through discipline. The required discipline may be ad
ministered either by oneself or by others. What is distinctive about this
discipline is that it is aimed toward the eduction of respect, the acknowledge
ment of the sensefulness of hope, and, ultimately, toward the development of
freedom and hope themselves.
Hope, then, does not deprive politics of teeth. It sets itself resolutely
against those who attempt in practice to render hope and respect otiose by
advancing exorbitant claims for their own capacities or accomplishments. A
politics embodying hope is required to oppose, perhaps by force, all attempts
to deny, whether explicitly or implicitly, the finitude of every political agent.
It is likewise required to oppose, again perhaps by force, attempts from
whatever quarter to usurp the political task of allotting to each sort of hu
man activity space within which to appear. In short, a politics which has
hope as one of its basic constituents is committed to reject any initiative
whose direct and primary objective is to eliminate the opportunity for some
people to exercise efficacious initiatives of their own.
The coercion which a politics of hope can countenance, however, is not
without bounds. It cannot be merely retaliatory. It must always be measur
ed against the objective of leading or restoring the coerced persons back into
full participation in the cooperative enterprises of the community.58 Though
some coercion obviously aims to suppress freedom and deny respect and
thus is incompatible with hope, other coercion fosters freedom and respect
and is elicited precisely by hope. Coercion, then, is not an unqualified moral
or political evil either for him who administers it or for him who suffers it.
Rather, it is simply one of many types of human performance which are to
be measured by hope and respect.
For coercive activity to fall within the legitimating bounds set by hope
and respect, it must acknowledge the place of forgiveness in responsible
politics.59 That is, on the one hand, legitimate coercion must aim at its own
cessation.60 Coercive activity must be animated by the will to forgive and
must extend no further than necessary to make it senseful to restore mutual
respect in hope. In a politics embodying hope, then, forgiveness anticipates
repentance. But out of respect, it does not eschew repentance. By virtue of
hope, the offender is regarded as one who can return to full community. He
is regarded as someone whose exercise of initiative and acquiescence can
once again be beneficial to all and actually is needed by all. Merely to ex
cuse the offender without his repentance, though, is to cease to hope in him.
It is to treat his initiative and acquiescence as fundamentally inconsequential.
A review of those features with which hope is bound up when it occurs
in a political context, when those in whom one hopes are human, shows that
hope plays what might be called a critical rather than a dogmatic role in
politics. That is, when hope is seen to be entwined with relational freedom,
respect, bounded coercion, finitude, and forgiveness, then it becomes clear
that what is accomplished by performances of hope is not the establishment
of some specific set of states of affairs or institutionalized goals as opposed
to other possible sets. Rather it forestalls the establishment of any particular
state of affairs or institutionalized goals as either definitive or fully com
prehensive.61 Performances of hope, then, keep the objects of the other
performances constitutive of politics from being regarded as either the neces
sary or the sufficient objects for all acceptable politics. Each object, e.g., a
specific piece of legislation, is always open to reassessment.
These considerations straightforwardly lead to the conclusion that in
politics tyranny, whether “benign” or “malign,” is incompatible with hope. If
tyranny is understood to consist in the definitive exclusion of some segment
of the populace from the exercise of political initiative, then it fundamentally
lacks the desire for and the expectation of a needed beneficial contribution
from others. Tyrants, in principle, cannot acquiesce in the initiatives of o-
thers and remain tyrants. But precisely what hope requires is the desire for
and expectation of initiatives of others in which to acquiesce.
It may well be that hope is not prerequisite for ruling out tyranny. Per
haps relational freedom and respect would be sufficient to rule out tyranny.
But without hope there is reason to suspect that the exorbitant claims of the
tyrant for the worth of his initiatives would be replaced with an enervating
skepticism about the worth of all initiative. That is, there is reason to sus
pect that without hope, some repudiations of tyranny would repose ultimately
upon a view that all initiative is of small consequence. In effect, finitude
could be interpreted as weakness. Relational freedom and respect, then,
could simply insist that no one overestimate his powers. On this view, poli
tics itself could be taken as basically a stratagem by which the weak cope
with their weakness.
Hope, however, emphasizes the strength of initiatives. Finitude, as inter
preted in hope, is the condition for even further opportunity as well as the
condition which circumscribes every accomplishment. Both acquiescence and
initiative aim at invigoration. On this interpretation of finitude, politics can
be taken as a positive achievement which holds open the way for positive
accomplishments.
Thus, though there may be other ways of precluding tyranny, hope is
sufficient for doing so. What is distinctive about the way in which hope rules
out tyranny is the positive estimation of human initiative which hope entails.
Politics practiced in hope is an achievement of strength by those who grow in
strength in the process of the practice. Even if politics is seen as a stratagem
born of weakness for weakness, it must be acknowledged as having some
strength. A politics of hope, better than one apart from hope, can account
for this strength.62
The Place of Hope in Politics*
Political philosophy is seldom an obviously efficacious mode of political

action. Nonetheless, because it is always articulated in the context of a strug
gle for justice and power which shapes human lives, its efforts to make sense
of the conditions for beneficial collective human accomplishments are far
from irrelevant to responsible political practice.1 Its analyses are never fully
independent of the historical context in which they arise. And they always
contain at least implied recommendations for future conduct. As a conse
quence of its time-bound character the arguments proper to political philoso
phy are for the most part enthymematic rather than demonstrative. They
claim persuasiveness rather than conclusiveness.2
In this paper, I want to argue that properly conceived hope is a neces
sary, though unquestionably not a sufficient, condition for maximally reasona
ble, and hence maximally responsible politics. Hope does not bring to a
politics its specific substantive provisions. But it does crucially modify how
political practitioners understand and live out substantive provisions. My
central claim, then, is that hope is the deliberately adopted and sustained
habitual orientation or attitude which so modifies other political habits and
activities that they are exercised most reasonably. To establish this claim, I
must first set forth the complex context which motivates it. The constituents
of this context delimit the field in which reasonable, responsible politics can
be sought. Then the appropriate conception of hope must be specified.
Finally, I will point briefly to hope’s political fruitfulness.
Martin Jay's comments on an earlier version of this essay were most helpful.
Without trying either to give an exhaustive list of the constituents of the

present context for political thought and practice or to order the ones I do
single out, I take it that there is substantial agreement that the following
factors are of great importance for responsible politics. These factors can be
grouped into three classes, namely (a) relatively long-standing and widely
accepted Western political understandings and convictions, (b) recent devel
opments, and (c) recent recognitions of insufficiencies and excesses.3
Among the relatively settled views concerning politics, the most pertinent
for my purposes is that which describes the set of features which together
constitute specifically political activity as distinct from other forms of activity.
As Sheldon Wolin has pointed out, even if there is no neat definition of the
field of politics, there is a long, well developed tradition concerning what
count as the central political issues.4 These issues make up, in general, the
domain of politics. Politics can be described in the following way. (1) It is a
form of activity centering around the quest for competitive advantage or
cooperative enhancement between individuals, groups, or communities. (2)
It is a form of activity which occurs within an ever changing situation of
relative scarcity of both cultural and material resources. (3) It is a form of
activity which produces consequences sufficiently large that they significantly
affect at least a substantial portion of an entire society.
Two more generally recognized features of politics also deserve mention
here. (4) The domain of politics resists subordination to the domain or
domains of any other sort of human activity. On Aristotle’s account, the
political domain is the domain within which all other domains, e.g., the do
mains of art or commerce or religion, find their proper place and fulfill their
specific functions. Accordingly, all other domains must acknowledge the
preeminence of the political.5 Or, on the account recently articulated by Paul
Ricoeur, the domain of politics is at least one autonomous domain among
others.6 In either case, politics is always involved with the other domains. It
is involved, at least permissively, in the allotment of resources for the other
sorts of activity. It also regulates them to prevent one from unwarrantably
encroaching upon another. And always, politics works to preserve itself as
the appropriate domain for exercising these functions. It resists efforts to
subordinate its activities and decisions to those arising from primarily reli
gious, economic, or technological considerations.7
The Place o f Hope in Politics 141
Even though politics always ultimately aims to harmonize, it itself cannot

avoid being a source of potential conflict. It cannot aspire to eliminate all
possibility of conflicts without thereby aiming to destroy itself. Nonetheless,
while leaving room for conflict, politics aims always at both the survival and
the flourishing of the community as a whole.
Finally, (5) politics is a thoroughly historical enterprise. Even the most
revolutionary politics gets its orientation and motivation from conditions
which precede it. And all political agents in some fashion appeal to those
who come after them both to endorse what they have done and to build
upon their accomplishments. As Merleau-Ponty pointed out, politics is a
permanently open interrogation requiring criticism of one’s self as well as of
others. Its achievements and institutions endow human experience with
durability. They also invite people to further experience and thus make
possible a relatively open future.®
In addition to the widely agreed upon view that the political domain is
constituted by activity having these characteristics, the context for contem
porary political thought and practice includes some pervasive new considera
tions that any responsible politics now or for the foreseeable future must
acknowledge. Here I want to draw attention to two of these considerations
which are in fact closely tied to one another. First, all except the most local
ized and small scale political activity today has an international and often
global dimension.9 Second, today and for the foreseeable future there is, on
the one hand, the constant danger of global, species-eliminating nuclear,
biological, or chemical warfare, and on the other hand, the widespread ecolo
gical problems which threaten the very habitability of the earth.10 Whatever
may have been the case in the past, no contemporary political thought or
practice can be genuinely reasonable if it fails to respond effectively to these
two new conditions.
The third class of factors constituting the distinctive context for contem
porary political thought and practice consists of the now recognized insuf
ficiency or excessiveness of several more or less recent views of political
practice or aspiration. These views have all been found wanting in some
fashion because they fail in one way or other to acknowledge fundamental
human finitude. A few examples of these failures will suffice for present
purposes.
On the one hand, Robert Dahl has shown the insufficiency for respon
sible politics of exclusive concern with structural considerations. Structural
arrangements, e.g., legal systems, economic, political, and educational institu

tions, etc., are obviously of considerable importance to the quality of a com
munity’s political practice. But, as Dahl makes clear, the set of practical
dilemmas which confront any sizeable nontyrannical or nontotalitarian mod
ern state cannot be responsibly resolved simply through structural modifica
tions. A proper attitude on the part of political agents is required. Their
attitude or attitudes provide normative determinations for how political a-
gents pursue their aims and aspirations.11
A particularly striking form of the failure to recognize the insufficiency of
structural considerations shows up in the sort of bureaucratic managerialism
promoted by Herbert Simon, among others. On this approach, most people
can achieve worth or significance only by submitting themselves to incorpora
tion within political and economic enterprises over which they have little if
any control. Freedom, for them, is in large measure irrelevant. And nature
is degraded to the status of mere raw material, having no worth other than
that ascribed to it by “scientific managers.”12
On the other hand, there is now a substantial, and growing, recognition
that large parts of political thought, and considerable practice, since the 17th
century has rested on excessive claims about the powers or prerogatives of
some or all political participants. These excessive claims have been made on
behalf of politics of the Right as well as of politics of the Left.
A useful way to think about the plethora of excessive political claims that
have been advanced during the past two centuries is in terms of what has
been called “the politics of redemption.” On the one hand, the politics of
redemption, whether of the Left or of the Right, wholly rejects the En
lightenment commitment to some version of democracy, liberal or radical.13
On the other hand, one of the basic characteristics of the politics of redemp
tion is that it persistently searches for or claims to have identified some
persons or features of human existence which are uncontaminated by the
complex, competitive, often antagonistic elements of civil society.14 Examples
of earlier politics of redemption are, on the Right, German National Social
ism and Italian Fascism and, on the Left, Trotskyism, Maoism, and perhaps
the Stalinist Bolshevicks. More recent Leftist attempts to identify the re
demptive element have pointed to women, homosexuals, third world peoples,
the sexual instincts, etc. Recent Rightist attempts have appeared among
religious or quasi-religious fundamentalists of various sorts. Harder to place
on a Left-Right spectrum, but nonetheless redemptive at least in part are
some separatist movements. What all these versions of politics of redemp

tion have in common is that they all reject political pluralism in favor of a
utopia-like homogenization.13
In recent years, many Leftist thinkers, at least, have abandoned their
longing for any sort of utopian political homogenization. They “have argued
instead for a more sober politics of MiXndigkeit or maturity, in which the
utopian hope of perfect reconciliation and normative totality are quietly laid
to rest.”16
These thinkers, to be sure, worry lest their post-redemptiveness lead to
loss of critical distance from the status quo and consequent loss of political
direction. Nonetheless, they insist upon avoiding what some characterize as
the “totalitarian myth of the Ideal City” as well as the “positivist pragmatism
of reformists without a project.”17
Jurgen Habermas, as Martin Jay says, is perhaps the guiding spirit of
anti-redemptive, anti-utopian Leftist thought, the principal theoretician of a
politics of Miindigkeit. For Habermas,
the only utopian perspectives in social theory which we can straight

forwardly maintain are of a procedural nature. For the utopian line
aments of any future emancipated society can be no more than ne
cessary general conditions of it. They cannot be in the nature of a
design for a form of life.18
The politics of Miindigkeit thus claims no universal principles other than

procedural ones. In continuity with Enlightenment political thought, it on
the one hand insists upon two related commitments, one to humankind as a
whole and the other to the uniqueness of each person. But on the other, it
also admits that any substantive doctrine concerning true and false needs or
the good life, no matter how initially appealing, is always particularistic and
not universal. It follows from this, Joel Whitebook says,
that civil society, conceived of as a realm in which the right freely to

determine one’s needs is institutionally guaranteed, must be pre
served and the attempt to dictate needs from above must be ruled
out in any transformation of society .... Once the democratic para
digm has been accepted, one must be prepared to accept a plurality
of life forms, some of which may not be to one’s political or cultural
tastes....To be sure, certain forms of life can be excluded at the out

set on formal grounds, but, because of the disjunction between for
mal conditions and substantive content, none can be derived per se.19
Thus Whitebook is led to conclude:
What maturity has to offer in recompense for the abandoned desires

of grandiosity is the satisfaction of dignity, autonomy, and mutual
recognition. It cannot be denied however, that the grandiose dis
avowal of finitude - death, suffering and lack - cannot be compen
sated. In this respect, maturity is relatively austere and completely
disconsolate.”
To be sure, to admit that the politics of Mundigkeit claims only procedur

al universals is by no means to trivialize it. I see no reason why it cannot
embrace a major part of the Enlightenment tradition. According to that
tradition, any political thought or practice which aspires to being responsible
must satisfy a set of desideranda of considerable moment.21
Prominent among these desideranda are: (1) the exercise of political
rule should be intelligible and not arbitrary; (2) the exercise of political rule
should be responsive to the needs and wants of the ruled; (3) political in
stitutions and policies should be adapted to prevailing material and cultural
circumstances; (4) political benefits and burdens should be distributed equi
tably and widely; and (5) the consent of the governed, though not sufficient
to legitimate any particular political authority, is a necessary condition for its
legitimation.22 These desideranda can be construed as principles or norms
for responsible political practice. Thus one can speak of (a) the intelligibility
or reasonableness principle, (b) the relevance principle, (c) the effectiveness
principle, (d) the justice principle, and (e) the freedom principle. If I am
correct that a politics of Mundigkeit can and does insist upon these desideran
da, then it is clearly not toothless.
II
But even if it does encompass these desideranda, one can still ask about
the sufficiency of the shift from a politics of redemption to one of Mundig
keit. Is the politics of Mundigkeit in its austerity, disconsolateness, and com
plete absorption in procedural considerations the most reasonable and hence

the most responsible political response to our inescapable finitude and his
toricity?
Unsupplemented, I will argue, the politics of Miindigkeit is too under
determined to be fully responsible. In fact, it can be dangerously enervating.
But supplemented, and thereby transformed, by a properly understood hope,
it is improved in crucial ways.
Parenthetically, let me note that, mutatis mutandis, something of what is
lacking in a politics of Miindigkeit is also missing both in Rawls’ liberal dem
ocratic politics and in Nozick’s libertarianism. I will not, however, detail my
criticisms of them here.23
The politics of Miindigkeit is underdetermined in at least three closely
related ways. (1) It insufficiently stresses the thoroughly historical character
of all politics and political agents. (2) It underspecifies the most reasonable
relationship among people. And (3) its assumption that it can totally isolate
procedural considerations from substantive ones is unwarranted.
First, no facet of human existence, and hence no facet of politics, shows
people to be radically independent individuals devoid of constitutive attach
ments both to other people and to specific material and cultural circumstan
ces. These constitutive attachments determine a person’s character. And,
to have character is to know that I move in a history I neither sum

mon nor command, which carries consequences none the less for my
choices and conduct. It draws me closer to some and more distant
from others; it makes some aims more appropriate, others less so.24
This historicality infects both substantive and procedural norms and goals. It
does not, to be sure, simply relativize norms and goals. But it does show
that whatever absolutes obtain are to be understood, in Gadamer’s terms,
critically and not dogmatically. This means that no linguistic formulation of
any norm or goal is definitive.25
Recognition of the full scope of human historicality allows one to see
both the riskiness and the possible grandeur of politics. When politics goes
badly, people are not only disappointed. They can suffer deep, abiding dis
locations of character. But when politics goes well, they can experience a
common good which none of them could know alone.26
Second, a crucial consequence of a politics of Miindigkeit is that the most

appropriate relationship among people is one of mutual respect. But, as
Julius Moravscik has recently argued, though respect is necessary for human
flourishing, it is insufficient. It does not require personal commitment to
specific persons. It does not require that one be willing to do things which
contribute to another’s flourishing.
To supplement the relationship of respect, Moravscik proposes a rela
tionship of caring. Two considerations support his insistence upon care.
First, care
endows the community with a desirable combination of flexibility and

stability. It helps to create stability through changes in values and
performance by providing for loyalty and involvement even when the
qualitative structure of the participants does not remain constant.
Secondly, care will affect the way we view each other in contexts in
which changes need to be considered....In addition to helping to cre
ate the desirable attitudinal context for communal discussions, care
will affect the content of such discussions as well.27
I agree that respect must be supplemented by care if flourishing is to be

promoted. But I will argue below that both respect and care are most se- ■
cure if they are rooted in hope.
A third way in which the politics of Miindigkeit is inadequate is in its
assumption that procedural considerations can be totally divorced from sub-
stantive ones. The historical character of the care upon which Moravscik
insists, bound as it is to particular persons in specific circumstances, unavoid
ably involves substantive considerations, e.g., descriptions of the persons an d 1
circumstances in question, as well as procedural ones. Further, there arp
strong reasons for holding that the social imagination essential to the con-1
stitution of all social reality, including politics, cannot eschew contingent;
representations of concrete deeds, outcomes, and circumstances which are Is
intelligible only in terms of some concrete contingent reality to which they !
are alternatives or supplements.28
III
The insufficiency of a politics of Mundigkeit can be partially remedied

and respect and care can best be secured in political matters, I propose, if
political agents live and act out of the fundamental attitude or habit of prop
erly understood hope. Hope is the politico-moral virtue which best promotes
the kind of interaction which makes a community flourish.29
Husserl’s account of human experience is correct when he points out that
each human life is characteristically marked by some fundamental orienta
tion, attitude, or habit. This attitude amounts to
a habitually fixed style of willing life comprising directions of the will

or interests that are prescribed by this style, comprising the ultimate
ends, the cultural accomplishments whose total style is thereby deter
mined. The individual life determined by it runs its course with this
persisting style as its norm....Humanity (or a closed community such
as a nation, tribe, etc.), in its historical situation, always lives under
some attitude or other. Its life always has its norm-style and, in
reference to this, a constant historicity or development.30
This fundamental attitude, or norm-style, modifies or modalizes one’s prac

tices or habits without, however, cancelling them. Thus justice or courage
can be practiced in different modes without ceasing to be what they are.
Nonetheless, as Husserl indicates, one’s fundamental attitude is of capital
importance.
Similarly, John Locke recognized the need for some fundamental virtue
which undergirds their acceptance of multiple duties required for a well
functioning society. According to John Dunn, he concluded that “trustwor
thiness, the capacity to commit oneself to fulfilling the legitimate expecta
tions of others, is both the constitutive virtue of, and the key causal precondi
tion for, the existence of any society.”31 For Locke, no human society can
exist without the exercise of the virtue of trustworthiness by its members.
I do not deny the crucial importance for society of something like trust
worthiness. But for reasons I will give below, I claim that even more basic
to maximally responsible politics is the habitual, deliberately adopted fun
damental attitude of political hope. But, of course, hope can have this role
only if it is properly construed.
There is a rather trivial sense in which one can say that since every hu
man action is telic, all of them involve hope of some sort. We all want the
projects we endorse, whether our own or others’, to succeed. And in not a
few cases, for the action to take place at all some fear must be overcome by
some feeling of hope or hopefulness.
The hope I argue for here is distinct, if not separable, from feelings or
emotions. It is also distinct, though inseparable, from, particular actions with
their specific objectives. It is, as Husserl notes, “a habitually fixed style of
willing,” a style which crucially modalizes the way particular deeds are per
formed.
Elsewhere in this volume I have detailed the historical bases for the
sense of the hope which I claim to be of crucial importance for politics.32
Here I will limit myself to discussing the main distinctive features which give
it its political importance.
First, both as a habitual attitude and in all of its particular acts, hope has
a distinctive temporal orientation. It rests on the conviction that the future
need not be like the present. In this respect, hope is indissolubly linked with
both memory and imagination. If memory shows that the past and the pres
ent are different, for better or worse, then imagination can anticipate a dif
ferent future, again for better or worse.33 Hope is genuine only if it refuses
either to resign itself to presently existing constrictions and limitations or to
ignore or eradicate these limits in the name of the future. “Despair surrend
ers the future; optimism sacrifices the present.”34 And both, contrary to
hope, demean the past.
Second, to hope one must be convinced that the shape and content of
the future is at least partly to be determined by the activity of free agents.
The influential agent may or may not be the one who hopes. But one who
hopes, even a political prisoner hoping for liberation, thereby allies himself
or herself to the influential agent. By hoping, one holds oneself ready to
benefit from that agency. Thus, at least in the minimal sense of linking one
to an efficacious agent, hope itself is efficacious. At the very least, it fur
nishes an appropriate audience for the obvious, “primary,” agent.
Third, though each exercise of hope always aims at some particular,
relatively determinate outcome, always has some “content,” that outcome is
never so valorized that failure to achieve it would necessarily defeat hope
itself as a persisting habitual way of willing. The content of at least some
particular hopes, including any that I would admit as appropriate to the
domain of politics, is always embraced with sufficient tentativeness that no

outcome, however different from what was hoped for, is sufficient to destroy
the basic hope itself.
Thus the hopes in question here always have a complex orientation.
They are always aimed toward some “agent,” human or superhuman, as well
as toward some longed for state of affairs.35 They are thus double-rayed.
The essentially qualified or tentative embrace of their content by the
practitioners of the hopes in question here springs from the fact that to be
this sort of hope they must eschew claims to certitude that any state of af
fairs they can envision would be unqualifiedly good. Therefore they can aim
at specific outcomes only hypothetically. That is, they can seek a particular
state of affairs only under the proviso that its coming about would be genu
inely to the good.
In rationally defensible political hope, one can hardly avoid having a
relatively determinate objective in mind. But one must seek it, e.g., the im
plementation of a particular program or the election of a specific candidate,
only if its achievement would indeed contribute to the community’s well
being. But no one can be sure in advance either just what would make such
a contribution or indeed just what, in detail, constitutes a particular com
munity’s well being. One who lives out a politics infused with hope never
forgets that politics is “a domain in which understanding is necessarily agoni
zingly limited, in which self-righteousness is almost always misplaced, and yet
in which the most vital human interests are constantly and inescapably at
stake.”36 Hence the state of affairs one hopes for can only reasonably be
hoped for under this crucial proviso.
The complex objective of any double-rayed hope which is a candidate for
reasonable, responsible political hope gives point to the clarifying distinction
Joseph Godfrey draws between ultimate hope, whose opposite is fear, and
fundamental hope, whose opposite is despair.37
The content of one’s ultimate hope, the content which is superordinate to
all other longed for objectives, can be either something to utilize, some con
dition to enjoy, or a shared life with other persons. For an ultimate hope to
be appropriate for responsible politics, I propose, it must subordinate all
desires for pleasures or useful things to a search for shared life.
Fundamental hope has to do with the how of hoping. It consists in the
refusal, regardless of the provocation, to make the judgment that all is lost,
that there is no point to further endeavor to achieve a shared life. In the
final analysis, I believe, without fundamental hope no ultimate hope can be

fully responsible political hope.
By reason of its double-rayed character, hope introduces a polyvalent
tension into the flow of experience. On the one hand, in its orientation to
some other agent hope anticipates that this other’s capacity for efficacious
action is good for both that other and for one’s own self. That is, hope en
tails that it is intrinsically better to be associated with other agents than with
puppets even if one were oneself the puppeteer. Thus hope of this sort
displays a courageous confidence that the agency of others need not diminish
one’s own agency. Without this background belief that it is good, and good
for me, to be tied to others, I cannot hope in a way which contributes to
responsible politics.38
On the other hand, by reason of its orientation toward states of affairs,
hope of any sort acknowledges at least implicitly that all human agency is
finite and contextualized. As a consequence, whether one state of affairs
rather than another prevails does matter, for a state of affairs always pro
vides conditions which bear upon the efficacy of human actions. Hope,
therefore, must deal with more than bare agency. It must also concern itself
with the context which either hinders or facilitates the exercise of that agen
cy. But one who hopes cannot know definitively the weight or thrust of any
particular state. Otherwise he or she would have a vision which would make
hope pointless.
Therefore, unless a human performance is oriented both toward others
and toward a state of affairs, it cannot be an act of hope relevant to respon
sible politics. If it has no orientation toward other efficacious agents, then it
is mere desire.39 If it disregards either present or future states of affairs,
then it is an act of either presumption or fanaticism, both of which radically
discount the concrete circumstances in which human activity occurs.
Though hope is double-rayed, its rays are rarely of equal weight. Only if
a hope’s primary ray is that which is directed toward other agents can it
possibly contribute to responsible politics. It must in effect deny that any set
of circumstances, present or future, can annihilate the capacity for efficacious
agency both of the one who hopes or of the one who inspires hope. At least
one source of efficacious agency capable of making possible other agency
must be acknowledged.
In sum, the sort of hope in question here is a double-rayed habit, orien
tation, or attitude, whose rays are so ordered that priority is always given to
the agent or agents in whom one hopes over whatever state of affairs is
hoped for.40 Further, hope rests on a conviction that the future is open to
efficacious activity in whose benefits the one who hopes, by the very fact of
hoping, can share. For one who is convinced that the future is open, hope
makes sense. If one denies this openness, then hope is absurd.41
The sort of hope in question here, then, can be precisely described as an
attitude or habit of acting adopted by a self-admittedly finite agent who posi
tively esteems his or her involvement with other agents in a partially pliable
world. One who hopes is ready both to give to others and to receive from
them. Hope refuses to be confined either by the constraints of present cir
cumstances or by the limited scope of imagined projections. One who hopes
conducts himself dr herself with steadfast prudent confidence toward an open
future. Nonetheless, however future-oriented it is, hope of this sort thor
oughly respects both the past and the present. As Marcel has put it, hope
says “as before, but differently and better than before.”42
The sort of hope I have described can be either political or religious or
neither. Part of what distinguishes political hope from other hopes is the
nature of the agent or agents in whom one hopes. Only if this agent is hu
man can the hope be political.43 But it need not be. For the hope to be
genuinely political one must hope in a multiplicity of human agents some of
whom are not one’s present partners.44 Further, if this hope is to be rational
and responsible as well as political, then the agents in whom one hopes must
be regarded as actual or possible fellow participants in the work of establish
ing or maintaining an abiding, structured context in which political activity
can transpire.45 The background belief for such a hope is that this sort of
structured context is in principle compatible with a full sharing of life among
all who inhabit it.46
IV
Let me now show how the foregoing considerations warrant my central

claim that hope, if understood in the way I have specified, is necessary for
maximally reasonable, and hence maximally responsible politics. Better than
any alternative, hope overcomes both the insufficiency and the excesses of
recent failures properly to assess the political significance of fundamental
human finitude. And at the same time, hope fits squarely with the generally
agreed upon requirements for fully responsible contemporary politics.
The point of departure for my argument is the set of conclusions reached

in Part I with the help of Husserl, the theoreticians of the politics of Miindig-
keit, and Moravscik. First, I take it that Husserl is right in holding that not
only each person but also communities always live out their existence in
some fundamental attitude, habit, or orientation which affects what they do.
Second, I take it that the politics of Miindigkeit is right in rejecting any poli
tics of redemption. And I would extend this rejection to what I have else
where called the politics of vision or truth, i.e., any politics which claims that
there is some knowable, fundamentally ahistorical order which functions as
the definitive criterion or guiding principle for political conduct.47 Finally, I
take it that Moravscik is right in maintaining that mutual care as well as
mutual respect are necessary for a human community to flourish. Hope, I
claim, (a) is better for politics than any other fundamental attitude, (b) es
chews all politics of vision, including those of redemption, and (c) provides a
secure basis for requiring care as well as respect.
My claim concerning the centrality of hope for reasonable and respon
sible politics is supported on the one hand by noting its superiority over its
competitors and on the other hand by showing the valuable demands it
makes on political practice. Competitors to hope can be found by consider
ing the semantic relatives of the concept of hope. These are presumption
and despair. Though neither of them necessarily denies the historical, com
munal, finite character of human life, they cannot take account of the politi
cal relevance of this character as well as hope does.48 Hope responds better
to the temporal, finite character of all human existence than does any of its
competitors.
Presumption fails to take time and the historical character of politics
seriously. The presumptuous person regards whatever he or she does or
leaves undone either to be harmless if not beneficial or to be readily rectifi
able by some subsequent doing. A habitual orientation of this sort trivializes
doings, sayings, and makings. Missed opportunities warrant no regret. They,
or their equivalents, always return. Seized opportunities warrant neither
relief nor joy. Opportunities are always there for the seizing. This trivializa-
tion of the present obviously extends to the past and to the future. Such a
politics ignores the historicality constitutive of all human activity, including
politics.
In the history of political thought, it is true, presumption is not a serious
competitor for a position of significance. No political thinker advocates
presumption as a political virtue. But political practitioners often act and

speak presumptuously. For example, they often deny or ignore practices
doing major damage to the environment, pretending that such damage is
always curable. That hope is incompatible with presumption is much to its
credit.
Much the same argument holds good against obvious forms of despair,
forms that deny that anything at all of positive worth can be accomplished in
politics. But two more subtle, more restricted versions of despair retain a
certain plausibility. These can be called resignation and defiance or, as I
prefer, containment.49 Neither of these orientations so thoroughly and ob
viously trivializes time or at least some moments of time as does presump
tion. But each does involve some debasement of it.
Resignation consists in the denial of one’s own ability to make a positive
contribution to an enduring responsible politics. Whatever efficacy others
may have, the resigned person denies that he himself or she herself can still
contribute something of value to political life. He or she also denies that
involvement with others can foster efficacy for himself or herself. Rather,
such involvement either simply thwarts whatever possibility for efficacy he or
she might have had or leaves it null. Thus one who is resigned takes it that,
regardless of past efficacy, now and forevermore he or she is reduced to
political impotence. Or, and this seems to me more frequently the form in
which resignation has been expressed in actual life, one holds that his or her
efficacy is irreversibly dwindling. This dwindling is taken to be the effect
either of uncontrollable forces or of irresistible degenerate political practice.
The future, on this view, can only be a time of decline for one’s political
efficacy.
Containment, on the other hand, denies neither the openness of the
future nor one’s own capacity for efficacious political activity. It is thus a
conceptually stronger competitor against hope than resignation. It also ap
pears to be the basis of a great deal of political practice, both past and pres
ent.50
But containment at least implicitly claims that at least some of one’s
fellows have nothing of worth to contribute to either the community’s sur
vival or its well being either now or in the future. At least some are simply
to be fought off. The orientation of containment thus entails that at least
some people can never be valuable collaborators, collaborators with whom
one’s own endeavors can gain greater efficacy or meaning. If, then, these
others could be reduced to impotence, the community, so containment im

plies, would be made better.
In containment, time and its riskiness are taken seriously. But it is al
ways time to insist upon the curtailment or nullification of initiatives of some
others. Those others are permanently cast in the role of alien or enemy.
There is no future to which they could contribute something positive. In
short, the orientation of containment brings about a fortress mentality. It is
always fundamentally adversarial.
Its importance for political life notwithstanding, the trustworthiness
Locke emphasizes itself either promotes or at least is compatible with a
politics of containment. First, Lockean trustworthiness rests upon the as
sumption that one acknowledges that there are divine sanctions. One who
does not believe in divine sanctions is not to be accorded trust.51 Some peo
ple, then, are to be excluded from full political participation.
Further, and more subtly, trustworthiness leaves open the way for con
tainment by its at least implicit emphasis upon the importance of a certain
consistency between what one has done and what he or she is expected to do
now and in the future. In an important sense, one earns trustworthiness by
displaying this consistency. Those who have not yet earned trust, for what
ever reason, bear the burden of proving their trustworthiness. Practically, if
not in principle, this requirement militates against innovation by newcomers,
whether these newcomers be the young or foreigners. Perhaps in the past
this burden on newcomers was of minor importance. Today and for the
foreseeable future, the globalization of political life makes the burden unwar
rantably heavy. If trust is to be dissociated from containment, it must be
advanced on credit and not withheld until earned. To advance it on credit is
part of what it is to hope.
In sum, neither habitual resignation nor habitual containment can serve
as that orientation which best promotes maximally rational and responsible
politics. Each of them in its own way embodies a distrust of the freedom of
at least some people. Each treats their freedom as fundamentally and hos-
tilely competitive with its own. In so doing, neither of these attitudes fully
acknowledges the opportunities the open future provides. As a consequence,
each of these orientations restricts the capacity, of those who adopt them to
extend political harmony as far as possible. In today’s world of global poli
tics, to whatever extent a politics favors hostile competition, that is competi
tion that is not ultimately in the service of cooperation, it is irresponsible.
Given the failure of these competitors, hope remains as the habitual

orientation proper to thoroughly responsible politics.52 But hope does not
win this role merely by the default of its competitors. Its own credentials
positively warrant granting this claim. Hope not only gives full recognition to
the finite, historical character of human existence, but positively esteems
rather than regrets these features. It appreciates that these features are not
impediments to human efficacy. Rather, they are constitutive of that ef
ficacy. They of course preclude efficacy that would be definitive or divine.
But they make possible indefinitely many agents capable of differentiated
achievements. Since this is the case, a politics animated by hope can satisfy
all the desideranda bequeathed to us by the tradition of Western thought as
well as the distinctive exigencies proper to our time and the foreseeable
future. Hope requires of politics a receptivity to and aspiration for contribu
tions both to political life and to other sorts of human endeavor not only
from one’s fellow citizens but also, in principle, from all other people. It
requires politics both to admit its indebtedness to predecessors and to leave
room for the contributions of future generations. It forbids any politics from
claiming to be either first word or last word, from claiming to be definitively
self-sufficient. Ingredient in the modesty hope requires is the admission that
no particular structural or institutional arrangement and no particular course
of action can guarantee either the community’s survival or its flourishing. It
never allows the canonization of any particular order, even of one it itself
elicits. Hope therefore never becomes self-satisfied. It perpetuates itself as
hope.
Hope thus requires respect both for oneself and for other people. On
the one hand, this respect entails esteem for the fact that there are people.
Though it is not anthropocentric, it is necessarily anthropic. It cannot coun
tenance any activity, under whatever guise, that endangers the continued
existence of the human species. As such, hope demands that care be taken
that there be people.53
But further, hope requires that politics seek ever more extensive full
fledged participation in the community’s life. This extensiveness is of two
sorts. First, in principle, participation by everyone is longed for. And sec
ond, as great a variety of types of activity (scientific, religious, artistic, etc.)
as is feasible is to be provided for. That is, hope requires politics to provide
for the optimal exploration of human capacities to exercise initiative, to ex
press freedom. It requires politics to restrict as little as is compatible with
the flourishing of the community as a whole either the number of agents or

the variety of things they can do, make, or say. Hope thus surpasses mere
tolerance of diversity. It seeks diversity.
Hope thus calls for and supplies a basis for the sort of care which Mor-
avscik has shown must supplement respect if a community is to flourish.
Dealings with others cannot properly be based simply on concern, for con
cern could be manipulative or paternalistic. Expressions of care always aim
to make those cared for into peers and partners of those who care.54
Demanding as hope is, it stops short of the utopian goal of universal
mutual love. Whether such a goal is appropriate for religious activity, it is
excessive for politics. Unlike religion, politics has to concern itself with the
community’s earthly survival. To satisfy this requirement might demand
actions which could be called loving only by extravagant equivocation.55
A politics of hope, construed as I have here, satisfies the received politi
cal desideranda pointed to above. Such a politics (a) cannot be arbitrary, (b)
constantly attends to the wants and needs of those whom it affects, (c) takes
account of the material and cultural circumstances in which it is situated, (d)
allots these resources so as to achieve optimally broad participation in both
senses mentioned above, and (e) acknowledges that the consent or approval
of those affected by it is necessary to its legitimation.
Such a politics acknowledges and reveres the specificity and diversity of
particular communities. But it insists upon the global bearing of all contem
porary politics. It neither ignores nor neglects the political, economic, and
ecological consequences of what it does or abstains from doing. By its rec
ognition of its own essentially historical, and hence non-perfect, character, a
politics springing from the attitude of hope not only denies that any reason
could justify threatening to extinguish human existence, but also refuses to
absolutize any of its achievements.
A politics of hope, therefore, not only satisfies the received desideranda
but it also responds effectively to pressing contemporary exigencies. And it
does so while at the same time insisting upon the interminable preservation
of politics itself as that which brings about a differentiated but harmonized
community.
Though a politics of hope does not prescribe any one particular set of
substantive policies or practices, it both sets limits to what is acceptable and
sheds light upon what warrants a particular policy or practice. Consider, for
example, the question of education in general and political education in par
ticular. In a politics of hope, educational policy both must avoid parochial

ism and must include as many people and be as diverse as is compatible with
the community’s overall well being. Whatever restrictions obtain are in per
petual need of justification. The presumption is always against them. And
what warrants this policy of inclusiveness and diversity is neither mere altru
ism nor mere self-interest nor mere supererogation. It is the recognition of
our basic communal but finite condition.
Similar consequences follow from a politics of hope for military policy,
economic development programs, foreign aid practices, and legislation. In
deed, it is hard to imagine any aspect of politics which would be untouched
both by the requirement to seek both inclusiveness and diversity and by the
requirement that all policies and programs reflect an admission of our finite,
historical, communal character. Because it imposes these requirements, a
politics of hope is both more reasonable and more responsible than is a
politics animated by any alternative basic habit or orientation.
It would be a mistake to regard the requirements of hope as so stringent
that no actual politics could satisfy them. Hope does not preclude either all
coercion or a differentiated distribution of goods and burdens. Nor does it
preclude all forms of competition. But it does require that whenever one
engages in or endorses coercion, differentiated distributions, and competition
that he or she do so because there is no presently available better way to
promote maximally extensive harmony.
Because hope does not preclude conduct of these sorts, it can happen
that the practices it adopts on some particular occasion are observationally
indiscernible from those a politics of containment would endorse. This is
why containment is hope’s closest competitor for the role of the fundamental
orientation animating maximally responsible politics. Further, it is always
possible that self-deception lead one to mistake a practice animated by con
tainment for one animated by hope. But this does not count against hope’s
superiority, for no fundamental attitude, whether hope or any other, can fully
inoculate us against the danger of self-deception.
Adopting hope, then, as our “habitually fixed style of willing” is no magic
elixir for producing perfect politics. But, for the reasons I have given, it,
better than any available alternative style of willing, promotes political prac
tice that satisfies both the abiding desideranda articulated in Western politi
cal thought and the distinctive exigencies of the contemporary world which
any responsible politics must respond to and respect. Therefore only a poli
tics animated by hope rather than by any of its competitors can claim to be
both fully reasonable and fully responsible.
Part IV
Because its subject matter is the ordered interaction of people dealing

with a material and cultural environment, it is insufficient to assess a political
philosophy exclusively in terms of its logical coherence. One also has to ask
both (a) what would be the likely outcome of the implementation of its rec
ommendations and cautions, and (b) in what respects is it better than alter
native proposals. Indeed, because all political philosophy is somehow direc
ted toward practice, one comes to a proper understanding of a particular
proposal only through interrogating it in terms of these questions.
There is, of course, no logical closure to this sort of interrogation. New
alternatives can always be proposed and new circumstances for implementa
tion can always arise. Nonetheless, if a proposal can both satisfactorily re
spond to a number of important perennial issues and show how some non
trivial alternatives are less satisfactory, it gains substantial persuasiveness.
Each of the four essays in Part IV shows in some way major implications
of the positions for which I argue in Parts II and III. Taken together, they
give a good indication of the fruitfulness both of my interpretation of what it
is to be human and of the basic orientation that I claim should animate any
politics which claims to be fully responsible.
Two of these essays have been previously published in practically the
same form in which they appear here. “Politics and Coercion” appeared in
Philosophy Today, Vol. 21, 1977, 102-114. “Ideology, Utopia, and Respon
sible Politics” appeared in Man and World, Vol. 22, 1989, 25-41. A third
essay, “Does Anarchy Make Political Sense,” is a thoroughly revised and
much expanded version of a piece with the same title that appeared in Hu
man Studies, Vol. 1, 1978, 369-375. The fourth essay, “Institutions, Power,
and Freedom” has not been published before.
Politics and Coercion
It is beyond question that throughout recorded history there has been a

connection between politics and coercion. But the source and nature of this
connection has been a troublesome issue for political theorists. In this paper
I will try both to explicate the source of this connection and to outline the
limits within which a defensible politics can involve coercion. My argument
here presupposes both that there is a distinguishable realm of politics and
that there is a set of elements which any defensible politics must embody.
This set of elements can be detected on the basis of clues provided by Hei
degger and Merleau-Ponty.
More specifically, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty provide the basis for the
negative conclusion that any theory of politics which rests on the assumption
of radical human autonomy is indefensible. Inasmuch as the prevailing
Western theories of politics do rest on such an assumption, they are fun
damentally defective. Positively, their works yield clues on the basis of which
one can claim that any defensible politics must embody at least the following
elements:
1) The distinction between rulers and ruled, by reason of a neces

sity which belongs specifically to the political realm, is irreducible.
2) Rulers hold their right to command by reason of their skill in
political acting, not by reason of any apolitical principle.
3) Political truth comes to be in the actual doing of political deeds.
4) The task of politics is not to redeem man from his historicity.
Rather it is to manage the opportunities of the moment in such a
way that future opportunities for human achievements o f all sorts
(not merely political achievements) can continue to arise.
5) Henceforth, political conduct must be judged in global, not in

local, terms.
6) Political conduct is the expression of the present opportunities
bestowed by the earth and a people’s heritage in the working out of
a people’s destiny.
Thus, a defensible theory of politics must recognize, as much Greek and

Roman political thought did realize, that legitimate political conduct must
have the characteristic of authentic speech or action rather than that of pro
duction or fabrication. Authentic speech, unlike merely repetitious or habi
tual utterances, draws upon an already sedimented language and set of say
ings and rises to a new saying. So, too, legitimate political conduct draws
upon the sedimented political deeds of a community’s heritage and rises to a
new expression of that heritage.
A distinguishing characteristic of the authentic speech belonging specifi
cally to the political realm, as opposed for example to the religious or the
artistic realm, is that the new political expression expresses anew what has
already been expressed. But the new expression expresses the old with a
difference. That is, legitimate political expression and conduct is both tied to
the community’s heritage and at the same time deals with the unique pos
sibilities proffered by present circumstances.1
But if one takes seriously Merleau-Ponty’s efforts “to base a politics on
the analysis of political man,”2 then one must cope with the fact that political
man throughout history has engaged in coercion. This fact poses a problem.
Authentic speech of any sort is a manifestation and acknowledgement of the
freedom of both speaker and hearer. Coercion, by contrast, involves com
pulsion or restriction. Can coercion, then, properly belong to the political
realm? Or is it necessarily a lapse from authentic politics? If it can belong
to the political realm, then are there specifiable limits to the legitimate poli
tical use of coercion? It is to these issues that this paper is addressed. I will
not, however, discuss specific coercive techniques, e.g., war, punishment of
criminals, etc.
I will argue that, given the condition of the actual and potential par
ticipants in political life, coercion belongs by existential necessity to the poli
tical realm. Coercion is not logically entailed by politics. It is not the case
that insofar as conduct is political it is likewise coercive. Indeed pure politi
cal conduct would preclude coercion. But pure political conduct is a limit
Politics and Coercion 163
concept. Concrete political conduct, the deed of temporal and historical

men, is always impure. In its ineluctable impurity, all concrete political con
duct necessarily either permits or requires an element of at least potential
coercion. This necessity, arising as it does from the condition of the par
ticipants in political life, is an existential necessity rather than a conceptual
necessity.
But coercion, if it is to have political legitimacy, must be intrinsically
ordained to the maintenance or extension of the political realm itself. Its
political legitimacy is determined solely by its effectiveness in supporting the
political realm. Paradoxically, its support is effective precisely to the extent
that it tends to make continued use of coercion pointless. Thus, one could
say that the best exercise of coercion is that which maximally reduces the
legitimacy of a subsequent exercise of coercion. But, lamentably for political
theory, there is no definitive, antecedently determinable, best concrete exer
cise of coercion.
Political conduct is a form of human expression. But obviously it is not

the only form of human expression. To clarify the existential necessity in
virtue of which all concrete political conduct either permits or requires an
element of at least potential coercion, one needs to describe the multiple
forms of human expression and the connections between these several forms.
Following Merleau-Ponty’s injunction to base politics on an analysis of politi
cal man, one has to see how, in concrete men, political conduct is connected
with non-political conduct. That is, one has to identify the several ways in
which a man can and regularly does deal with himself, other men, things, and
states of affairs.
I find that there are four basic ways in which men deal with and express
their being in the world. First, an individual can give expression to his own
distinctive individuality and the uniqueness of his relation to his surround
ings. He does this by expressing his own estimations, evaluations, and pro
jects. Obvious examples of this form of expression, though by no means the
only or most frequent ones, are the activities of individual artists and artisans
in producing their works. I will call expression of this type I-expressions.
The distinguishing characteristic of I-expression is that what is of paramount
importance in such expression is precisely the self-expression of the expres

sor.
A second type of expression, which I will call it-expression, is that in
which the expressor serves simply as a mouthpiece, articulating that which
has been given to him to articulate. In expressions of this type the expres
sor’s uniqueness is either unnoticed by him or suppressed. Examples of such
expression range from simply repeating prevailing conventional expressions
to giving voice to scientific findings. Obviously, there are important differen
ces between mouthing commonplaces and reporting scientific findings. But
for present purposes these differences are irrelevant. The hallmark of ex
pressions of this second type is that the expressor’s uniqueness is fundamen
tally irrelevant to the significance of what is said or done.3
Third, an individual man can address himself to other men so that they
can both recognize his uniqueness and respond to him by expressing the
uniqueness proper to each of them. Expressions of this type presuppose a
recognition of mutuality among the participants. Each participant is both
agent and recipient, both speaker and hearer. Each expression of this type
anticipates a response which will elicit further expressions of the same type.
This requirement of mutuality can be satisfied only if both the uniqueness
and the commonness of the participants is acknowledged and expressed. Ex
amples of expressions of this type are all attempts at persuasion and all deli
berate undertakings which require a plurality of agents for their achievement.
I will call expressions of this type you-expressions. They are, of course, all
plural. The distinguishing characteristic expressions of this type is that, un
like I-, and it-expressions, what is most significant about the expression is not
fully established prior to the actual expression but comes to be in the activity
of mutual expression.
Fourth, a man can ally himself with others in such a way that the distinc
tion between the participants’ acting and receiving, between their speaking
and hearing, effectively collapses into a unitary expression. The participants,
though plural in number, act as one. Both the uniqueness and the common
ness of the participants, though it is presupposed for this type of expression,
is superceded by their communion. Examples of expressions of this type are
making music together, engaging in ritual worship, living together in dedica
tion to something which is taken as more worthwhile than either the unique
ness of each participant or the natural commonness by virtue of which each
man is like other men. I will call these expressions we-expressions.
The distinctive characteristic of we-expressions is that what is now ex

pressed is taken by the conjoined expressors not only to enhance the expres
sors but also to enable them to continue to express hereafter, and perhaps
better, precisely that which is now expressed. From another angle, whereas
you-expressions are founded upon respect, we-expressions are founded upon
love. Respect, as Hannah Arendt has pointed out, promotes the political.
But love is basically anti-political.4 Obviously, in actual life, expressions
regularly contain elements of more than one type. For present purposes,
though I think it is debatable, I will even grant that there are no concrete
expressions which belong exclusively to only one type. But I do hold, and
this is simply a factual claim, that there are many expressions whose struc
ture is such that they can be identified as belonging basically to one of these
four types of expression.5
The human condition is such that, in principle, any man can engage in
any of these types of expression. But there is no natural necessity for him to
engage in all of them. Nonetheless it appears that in the course of his life it
is (1) impossible for him not to engage in some form of it-expression, (2)
pathological for him not to engage in some form of I-expression, (3) abnor
mal for him not to engage in some form of you-expression, and (4) at least
regrettable for him not to engage in some form of we-expression. Further,
there is reason to believe that there is a genetic dependence of we-expression
upon you-expression, of you-expression upon I-expression, and of I-expres-
sion upon it-expression.6
But if one concentrates on concrete, historical men, as one should if he
discusses politics, he finds that healthy adults engage, at different times and
with varying frequency and intensity, in all types of expression, with the pos
sible exception of we-expression. This means, however, that men can and do
refrain from one or the other of these types. On any given occasion, the
type of expression which the adult engages in is at least to some degree at
his discretion.
For present purposes it is important to emphasize the fact that the ex
pression which concrete men engage in is not all of a piece. Nor is there any
fixed pattern which would insure ahead of time that a man will employ each
type of expression. He can neglect some types indefinitely.
Within the context of this discrimination of types of expression, it is now
possible to identify political expression and to determine the relation be
tween it and coercion.
II
The type of expression appropriate to politics is you-expression. Of

course, not all you-expression is political. For example, business transac
tions, academic discussions, some exchanges of promises, and some presenta
tions of works of art to an audience are basically non-political you-expres-
sions, even though these may, on occasion, have political overtones. Indeed,
it is characteristic of our era that economic expression and political expres
sion have tended to become so intertwined that one must recognize the pos
sibility, and danger, that politics could be wholly subjugated to economics.
But for present purposes, it is enough to emphasize that all genuine political
expression is you-expression.
Political you-expression is distinguished from non-political you-expression
by its intrinsic, essential acknowledgement of its continuity with the past and
future you-expressions, while nonetheless being addressed to the novel ex
igencies and possibilities of the present moment. Further, political expres
sion is directed toward establishing and preserving a public space within
which men can engage in expression of any type. This is not to say that
political expression is a means to some end. Any particular political expres
sion exists for the sake of the continued possibility of political expressions.
But that possibility, intrinsically involving both expressors and hearers, neces
sarily opens the way for whatever these expressors and hearers can proffer or
receive. Thus it is not the case that political expression is directed, as to
ward its telos or end, either toward the achievement of something other than
expression or toward some predelineated determinate expression or set of
expressions. Rather, genuine political expression, simply by being what it is,
cannot help but make it possible for the space it establishes to be occupied
by expressions of any type.
Political expression, then, is the immediate manifestation of power.
Power arises from the consent of a plurality of people to join together for
speech and action. Unlike force or strength, power does not consist in physi
cal might. Nor can power be the property of one man in isolation from
others. Whereas force or strength can be possessed by either a single man
or a group and deployed against other men or .upon things, power consists
exclusively in establishing and maintaining intercourse among men. Thus in
the absence of consent, there is no power, though there may be force or

strength.7
Power demands political expression to maintain the consent whence it
arises. Speech or expression and action o f whatever sort are historical phe
nomena. They make sense only if they are durable, only if they do not van
ish in the very moment of their appearance. It is precisely the point of poli
tical expression to make it possible for them to endure by providing the
durability of the space opened by the power emerging from the consent of a
plurality of people living together.
Parenthetically, let me acknowledge the ambiguity of the mutual relation
between consent and political expression. Merleau-Ponty, among others, is
correct in insisting that, in existence, one cannot defend a hard cleavage
between an inner realm (here the realm of consent) and an outer realm
(here the realm of political expression). They are mutually intertwined. In
existence, without power there is no political expression. But without politi
cal expression there is no power. Nonetheless they are not the same and so
it is appropriate to distinguish them from one another. Mutatis mutandis,
the same point holds good for the distinctions drawn above between types of
expression.
Political expression with its concomitant consent is rooted in hope.
Hope, as Gabriel Marcel puts it, is an aspiration for the “as before, but
differently and better than before.”8 Political expression implies both that all
types of expression are worthwhile and that, over and above what has already
been expressed, there is still reason to look forward to new expressions of all
types. Likewise, since it provides the foundation for the possibility of an
expression enduring beyond the moment of its utterance, political expression
provides the basis for establishing continuity between what has already been
expressed and what is still to be expressed.
Hope, at its profoundest levels, is not an aspiration for any determinate
state of affairs, or, in this context, expression. He who truly hopes may in
deed say something like “I hope for X.” But at bottom he recognizes that
the occurrence or non-occurrence of this determinate X does not of itself
either fulfill or leave unfulfilled his hope. Hope is an openness to receive
from another. To the degree that he genuinely hopes, to that degree he
does not attach conditions to his openness.9
In its manifestation in political expression, hope does not even permit a
prior specification of those others for whom a space is opened in which they
can engage in expression. Political expression requires power. Since power

arises from the consent of a plurality to join together for speech and action,
and since, by reason of new births, comings to adulthood, and deaths, this
consent is perpetually in need of refashioning, it is impossible to determine
ahead of time whose consent is acceptable or is to be solicited. Thus it is
impossible to determine in advance whose expressions are to be awaited in
hope.
Similar considerations lead to the recognition that in principle genuine
political expression necessarily tends to bring more and more people into the
circle of consent. The larger and deeper the circle of consent, the more
secure and durable is the circle and the greater is the scope of what is ex
pressible within it. This means that all political expression,by its essence as
political, tends to solicit the support and consent of every man. But this
tendency to universality is not intrinsically bound up with a thrust toward a
world government or with any of the usual versions of one-worldism. This
tendency can allow for multiple circles of consent, for multiple political com
munities, so long as each of these so acts that it allows for the continued
existence of any other political community which lives in peace as one legiti
mate community among others. Indeed, if one keeps his political analysis
focused on political man, he will see that the actual multiplicity of political
communities is rooted in history and that each of these communities has its
own heritage and destiny which it is able to express. Thus one may legiti
mately speak of a world-wide circle of consent only if he recognizes that this
circle is sustained and expressed by each of a multiplicity of smaller circles of
consent.10 The tendency to universality, then, is compatible with and, I would
suspect, requires the recognition and maintenance of regional differences.
Nonetheless, genuine political expression is always and of necessity directed
toward as large an audience as the historical moment permits it to reach.
The recognition of hope as that which characterizes genuine political
expression confirms several of the conclusions I reached elsewhere on the
basis of the delimitation of the political realm as that realm of public activity
which does anew, but with a difference, what has already been done. Specifi
cally, this necessity of hope shows that there is no such thing as a definitive
politics, that is, a politics in which nothing substantial is left unsaid and noth
ing substantial is left to be said. From this it follows: 1) that political con
duct which claims an ahistorical justification is either blind or deceitful; and
2) that revolution, understood as a radical rupture with a people’s past owing

nothing to that past, is political nonsense."
If my account of legitimate political expression, with its ingredient of
hope and its tendency to universality, is correct, then the use of coercion in
politics appears to be incongruous to say the least. Coercion is the use of
techniques and physical implements to impose one’s will on another. Coer
cion properly so called never involves authentic speech, for authentic speech
requires a hearer who can respond freely to it. He who is coerced, insofar
as he is coerced, cannot be a participant in the development and main
tenance of a public realm. He is an outsider.
Yet political man has regularly, throughout history, employed coercion
and considered it to belong to political praxis. How is this apparent anomaly
to be understood?
Ill
If the consent requisite for political activity were stable or could be stabi
lized so that the integrity of the political realm could be assured, then coer
cion either would be pointless or, if it ever had a point, could become ob
solete. But given the historical character of the political realm, its integrity
cannot be definitively assured. There are always new people, the next gener
ation, to be incorporated into the circle of consent. And those within the
circle of consent either die or can withdraw their consent.
My thesis is that coercion can make political sense by virtue of the fact
that every concrete historical political realm is not all-encompassing. In
other words, coercion can be a legitimate political activity only insofar as
some men in at least some respects are outside the public space within which
the coercive conduct originates. But coercion of itself is not a full-fledged
political deed. Unlike expressions of power, it is never politically self-justify
ing. Political uses of coercion are always manifestations of the weakness or
imperfection of the body politic which uses it.12
Before defending my thesis, let me briefly note that coercion may be
either destructive or constructive. It is destructive to the extent that it main
tains or promotes the lack of consent between the coercer and the coerced.
It is constructive to the extent that it attempts to remove obstacles in the
coerced to his consent. If coercion is constructive, it can be propaedeutic to
full-fledged political activity inasmuch as it is aimed toward making it pos
sible for the coerced to consent to join the body politic. Likewise, a political
group may engage in coercion, whether destructive or constructive, to pre
serve its own public space. In cases such as these, the use of coercion is
political. But it is so not by virtue of what is done but by virtue of who does
it - a political body qua such - and by virtue of what its doing preserves,
namely the possibility of further expressions of power rather than of coer
cion.
Now let me present evidence for my thesis that coercion can make politi
cal sense by virtue of the fact that no concrete historical political realm is all-
encompassing.
Though the human condition is such that multiple types of expression are
permanent possibilities for every man, there is no guarantee that, simply
because men live in contact with other men, any particular man or group of
men will engage in political you-expression. Indeed, the intrinsic character
of each type of expression sets it apart from, and to some extent over a-
gainst, other types of expression.
From one standpoint, all other types of expression call for the type of
expression which establishes and maintains the political realm. This is so to
the extent that an expression claims to be of lasting significance, to be mem
orable. But from another standpoint, the intrinsic sense of both I-expres-
sions and it-expressions involves a claim that the legitimacy of such expres
sions does not depend upon the consent of others. And the intrinsic sense of
we-expressions is that they, at least to some extent, manifest a community
held together by something deeper than hope. This deeper bond may be
love, a shared vision, blood ties, etc. But whatever this bond may be, it tran
scends the need for hope. From this latter standpoint, I-, it-, and we-expres
sions necessarily tend to weaken the circle of political consent because they
reduce the scope of that concerning which consent is sought or hoped for.
But since political expression itself, as I pointed out above, hopes for
expressions of all types and provides the space within which they can appear
and endure, it cannot legitimately seek the elimination of any other type of
expression. The very reason for the existence of political expression is to
insure the permanent possibility of all types of expression. It is this irreduci
ble tension which gives rise both to the ineliminable possibility of coercion
and the intrinsic limits within which any legitimate exercise of coercion is
confined.13
Coercion may, of course, be engaged in by anyone on behalf of an ex

pression of any type. But there is a crucial difference between coercion on
behalf of political expressions and that on behalf of any I-, it- or we-expres
sion. Coercion on behalf of any of the latter types of expression necessarily
tend to exclude in advance the legitimacy of at least one other type of ex
pression. Thus, I-expressions tend to exclude the legitimacy of we-expres-
sions and vice versa. And all these three types of expression tend to depreci
ate the worth of political expressions. Any you-expression, if it occurs in the
context of certain historical, geographical, or cultural factors, can be political.
But to the extent that you-expressions occur outside of contexts which incor
porate them into a concrete political realm, they too tend to depreciate the
worth of political expressions.
This depreciation can take one of two forms. On the one hand, a man
can be so absorbed in non-political expressions that he simply ignores engag
ing in that circle of consent which is maintained through political expression.
This is an apolitical depreciation of the political. On the other hand, there
can be an attempt made to make political expression, and thus the political
realm, subordinate to some other type of expression. Such an attempt tries
to use the political realm as a means to enhance non-political realms. This
is an antipolitical depreciation of the political.14
But both forms of depreciation of political expression are finally either
self-defeating or tend to negate further expressions of their own type. Apoli
tical depreciation of politics on behalf of what is expressed fails to recognize
the necessity of the political realm for the durability of what is expressed.
Anti-political depreciation of politics on behalf of what is expressed tends to
destroy the space needed for the appearance of new expressions of any type
whatsoever, including new expressions of its own type. The intrinsic con
stricting or atrophying consequence of using coercion on behalf of I-, it-, or
we-expressions thus reveals the illegitimacy of the use of coercion on behalf
of any expression of these types. Similarly the use of coercion on behalf of
those non-political you-expressions which do as a matter of fact occur out
side of contexts which would incorporate them into the political realm is also
illegitimate. But this is not at all the case with the use of coercion on behalf
of political expression.
Political expression, since it provides space for all types of expression,
can have coercion exercised on its behalf without necessarily leading to a
constriction of any other type of expression. Any particular exercise of coer
cion, of course, will lead to at least the temporary obstruction of some ex
pressions. But this obstruction, paradoxically, is simply the necessary price
to be paid for keeping open the public space required for expressions of all
types to appear and endure. This paradox, arising as it does from the con
crete condition of the men who engage in expression, is irreducible. It is an
existential necessity.
More specifically, the irreducible paradox here is that coercion, which
shows the limitedness of the power which arises from a circle of consent,
makes sense only by virtue of that consent. Those whose consent establishes
this circle must consent to those obstructions of their own expression which
are needed to preserve this circle. And yet, the point of the consent is pre
cisely to provide space for expressions of all types. The use of coercion thus
tends both to preserve and to weaken the consent on whose behalf it is exer
cised. The upshot of this paradoxical condition in lived experience is that the
exercise of coercion for the sake of political expression is intrinsically risky.
Its legitimacy can never be assured ahead of time. This riskiness, however, is
no different from that which attached to the entire political realm. All politi
cal deeds and expressions, together with the consent which provides the
space within which they appear and endure, are themselves risky. They are
all characterized by hope rather than by vision or settled love. Thus coer
cion, if it is to be exercised on behalf of politics, must itself be characterized
by hope and riskiness.
With the foregoing clarifications in hand, I can now say something about
the limits of the legitimate political use of coercion. But as I mentioned
above, I will not deal with specific techniques of coercion, e.g., war, ways of
dealing with criminals, etc. My concern, rather, is with the limits which must
be observed in any legitimate exercise of coercion regardless of which tech
niques are used.
IV
The circle of consent which establishes the political realm is essentially

finite. Two aspects of its finitude are of prime importance in the present
context. First, no one necessarily enters any particular circle of consent and
whoever does enter some such circle can always' withdraw from it. Para
phrasing Locke, one can say that whereas men are born to a political circle
of consent, they are not born in it.15 Second, no circle of consent can ex
haustively embrace all that can be expressed by any person who is in the
circle.
The existence of any particular circle, then, is never secure. This lack of
security gives rise to a need to defend the circle. This defense, qua defense,
is coercive. It imposes the existence of the circle on those who are in some
measure outside the circle. This imposition testifies not to the power but to
the fragility and finitude of the circle.
Given this irrecusable fragility and finitude, coercion is existentially a
permanently possible mode of activity for any particular political body. In
sofar as the political body is itself legitimate, that is, insofar as it provides
space for expressions of all types, then coercion as a permanently possible
mode of activity is legitimate. The circle of consent simply cannot exist with
out involving coercion as a possible mode of activity. Coercion, then, by an
existential necessity arising from the condition of the participants in the poli
tical realm, belongs to the political realm as one of the permanently possible
modes of activity available to a political community. The exercise of coer
cion does not necessarily involve a lapse from the realm of politics.16
Nonetheless, concrete exercises of coercion, if they are to be legitimate
political activities, are limited by virtue of their orientation to the main
tenance of the political circle of consent. The fragility and finitude of the
circle, which manifest its temporality, require that the circle be continually
reconstituted. Participants in the community must so act that their fellow
participants will persevere in their consent and that their conduct elicit the
consent of new participants (the next generation, immigrants, etc.).
But the consent which is to be sought is precisely a consent to hold open
a space in which all types of expression can continue to appear. Thus, con
crete expressions of coercion, to be politically legitimate, must be such that
in the very suppression of some expressions, it can in principle be seen, even
by those whose expressions are suppressed, that space for other expressions of
the same type as those suppressed is maintained. That is, every concrete
exercise of coercion must be such that it can serve and be seen as serving the
political community on whose behalf it is exercised. This means that every
concrete exercise of coercion must be visible as that which leaves room for
the conversion of men from being those who are coerced to those who con
sent. This consent, of course, is not consent to coercion as such. Rather it
is consent to the establishment of the space for all types of expression, the
maintenance of which space may require coercion.
It is, of course, possible that legitimate coercion is inefficacious for the

preservation of some particular political body. But should this be the case,
that body is simply doomed. Recourse to illegitimate coercion of itself cor
rodes the power of the political body and replaces the circle of consent with
either of the twins, tyranny or anarchy.
Thus, on the basis of the foregoing considerations, it can be seen that,
given the human condition, coercion belongs to the political realm. Further,
it can be seen that there are intrinsic limits to any legitimate political use of
coercion. More specifically, these considerations allow one to reach the
following conclusions about coercion and its relation to politics. These con
clusions are congruent with the elements of legitimate politics pointed out at
the beginning of this paper.
1) The possibility of legitimate coercion cannot be removed from the
political realm. This fact meshes with the fact that the distinction between
rulers and ruled, by reason of political rather than natural necessity, is ir
reducible. Some person or group must be responsible for restricting some
expressions for the sake of the maintenance of the political community as a
whole.
2) Since coercion is a permanently possible political activity and since all
political activity is historical, no definitive codification of legitimate coercive
activity can be formulated. This fact meshes with the fact that the truth of
political conduct comes to be in the actual doing of political deeds.
3) Any exercise of coercion which aims to definitively overcome the es
sential fragility and finitude of the political realm is politically indefensible.
This fact meshes with the fact that no political activity can have as its au
thentic task the redemption of man from the exigencies of his historicity.
4) No exercise of coercion can be politically legitimate which excludes in
advance the possibility of associating other and new men in the circle of
consent. This fact meshes with the fact that political conduct must hence
forth be judged in global terms.
These conclusions, and the investigations leading up to them, do not of
course resolve the paradoxical relationship between power and coercion.
That paradox, I take it, is a special case of the irresolvable paradoxical rela
tionship between the demands of what is to be thought and the demands of
what is to be done. But these conclusions do elucidate the implications of
the human condition for those who would engage in serious political thought
and activity.
Ideology, Utopia, and Responsible Politics
The concepts of ideology and utopia, at least since Marx, have regularly
been understood in pejorative terms. Ideology is understood in terms of
distortion or dissimulation. It is taken to be a fundamentally, and more or
less dangerously, defective way of responding to the world. Utopia, on the
other hand, is understood in terms of fantasy, or dreaming. It is taken to be
a way of refusing to respond to the world as it is, a way of withdrawal from
the world. To be either an ideologue or a utopian is regularly thought to be
infected with a social or political ill.
Generally, though, these two concepts and the phenomena to which they
refer are treated separately. They are not taken to be intrinsically related to
one another. Paul Ricoeur, however, in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia1
proposes to understand them as complements of one another and, according
ly, to see them as belonging to the same conceptual framework. In these
Lectures Ricoeur, on the one hand, analyses how one or both of these con
cepts have been treated by major 19th and 20th century thinkers. On the
other hand, he goes beyond considering the place of these concepts in politi
cal thought and asks what they entail for a proper understanding of the hu
man condition. As George Taylor says in his “Introduction” to the Lectures:
“In these lectures, Ricoeur uses social and political categories to discuss what
it means to be human, an issues that concerns both our present and our
persisting possibilities” (xi).
In this paper, I will not consider the adequacy of Ricoeur’s analysis of
other thinkers. Nor will I emphasize matters of philosophical anthropology.
I wall rather concentrate upon the contribution these Lectures make to con
temporary political thought. Ricoeur, I will argue, is right to treat ideology
and utopia as complements of one another. But his understanding and as
sessment of them must be modified if they are to function properly in re

sponsible political thought and practice.
Ricoeur maintains that the phenomena of ideology and utopia share two
important traits. First, each is thoroughly ambivalent. Each has both a
positive, constructive side and a negative, destructive side. Thus each has
both a constitutive and a pathological dimension. The second common trait
is that the negative dimension of each is more apparent than the positive
dimension. Ricoeur accounts for these shared features by treating ideology
and utopia as complementary functions of what he calls the social or cultural
imagination (1-2). If this is the case, then one can argue that neither the
ideological nor the utopian is eliminable from this imagination and that,
indeed, this imagination is essential for the constitution of social reality.2 To
make his case, Ricoeur has to find more fundamental, non-pathological
meanings of both ideology and utopia beneath their more obvious, pathologi
cal ones.
(a) Ideology
Ricoeur begins his analysis of the concept of ideology by drawing atten

tion to its history. That history has been one of an ever expanding range of
applicability. For the young Marx, for example, the ideological was whatever
stood in opposition to the concrete praxis of individual persons afflicted in
various ways by alienation. The ideological thus stands opposed to the real.
For the later Marx, though, as well as for Engels and subsequent Marxists of
various stripes, any humanistic concern for individuals is itself ideological.
The ideological is now opposed to Marxian science, which deals with the
infrastructure of society, with relations of production and classes in conflict
(69-74). In the course of this historical development, Ricoeur notes:
the concept of ideology progressively covers German idealism, pre-

scientific sociology, objectivist psychology and sociology in their posi-
tivistic forms, and then all the humanistic claims and complaints of
“emotional” Marxism. The implication seems to be that everything
is ideological....(7)
Ideology, Utopia and Responsible Politics 177
Though official Marxism, as Ricoeur acknowledges, does not explicitly

draw this extreme implication that almost everyone is thoroughly muddled
throughout their lives, its understanding of ideology as exclusively distortive
has no resources for blocking such a conclusion. Apparently, everyone is
bemused but Johnny and, perhaps, his very small band.
The implausibility of this view of ideology is compounded by what has
come to be known as Mannheim’s paradox.3 Simply put, the paradox is: If
all discourse is ideological, then how can Marxist discourse escape ideology?
If everything said is a biased manifestation of unrecognized interests, from
what nondistorted perch could Marx or anyone discover that there was dis
tortion?
Ricoeur’s response to Mannheim’s paradox and the extreme position
which generated it is first to treat the concept of ideology as that which is
opposed to science as secondary to that of ideology as opposed to praxis and
then to recast the purported opposition between ideology and praxis. His
objective is to show that ideology does not consist exclusively or even primar
ily in a distortion or dissimulation of praxis. He proposes to do so by in
tegrating the concept of ideology as distortion into a broader framework, one
which recognizes the symbolic structure of human life.
Borrowing the concept of symbolic action from Kenneth Burke and Clif
ford Geertz, Ricoeur argues that there is no genuinely human action which
does not involve some way both of ascribing meaning to the particular action
and of fitting it into the pattern we call a life. This double performance
constitutes the symbolic function. “Unless social life has a symbolic func
tion,” Ricoeur argues, “there is no way to understand how we live, do things,
and project these activities in ideas, no way to understand how reality can
become an idea or how real life can produce illusions” (8).
Obviously, as Marx and others have emphasized, this symbolic structure
can yield perversions. But the perversions are always only partial. “The
distorting function covers only a small surface of the social imagination, in
just the same way that hallucinations or illusions constitute only a part of
imaginative activity in general” (8). To claim otherwise is to run afoul of
Mannheim’s paradox.
If all human action is symbolically structured or organized by cultural
patterns, then one can understand not only how the several actions of a sin
gle person fit together as a coherent life, but also how multiple lives can be
organized and integrated into a community. Without some hypothesis of this

sort, how the integration and identity of either a person or a community is
achieved remains opaque. Following Geertz, Ricoeur calls the set of sym
bolic structures constitutive of an identifiable community an ideology. Be
cause there can be many such sets, there can be many ideologies. But with
out some set of these structures, human community would be impossible.
On this view, ideology plays a necessary, constructive role in the establish
ment and maintenance of any human community. It is not, therefore, fun
damentally destructive.
Lest he beg the question, Ricoeur has to show how his view of ideology
is related to the early Marxian sense of ideology as distortion of thought and
praxis by unrecognized interests. Ricoeur locates this connection at the point
at which any social order gives rise to the issue of governance. It is at this
point that differentiation and hierarchization enter into the community.
Following Max Weber, Ricoeur notes that when the distinction between
the rulers and the ruled is introduced into a group, the rulers have both
authority and domination. Not only do they have the ability to establish and
maintain order by force, they also are entitled to lead. Not even the most
brutal system of ruling lives by force alone. Every system of ruling solicits
the consent and cooperation of the ruled. That is, it seeks to have its au
thority and domination acknowledged as legitimate. “It is ideology’s role,”
Ricoeur says, “to legitimate this authority....While ideology serves...as the
code of interpretation that secures integration, it does so by justifying the
present system of authority” (13).
But, as Weber has also shown, no absolutely rational legitimation of any
particular system of authority and rule can be found. There is no set of
rational norms which can definitively determine either that it is X who
should rule and Y who should obey or that any specific system of ruling must
be implemented. Nonetheless, there is no reason to think that there can be
any enduring, relatively complex human community without ruling and obey
ing. Thus, on the one hand, there must be some justification proffered to
legitimate both X’s ruling and the system which establishes that rule. But,
on the other hand, the claim always exceeds available evidence. Alternatives
are always not only possible but plausible.
Ideology serves to bridge the gap between the rational necessity for legi
timated authority and power and the impossibility of any conclusive justifica
tion for any particular ruler or system of rule. As Ricoeur puts it, “ideology
must bridge the tension that characterizes the legitimation process, a tension
between the claim to legitimacy made by authority and the belief in the legi
timacy offered by the citizenry” (13). Without the bridging function per
formed by ideology, it is hard to see that there could be any but the most
trivial stable community.4
But because ideology claims more than it can legitimate, it is perpetually
prone to distort and dissimulate reality. In its effort to constitute the identity
of the community and to secure acceptance by the ruled of the ruler’s legiti
macy, ideology inevitable tends to justify the status quo, to canonize the exist
ing system of authority regardless of the limits of its rationality. Necessary,
then, to a community’s identity and preservation, ideology is nonetheless
always prone to distort reality.
To be prone to distort is not, however, necessarily to distort. This is
especially so when there is a counterweight. The counterweight to the ideo
logical tendency of the cultural imagination is its utopian tendency.
(b) Utopia and its connection with ideology.
Because all systems for legitimating authority and power suffer from a
“credibility gap,” Ricoeur argues, there is always room for utopia. In fact,
utopia’s distinctive function is to expose this credibility gap.3
Not only does the cultural imagination promote the integration of com
munities, it also instigates their critique. Through its utopian function, the
cultural imagination leads us to rethink in a critical way the nature and char
acter of our social life. If Ricoeur is right, there is no possibility of ideology
with its integrative role without the correlative possibility of a utopian chal
lenge to this integration. Both ideology and utopia are unsuppressible func
tions of one and the same imagination. In Ricoeur’s words, “there is no
social integration without social subversion” (16-17).
Utopian thought introduces what might be compared to Husserlian im
aginative variations on such realities as government, family, religion, and
especially, power. It subjects the socio-political status quo to a critique lo
cated in a “nowhere.” That is, its critique of what presently obtains some
where is not rooted in what presently obtains elsewhere. It is rooted in what
does not presently exist and has never existed at all.
Utopia’s “nowherehood” is, to be sure, a limitation. But it is also at the
root of utopia’s corrective potentiality. How utopia functions in any par
ticular instance is largely determined by how it relates itself to present social

reality. If utopian thought ignores or trivializes actual circumstances, if it
fails to connect the “here and now” of social reality to the “elsewhere” or
“nowhere” of utopia, then it is pathological. It degenerates into escapism.
But even if degeneration is an irremovable possibility, it is not an in
evitability. If utopian thought recognizes that both its sense and its legitima
cy depend at least in part upon the present reality it criticizes, if it ack
nowledges that what it criticizes is both potent and not devoid of at least
minimal redeeming features, then it is nonpathological and, potentially, ther
apeutic.
If ideology and utopia do indeed fit within the same conceptual frame
work, Ricoeur suggests, then nonpathological utopia can be the antidote to
degenerate ideology. He asks, rhetorically: “Is not the decenteredness, the
‘eccentricity,’ of the imagination’s utopian function the cure of the pathology
of ideological thinking, which has its blindness and narrowness precisely in its
inability to conceive of a nowhere” (17)?
In these Lectures Ricoeur tests and refines this proposal through analyses
of the ways either ideology or utopia or both have been treated by thinkers
as diverse as Marx, Weber, Mannheim, Habermas, Saint-Simon, and Geertz.
The conclusions he ultimately reaches are of substantial importance for re
sponsible political thought.
Ricoeur’s analyses show that what is at stake in both ideology and utopia
is the matter of power. Power is the point at which they intersect. Every
ideology buttresses some institutionalized power and tends to claim for it
more legitimacy than the evidence can warrant. Utopias, on the other hand,
all deinstitutionalize principal human relationships, including that of power.
Every utopia deinstitutionalizes power in one of two ways. It may claim
that power should remain deinstitutionalized and that there should be no
rulers. This way is the way of anarchy. Or it may claim that power should
be reinstitutionalized in a more rational way. The rulers will be the best or
the wisest. This way is the way of tyranny, benevolent perhaps, but tyranny
nonetheless. “All utopias,” Ricoeur says, “oscillate between these two poles”
(299).
Though neither of these alternatives is satisfactory, Ricoeur still finds
much merit in utopia’s destabilizing effect. Utopia challenges the present
order of things. It introduces an element of doubt into the taken for granted
status quo. Utopia, in Ricoeur’s words, “makes the actual world seem
strange....There is an experience of the contingency of order” (299-300).

Whereas ideology justifies social life as it presently is, utopia redescribes it,
showing that it might be otherwise.
As they actually occur in social life, Ricoeur finds, both ideology and
utopia function in some fashion at three levels, the levels of (a) distortion,
(b) legitimation, and (c) identification. At all three levels, both the ideologi
cal function and the utopian function do something other than simply repre
sent or express present reality. At a first level, ideology presents a distortion
of reality. Utopia presents a fanciful replacement instead of reality. At a
deeper level, ideology purports to bridge the gap between present power and
evidence for its legitimacy. Utopia contests present power and proposes an
alternative to it. Third, at its deepest and best level, ideology’s function is to
establish and maintain the identity of a group. Utopia’s best function is to
explore possible alternatives to what is admittedly actually the case.
Thus, at the first, rather superficial level, the level of distortion, the ex
pressions of the ideological and the utopian functions of the imagination are
incompatible with one another. Deeper probing, however, shows that these
functions are complementary. Our identity, not only as individuals but also
as groups, expresses itself in symbols derived from our expectations for the
future as well as from our present and past experience. It is part of our
identity to be open to what is not yet, to what is new. For groups as well as
for individuals, identity is prospective. It is partially in suspense. We are
now not merely what we have been. “What we call ourselves is also what we
expect and yet what we are not” (311).
If indeed both the ideological and the utopian functions are constitutive
of the social imagination, and if the social imagination in turn is constitutive
of social reality, then we cannot rid ourselves of these functions. Further, if
Mannheim’s paradox holds good for Ricoeur’s own analyses, then there is no
possibility of an escape into a discourse definitively secure from distortion
and fantasy. Ricoeur acknowledges that he can find no response to Mann
heim’s paradox “except to say that we must try to cure the illness of utopia
by what is wholesome in ideology...and try to cure the rigidity, the petrifica
tion, of ideologies by the utopian element” (312).6
This response, he admits, would be clearly insufficient unless one tries to
transform this circle into a spiral by committing himself or herself to some
specific set of values and living accordingly. Ricoeur confesses that there is
something “fideistic” about such a commitment but nonetheless defends it

because
I do not see how we can say that our values are better than all others
except that by risking our whole life on them we expect to achieve a
better life, to see and understand things better than others (312).
Ricoeur’s “fideism” is attenuated by the fact that Mannheim’s paradox

does not tell the whole story. Even if we cannot escape from the ideological
circle, we are not entirely imprisoned by it. Turning Mannheim’s paradox
back on itself, Ricoeur observes: “We know that Mannhaim’s paradox exists
only because we have the capacity for reflecting on our situation; this is the
capacity Habermas called Selbstreflexxon” (313). The ideological element and
the utopian element constantly both collaborate with and contest each other.
And we know it.
Ricoeur’s ultimate conclusion is that, faced with the impossibility of an
all-encompassing view of social life and its history which would definitively
overcome both ideology and utopia, we should adopt Mannheim’s criterion
of appropriateness. According to this criterion, the worth of any particular
expression of either the ideological or the utopian function, neither of which
can be definitively suppressed, is to be measured by its appropriateness for
constituting a group identity congruent both to the exigencies of the actual
conditions in which social life must be lived and to the possibilities resident
in those conditions. Difficult as it is to apply, this criterion is apparently our
only alternative. The upshot of Ricoeur’s analyses, then, is:
Instead of a pseudo-Hegelian claim to have a total view, the question

is one of practical wisdom; we have the security of judgment because
we appreciate what can be done in a situation. We cannot get out of
the circle of ideology and utopia, but the judgment of appropriate
ness may help us to understand how the circle can become a spiral
(314).
II
There is much to applaud about Ricoeur’s sophisticated analysis of ideol

ogy and utopia. He argues convincingly for his principal thesis, namely that
without the function of the social imagination there can be no stable political
community. Unless the perceivable present conditions of human life (speci
fic material conditions plus the available ways of thinking, speaking, acting,
and making) are supplemented by achievements of the social imagination, no
group of people could either attain the unity necessary to establish its iden
tity as a particular community or develop the common projects necessary to
preserve it as an integrated community. Unless “the here and now” can be
complemented by an “elsewhere and other time,” social fragmentation is
inevitable. It follows, therefore, that no political community is definable
exclusively in terms of its present determinations.
In the course of establishing this general thesis, Ricoeur handles the
always troublesome but fascinating issue of power with both forthrightness
and circumspection. He says: “For me the problem of power is the most
intriguing structure of existence” (311). In discussing this problem he never
loses sight of power’s polyvalency. Refreshingly, given the depreciation of
power in so much contemporary thought, Ricoeur never reduces power to
the status of a product of the devil’s work.
There is no good reason to believe that power is necessarily a zero-sum
game.7 Nor is the absence of power, in itself, a blessing. To be sure, every
actual political regime of which there is a historical record shows that there
were people whom it harmed either by what it did or by what it failed to do.
Some of the harmed have been members of its own community. Others
have been foreigners. Because every regime brings harm to some, every
regime is indictable. That is, a utopian alternative is always conceivable.
In practice, however, to hold that, since every known regime is indictable,
no regime has enjoyed rational legitimacy is nonsense. To assert that no
regime’s legitimacy has been without taint is true but largely pointless.
There is no good reason to think either that some concrete regime could
have complete legitimacy or that anarchy, the absence of relations of power,
is livable.
The task for the responsible thinker, then, is first to avoid unwarranted
claims about the possibility of fully legitimate regimes and, second, to search
for criteria with which to assess the legitimacy both of actual regimes and of
genuinely plausible alternatives to them.
In formulating and applying these criteria, the responsible thinker will
recognize the historicality of all regimes of power. Both regimes and their
legitimacy can wear out. A regime may outlast its legitimacy. Or its col
lapse may coincide with its loss of legitimacy. But in neither of these cases
does a regime’s loss of legitimacy entail that it never had legitimacy. Indeed,
to argue that no actual regime ever had legitimacy is tantamount to claiming
that, at least thus far, all power has been perverse power.
Perhaps such a claim can be given some conceptual plausibility. But any
attempt to make it applicable to actual power relations is doomed to futility.
One who holds that all known power has been perverse power has no motiv
ation to attempt thoughtful change in power relations. He or she has no
conceptual resources with which either to oppose the social chaos which
pointless change threatens to bring or to rise above the passivity of acquies
cence in the status quo. Ricoeur, to his great credit, never denies power a
positive role in stable communities. He never treats power irresponsibly.
But even though Ricoeur’s analyses of ideology and utopia deserve con
siderable praise, they need refinement if they are to contribute to maximally
responsible political thought and practice. These refinements affect both
how these two phenomena are understood and the way they are deployed in
responsible symbolic action.
Central to Ricoeur’s treatment of power is his recognition that no one
can ever become definitively immune to either ideological or utopian “dis
tortions.” That is, no one can attain, much less sustain over time, anything
that could be considered a transparent vision either of what is or of what
ought to be. Neither the ideologist or utopian nor his or her critic can gain
this essentially ahistorical transparency (252-253). The constitutive role of
the social imagination in the structuring of social reality, Ricoeur maintains,
insures that this the case.
But may one not properly ask: What then is the status of Ricoeur’s own
thought? Or of those with whom he finds greatest sympathy, namely Geertz
and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Habermas? Does Ricoeur not effectively
free himself from ideological and utopian distortions? Perhaps the tendency
to ideology and utopia is irremovable from actual living people, Ricoeur
included. But does his analysis not point to a way of thinking which effec
tively eliminates ideology and utopia from responsible social and political
thought?
Any particular ideological doctrine or utopian scheme, though it exceeds
and somehow denies the constraints of the real, nonetheless takes its sense
in large measure from the reality from which it distances itself. Without that
reality and the constraints it imposes, the ideology or utopia in question
would make very little sense.
But every set of concrete real conditions is essentially limited by contin
gency. Whatever ideology or utopia is the correlate of these conditions, the
supplement or alternative to them is infected by the same limitations. Any
particular ideology is limited and contingent inasmuch as its task is to bridge
the gap between some actual claim to power or authority and the contingent
reality which provides evidence, albeit insufficient evidence, for it. If the
current conditions provided no evidence in its favor, the ideology would lack
all plausibility and thus be trivial. But the evidence provided, like the current
conditions themselves, is never more than contingent. Similarly, each par
ticular utopia proposes remedies for the ills of some essentially contingent
situation. The ills, like the conditions which generate them, are contingent.
So too, then, are their utopian remedy.
The history of ideologly and utopia, however, shows that their genuine
proponents take them to be definitive.8 They are not presented as mere
temporary cures. They are meant to escape contingency. Genuine propo
nents of either an ideology or a utopia deny that what they espouse is shot
through with contingency. For them, the present reality is no more than a
point of departure which can be left behind without a trace. Accordingly,
they can be said to espouse their ideology or utopia categorically and not
merely hypothetically. The ideology or utopia in question is, they hold, what
ought to be the case regardless either of what is actually the case or of any
other alternative.
The benign contribution which Ricoeur claims to discover that both the
ideological function and the utopian function of the social imagination can
make to the constitution of social reality can only be made if their products
are recognized precisely for what they are, namely (a) representations of
what is not real, and (b) contingent representations whose sense is undetach-
able from that of the contingent reality to which they are supplements or
alternatives. If a particular ideology or utopia is so recognized, then it is
embraced or entertained only hypothetically. It cannot present itself as a
permanent and definitive solution to the problem of power. Nor can it,
because of the radical historicality of every social reality, present itself as the
sole legitimate replacement for the current reality. No contingent product of
the social imagination, if recognized as contingent, can pretend so to exhaust
the possibilities of the social imagination that other plausible representations
are impossible.
But does not the difference between asserting an ideology or utopia,
holding it categorically, and entertaining it, holding it only hypothetically,
make all the difference between social pathology and social health? Does
not the criticism to which ideologists and Utopians have been traditionally
subjected have its roots in the categoriality of the claims advanced for what
they present as the non-contingent solution to the intractable problem of
legitimizing power? If I am correct, then Ricoeur has not so much rehabil
itated ideology and utopia as he has shown how the social imagination’s
tendency to them is to be harnessed and put into the service of responsible
political thought. It is harnessed by refusing to embrace categorically the
content of the representation. It is precisely this refusal which distinguishes
the responsible political or social thinker from the ideologue or utopian.9
The practical importance of distinguishing the hypothetical embrace of
an ideological or utopian representation from the categorical embrace of it
shows up clearly in the important symbolic action of political education, the
process by which newcomers are incorporated into a community. If political
education is to be responsible, then both the teacher and the student must
(a) pose alternatives to the actual distributions of power, since these distribu
tions cannot be definitively legitimated, without at the same time (b) destroy
ing the possibility of rationally accepting some distribution, that is, without
precipitating anarchy. To embrace an ideology categorically is to deny the
necessity or even the utility of considering alternatives to the present reality.
It is to treat the always contingent present as the necessary. To embrace a
utopia categorically is to deny the connection which utopia must retain to
reality if it is to be senseful. It is to treat the real as though it were devoid
of merit and thus to destroy the rational basis for accepting any contingent
actual distribution of power. Unquestionably, no regime finds it easy to
acknowledge the limits of its legitimacy. Similarly no critique of a regime
finds it easy to acknowledge that the regime’s limited legitimacy is nonethe
less genuine legitimacy. Short of these acknowledgements, though, there can
be no political education. There can only be either indoctrination or subver
sion. But with these acknowledgements, responsible political education be

comes not only possible but also imperative.
Further, if the distinction between the hypothetical entertaining of ideol
ogies or utopias is distinguished from the categorical assertion of them, then
egress from Mannheim’s paradox can be demonstrated more convincingly.
Ricoeur’s solution to Mannheim’s paradox, as I mentioned above, is to cure
the excesses of utopia by those of ideology and vice versa. This cure is to be
practically consummated, according to Ricoeur, by risking everything for our
chosen set of values. In his words, cited above, “I do not see how we can
say that our values are better than all others except that by risking our whole
life we expect to achieve a better life, to see and understand things better
than others” (312). But a consummation of this sort, as Ricoeur himself
admits, can be achieved only voluntaristically, or fideistically. Egress on the
basis of rational considerations alone is apparently insufficient. Force of will
is required.
If, however, it is proper to distinguish hypothetical entertainings of ideol
ogies or utopias from categorical assertions of them, then what are enter
tained are not full-fledged ideologies or utopias. What is entertained is not
isolated from the admittedly contingent reality upon which it depends for its
own intelligibility. What is thus entertained is modally different from an
ideology or utopia which is categorically adopted. The former is no more
than a supplement or alternative to a reality recognized both as resistant to
reduction and as having its own positive worth. The latter would either re
duce reality to a moment of itself or seek to cancel it altogether. That which
is simply entertained, then, has a different logical status than do adopted
ideologies and utopias and therefore eludes Mannheim’s paradox.
My insistence upon distinguishing the hypothetical from the categorical
holding of ideologies or utopias does not denature them. Nor does it under
cut the importance of admitting, with Ricoeur, that political thought which
makes no demands upon how we live is sterile. How could thought be both
responsible and political and still make no challenge to how we live with one
another? But if, on the one hand, Ricoeur is correct both that tendencies to
ideology and utopia are unsuppressible and that the productions of these
tendencies make claims upon our conduct, and if, on the other hand, I am
correct that these products are held responsibly only if they are held hypo
thetically and not categorically, then Ricoeur’s prescription for curing the
excesses of ideology and utopia can and should be refined in two correlative
ways.
First, we cannot under any circumstances claim with Ricoeur that the
values according to which we order our lives are better than all others. The
values in question here must include political values. But given the radical
contingency of all power and legitimations of power, we can never claim
more than that our present political values are no less than equal to all pres
ent alternatives. Our claim can at most be (a) that our set of values is a set
supported by the best presently available evidence, and (b) that living by our
set of values provides as well as any other set opportunities to recognize
fresh evidence which would show either that some other set is indeed super
ior or that our set, though appropriate to its times, is now outmoded. So cir
cumscribed, a claim of this sort admits the possibility that other sets of politi
cal values might be just as appropriate to prevailing conditions as our is. So
to live a political life, I have argued elsewhere, is to live a politics of hope.10
Properly understood, hope best characterizes the appropriate way to live
out the play between our recognition of present reality and the two sorts of
variations worked on it by the social imagination, namely ideological supple
ments and utopian alternatives. It also best characterizes the way to inter
pret living in a world whose inhabitants differ in the sets of values by which
they live.
Though no demonstrative arguments are available to justify a politics of
hope, enthymematic arguments, the sort of arguments appropriate to the
subject matter of politics, do support it. There is no necessity, then, to lapse
into fideism. Strong reasons exist for the general position Ricoeur has devel
oped in these lectures. Accordingly, it is a mistake to suggest that these
reasons fall short of providing firm rational guidance to responsible political
conduct and that therefore the sort of politics which Ricoeur espouses rests
ultimately on something other than reason.
The second refinement I want to make in Ricoeur’s conclusions is corre
lated to the first. Just as we must be prepared to alter our social or political
values if new evidence demands it, so we must be prepared to alter the ob
jective or goal of our political desires and aspirations. The evidence on the
basis of which we formulate political objectives and goals is always both
limited and contingent. Accordingly, we can only seek to bring about social
condition C if no superior condition C ' becomes warranted by evidence.
Our dedication to C must be only hypothetical and not categorical. For
example, being committed to bringing about a specific kind of resolution R

to the troubles of Northern Ireland is reasonable only so long as one is pre
pared to abandon R for R ' should evidence demand it. We must therefore
live out our set of values, even risking death for them, only in such a way
that we remain prepared to abandon the specific objective of our aspirations
or expectations should a better objective appear.
The importance of this second refinement is that it undercuts any ten
dency toward fanaticism. Willingness to risk death for our objectives neither
removes their hypothetical character nor warrants suppressing voices propos
ing alternative objectives. Because we must remain open to new evidence
and thus to new expectations and aspirations we can never rationally defend
so strong a claim for our set of goals and objectives that it warrants our
suppressing all competitors. This consideration does not entail pacifism.11
But it does indicate that it is far from easy to find rational grounds for calls
for war or civil strife.
If the position enunciated in Lectures on Ideology and Utopia is amended
by using the distinction between the hypothetical and the categorical holding
of values in such a way that (a) there is no need to resort to fideism and (b)
tendencies to fanaticism are effectively blocked, then Ricoeur has made a
major contribution to responsible contemporary political thought. The phe
nomena to which the concepts of ideology and utopia refer show no signs of
fading from contemporary political life. To show, as Ricoeur has done, both
that they are products of ineliminable tendencies of the social imagination
and that, when brought together in the same conceptual framework, they can
be seen to be not mere distortions but rather products of the very conditions
which make social life and its amelioration possible is an accomplishment
with far ranging implications for contemporary political philosophy.
Does Anarchy Make Political Sense?
Tyranny, Aristotle says, either is the worst of politics or is no politics at

all.1 And though he does not specifically discuss anarchy, he says that that
form of democracy which always appeals from laws to the people is the worst
form of democracy. For “such a democracy is fairly open to the objection
that it is not a constitution at all; for where laws have no authority, there is
no constitution.”2 It is easy then to infer that Aristotle would find anarchy
little better than tyranny.
Recently, however, Reiner Schum ann has argued, on the basis of his
reading of Heidegger, for a subtle, different version of anarchy.3 His work
prompts a rethinking of the political sensefulness of anarchy.
In this essay I will undertake such a rethinking. My central concern will
not be to assess the defensibility of Schum ann’s reading of Heidegger.
Rather, it will be to re-examine anarchy. Though I will argue that in the
final analysis anarchy is politically untenable, Schum ann’s work prompts a
critique that brings to light crucial features of responsible political thought
and action.
Schum ann follows Heidegger in his analysis of the history of metaphy

sics, a history running from Plato through Nietzsche. Each metaphysical
system, on this analysis, hangs on some primordial principle or entity. This
fundament rules over everything, determining both how things are to appear
and how they are to be assessed.
Political practice, too, falls under the dominance of the reigning meta
physical principle. That principle determines how the political practice in
question is to be judged. In the era of metaphysics, the question “What is
to be done?” gets answered in terms of some primary discourse engendered

by some such principle. Examples of these primary discourses are the dis
courses about being, nature, God, or the supreme judgment of reason.
The history of metaphysics is the history of the successive times in which
each of these principles first prevailed and then effectively disappeared.
Hence Schiirmann calls them ‘epochal principles.’ Serving to legitimate
practical disciplines and their exercise, these principles “have been political,”
he argues, “because more evidently at each stage, they have forced the net
work of things, words and actions of an age into the logic of domination.”4
That is, these principles establish and maintain an order or regime regulating
this network.
But our epoch, the epoch of the dominance of technology, manifests the
exhaustion of the age of metaphysics. We have arrived at a post-metaphysi
cal time in which all ultimate principles or standards are dissolved. Ours is
a time devoid of archi or standard of measurement. It is a time of an-arch6,
of anarchy.5
Now that the metaphysical era as a whole has come to an end we find
ourselves in a transitional era, on the way to a different way of thinking and
acting. This amounts to a different way of being human. This new era is a
way without principle, an an-archic way. Unlike eras of domination, this new
era of thinking and acting is one in which there is a mutual letting-be among
people and between them and the world with its things. This way of thinking
and acting does not yield, as traditional political thinking does, “a theory of
organization of man into collectivities.”6 Rather, in a non-telic manner it
“anticipates a possible post-technological economy not stamped primarily [as
politics based on metaphysical principles always are] by institutionalized
violence.”7 We cannot force this new way to prevail. But it is a concrete
possibility for which we can prepare.8
The political implications of this transitional thinking and acting show up,
according to Schiirmann, when we treat the three basic constituents of poli
tics, namely words, things, and actions, as no longer subject to domination by
some metaphysical principle.9 First, consider words as constituent of politics.
Politics has always, and necessarily, involved speech and language. There is
no fully human intercourse, political or otherwise, without words or their
equivalents. Throughout the metaphysical era, epoch after epoch, speech
and language have been ordered and dominated by a syntax and grammar
which themselves spring from metaphysics. Hence so long as we string our
Does Anarchy Make Political Sense? 193
words together in a way which requires the subordination of some of them to

others, what we say still remains dominated by metaphysical thinking of some
sort.
If we are to escape from metaphysics and the domination ingredient in it,
we must hold ourselves ready for a language which will have “rid itself of the
grammar of metaphysics. The tongue to be learned would then have to
extricate itself from ... the subject-predicate attributions.”10 Thus speaking in
the transitional era is to prepare the way for a future speech which is “freed
from the grammar that has made the West.”11
But politics of course involves more than just speech and language. It
also must deal with things. The epoch of technology, in which metaphysical
politics has reached its close, is an epoch in which all things are dominated
by the principle of subjectivity. In this epoch, the only way things can appear
is as raw material to be disposed of according to human purposes and de
signs. Indeed the epoch of technology is the epoch which most fully expres
ses the reign of subjectivity.
To resist domination by the principle of subjectivity, we must turn to
deal, resolutely and consistently, with things in an a-principial or an-archic
manner. Only if we do so can there be a chance that the end of the era of
metaphysics can open the way for a transition to a ‘salvific’ time.
Further, in addition to words and things, politics has to do with action.
Indeed, without anti-principial, and eventually a-principial action, a-principial
thinking or saying remains impossible. A-principial action is action which
neither has nor seeks justification by some fundamental principle. It is ac
tion “without why.” Action “without why,” as an ontic condition, precedes
and makes possible an ontologically an-archic thinking and saying.12 Thus
anarchic action or praxis is not merely the practical application of anarchic
thinking. Nor is it merely heuristic. Rather,, it is “a practical a priori with
out which thinking ... lapses into impossibility.”13
When action is no longer governed by some metaphysical principle, then
key notions through which philosophers have tried to understand action are
radically transformed. First, action can no longer be thought to move per
sons or things to some goal established in advance. Rather than forcing its
constituents to appear in the light of such ends, an-archic action lets the
persons and things which it involves show themselves as they are, namely as
themselves free from subordination to some primary principle. They too
now show themselves as “without why.”14
Second, the metaphysical concept of responsibility is undercut. This

concept implies that there is some ultimate authoritative ground against
which action can be measured. But since there is no such ground, then this
concept of responsibility collapses. Responsible acting in the transitional
time eschews any appeal to a foundational principle. It prepares for an era
in which responsibility will consist in devotedly letting-be “the ever new
modes in which things unite in a world and differ from it.”15 That is, post
metaphysical responsibility consists in being attentive and responsive to the
temporal, fluid play of things as they come together and stand apart.16
Third, when transitional thinking is joined to transitional acting, they
open up the possibility for nonattachment. Nonattachment is the correlate of
nonmetaphysical responsibility. It amounts to a “protest against busyness.”
More specifically, in our epoch, it is the protest against the domination by
subjectivity which manifests itself in the global technological enterprise aimed
at reducing everything to raw material. As protest, nonattachment lets per
sons and things be free from domination by principle.17
Fourth, taken together, transitional thinking and transitional acting trans
form all metaphysical notions about human destiny. This transformation
radically changes both how one understands time and how one understands
human activity. For this new understanding and action no temporal moment
is either preparatory for or deviant from some other moment which is ‘bet
ter’ or ‘worse’ or is in any sense its goal. Similarly, what transpires in time
cannot rightfully be regarded as doing so for human beings. Nor can one
sensefully assess human doings in terms of their consequences for mankind’s
future. To do so would be to grant, either overtly or covertly, unwarranted
special privilege to the human way of being over other ways of being. Rath
er, the thinking and acting appropriate to this age of transition must contest
this “humanistic” vestige of metaphysical thinking along with all other such
vestiges. It must treat these vestiges as remnants of an era which has now
come fully to a close.18
Finally, acting and thinking which are genuinely transitional prepare the
way for a shift from violence to anarchy. The epoch of technology thorough
ly demonstrates how radical an act of violence it is to subject everything to a
metaphysical principle. Transitional acting and thinking subvert this sys
tematic violence. They do so, Schiirmann says, by letting things come to
presence unobstructedly. In his words: “The practical condition for raising
the question concerning technology and the violence inherent in it can only
consist in letting things enter their world in constellations essentially rebel

lious to ordering.”19
Schum ann makes plain just where transitional thinking and acting lead.
First, he endorses Meister Eckhart’s comments: “The just man seeks noth
ing in his works. Those are serfs and hirelings who seek anything in their
works and who act for the sake of some ‘why’;” and “if you were to ask a
genuine man who acted from his own ground, ‘Why do you do what you are
doing?’ if he were to answer rightly, he would say no more than, ‘I do it
because I do it’.”20 Then Schiirmann adds:
To the question, What is to be done? when raised together with the

question, What is being? a radical phenomenologist can only re
spond: dislodge all vestiges of a telocratic economy from their hide
outs - in common sense as much as in ideology - and thereby liber
ate things from the ‘ordinary concept’ which ‘captures’ them under
ultimate representations. In the ambiguous situation of a possible
transition, that, then, is how Heidegger’s thought of the temporal
difference enables one not to remain passive under the technological
‘assault.’21
The call that Schiirmann issues for anarchic action cannot, he says, be
answered by individuals or small groups in isolation from others. If anarchic
action or nonprincipled praxis is to come to pass, it will “either claim every
one that lives in the economy of transition or it will be nothing at all.”22
Schum ann's claim that his position develops the implications of Heideg
ger’s thought for politics is, of course, not uncontroversial.23 But, as I men
tioned at the outset, my primary concern is not with how Heidegger is to be
read. It is rather to examine the reasonableness of anarchy as a political
undertaking. The claim I will defend is that the sort of anarchic thinking
Schum ann proposes can at most serve as a propadeutic to responsible poli
tics. Unsupplemented, it is insufficient for responsible politics. And anar
chic action is wholly inadequate either as politics or as its propadeutic.
II
Schum ann's proposal is benign insofar as it rejects the notion that a

politics can rightly claim to be legitimated because it is derived from some
fundamental, ahistorical metaphysical principle. His proposal thereby resists

as indefensible the claims of at least two historically significant varieties of
politics.
Elsewhere I have called these two varieties of politics the politics of
vision and the politics of will or might.24 Both of these sorts of politics dis
play a certain Prometheanism. Both of them fail to give due weight to the
finitude and historicality ingredient in the human condition. A politics of
vision rests on the conviction that nothing essential to its animating vision
need be sought outside of the privileged visionaries. And what is to be done
can be determined, sooner or later, precisely through the vision. What the
visionary claims to have caught sight of is some ultimate metaphysical prin
ciple in terms of which everything either is or should be ordered and regu
lated. Orthodox Marxism has frequently been regarded, by practitioners and
foes alike, as a politics of this sort, a politics engendered by a vision held to
be unqualifiedly true.
A politics of will or might is constituted by its participants’ conviction
that they are at bottom masters of their own condition. They claim to be at
liberty to dispose matters as they see fit for purposes they themselves decide
upon. At bottom, they recognize neither material nor cultural debt to either
past or future persons. Some contract theories, e.g., Hobbes’, exemplify this
conviction. Like politics of vision, politics of will or might is radically at odds
with Schum ann’s position.
But even if both of these sorts of politics, based as they are on some
metaphysical principle, lose their legitimacy through the Heideggerian cri
tique of metaphysics which Schum ann appropriates, are we necessarily left
with anarchy as the only alternative? Can history, if read nonmetaphysically,
not open the way for a more defensible, and hence more responsible poli
tics? Before addressing this question, let me offer some critical reflections
on the anarchy Schum ann proposes.
What evidence we have from the history of Western political thought
worthy of the name, i.e., political thought not in the sendee of tyranny, shows
us that both political thought and political practice always display a tension
between concern for mere living or longevity and concern for living well. To
ignore either pole of this tension, there is much reason to believe, is to open
the way for tyranny, either directly or as the culmination of some unlivable
experiment with anarchy.
Thus Hobbes, however much he strains this tension in favor of living, or

survival, does not fail to show some concern for pleasure, for living well.
And Plato, on the other hand, who so vigorously emphasizes living well, is
never unmindful of the importance of the durability of the good state.
Schum ann's proposal is notable, among other reasons, for its striking
silence about the importance of durability either for political communities or
for the human species as a whole. It is probably wrong to say that he wholly
ignores this matter. He does, for example, construe our present epoch as a
transitional time awaiting a new era, a new grant of being. So presumably it
would be regrettable if our species were to become extinct while this awaited
grant remains possible but not yet actual. Nonetheless, durability, whether
of particular peoples or of the whole species, figures barely at all in his poli
tical considerations. It gets no thematic treatment in his position.
Schum ann’s silence about human durability is particularly troublesome
in our present circumstances. Now and for the foreseeable future we live at
a time when the durability of the human species cannot be taken for granted.
Biological or cosmological factors will of course eventually bring our species
to an end. But much nearer at hand is the threat of extinction brought a-
bout by numerous products and practices which people themselves, with
greater or lesser deliberation, bring about and continue. Environmental
degradation, overpopulation, and global warfare - chemical, biological, or
nuclear - presently threaten every species, including the human species.
Therefore today, as Hans Jonas has seen, there is a practical necessity and
moral imperative for us to preserve life in its variety, including human life,
on earth.25 This is a necessity and imperative which we can fail to obey. At
least one task of any politics claiming to be responsible is to promote the
acceptance and observance of this imperative. But the politics Schiirmann
proposes gives one scant reason to believe that it can satisfy this elementary
requirement.
Attention to the matter of durability and its political implications leads
one to discover numerous problems, either conceptual or practical or both,
with Schum ann's position. Roughly speaking, some of these problems arise
from Schum ann’s view of the field of politics itself. And others arise from
his call for action “without why.” These two groups of problems are of
course intertwined with one another. But for clarity’s sake I will separate
them.
Consider first some prominent characteristics of the sort of political

domain to which Schurmann addresses his proposal. There is reason to
think that the sort of domain he has in mind either is a practical impos
sibility or is woefully underdetermined.
One crucial, and highly problematic, feature of the political domain
Schurmann envisages is the unanimity of its members. Schurmann says that
if the anarchic or aprincipial praxis he advocates is to come to pass it will
either claim everyone living in the time of transition or it will be nothing at
all. I take it that Schurmann means that unless everyone comes to act anar-
chically, no one can fully do so.
But given this requirement of full unanimity, then, if Schiirmann’s propo
sal is not wholly inapplicable to any concrete politics, it is certainly not a
comprehensive proposal for the whole of politics. That is, if it is ever ap
plicable, it is only sometimes applicable. Hence the proposal can be no
more than partially adequate.
But history provides good reasons for doubting whether Schiirmann’s
proposal has any applicability at all to anything hitherto recognized as poli
tics. The politics about which history speaks always has divisions among
people with which to deal. All the actually enacted politics we know any
thing about has always had to manage divisions within its populace as well as
some external threat. None of them presupposes the absence of divisions.
Indeed the task for nontyrannical politics is not to eliminate diversity. Rath
er it is to achieve a unity which preserves diversity, a togetherness which
respects some apartness. As such, nontyrannical politics, as part of the price
it pays for being nontyrannical, always risks opposition and hence overthrow.
In fact, it is hard to see how anything properly called politics would make
any sense in an era of unmitigated unanimity.
But suppose it could come to pass that everyone did live, think, and act
in the anarchical way Schurmann recommends. Could such a group be dura
ble? Even if it is neither logically nor physically impossible for it to be dura
ble, we have scant reason to think that it could abide long in this condition.
The closest approximation I can imagine to a Schiirmannian anarchic
community is Sartre’s fused group, e.g., a group needing no leader, no prin
cipal or principle, to make common cause in some undertaking. Sartre’s
example of such a group undertaking is the storming of the Bastille. But, as
Sartre rightly saw, groups in fusion are inherently ephemeral. To achieve
durability they rather quickly devolve into pledged groups or even into or
ganizations.26 They do so both by reason of the bodily exigencies of its mem

bers and by reason of changes in the external circumstances they inhabit. As
in the case of fused groups, there is no historical evidence to suggest that
Schiirmann’s global community of anarchic praxis could sustain itself precise
ly as such. At least some people would have to work at providing the condi
tions in which others could live anarchically. This, for example, is the history
of even the most “otherworldly” monastic communities.
Thus to enter Schurmann’s global anarchy, just as to enter a Sartrean
fused group, is not to enter an abiding paradise. So far as we have any evi
dence, every group, whether globally anarchic or not, is always subject to
stresses threatening to fragment it. If it is to endure for any appreciable
time, at least some of the group’s members must work at its survival. This
work, of course, is telic. It aims to preserve the group. Thus, so far as we
have any reason to believe, a durable global anarchy is a chimera.
There are at least two further reasons to question whether Schurmann’s
proposal is really germane to what has hitherto been understood to be the
field of politics. One of these reasons is that Schiirmann emphasizes that his
proposal is not a theory concerning the organization of people into collec
tivities. His proposal, he says, has nothing to do with the age-old debates
about the best forms of government (monarchy or aristocracy or democracy)
or their perversions (tyranny, oligarchy, anarchy). Rather the action for
which he calls consists “in doing explicitly what we always do and cannot
help doing: conforming to presence as it comes about, to the event of pre-
sencing - but henceforth without the fiction of some ultimate stabilizing
ground.”27 Any stabilizing ground, Schiirmann argues, is a metaphysical
ordering principle which is the source of initiatives and commands that cul
minate in institutional violence.28
But can there be any actual politics which does not establish or maintain
institutions which organize people and socialize new members into the body
politic? Is this not a principal part of what, in Schurmann’s words, “we al
ways do and cannot help doing?” Further, a critical issue for any politics
about which we know anything is to determine which institutional arrange
ments to support and which to oppose. How a politics handles this dis
crimination in large measure determines whether it is responsible or ir
responsible politics. But Schiirmann not only fails to offer any guidance in
this matter. He in effect dismisses it as an irrelevant consideration in this
transitional time.
This dismissal, as Schiirmann makes explicit, means that his proposal

does not find it important to address directly the threat of tyranny. Again,
no politics about which we have any information has ever been wholly free
from the danger of lapsing into tyranny. Could politics in the transitional
age, any more than politics in any other age, be wholly immune to this dan
ger? Part of the task for any responsible politics is to be perpetually on
guard against tyranny. By leaving this threat unaddressed, Schiirmann shows
his position to be either fundamentally flawed or substantially incomplete.
And the criticisms I will offer below of Schiirmann’s call for action “without
why” make it dubitable that he or anyone could satisfactorily fill in this in
completeness or remedy this flaw without a radical transformation of his
proposal as a whole.
There is a third reason for calling into question Schiirmann’s conception
of politics, one which is of some importance in its own right and which also
provides a bridge to discussing Schiirmann’s call for action “without why.”
Politics always involves contingencies. Contingencies are the very stuff of
politics. We deal with contingencies, as Aristotle saw, through deliberation,
judgment and choice. The exercise of any of these is always oriented by and
toward some goal. What could wholly anarchic deliberation, judgment, or
choice be? Would it not be at best a refusal to deliberate, judge, or choose
in any proper sense? And would not this refusal amount to a refusal of
politics itself? Schiirmann is apparently right when he says that his politics
does not have anything to do with traditional politics. But it is his loss that it
does not.
Let me turn now to consider Schiirmann’s call for action“without why.”
There are several reasons for being suspicious of it. First, leaving aside for
the moment the questions about its durability, how would an anarchic praxis
come to be embraced by everyone? Unless conversion to anarchic praxis is
supposed to simply befall people, in which case it would not be a human,
much less a political, achievement, presumably some people could help oth
ers embrace it.29 If we anarchists can help others, even by example, to con
vert to anarchism, then do we not have an obligation to help. But is not the
satisfying of an obligation always an acting with a reason to meet a standard
of some sort, an acting “with why”?
But second, suppose that somehow global anarchic praxis were to come
about and endure for a while. How should we think this duration. That is,
what should be said about the connection among the several successive mo
ments of the time of anarchy. Anarchic practice, Schiirmann says, espouses

discontinuity and fluidity.30 It holds to a destiny or grant of Being which is
“the ever moving order of presencing-absencing, the aletheiological constella
tion as it situates and re-situates everything in time.”31 Thus the practical a
priori of an anarchic praxis capable of subverting the systematic violence of
institutions necessarily consists, as I mentioned above, “in letting things enter
their world in constellations essentially rebellious to ordering”32 How can the
action performed at any one moment be wholly “without why” if it has no
concern with the preservation of anarchy? And if it indeed has no such
concern, then sustained anarchy is in no wise a human achievement. It is not
the result of praxis, anarchic or otherwise.
Schiirmann claims that his approach does not eliminate from politics the
task of preserving a tradition. “But the tradition to be preserved is that of
the response, in thinking as well as in political conduct, to the ever new con
stellations of ‘the truth of Being’.”33
But this is no solution ot the question of how enduring praxis could be
possible if that praxis were truly anarchic, truly “without why.” Schiirmann’s
position amounts to saying that the only tradition deserving preservation is
the tradition of repudiating all traditions. This may not be nonsense if it is
construed formally. It may well be logically possible to repudiate the content
of everything which has gone before and to do so at every new moment. But
materially it amounts to saying that any content of what was once new loses
all of its importance simply by become old. But if the new loses all of its
importance merely by become old, then, Schiirmann’s wish to the contrary
notwithstanding, celebrating newness is at bottom indistinguishable from
celebrating pure interiority, in the Hegelian sense.34 One could celebrate
only that something is new, not what it is. That such a position can avoid
collapsing into nihilism is dubious at best.
The fear that Schiirmann’s position is in the final analysis tantamount to
nihilism gains further strength from his remarks about concern for the future
of humankind. If “life without why” functions as the sole practical a priori
for praxis as well as thought in this time of transition, then all coercion is
always indefensible. But any politics of which we have records involves regu
lated and more or less limited coercion. This coercion is generally con
sidered not only ineliminable from communal life but a practical necessity
for the community’s well-being as well as its survival.35 The soundness of
this widespread experience is not effectively challenged by the mystical tradi
tion to which Schurmann appeals. The mystical tradition may yield a distinc
tive evaluation to the entire domain of politics, perhaps relegating it to near
insignificance. But it is no evident guide for political practice as such. Even
granting that the mystical tradition has no room for coercion, if it allows
room for any genuinely political activity, then by that very fact it must allow
for political coercion.
Further, even if acting “without why” were a practical possibility for a
sustained period, how could it be politically legitimate. Schurmann says that
a “certain disinterest in mankind’s future is evident not only in [the] concep
tion of place, but also in the conception of time required for understanding
today’s context as potentially anarchic.”36 Faced as we are today with geno
cide in Cambodia, reckless militarism in Iraq, and politically exacerbated
hunger in Ethiopia as well as elsewhere, how could a politics “without why,”
a politics evidencing “a certain disinterest” in mankind’s future be respon
sible? To the contrary, our times call for resistance to these outrages pre
cisely for the sake of humanity as well as for the innocent individuals who
most immediately suffer from them.
Perhaps Schurmann would reply that were his anarchic politics actually
global political practice, then these outrages could no longer take place. But
should that be his rejoinder, then must one not conclude that, whether this is
the transitional time or not, his anarchic politics has no relevance to today’s
conditions or to any future conditions of which we can catch even a glim
mer?
If Schurmann does claim that the anarchy he proposes is the appropriate
response to contemporary political exigencies, then he is in effect promoting
a version of what I have elsewhere called the politics of presumption.37 One
form of the politics of presumption is that which disregards the ineliminable
threat of absolutism embodied in all amassing and wielding of political pow
er. The tendency of power to grow itself tends to promote some people at
the expense of others. Practitioners of this version of the politics of pre
sumption take it for granted that increases in power for some will automati
cally lead to betterment for all. And if something should go awry in this
spreading of well-being, then it is readily rectifiable.
Schiirmann’s call for action “without why” apparently eschews wrestling
in any traditional sense with questions about political power and its distribu
tion and intensity. This eschewal is supposed ultimately to cancel the politics
which have pervaded the metaphysical era. Rather than taking too lightly
the riskiness inherent in deploying political power, which deployment un

avoidably involves acting “with whys,” Schurmann’s version of political pre
sumptuousness invites us to accept the extraordinarily dubious assumption
that, if eschewed, political power as we have known it would evaporate.
Even if, in some projected “golden era” one of these forms of disregard
for the riskiness of political power should be appropriate, neither of them
responds to the exigencies of our age. One has only to look at the increasing
disparity in economic wealth, with its attendant political power, between the
northern and the southern hemispheres to have scant confidence that in
creases for the privileged automatically redound to the betterment of the
nonprivileged. Nor is there any reason to think that this presently well en
trenched gap will be shrunk, much less closed, by an anarchic disregard of
political power.
Schurmann’s politics “without why,” with its “certain disinterest” in the
future of humankind, ultimately amounts to an antipolitics no less than does
the technocratic, bureaucratic rationality propounded by people like Herbert
Simon which would make its highest goal an organizational efficiency that,
ideally, so shapes people that all of their decisions and actions are geared to
satisfy the goals and requirements of the organization.38 Neither of these
approaches properly appreciates the essential ambivalence in all political
activity. Emphasizing only the dangers and limitations resident in all political
activity, they in effect disregard the positive contributions both to survival
and to flourishing that politics, and only politics, can make. Consequently,
they propose to eliminate politics in any sense with which we have familiarity
in favor of something other than politics. But nothing in the available his
torical record suggests that, if either of their alternatives were to succeed, it
would be either durable or desirable.
My analysis thus leads to the conclusion that the anarchy Schiirmann
endorses shows no real promise of being possible much less being either
durable or desirable. But it does not follow that one’s only recourse is to
retreat to a search for still another absolute metaphysical principle from
which to derive both political thought and political practice. Schiirmann,
among others, has made a strong case that no such principle can be found.
It is to his credit that he has done so. No politics of vision or of will or
might is defensible. Thus Schurmann’s work serves as a valuable, sobering
propadeutic for responsible political thinking in our time and for the foresee
able future. But his call for anarchic praxis, action “without why,” is unwar
ranted.
Given the propadeutic merit of Schiirmann’s work for political thought,
but given also the unacceptability of the alternative he proposes, what third
way remains available? The alternative I suggest is that we can find support
for responsible political acting as well as thinking by attending carefully and
attentively to what we know of the past.
As Lawrence Biskowski has pointed out, even if there is no transcenden
tal or metaphysical principle by which we can orient our thinking and con
duct, we can still find some measure of orientation in “our continued con
frontation with each other and the resulting need to order our relationships
and to care for our common world.”39 And we do not have to confront each
other as newborns. We can do so with conscious attention both to our own
personal history and also to the vast domain of recorded human activity.
Nothing of human history, and perhaps even nothing of natural history, is
wholly irrelevant to our quest for orientation.
One cannot, of course, expect history to supply a first principle or axiom
of its own whence we can derive reliable political conclusions. Nor is history
either transparent or monovalent. Nonetheless it is an invaluable, apparently
indispensable, resource from which responsible cautions and recommenda
tions for political thought and practice can be fashioned.
Perhaps one could detect present wrongs in a political order without
much regard to history. For example, it is unlikely that one needs a grand
historical basis for decrying cruelty. And further, one may well be able to
construct an imagined alternative political order from which particular ills
would be absent. But without drawing upon history, how could one discern
genuinely possible and practicable structural arrangements or functions which
merit inclusion in one’s political aspirations? That is, without history, per
haps one can see what should be abolished. But without history, how could
one determine what deserves to brought into being or preserved?
History can serve and has served as guide for responsible politics in
several ways. It provides examples of what is to be avoided, e.g., slavery, or
another Holocaust. Those institutions or deeds should be extirpated. They
can have no place in responsible politics.
But history can and does also testify to worthy initiatives and aspirations.
Some of these initiatives and aspirations actually received embodiment in
actions bringing nations into being, e.g., the United States, through its revo
lution, and Italy, through its struggle for unification. The deeds and words
constitutive of these in a u g u r a l moments are, to be sure, neither axioms nor
metaphysical principles, regardless of the language in which they are articu
lated. They are thoroughly historical, and hence polyvalent. Nonetheless,
they still serve effectively as touchstones for present political undertakings
claiming legitimacy.
These inaugural moments are not, of course, moments of absolute begin
nings. All of them have precedents. And none of them provide unam
biguous criteria. For example, at present there is an intense struggle among
Chinese public figures about the meaning of the May 4, 1919 Movement.
That movement itself no doubt embodied competing tendencies. Nonethe
less, if we are to make any sense of and reasonably assess contemporary
China and its political strife, we cannot ignore that Movement.40
These “positive” inaugural moments do not furnish either master keys
for how some situation is to be thought about or precise prescriptions for
what is to be done. But they do provide at least rough definition of a field
of appropriate reflection and permissible action. Through education con
cerning these moments and the fields they define citizens can discover their
own political identities and the range of their reasonable, responsible choi
ces.41
Perhaps even more importantly, history displays not only particular in
augural moments and their aftermaths but it also guides our efforts to distin
guish the domain of politics from other domains such as religion or econom
ics. One need only reflect cursorily on Western history to realize that the
way the domain of politics is defined and how that domain is related to other
domains, e.g., the domain of religion, is of consummate political importance.
Consider, for example, a definition I would propose for politics. Politics,
I should like to propose, is that domain of thought and deliberate activity
aimed at establishing or maintaining a durable group - a group outlasting the
lives of any of its members - designed to amass, protect, and distribute ma
terial and cultural boons and to fix and distribute the burdens indissociable
from the pursuit of these objectives. Only history can provide the evidence
with which either to defend or attack my proposal. Without regard to his
tory, either to accept or reject it would be unwarranted.
History, then, serves to provide standards or benchmarks, both negative
and positive, for determining both the defensibility of one’s conception of the
domain of politics and the reasonableness of any particular political judg
ment or practice. Contingent as it is, the evidence provided by history yields

nothing incorrigible or definitive, nothing endowed with Cartesian certitude.
Nonetheless, this evidence is by no means inconsequential. In telling us
about the deeds of others and their outcomes, it tells as much as can be told,
apart from Revelation if there be such, about what we can reasonably expect
or hope for from our own undertakings.
Schiirmann, then, is, as I have said, surely right to deny that any politics
deduced from a metaphysical principle can any longer be reasonable or re
sponsible. But his claim that we now inhabit a transitional time which calls
for anarchic praxis in need of no guidance from history is unsustainable.
The history which transpired during the era of metaphysics is not a history
whose entire significance depends upon metaphysics. The guidance history
can give is not exhaustively metaphysical in character. Failing to make this
distinction, Schiirmann is blocked from seeing a far more defensible alterna
tive both to a politics derived from metaphysics and to the anarchy he es
pouses.
On Institutions and Power:
Deconstruction and an Alternative
Social and political institutions, it is generally agreed, are “practical ne

cessities” for human existence. If this is indeed the case, as I will assume,
then philosophical positions which misconstrue them and the power exercised
in and by them or misjudge how we should deal with them are seriously
flawed.
In this paper I argue that at least two self-described deconstructive ap
proaches to these matters fail. Then I will propose an alternative approach,
one which owes much to Merleau-Ponty.
Not a few critics have argued that perhaps the principal shortcoming of
deconstruction as a theoretical enterprise lies in its inability to articulate a
solid basis for responsible political engagement. On their assessment, the
general thrust of the deconstructivist project undercuts the very possibility of
a well justified political claim or action. As a consequence, in fact if not in
intention, deconstruction robs politics of all urgency. No particular politics is
at bottom better justified than any other. Implicit in this criticism is the
charge that deconstruction has nothing of real consequence to say about
institutions and the power they involve.
Frank Lentriccia has forcefully articulated criticism of this sort. In his
words:
Deconstruction confuses the act of unmasking with the act of defus

ing, the act of exposing epistemological fraud with the neutralization
of political force. Deconstruction, then, is a “critical” philosophy, but

only in the slimmest sense of the word - it may tell us how we de
ceive ourselves, but it has no positive content.... It has nothing to
say.... Politically, deconstruction translates into that passive kind of
conservatism called quietism; it thereby plays into the hands of es
tablished power.1
Recently some deconstructionists have presented political positions which

amount to rebuttals of Lentriccia’s charge. Among them, Wlad Godzich and
John Caputo have explicitly addressed the issues of institutions and power.2
And the conclusions they reach are anything but conservative and quietist.
But even if these two deconstructionists cannot be charged with political
quietism, one can still ask whether they point the way toward responsible
politics, politics which is consonant with the flourishing of the human com
munity. The answer, I claim, is no.
Specifically, I will argue that neither Caputo nor Godzich properly under
stands institutions in their practical necessity. Consequently, they can pro
vide no helpful guidance to political practice concerning them. Because
Caputo’s position is rather fully fleshed out, I will give it the more detailed
attention.
(a) Caputo on Institutions and Power.
Caputo’s views on institutions and power are straightforwardly derived

from his political ethics, which in turn has its roots in the view of the history
of metaphysics he has learned from Heidegger and Derrida. Fully to com
prehend what Caputo says about institutions and power one must take note
of this view.
Based on his reading of Heidegger and Derrida, Caputo regards this
history as the sequence of numerous, necessarily futile attempts to control
and regulate the flux of the constantly mobile play of Being. Metaphysical
schemes are “so much scaffolding stretched across the flux and are only as
good as the results they produce, the degree to which they let life flourish
...only as good as the measure of play they mete out” (RH, 257).
In one sense, we cannot avoid the pretensions of metaphysics. We can
not avoid planning, acting, teaching, and directing. Consequently we in
evitably generate schemes and programs whose aim is to stabilize the flux, to
Institutions and Power 209
domesticate and channel it. But now we know from Heidegger’s and Der
rida’s deconstructive work that the game is over. None of these schemes and
programs can do the job for which it was made. In its turn, deconstruction
is not itself some new scheme. Rather, its objective is “to throw us out into
the cold, to divest us of the comforts of philosophy, to let the whole tremble,
to restore the difficulty o f things” (RH, 187. My emphasis).
As a consequence, deconstruction, or in Caputo’s revised version of it,
radical hermeneutics, teaches us to be humble and cautious. It elicits from
us an authenticity which
deflates pretension and divests us of too great a confidence in our

schemes, from pressing them to the last detail, from being willing to
draw blood on their behalf [sic]. Such authenticity, which means
owning up to our shortcomings, inspires moreover a certain compas
sion (RH, 259).
This compassion is the outcome of our admission that our common fate is to
suffer a common comfortlessness. With humble caution, compassion de
mands “a ‘community of mortals’ bound together by their common fears and
lack of metaphysical grounds, sharing a common fate at the hands of the
flux” (RH, 259).
These considerations provide the frame within which Caputo spells out
his ethics, an ethics with substantial political implications. This ethics has two
parts. One, especially indebted to Derrida, is an ethics of dissemination.
The other, springing more from Heidegger, is an ethics of letting-be (Gelas-
senheit).
The ethics of dissemination consists primarily of three overlapping provi
sions and one “meta-norm.” The first of these provisions is based upon the
view that metaphysically based ethics and politics always somehow call for
and justify power which is repressive. Accordingly, this provision calls for us
both to be alert to those who are victimized by such ethics and politics and
to be wary of power. Even more, Caputo says, an ethics of dissemination is
“bent on dispersing power clusters, constellations of power which grind us all
under” (RH, 260). It does so by bringing into the open the systematic vio
lence resident in all organized structures such as universities and hospitals as
well as governments and churches. This expos6 shows both the contingency
of every scheme and the limitations of any expertise. “And it does all this
not by any show of strength of its own but by letting the system itself un
ravel, letting the play in the system loose” (RH, 260).
Radical hermeneutics is thus a transgressive or revolutionary activity.
Explicitly employing the term “paradigm” in a Kuhnian sense, Caputo says
that this activity shows that “every paradigm is a fiction, a contingency, a way
of laying things out which cannot claim absolute status or immunity from
reform” (RH, 220). The dispersal of power clusters is revolutionary activity
in social life comparable to paradigm shifting in science.
Caputo derives the second provision of his ethics of dissemination from
a “salutary mistrust” of all binary schemes such as ruler and ruled, male and
female, and privileged and deprived. An ethics of dissemination is thus “an
ethics of otherness, an ethics aimed at giving what is other as big a break as
possible” (RH, 260).3 Confronted by the vast organized power both of tech
nology and of large scale economico-political systems, whether, capitalist or
socialist, such an ethics insists upon the right to dissent and upon granting
the idiosyncratic its rights (RH, 161).
The third provision of Caputo’s ethics of dissemination requires that in
the ethico-political sphere we “keep the debate fair and free from manipula
tive interests” (RH, 262). This ethics admits that the existence of institutions
is a practical requirement for many, if not all, social accomplishments.
Therefore it is not categorically opposed to their existence. But they do
tend, Caputo holds, to suppress differences and to normalize conduct accord
ing to some norm or principle. And so an ethics of dissemination em
phasizes that institutions are not pure expressions of prudence. They owe
their existence to power politics as well. Therefore, without seeking either to
destroy existing institutions or to forestall the formation of new ones, the
practitioner of Caputo’s ethics of dissemination works “to intervene in ongo
ing processes, to keep institutions in process, to keep the forms of life from
eliminating the ///e-form they are supposed to house” (RH, 263).
Something of a meta-norm specifies the scope of these three provisions.
Neither taken disjointly nor conjointly do they yield a universally sound mas
ter scheme or program of action. Rather, in Foucaultian fashion, the ethics
of dissemination
speaks only of a series of contingent, ad hoc, local plans devised here

and now to offset the exclusionary character of the prevailing system.
Its role is to break up clusters of power, constellations of ruling in

terests, to put them on the run (RH, p. 264).
This ethics of dissemination, Caputo concludes, shows that one who

insists on the radical nonstabilizability of the flux is not left ethically bank
rupt. On the contrary, he has sharpened suspicion “of anyone bent on ac
cumulating capital” (RH, p. 264).
But the ethics of dissemination, according to Caputo, does not stand
alone. It belongs together with Heidegger’s discovery of Gelassenheit and
the ethics following therefrom. This complementary ethics has two main
features.
First, an ethics of Gelassenheit demands an irrevocable respect for every
person. The basis for this respect is not some Cartesianesque transparent
excellence enjoyed by each ego. Rather, it is the appropriate acknowledg
ment of the perpetual mystery each of us is to ourselves as well as to others.
It springs from that unfathomable depth which each of us is, a depth that
necessarily frustrates any attempt to capture who a person is in terms of
some conceptual scheme.
The raw fact of human suffering gives rise to the second feature of the
ethics of Gelassenheit. Because no one has a vantage point from which to
survey the whole of humankind, no one can pronounce a “Last Judgment”
on the meaning of suffering. Nonetheless, however limited our perspectives
may be, we can see that letting-be entails three consequences for action.
First, we should promote liberation from the bondage of suffering. Second,
we should tolerate others in their otherness. And third, we should maintain
solidarity with others in our common task of coping with the flux of exis
tence.4
For Caputo, there is no irresolvable tension between the ethics of dis
semination and an ethics of Gelassenheit. “Both,” he says, “are united in the
Augustinian formula ‘dilige, et quod vis fac’ (“love, and do what you will”)”
(RH, 267).
The implications of Caputo’s twofold ethics for dealing with institutions
and power are not hard to discern. All institutions in their exercise of power
perpetrate systematic violence. They tend to discriminate against and mar
ginalize some people. And they tend to consolidate and perpetuate their
specific forms of violence and discrimination. Nonetheless, they are inelimi-
nable.
Caputo’s ethics calls upon us to defy these tendencies inasmuch as these

tendencies are tendencies which make people suffer. Thus, this ethics en
joins us (a) to insist that any particular institution is merely contingent, (b)
to challenge all orderings, marginalizations, and discriminations, and (c) to
disperse institutional power. More generally, his ethics sanction the adoption
of a religious attitude which is
a protest against suffering. It is essentially defiant, protesting, protes-

tant - against a violation of life which must not go unanswered - and
catholic, because it speaks on behalf of all who suffer.... Religion,
accordingly, is fundamentally a defiant gesture. It speaks in the name
of life and against the powers that demean and degrade life (RH,
280. My emphasis).
For Caputo, then, the authentic or, as he prefers, the “arche-kinetic”

response to the institutions and power we can never evade or do without is
one of subversion (RH, 200-206). Though subversion can never fully suc
ceed, it is always appropriate. It is the pristine gesture of the ceaseless,
absolutely thoroughgoing movement of “radical hermeneutics” (RH, 206).
(b) Godzich on Institutions and Power.
The general thrust of Caputo’s ethico-political thought fits comfortably

with Godzich’s views. This fit is particularly apparent concerning the issues
of institutions and power.5
Godzich develops Samuel Weber’s distinction, which owes much to Paul
De Man, between institutionalized functioning on the one hand and institut
ing acts on the other (II, 155-156). An institution, for Godzich, consists of a
group of people united under a guiding idea which they seek to implement
through prescribed procedures. Institutionalized functioning is activity per
formed according to the dominant idea and its associated procedures. “An
institution, then, is a social crucible.... Institutions are fundamentally instru
ments of reproduction.Jn that they ensure that regulative processes take
place so as to contain what otherwise could threaten to turn into archaic
proliferation” (II, 156-157).
Acts of instituting, by contrast, are trailblazing acts. Each of these acts,
with a unique interplay of blindness and insight, strikes out from, and a
gainst, some institutionalized routine or routines. Every institution, of

course, owes its existence to one or more of these “anti-institutional” trail-
blazing acts. As a consequence,
the instituting moment, which endows the entire institution with

signification and meaning, is held within the institution as both pro
per to it and yet alien: it is its other, valued to be sure yet curiously
irrelevant to immediate concerns.... Instituting and institution are not,
then, two facets of the same entity (II, 156-157).
Instituting acts are acts of originating power. They change arrangements

in a fundamental way and they bestow meaning upon the arrangements they
bring about. But, by definition they are inaccessible to institutionalized func
tioning (II, 159-160). That is, the power of the instituting acts, together with
the meaning they bestow, is inaccessible to the institution’s subjects.
In state-organized societies, Godzich claims, some privileged class ar
rogates to itself the role of rightful mediator. It claims the right to mediate
between the powerful instituting acts and the only activity the subjects of the
state can perform, namely acts of institutionalized functioning. This right to
mediate amounts to the right to interpret authoritatively. Thus the ruling
class effectively behaves as though it were under no obligation to the institut
ing acts. Since, or so it claims, it alone has access to these acts, only it can
determine their meaning. Hence it is entitled to rule.
The initial target of deconstructive practice, Godzich says, is this privi
leged class which claims a position of justified dominance. Deconstructive
practice “aims at nothing less than, in its first stage, the restoration of a uni
versal indebtedness since this appears to b e'th e only ground on which e-
quality, as a social fact, can be thought o f ’ (II, 162. My emphasis).
This equality is epistemological rather than ethical. It consists in the fact
that all human beings are equally dispossessed from the domain of meaning.
The dependence of all thought upon language with its tropes leads inevitably
to insoluble aporias, to crucial but undecidable issues. The plethora of these
unmanageable matters testifies to the depth and breadth of human power
lessness (II, 162).
By its insistence upon the universal epistemological equality in weakness,
deconstruction delegitimizes any claim to privilege by any class of people. It
delegitimizes any claim of theirs to be entitled to subject others to their
commands. Thus, Godzich concludes, contrary to Lentriccia and other critics

of deconstruction’s alleged quietism, “the persistent concern with epistemol-
ogy and the literary in deconstruction derives from a social concern rather
than represents a turning away from it as the accusers pretend” (II, 164).
(c) Critique
It seems clear that both Caputo and Godzich articulate positions that
escape the charge of political passivity or quietism. And to be sure there is
much to admire in their positions. This is particularly so in Caputo’s case.
Nonetheless, do their positions deal satisfactorily with the issues of institu
tions and power? Or, as I will argue, do they leave crucial parts of the story
untold and thereby leave themselves open to destructive readings? Here
again the primary focus of my critique will be Caputo’s position, though I
will not ignore Godzich’s view.
Caputo explicitly (e.g., RH, 252-257) and Godzich at least implicitly rec
ognize the historical character of all human performances. And Caputo
sometimes acknowledges the irreducible ambiguity of all action. For ex
ample, he says that those who properly understand the human condition act
without the security of metaphysical foundations but rather with a heightened
awareness of the insecurity to which they are exposed (RH, 239). He even
criticizes what he takes to be the reductionistic, though opposed, ways in
which Gadamer and Foucault view institutions.
Nonetheless, Caputo’s twofold ethics, and the assessment of institutions
implied thereby, suggests at least a partial reductionism or disambiguation in
its own right. So too does Godzich’s view. Neither of them claim that we
can live without performing actions which are ambiguous, or better, am
bivalent. But their views on institutions and how we should deal with them
imply that at least some unequivocal, monovalent actions are available to us.
Caputo’s call for unremitting deconstruction in effect claims that deconstruc-
tive performances both (a) are always timely and (b) have a purity and rec
titude which no other performances can match, much less surpass. And
Godzich points in the same general direction when he grants unconditional
privilege to acts of instituting over institutionalized functionings.
But to allow for such unqualifiedly privileged actions is to misunderstand
just how thoroughgoing the historicality of human existence actually is. As
Merleau-Ponty saw, all action, including speech, is both ambiguous in its
sense (sens) and ambivalent in its consequences.6 The ramifications of such

a misunderstanding are by no means trivial for either political thought or
political practice.
Consider again both the way Caputo proposes that we understand and
respond to institutions and their power and the reasons behind his proposals.
For Caputo, the uniquely appropriate response to institutions and power
is subversion. Even if we cannot avoid some collaboration with or acquies
cence in the routines by which institutions maintain themselves, we should
always be alert for opportunities to subvert. And the basic reason for this
stance is that institutions inevitably oppress some and exclude others. Hence
it is always right to protest against the suffering of the Other, to be defiant
toward institutions. This defiance is not directed against one institution on
behalf of another institution. It is directed against all institutions, both actual
and possible.
Such defiance, however, amounts to an effort to have one’s action owe as
little that is positive to predecessors as possible. The sedimented results of
what they have done serve as no more than a point of departure from which
I aim to divorce myself and whose efficacy I seek to cancel. What my prede
cessors have left behind is to be overcome, not preserved.
Institutions, however, are unavoidable. My defiance therefore can have
nothing more than Sisyphean efficacy. However subversive I may be, there
will always be institutions. Not even Sisyphus, though, provides me with a
positive heritage, for heritages always depend on institutions both for their
giving and for their receiving. And for the same reason my defiance estab
lishes no legacy for other defiers. Like Kierkegaard’s knights of faith, Capu
to’s defiers cannot help one another by their defiance. They leave nothing
positive behind for their successors.7
In short, Caputo’s politics of defiance amounts to a politics seeking in
nocence. In doing so, it risks making itself impotent.
Further, and of critical importance, why should one believe that defiance
is particularly privileged? If it, too, is really historical and social, then it gets
at least part of its sense and efficacy from its context. At least part of its
context is made up of actual institutions and possible institutional alternatives
to them. Only in conjunction with its context can particular acts of defiance
be properly assessed. They do not all, therefore, have the same meaning.
To exempt them from connections with their context is to treat them ahis-
torically.
Caputo is apparently attracted to this curiously ahistorical politics be

cause, as he says more than once, no institution is innocent (RH, 235, 244,
and perhaps elsewhere). He rightly sees that oppression and exclusion are
part and parcel of any institution of which there is a trace. All of them are
indictable. Even if we cannot extricate ourselves from complicity with and
participation in institutions, at least, or so he apparently reasons, we can be
defiant. In these moments of defiance we can repudiate all suffering and
declare it unjustifiable. Thus, for Caputo, even if we cannot make our hands
truly clean, defiance is the way to remove whatever dirt one can.
But here again there is reason to challenge Caputo’s disambiguated as
sessment of suffering and the Other. It is surely insufficient to say (a) that
suffering is not innocent “when there is systematic exclusion and oppression
all around” (RH, 286), and (b) that there is no privileged position from
which one could pronounce incorrigible judgments on the meaning of suffer
ing. But beyond these truisms, Caputo furnishes no guidance.
Nothing Caputo says gives one reason to abandon the standard distinc
tion between hurt and harm. Both bring about suffering. But not all suffer
ing is indefensible. Some hurting, like some coercing, as good parents know,
helps the one hurt or coerced. Why should we believe that each and every
act of institutions which either pains or coerces deserves repudiation and
defiance? To make such a claim is to ignore history.
Similarly, why should one accept Caputo’s romanticizing of the Other?
Can not some of these others bring about their exclusion and punishment by
their own actions? At least some functions of some institutions have been
directed toward blocking some people from preying on others. The preda
tors, one might reasonably hold, deserve exclusion.
In sum, one can readily agree with Foucault and others, including Capu
to, that much suffering which people have inflicted on others on the basis of
some supposed principle cannot be defended. The reasons some people
have made others suffer turn out to be either no reasons or disreputable
reasons. Some of those marginalized as fools or scoundrels turn out not to
have deserved exclusion. But one would be rash to infer that there are nei
ther fools nor scoundrels. And the distinction between harming and helpful
hurting is still applicable, even to institutional performances and require
ments.
Finally, one has reason to be leery of the way Caputo first ties the defi
ance he commends to religion and then projects them as the proper political
response to institutions. Bringing religious judgment to bear upon politics

and its institutions has had a long and anything but unambiguous history,
both for politics and religion.
One can readily agree that some religiously inspired defiance of institu
tions has been prophetic and salvific rather than merely Sisyphean. But
there is no reason, either historical or conceptual, to grant pride of place to
defiance as the pure political act. Some defiance by self-announced pro
phetic religious voices has been both divisive and destructive. And even the
defiance that later wins applause is applauded for the way its initiative has
gained perduring institutional embodiment. Nonetheless, in both cases, whe
ther of praise or censure for defiance, the historical judgment never achieves
total disambiguation.
In the final analysis, one must conclude that Caputo’s treatment of in
stitutions and power fails. He himself admits that they are practical neces
sities. And there is good reason for holding that all institutions with their
power orient and direct people.® One doubts that Caputo would endorse
aimlessness. But nothing in his politics of defiance requires either that we
establish or preserve some institutions rather than others or that we support
one set of directions and orientations rather than others.
We may well argue about which institutions and power clusters are bet
ter than others without expecting a definitive answer. But this does not
entail that from the outset the argument was idle. This is simply the way
much, if not all, political discourse proceeds. It reflects our radically social,
historical condition.9 But apparently because nothing institutional can a-
chieve definitive purity and singleness of consequences, Caputo has nothing
more to recommend than the single simple solution of defiance, the “pure”
act of the pure at heart, the act which concerns itself with neither context
nor efficacy. He leaves us with no recommendations or cautions for deciding
among alternative social and political possibilities. In so doing, he fails to
touch one of the most persistent and perplexing problems of human life, a
problem always of crucial concern for responsible politics.
Godzich’s discussion of institutions and power, as I mentioned above,
also amounts to an attempt to disambiguate action. It does so by drawing a
strong hierarchical distinction between acts of instituting on the one hand
and institutional functionings on the other. And, though he does not make
the point explicit, the logic of his position also requires the admission of a
third kind of action, namely deconstructive practice, hierarchically situated

between the two he explicitly distinguishes.
Hierarchizing presupposes disambiguation. If, as I have argued above,
schemes proposing to disambiguate action necessarily distort its sense, then
counterparts to the arguments I presented against Caputo’s disambiguation
apply to Godzich’s. But Godzich’s position is sufficiently distinct from Capu
to’s that it deserves at least a brief critique addressed specifically to it.
On Godzich’s telling, one will recall, the routinized acts of institutional
functioning depend both for their possibility and their validity upon trailblaz-
ing acts of instituting which strike out blindly and yet somehow arrive at
insight. These trailblazing acts are independent of institutional functionings.
They are neither generated nor validated by these functionings. At least in
politics, all acts of instituting stand apart from any issue concerning valida
tion. They neither have validation nor aspire to it nor need it. - The “vali
dation game” belongs to institutions and their functioning. In some crucial
sense the validation game, by necessarily appealing to that which has no
regard for questions of validity, itself has no validity. Thus institutions in
their functioning play a validation game, always a game of power, which is
ultimately indefensible (II, 161-162).
Godzich’s response to this pervasive play of validation is to endorse, in
the first stage, a deconstructive practice which aims for a universal admission
that all human beings are equally dispossessed from the domain of meaning
precisely by reason of their powerlessness in the face of language and its
uncontrollable play. Such an admission amounts to a full scale delegitimiza
tion of institutions and their power. And at the same time, deconstructive
practice serves as ground breaker, or precursor, for awaited new acts of
instituting.
Godzich’s proposal for deconstructive practice reminds one of Plato’s
would be philosopher king who wants to wipe clean the slate of social and
political structures prior to reconstructing the state.10 We shudder at the
tyranny, however “benign,” Plato’s king proposes to write on this cleansed
slate. Why should we shudder any the less when we have no idea what
“insight through blindness” will get inscribed on the slate Godzich would
have us prepare? Indeed, one wonders just how to interpret Godzich’s pro
posal. Is his first stage an exercise of “straight up” Sisypheanism doomed to
be perpetually repeated because institutions never fail to reappear? Or is it
preparatory to a Promethean stage which will produce either a society with
out institutions or a society whose institutions claim no validity, i.e., will

produce a society whose features are now known only to the gods?
In either case, one has good reason to deny that Godzich’s proposals
make sense as politics. If his proposal is Sisyphean, then politics itself is
futile. If his proposal is Promethean or precursive to the Promethean, then
it is foolishly presumptuous, for it amounts to gambling that anything is bet
ter than what we are familiar with. Surely that gamble disregards the his-
toricality of everything human, both actual and possible.
At least as damaging to Godzich’s proposal is the incoherence of his
notion of acts of instituting. If acts of instituting culminate in insight, would
this insight be private and wholly without precedent? What sort of insight
could not be social and hence indebted to others or not be historical and
hence have determinate precedents? And if any insight is intrinsically social
and historical, then must not institutions with their power be implicated in
making social and historical resources available as constituents for new in
sights? Godzich notwithstanding, there is no good reason to think that any
act, whether of instituting or otherwise, can be wholly independent of all
previous institutional functionings.
In summary, Caputo’s and Godzich’s reductive, disambiguating readings
of action and its history lead them in effect to depreciate institutions and
their power. Even if they both admit that institutions are practical neces
sities and not wholly worthless, they and their preservation are always at best
lesser goods. Such a depreciation, if it were consistently lived out, would be
politically irresponsible. Rather than promoting better politics, it would tend
to replace politics with a counterfeit. In doing so, it would open the way for
the twin political disasters of anarchy and tyranny. These twins, Aristotle
rightly says, are either the worst of politics or no politics at all.11
Fortunately, action and its history need not be read reductively or sim-
plistically. If read with subtlety, one finds support for a very different, poly
chromatic view of institutions and power. It shows that historical com
munities as they have actually lived out their times display knowledge as well
as ignorance and strength as well as weakness. Our predecessors both have
known at least something about what makes a community habitable and even
flourish and have achieved some successes in bringing it about. These a-
chievements are manifest in and through some institutions. Here I will not
foolishly try to prove the veracity of this alternative view by appealing to
some string of historical events and situations. It is for the reader to assess
the historical record. But I will claim that the alternative I propose enjoys
both conceptual plausibility and significant support from the historical rec
ord.
II
An adequate conception of institutions and power, I assume, must be

one which faithfully reflects the finitude and historicality of human existence.
It likewise must acknowledge our ineluctably social character. With Charles
Taylor, I take it that “living in society is a necessary condition of the devel
opment of rationality...or of becoming a moral agent in the full sense of the
term, or of becoming a fully responsible autonomous being.”12 Thus a fully
developed freedom requires both that we understand ourselves in such a way
that aspirations to autonomy make sense and that we recognize that we
cannot sustain this self-understanding except in society. We must recognize
“that our identity is always partly defined in conversation with others or
through the common understanding which underlies the practice of our soci
ety.”13
A society without structures or institutions and without power is a utopia.
So far as the historical record shows, whatever freedom and cultural ac
complishments people achieve are always achieved in a setting of social and
political institutions and power. But that same record shows, as Caputo and
Godzich stress, that institutions can and do also oppress. How then should
we properly characterize and assess human institutions and their power?
The alternative conception of institutions and power that I will propose here
draws heavily on leads furnished by Merleau-Ponty and is supported by the
reflections of thinkers such as Bernhard Waldenfels, Anthony Giddens, and
Mikel Dufrenne.
This alternative conception rests on Merleau-Ponty’s general view that all
human experience, whether of doings or undergoings, is essentially and thor
oughly ambiguous. This ambiguity is rooted in the radical finitude and his
toricity of our existence. As a consequence, on this view, whatever artifacts
we produce, including institutions, will share this ambiguity.
Caputo’s aim in articulating his radical hermeneutics is, as I mentioned
above, to restore “the difficulty of things” (RH; 187). In fact, however, it
makes much too easy a response to the existence of institutions and power.
It always aims to undo them. But it is the alternative I recommend, insisting
as it does on the irreducibility of the ambiguity of institutions and power,

that in fact keeps faith with life’s difficulty. Any particular response to in
stitutions and power, whether of support or of opposition, is always risky.
Merleau-Ponty, in criticizing what he regards as Sartre’s “Manichean”
view of institutions, argues that they cannot properly be set over against
people as their implacable, hostile Other. Though they never fail to threaten
to degrade and subjugate people, that is not all they can, and usually do, do.
They are in all respects human artifacts. “Man,” Merleau-Ponty says, “is
everywhere, inscribed on all the walls and in all the social apparatuses made
by him.... Everything speaks to them of themselves.”14
This insight leads him to set forth an alternative conception of institu
tions. He writes:
What we understand by the concept of institution are those events in

experience which endow it [experience] with durable dimensions, in
relation to which a whole series of other experiences will acquire
meaning, will form an intelligible series or history - or again those
events which sediment in me a meaning, not just as survivals or resi
dues, but as the invitation to a sequel, the necessity of a future.15
Hence, for better or worse, and not infrequently for both, institutions are
“the consequence and guarantee of our belonging to a common world” (TL,
40).
In elaborating his alternative conception of institutions, Merleau-Ponty
does not disambiguate the human condition. Action is never pure. Neither
are the institutions which both arise from it and shape it.
One consequence of this ambiguity shows up in the exercise of freedom.
When people exercise their freedom, they inevitably interfere with one a-
nother, they infringe on other freedoms. Thus all politics, including demo
cratic politics, involves violence (AD, 26). Human history is the history of
disputes as they are “inscribed in institutions, in civilizations, and in the wake
of important actions” (AD, 205).
But violence is not “monotonic,” not all of the same sort. It may be
either progressive or regressive. Violence is progressive if it tends to dimin
ish either the intensity or the extent of subsequent violence. It is regressive
if it tends either to self-perpetuation, or, worse, exacerbation.16
In keeping with his insistence upon the ambiguity of everything human,

Merleau-Ponty admits that any historical progress is always accomplished at
the price of some loss, some destruction. And further, however much a
movement of progressive violence may succeed, it always preserves itself
through institutions which never fail to endanger subsequent progress (AD,
220-221). Progress, then, can only be relative, never absolute.
But the fact that no violence can be absolutely progressive does not jus
tify the conclusion that “everything is in vain and that nothing can be done:
each time the struggle is different, the minimum of demandable justice rises”
(AD, 220). Thus, far from justifying political quietism, the fact that there is
no definitive salvific politics calls for unceasing initiative, virtu without resig
nation.17
The initiative Merleau-Ponty calls for cannot consist exclusively in resis
tance to institutions. It cannot be simply that deconstructive initiative aimed
at undercutting institutions which Caputo advocates and Godzich apparently
privileges. To the contrary, for Merleau-Ponty one of the most important
tasks for our era is “to find institutions which implant [the] practice of free
dom in our customs” (S, 349).18
Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on institutions and their ineliminable am
biguity provides a context into which the insights of a number of other an
alyses of institutions fit nicely. Let me note briefly how the contributions of
just three of them mesh with Merleau-Ponty’s position.
Bernhard Waldenfels, for example, recognizes that rules and institutions
can never fully regulate human life, for they are insufficient to generate par
ticular concrete enterprises. But neither does anarchism make sense. No
creation can be totally independent of the burden and heritage of the tradi
tion from which it springs. He concludes, therefore, that one should
accept the openness and limits of institutional rules as two sides of

the same coin. To be sure, every institution has its limits. Neverthe
less, there is no pre- or suprainstitutional realm which could be a
refuge against institutional constraints. No, the limits are inherent in
the rule system itself. Something unruled is to be found within what
is ruled, just as the invisible or the unsayable is not beyond what is
seen or said, but within.19
Waldenfels’ conclusion fits nicely with Merleau-Ponty’s recognition that

institutions are not set over against the human. Rather, they are human
through and through. As a consequence, they share in the finitude and his-
toricality of the human condition. They can never be brought to definitive
completion. As historical, they are essentially permeable to change.
Anthony Giddens and Mikel Dufrenne help one to flesh out the implica
tions of the finitude and historicality of institutions. Giddens shows that not
only is there always something unruled within systems of rules but every rule
is itself intrinsically ambiguous. It is simultaneously both a restriction on
action and a resource for action.20
Dufrenne, for his part, clarifies the institution’s self-reproducing activity,
activity which Godzich also notices. Institutions do not merely shape their
members. They also support them in their distinctiveness. Through institu
tional activities, individuals gain both their social identity and their differen
tiation from their consociates. Precisely because both institutions and in
dividuals are finite, they need one another.
On this alternative view, institutions do not, without qualification, exclude
individual initiative. Rather, for institutions to maintain or enhance their
efficacy they must not only be open to but must also encourage initiative,
even initiative which will modify them. An institution which sets out to elim
inate all initiative could succeed only at the price of its own ossification, or
unraveling.
Conversely, initiative is not unambiguously opposed to all institutions.
Only institutions can give durability and efficacy to the outcomes of initia
tives. Even initiatives aimed at eliminating some institution must, if they are
to be senseful, itself aim for incorporation into a new institution. In short,
no institution is free from the paradox that it needs some acts which ignore
or violate its rules and routines if those very rules and routines are to remain
potent. And no initiative can free itself either from all institutional resources
or from a need for incorporation into some institution.
Unmistakably, even if not by name, Merleau-Ponty, Waldenfels, and
Dufrenne all see that institutions necessarily involve power. And Giddens
makes this connection explicit. Power, for Giddens, is “the capability of
achieving outcomes” (PCST, 38). As such it is ingredient in all action. Ac
tion, in turn, is always interaction. And it draws upon rules as resources for
its efficacy. In any social system, then, power involves” reproduced relations
of autonomy and dependence in social interaction” (PCST, 39).
Giddens concludes that all agents participate in what he calls the dialec
tic of control. This dialectic of control is “the capability of the weak, in the
regularized relations of autonomy and dependence that constitute social
systems, to turn their weakness back against the powerful” (PCS! , 39).
Therefore:
just as action is intrinsically related to power, so the dialectic of con

trol is built into the very nature of social systems. An agent who
does not participate in the dialectic of control, in a minimal fashion,
ceases to be an agent. All relations of autonomy and dependence
are reciprocal: however wide the asymmetrical distribution of re
sources involved, all power relations express autonomy and depen
dence “in both directions.” Only a person who is kept totally con
fined and controlled does not participate in the dialectic of control.
But such a person is then no longer an agent (PCST, 39).
As Merleau-Ponty had already seen, no one either commands or obeys ab

solutely (SNS, 143 and A D 120 and 150-151).
To say that there is no power apart from a dialectic of control is likewise
to say that power is never the possession of some person or group set over
against others lacking that property. Rather, power can subsist only in rela
tions among people. Or, as Hannah Arendt puts it, “the only indispensable
material factor in the generation of power is the living together of people.”21
But just because power belongs to a dialectic of control it does not fol
low that power is in all respects a zero-sum game. That is, the wielding of
power is not necessarily at the expense of those subjected to its exercise. At
least some exercises of power can empower those who are subjected to it.
Examples of this kind of empowering are some programs to improve nutri
tion and some programs to provide either education or technical information.
Political institutions, too, can in at least some cases promote cooperation for
its own sake and not just as a competitive strategy. Some cooperation, then,
and perhaps also some strategic competition geared toward improved coop
eration, can result in power wielders seeking to empower their subjects.22
Even some violence, as I mentioned above, can be progressive, can free the
oppressed from complicity in their own subjugation.
It would, of course, be utopian to claim that power can be exhaustively
an exercise in cooperation. It cannot be totally stripped of zero-sum facets.
Universal cooperation would in effect cancel the dialectic of control. But

nothing requires that universal competition reign. Were it to do so, it too
would cancel the dialectic of control.
Power, then, like institutions, cannot be disambiguated. Rooted as it is
in action, it shares action’s essential finitude and historicality. The conse
quences of action cannot be confined only to those which are intended.
Even intended consequences must be elected at the expense of other pos
sibilities. And what any of us can do gets at least part of its significance and
efficacy from how others receive it.
If this alternative conception of institutions and power is not only plausi
ble but is even, as I believe, persuasive, then some important political conse
quences follow. The most obvious consequence, given the context of this
present discussion, is that neither Sisyphean nor Promethean responses to
institutions are defensible. Caputo’s defiance and Godzich’s at least tacit
disparagement of them are misguided. There is no sound reason for con
struing institutions as an implacable Other which it is always appropriate to
undercut. The urgent political question is never whether we should be for or
against institutions. Rather it is which institutions will we support and which
will we oppose.
As the alternative I have presented shows, in our inextricable involve
ment with ambiguous, ambivalent institutions, responsible politics will be a
politics of melioration, or perhaps a politics of hope for melioration.23 Only
this sort of politics, and not a politics of defiance or disdain, can satisfy Ca
puto’s praiseworthy goal of “restoring life to its original difficulty” (RH, 1).
A politics of melioration does not presume to have located the unques
tionable “best of politics” by which it can unequivocally measure progress in
amelioration. It takes none of the risks out of politics. Nonetheless, we are
not bereft of all guidance, fallible though it surely is. On the one hand, as
Merleau-Ponty pointed out, we can and do find within the span of our own
experience political conditions which are intolerable and must be fought (H T,
105). Such was Nazism and such is South African apartheid. On the other,
we benefit from the guidance of history. Even if history gives us no fool
proof directions, again as Merleau-Ponty saw, it does show some solutions to
be impossible and others to be senseless (AD, 22-23). Still others show
themselves as promising. With history’s recommendations and cautions, a
politics of melioration which respects the thoroughgoing ambiguity of every
thing human becomes a responsible politics. For it, institutions and power
are neither divine nor diabolic, just human, thoroughly and inescapably hu
man.
Notes
Preface (pp. xi-xii)
1. I take this phrase from Thomas Nagle’s The View from Nowhere (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1986). I use it here without intending to comment
on Nagle’s work.
2. For two other critiques of individualism and calls for some “third way” see
Michael Harrington, The Politics at God’s Funeral (New York: Holt, Rine
hart and Winston, 1983), and Robert Bellah et al., Habits o f the Heart: In
dividualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of Cali
fornia Press, 1985).
Renovating the Problem of Politics (pp. 3-17)
1. Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations (Evanston: Northwestern Uni

versity Press, 1974), 212-213, fn. 7. Hereafter cited as HM.
2. For a detailed examination of Heidegger’s relationship to Nazism see

Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity (Bloom
ington: Indiana University Press, 1990). Zimmerman’s bibliography contains
references to most of the important studies on this question. Hereafter cited
as HCM.
3. See in this connection Jurgen Habermas, “Work and Weltanschauung: The

Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective,” Critical Inquiry, 15, no.
2, 1989, 431-456. Hereafter cited as WW. This same issue also has impor
tant pieces on the Heidegger question by Blanchot, Derrida, Gadamer, La-

coue-Labarthe, and Levinas.
4. Another obvious form of this tension has to do with the relation between
philosophy and the arts.
5. See Hannah Arendt, “Reflections on Violence,” New York Review o f

Books, Feb. 27, 1969, 24ff. Hereafter cited as RV.
6. See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: The Viking
Press, 1968), 17-18. Hereafter cited as BPF.
7. BPF, 107.
8. BPF, 116-120. As will be seen from what follows, there is reason to ap
plaud rather than to chastise Aristotle for not offering a definitive resolution.
9. I am, of course, working here with typifications of tendencies. The actual

doctrine of any major political theorist is not adequately caught by these
typifications. But I do claim that I can make my analysis applicable to each
of the major modern political theories.
10. Gabriel Marcel has made something of the same point. See his The
Mystery o f Being, tr. by G. S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964) Vol. 1,
34, 39-40, 45-46.
11. There are, of course, important differences between Heidegger’s and

Merleau-Ponty’s contributions to political thought. Roughly put, Merleau-
Ponty seems to call for a greater degree of “activism” in political endeavors
than does Heidegger with his notion of releasement. Nonetheless, for the
present purposes of trying to discover elements extricable from their works
for a new politics, it is, I think, permissible to leave aside whatever differen
ces may separate them.
12. See, however, in this connection Jean-Michel Palmier, Les ecrits politiques
de Heidegger (Paris: Editions de l’Herne, 1968), hereafter cited as EPH; and
Otto Poggeler, Philosophic und Politik bei Heidegger (Freiburg-Miinchen: K.
Alber, 1972), and HCM, 17-33.
Notes 229
13. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston-

rxxxxx, 1973), 28-29. Hereafter cited as AD .
14. AD , 225. It is important to note that Merleau-Ponty saw that com

munists, too, could work in and not be excluded from a parliament.
15. A D , 226.
16. AD , 227. See in this connection Merleau-Ponty’s “On Madagascar,” in

Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1964), 328-336. Hereafter cited as S.
17. S., 221.
18. S., 222-223.
19. S., 35. My modification of McCleary’s translation.
20. See in this connection BPF, 153-154.
21. S., 222. My insertion.
22. WW, 435. See also 445 and 455.
23. See M. Heidegger, “Wissenschaft und Besinnung,” in Vortrage und Auf-

satze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967) Teil I, esp. 53-62, hereafter cited as VA\ and
Letter on Humanism, tr. by Edgar Lohner in Philosophy in the Twentieth
Century, ed. by William Barrett and Henry Aiken (New York: Random
House, 1962) Vol. Ill, 270-302.
24. M. Heidegger, “Uberwindung der Metaphysik,” in VA, 88.
25. VA, 90. Zimmerman’s critique in HCM of Heidegger’s reflections on

technology is thorough and judicious.
26. M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” tr. by Albert Hofstadter
in Philosophies o f Art and Beauty, ed. by Albert Hofstadter and Richard
Kuhns (New York: Random House, 1954), 685-690. Hereafter cited as PAB.
The themes of destiny, fate, and heritage are already at play in Being and
Time. After the end of World War II, as Habermas points out, Heidegger
no longer gives political leaders the same eminence he gives to poets and
thinkers. See WW, 448-449.
27. PAB, 695.
28. PAB, 696-698.
29. Again I will not try to determine here the logical relationships holding
among these elements.
30. As Habermas indicates, Heidegger’s formulation of this distinction is on

more than one occasion far from happy. See, for example WW, 443.
31. See in this connection Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power tr. by J. F. Hunt

ington (Boston: The Viking Press, 1962).
32. For useful distinctions between power, coercion, force, and violence see
RV, 19-31. In several of the other essays in this volume I do discuss the
problems of coercion and violence.
33. HM, 282, also calls attention to the connection between speech and poli
tics.
34. On Greek and Roman political traditions see BPF, “What is Authority?”
and “What is Freedom?”
Philosophy of Language and Political Thought (pp. 19-36)
1. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology o f Perception, tr. by Colin Smith (London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). Hereafter cited as PP.
2. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. by Claude Lefort, tr. by
Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). Hereafter
cited as VI.
3. See Jacques Taminiaux, Le regard et Vexcedent (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff,

1977), 90-115. Hereafter cited as RE.
Notes 231
4. See my Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloom

ington: Indiana University Press, 1980), Chapter 3.
5. Merleau-Ponty, The Prose o f the World, ed. by Claude Lefort, tr. by John
O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 19734), p. 36. Hereafter
cited as PW.
6. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy o f Perception, ed. by James M. Edie (Evan

ston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 134. Hereafter cited as POP.
7. Merleau-Ponty, Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwest

ern University Press, 1964). Hereafter cited as S.
8. “Now if we rid our minds of the ideal that our language is the translation
or cipher of an original text, we shall see that the idea of complete expression
is nonsensical, and that all language is indirect or allusive - that is, if you
wish, silence (5, 43).”
9. S, 138.
10. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind” in POP. Hereafter cited as EM.
11. See also Merleau-Ponty, “The War Has Taken Place,” in Sense and Non-
Sense, tr. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: North
western University Press, 1964), 147. Hereafter cited as SNS.
12. EM, 269.
13. S., 109-110.
14. Albert Rabil, Jr., Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist o f the Social World (New
York and London: Columbia University Press, 1967) 135.
15. PP, 106-132 and 182-190; PW, 78.
16. VI, 101-104.

17. Speaking of the painter, Merleau-Ponty says: “This unhearing historicity-

...does not imply that the painter does not know what he wants. It does
imply that what he wants is beyond the means and goals at hand and com
mands from afar all our useful activity {EM, 285).
18.1 owe this insight to Gabriel Marcel. See his The Mystery o f Being, tr. by
G. S. Fraser (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1960) Vol. I, 137. Merleau-Ponty
himself speaks of a wild world ( m/i monde sauvage) and a wild spirit (un
esprit sauvage). See S., 180-181.
19. Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John O’Neill (Boston: Bea
con Press, 1967). Hereafter cited as HT\ and Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f
the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1973). Hereafter cited as AD.
20. HT, xxxvi-xxxvix: “There is no line between good people and the rest, and
... in war, the most honorable causes prove themselves by means that are not
honorable.” HT, xxxix, fn. 17.
21. HT, 164.
22. HT, 164.
23. HT, 150.
24. AD , 88-91, and 206-207.
25. AD , 90-91.
26. HT, xlii.
27. AD , 150-153. “But if there is neither an objective proof of the revolution

nor a sufficient speculative criterion, there is a test of the revolution and a
very clear practical criterion: the proletariat must have access to political life
and to management (AD, 153).”
28. A D , 56-57, 204ff.
29. HT, 150.

Notes 233
30. A D , 203-233.
31. AD , 196-197.
Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thought (pp. 37-49)
1. Merleau-Ponty, Signs, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwest

ern University Press, 1964), 20. My modification of McCleary’s translation.
Hereafter 5.
2. Other special cases are specific religions, specific arts, and specific educa
tional enterprises.
3. See in this connection Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguis

tics, tr. by Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 7-10, 71-78, and
90-100. Hereafter cited as CGL.
4. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1973), 103. Hereafter cited as AD .
5. S, 218-219. For another version of this relation with a notably different

emphasis, see Bertrand de Jouvenel, Sovereignty, tr. by J. F. Huntington (Chi
cago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), 137-138. Hereafter cited as
Sov.
6. S, 274-275. See also Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John

O’Neill (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), xxxii-xxxiii. Hereafter cited as HT. It
is no surprise that Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, and Thucydides could
not teach their sons to be statesmen. See Plato, Meno, tr. by G. M. A.
Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976), 26-27.
7. S, 276.
8. Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, tr. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patri

cia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 143.
Hereafter cited as SNS.
9. S, 302-303. As de Saussure says, “In language there are only differences.”

CGL, 120.
10. According to de Saussure, the synchronic laws of language report states

of affairs but are not imperative. Thus, the state of affairs is precarious.
CGL, 92.
11. S, 336. See also S, 35, where Merleau-Ponty says, “History never confes
ses, not even her lost illusions, but neither does she dream of them again.”
12. S, 323-324.
13. AD , 23. See the useful, related remarked by de Jouvenel, Sov., 105-107.
14. 5, 35.
15. S, 328, 335. See also Merleau-Ponty, “Pour La V6rit6,” Les Temps Mo-
demes, 1945, 600.
16. AD , 124. See also James Miller, History and Human Existence (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1979), 209-212.
17. A D , 143.
18. Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures at College de France, 1952-1960,

tr. by John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 40-41.
19. S., 349. See also SNS, 152 for an earlier version of this insight of Mer-
leau-Ponty’s. In another related context, Merleau-Ponty has said: “The
presence of the individual in the institution and of the institution in the in
dividual is evident in the case of linguistic change. It is often the wearing
down of a form which suggests to us a new way of using the means of dis
crimination which are present in the language at a given time .... The contin
gent fact, taken over by the will to expression, becomes a new means of
expression which takes its place, and has a lasting sense in the history of this
language” (Merleau-Ponty, In Praise o f Philosophy, tr. by John Wild and
James Edie [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963], 55.) Hereafter
cited as IPP.
Notes 235
20. CGL, 77-78.
21. See Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology o f Perception, tr. by Colin Smith

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), 183-184 and Merleau-Ponty, The
Primacy o f Perception, tr. by James Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1964), 134.
22. SNS, 143, and AD , 120, 150-151.
23. AD , 53, 206.
24. AD , 22.
25. AD , 225ff.
26. HT, xxiv-xxv.
27. A D , 198.
28. AD , 207.
29. AD , 226.
30. SNS, 148, and S, 348-349.
31. HT, xxxiv-xxxv. See also Sov, 18-25, 31-33.
32. S, 336.
33. Willy Brandt, et al., North-South: A Programme for Sum val (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1980): “It is now widely recognized that development in
volves a profound transformation of the entire economic and social structure.
This embraces changes in production and demand as well as improvements
in income distribution and employment. It means creating a more diversified
economy, whose main sectors become more interdependent for supplying
inputs and for expanding markets for outputs.
“The actual patterns of structural transformation will tend to vary from
one country to another depending on a number of factors - including resour
ces, geography, and the skills of the population. There are therefore no
golden rules capable of universal application for economic development.

Each country has to exploit the opportunities open to it for strengthening its
economy. Structural transformation need not imply autarky. Some countries
might find it feasible to pursue inward-looking strategies that rely, at least in
the early stages, on using their domestic markets. Others may diversify and
expand their exports. Exports can become more fully integrated with the
rest of the economy, as the domestic market comes to provide a larger base,
or as export industries secure more of their inputs from local sources. Yet
others will concentrate initially on distributing income more evenly in order
to widen the domestic market for locally produced goods and to lay the
foundations for a better balance between the rural and urban sectors. But
all countries need an international environment that will be responsive to
their development efforts. Herein lies part of the rationale for a new inter
national economic order (48-49; see also 127-128).”
34. S, 4.
35. S, 35. My modification of McCleary’s translation.
36. A D , 155.
31. AD , 144, 194.
38. S, 324, 328.
39. Machiavelli’s weakness was that he did not have such a guideline. See S,
221-223.
40. S, 307.
41. IPP, 32.
42. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, tr. by D. S. Fraser (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1962), 29-67. Hereafter cited as HV. My conception of Mer
leau-Ponty’s politics of hope is at variance with that of Barry Cooper. See
his Merleau-Ponty and Marxism: From Terror to Reform (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1979), 53-55.
Notes 237
43. HV, 60.
44. HV, 67.
45. I do not, of course, want to suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s politics rests

upon anything like the absolute Thou which Marcel says is the “very cement
which binds the whole into one [HV, 60-61).” On the nonterminal character
of political conduct see Sov, 129-130.
46. HT, xxxv.
47. S, 314-318.
48. Perhaps the stringency of this guideline could be attenuated without loss
of fidelity to Merleau-Ponty’s intentions, in the following way: A policy or
deed is justified if it is recognizable to everyone, at least mediately, as some
thing that each man or state could rationally endorse being carried out by
someone, even if not by oneself. Thus A , who cannot immediately approve
of B ’s policy or deed, can approve of C s policies and deeds even when these
latter involve an endorsement of the performance of B that A cannot directly
accept. Through and only through the acceptability to A of Cs policies and
deeds is fi’s policy or deed made acceptable to A . Such an attenuation
would forestall the fault of legitimating too little. For example, if nations A
and B are at odds, then the rulers of both of them might be able to endorse
a refusal by nation C to take sides, even though each of them would be
strengthened by C s support.
49. HT, xxxiv-xxxv and SNS, 152.
50. A D , 196.
51. A D , 29.
Politics, History and Violence (pp. 51-62)
1. Kerry H. Whiteside, Merleau-Ponty and the Foundation o f an Existential

Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 279. Hereafter cited
as MPF. My criticisms notwithstanding, Whiteside’s work is an exceptionally
valuable contribution to Merleau-Pontyan scholarship. His criticism of Mer-

leau-Ponty’s later political philosophy is briefly foreshadowed by that of
Martin Jay, though there is no evidence that Whiteside depends on Jay. See
Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor
nia Press, 1984), 382-383. Hereafter cited as MT.
2. MPF, 7. My emphasis.
3. It can be shown, I believe, that the later period of Merleau-Ponty’s politi

cal thought is less discontinuous with the earlier period that Whiteside ad
mits. For present purposes, I will not explicitly develop that argument. But
the argument I will make will in fact contain elements which could well be
educed to make such a case.
4. This description of violence is my own. In devising it I have tried to cap

ture what Merleau-Ponty means by it. I have also been instructed by Sergio
Cotta, Why Violence? tr. by Giovanni Gullace (Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, 1985) though I have not adopted his conclusion.
5. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John O ’Neill (Bos

ton: Beacon Press, 1969) 88-89 and 102. Hereafter cited as HT. H T is the
principal work in which Merleau-Ponty’s early political thought is developed.
Other important early essays of his bearing on politics, especially “Con
cerning Marxism” and “Marxism and Philosophy” are collected in his Sense
and Non-Sense, tr. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia A. Dreyfus (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1964). Hereafter cited in the body of the text
as SNS.
6. See MT, 370.
7. Merleau-Ponty’s use of Saussure’s structuralism is sufficiently peculiar that

his later view of history can be called “Saussurean” only in a heterodox
sense. For instructive remarks on how Merleau-Ponty appropriated Saus-
sure, see James M. Edie, “Foreword,” in Merleau-Ponty, Consciousness and
the Acquisition o f Language, tr. by Hugh J. Silyerman (Evanston: Northwest
ern University Press), 1973, xi-xxxii; and Edie, “The Meaning and Develop
ment of Merleau-Ponty’s Concept of Structure” in Merleau-Ponty: Perception,
Notes 239
Structure, Language, ed. by John Sallis (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press,

1981), 39-57.
8. MT, 366.
9. Maurice Merleau-Ponty/Uve/ifurej o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 26. Hereafter cited in the
body of the text as AD .
10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sigtis, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1964), 20. Hereafter cited in the body of the
text as S.
11. See also MT, 372-375.
12. I document this claim in my The Politics o f Hope (London and New
York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 23-39. See also MT, 361-384.
13. Merleau-Ponty’s root requirement is a special sort of procedural require

ment. It is the “ur-procedural” requirement that all specific requirements,
substantive and procedural, must satisfy if they are to be binding.
14. For a fuller discussion of the important distinction between holding a

political position hypothetically and holding it categorically, see my “Ideol
ogy, Utopia, and Responsible Politics” in this volume.
Relational Freedom and Its Political Consequences (pp. 65-84)
1. One’s own psychological handicaps count, on this view, as part of the

Other.
2. See Sir Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty” in his Four Essays on
Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) 118-172. Berlin does not
develop his own position exclusively in terms of this distinction. His position
is much more subtle and resembles in important ways the position I will
defend. Another example of one who takes the notion of freedom as auton
omy for granted is William K. Frankena. See his Ethics, 2nd ed. (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 7-8.
3. See P. H. Partridge, “Freedom,” in Encyclopedia o f Philosophy, ed. by

Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1967), Vol. 3, 222-
223. Though Partridge mentions Mortimer Adler’s The Idea o f Freedom, 2
vols. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1958), he takes no discernible notice of
the careful, crucial distinctions Adler draws. Adler’s The Idea o f Freedom is
hereafter cited as IF.
4. Partridge’s concept of coercion is not unlike that given by Michel Foucault

in his “Afterword: The Subject of Power,” in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul
Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982), 220.
5. This conception of man is a staple of the post-Renaissance Western intel

lectual tradition. Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Nietzsche
all articulate it in some fashion. A more complicated, though hardly un
troubled, notion of human autonomy appears in the early Hegel. See, in this
latter connection, Jean Hyppolite, Studies o f Marx and Hegel, tr. by John
O’Neill (New York: Basic Books, 1969) 38-39 and 44-45. One should also
note Hegel’s own analysis of the connection between terror and misconstrued
freedom. See his Phenomenology o f Spirit, tr. by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clar
endon Press, 1977), 355-363.
6. See Descartes, Discourse de la Methode, in his Oeuvres Philosophiques, ed.

by Ferdinand Alqui6 (Paris: Garnier Frdres, 1963), Vol. 1, 643. Hereafter
cited as DM. Descartes himself apparently held a more modest view than
the one I sketch here. He says only that we are to be as it were lords and
possessors of nature. Marx, too, sometimes gives one reason to think that he
holds some version of the doctrine of autonomous freedom. As Charles
Taylor points out, “the young Marx is heir of the radical Enlightenment ...
in his notion that man comes to shape nature and eventually society to his
purposes.” See his Hegel and Modem Society (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni
versity Press, 1979), 141. Hereafter cited as HMS.
7. See Alexander P. D’Entrdves, The Notion o f the State (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1967) 78 and 212-230.
Notes 241
8. There is some reason to think that Rawls is modifying the position he took
in his famous A Theory o f Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1971). See for example his “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford
Journal o f Legal Studies, Vol. 7, no. 1, 1987, 1-25.
9. HMS, 74.
10. DM, 594. Here again Descartes’ own view is more complex than this
quotation shows. Though he does insist upon radical autonomy for the
realm of thought, he does not explicitly require it for the realm of action. His
epigones, though, have not always shown the same restraint.
11. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique o f Dialectical Reason, tr. by Alan Sheridan-
Smith (London: New Left Books, 1976), Vol. 1, esp. 401 and 424-444. Here
after cited as CDR.
12. See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. by Hazel E. Barnes
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1968), esp. 86-112 and 559-619.
13. The interpretation of freedom as autonomy is widespread not only among

those who admit that men are free but also among those who deny it. Many
of the arguments against freedom are really directed against claims that men
can be autonomous. Both behaviorist and structuralist denials of freedom
regularly rest on evidence adduced to show that men are inextricably depen
dent both upon one another and upon material nature. Thus they conclude
that the sort of autonomy which supposedly constitutes freedom is in prin
ciple unattainable.
14. HMS, 6-7.
15. Anthony Kenny, Will, Freedom, and Power (New York: Harper and Row,
1976), 134.
16. CDR, 422.
17. See Edmund Husserl, The Crisis o f European Sciences and Transcendental
Phenomenology, tr. with an introduction by David Carr (Evanston: North
western University Press, 1970), 327-334.
18. Insightful as Sartre’s CDR is, so far as I can see he fails to grasp the
correlativity of individual and communal praxis. On more than one occasion
he treats communal praxis as decomposable into a multiplicity of individual
praxes. There is, I believe, some praxis, or at least features of praxis, which
is ours, even though it is not properly either mine or yours, e.g., making
music together.
19. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose o f the World, ed. by Claude Le-
fort, tr. by John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973),
esp. 143-44. Hereafter cited as PW.
20. PW, 14.
21. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. by Claude
Lefort, tr. by Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1968), 143-155. Hereafter cited as VI.
22. VI, 129, and PW, 144.
23. This conclusion obviously contradicts Descartes’ claim in Meditations that

the human will is infinite. See Descartes’ Philosophical Writings, tr. and ed.
by Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Geach (Indianapolis: Library of Liberal
Arts, 1971), 93-94.
24. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology o f Perception, tr. by Colin Smith

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). Hereafter cited as PhP.
25. PhP, 442.
26. PhP, 453. Merleau-Ponty’s position here is compatible with that of Hei
degger in the latter’s Being and Time and “On the Essence of Truth.” In
Being and Time Heidegger emphasizes that freedom is distinctive of man’s
kind of being, but his kind of being is always to be in the world among things
and with others. See Being and Time, tr. by John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 294-331 and 417. Hereafter
cited as BT. In “On the Essence of Truth,” Heidegger shows that freedom,
which is a participation in the revelation of what-is-as-such, requires both
restraint and involvement with the Other. See “On the Essence of Truth,” in
Notes 243
Heidegger, Existence and Being, ed. by Werner Brock (Chicago: Henry Reg-
nery, 1949), 307-319. Heidegger recognizes, even if only elliptically, that his
doctrine of freedom, which forbids vengeance on the Other, has political
consequences. He says: “The space of that freedom which is won over
vengeance is equally foreign to pacifism, to the politics of might, and to a
calculating neutrality.” See “Wer ist Nietzsches Zarathustra” in Heidegger,
Vortrage un Aufsatze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1967), vol. 1, 102. See also my
“Heidegger: Spokesman for the Dweller,” The Southern Journal o f Philoso
phy, vol. XV, 1977, 189-199.
27. Charles Sherover, who also links freedom to finitude, temporality and
historicity, defends a strikingly similar view in his “The Temporality of the
Common Good: Futurity and Freedom,” Review o f Metaphysics, vol. 37,1984,
475-497. My proposal also meshes smoothly, I believe, with Agnes Heller’s
and Ferenc Feh6r’s basic law of democratic politics, namely, “act in a way
which allows all free and rational human beings to assent to the political
principles of your action,” provided this law is not interpreted ahistorically.
See their The Political Condition (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988), 70.
28. My account of freedom is structurally similar to Aristotle’s account of

happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics 1095b29-1096a2 and 1101al3-21. As
happiness is an exercised capacity and not simply a capacity, so too is free
dom an exercised capacity and not simply a capacity. In speaking of freedom
as a process, I use this term in much the same way as Carol Gould does in
her description of Marx’s view of freedom as a process. She says: “A pro
cess, as distinct from an entity or a relation, is an activity that has continuity.
The process described here also is marked by emergence, that is, by real
novelty as the character of this continuity itself. It is a process of constant
change. But it is not sheer flux. Rather it is the preservation of a past state
by transforming it into new forms.” Carol Gould, Marx’s Social Ontology
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 127-128. Whether Gould has accurately
reported Marx’s view is, of course, not to the point here. For anticipations
of the other sorts, see Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre
Dame University Press, 1981), 149, and Martin Buber, “What Is Man?” in
his Between Man and Man, tr. by Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: MacMil
lan, 1978), 177-181. My proposal is also consonant in the main with that of
Mortimer Adler, though I give a different cast than he does to the tension
between self and other. See IF, vol. 1, 608-620. Though our vocabularies
differ, my position is also compatible with Sheldon Wolin’s argument in his
“The Idea of the State in America,” in Humanities in Society, vol. 3, 1980,
151-168. For another sort of anticipation, see Heidegger’s discussion of
heritage and destiny in BT, 434-439.
29. Thus, it makes sense for Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, to regard
Shakespeare’s Richard III as a man who, through his crimes, stifles his own
freedom.
30. See in this connection William Richardson, “The Mirror Inside: The
Problem of Self” in Review o f Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, vol. 16,
1978-1979, esp. 108.
31. This condition is not violated by the fact that my performance of some
activity X at time T precludes my performing any other activity y at this
same time T. Since this fact holds for all activity, it cannot be cited in criti
cism of any particular activity.
32. The distinction among these kinds of relationships is categorical, not

classificatory. Concrete relationships may involve aspects of all three of
these kinds. Citizenship relationships, for example, appear to involve all
three of them.
33. The term ‘reflection’ designates first the minimal condition that only what
have been traditionally called human acts as opposed to mere acts of humans
can be free. It admits secondly that there can be degrees of awareness in
human acts. The greater the awareness of what can be accomplished, the
greater the field of freedom. Finally, ‘reflection’ refers to the unity of the
three stages in the development of voluntary action which Paul Ricoeur dis
tinguishes, namely, decision (including choice and motivation), setting the
body into voluntary motion, and consent. See his Philosophie de la volunti:
Le Volontaire et I'Involontaire (Paris: Aubier, 1950).
34. When the patient is cured, the physician-patient relationship dissolves, of

course, perhaps to be replaced by another relationship.
Notes 245
35. Aristotle, Politics, 1332b25-26. See also 1261a31-1261b6. Aristotle of

course allowed undue restrictions on eligibility for citizenship.
36. Aristotle, Politics, 1268a24.
37. Sartre is right in seeing that yielding to others or putting constraints on

one’s own future praxis is itself praxis. But he apparently regards this as
degenerate praxis as compared to the praxis which constitutes the fused
group. If so, I think he is wrong. See CDR, Vol. 1, 417-421 and passim.
38. One can show that respect is a condition for artistic and religious mani
festations of efficacious freedom as well, but this is not the place to argue for
the general thesis.
39. See Rom Harre, Social Being (Ottowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979),
24-25. Hereafter cited as SB.
40. See Michael Walzer, Spheres o f Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983),
274-275. Walzer discusses self-respect here. But what he says applies to all
respect. In general, I would argue that my Politics o f Hope (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), hereafter cited as PH, supplies a firm under
pinning for several of the claims and conclusions Walzer presents in Spheres
o f Justice. Hereafter cited as SJ.
41. SJ, 274.
42. SJ, 277. My emphasis. Though I fully endorse the words I cite, Walzer
uses them in a somewhat different context. Unlike Walzer, I do not restrict
them to the notion of “democratic citizenship.” In the spirit of Merleau-
Ponty, I give them a global sense. See “Merleau-Ponty’s Political Thought:
Its Nature and Its Challenge,” in this volume.
43. SJ, 278.
44. SB, 24.
45. See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Garden City: Doubleday
Anchor Books, 1959), 215-219.
46. Heidegger’s remarks on heritage and destiny support my claim. See BT,
434-439.
47. SJ, 278.
48. See Herbert Spiegelberg, “Ethics for Fellows in the Fate of Existence,” in
Mid-Twentieth Century Philosophy, ed. by Peter A. Bertocci (New York:
Humanities Press, 1974), 193-219.
49. See in this connection the essay “Politics and Coercion” in this volume.
50. Though I will not try to do so here, I think that the sort of respect flow
ing from the concept of relational freedom makes it possible also to har
monize the requirements of the aesthetic domain with those of morality and
politics.
I and Mine (pp. 85-96)
1. Cliffort Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View,” in Interpretive Social

Science, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979), 229.
2. See Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory (Berkeley: Uni

versity of California Press, 1979) 29. Hereafter cited as CP.
3. See Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar, Reading Capital (London: New
Left Books, 1970), 180-189. “The structure is immanent in its effects in the
Spinozist sense of the term,..i/ie whole existence o f the structure consists o f its
effects .... [The structure] is merely a specific combination of its particular
elements, is nothing outside its effects”(188-189). For a good overview of
this and other continental analyses which claim to undercut the distinctive
ness of the self, see CP, 9-48.
4. See Samuel Ijsseling, “Hermeneutics and Textuality,” Research in Phenom

enology 9 (1979): 10.
5. Anthony Kenny defended this position in the untitled paper he read at the
“Continental and Anglo-American Philosophy: A New Relationship?” con-
Notes 247
ference at the University of Chicago, May 11-13, 1984. See also G.E.M.
Anscombe, “The First Person,” in Mind and Language ed. S. Guttenplan
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) 59.
6. CP, 70.
7. CP, 55-56.
8. See William Wimsatt, “Robustness, Reliability, and Multiple Determina

tion in Science,” in Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences, ed. Marilyn M.
Brewer and Barry E. Collins (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1981) 124-163, esp.
126-128. Hereafter cited as RR.
9. RR, 144-147.
10. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Maquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) 67-69. Hereafter cited as BT.
11. BT, 68. See also Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundation o f Logic tr.
Michael Hein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984) 188-189. Here
after cited as FL.
12. BT, 303.
13. BT, 308.
14. Heidegger, “Was Heisst Denken?” in Vortrage und Aufsdtze (Pfullingen:

Neske, 1967), Vol. 2, 3; Basic Writings, ed. David Krell (New York: Harper
and Row, 1977) 345.
15. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Univer
sity Press, 1981), 96-97. Hereafter cited as AV.
16. A V , 89. My insertion.
17. A V , 91.
18. See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule o f Metaphor, tr. Robert Czerny with Kathleen
McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977)
7. Hereafter cited as RM.
19. Ricoeur himself suggests something of this “rebound” effect. See RM,
87-89.
20. See in this connection Hannah Arendt, “The Concept of History: Ancient
and Modern,” in her Between Past and Future (New York: Viking Press,
1965). Hereafter cited as PF.
21. For a discussion of this issue from another angle, see my “Authors, Audi
ences and Texts,” Human Studies (1982) 137-146.
22. H.-N. Castaneda, “On the Phenomeno-Logic of the I,” Akten des X IV
Intemationalen Kongresses fur Philosophic, Wien, 1968, 261. Husserl, it
should be recalled here, speaks of the “primal ‘I’ ... which can never lose its
uniqueness and indeclinability.” See his The Crisis o f European Sciences and
Transcendental Phenomenology, tr. David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1970) 185. Hereafter cited as TC.
23. TC, 266.
24. Colin McGinn, The Subjective View (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) 53-
55. Hereafter cited as SV. He explicitly criticizes here G.E.M. Ancombe’s
position referred to above, and thereby implicitly attacks the Kenny thesis I
have mentioned.
25. SV, 91.
26. SV, 91.
27. SV, 91 fn. 32.
28. SV, 93.
29. McGinn does deal, under another heading, with the dimension with
which I am concerned. He recognizes that his position poses problems for
Notes 249
physicalist accounts of experience. He himself, though, does defend a spe

cific version of physicalism. See SV, 137-145.
30. This argument parallels MacIntyre’s contention, discussed above, that a

full account of determinism would have to be couched in a “neutral” lan
guage, but that no such neutral language is either available or in prospect.
31. See in this connection Richard Bauman, Let Your Words Be Few (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 14. Hereafter cited as YfV.
32. See in this connection, Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory (Fort Worth:
TCU Press, 1976) 22.
33. The possibility of shifting emphasis between the topic and the audience
also makes possible the historical distinction between rhetoric and science.
However much one might today want to attenuate this distinction, it is hard
to claim that all discourse has the same manifest emphasis. Styles of dis
course differ from one another and are deployed at the discretion of the
speaker.
34. YW, 10-11 and 30.
35. For more detailed argument, see my Silence: The Phenomenon and Its
Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), esp.
54-82. Arendt makes a comparable point in terms of thinking and its in
dependence from space-time. See PF, 13.
36. Heidegger, The Basic Problems o f Phenomenology, tr. Albert Hofstradter

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) 171. See also H-G. Gadamer,
Philosophical Hermeneutics, tr. David E. Linge (Berkeley: University of Cali
fornia Press, 1976). Gadamer says: “Self-understanding only realizes itself in
the understanding of a subject-matter and does not have the character of a
free self-realization” (55).
37. Emmanuel Mounier makes something of this same point from another
standpoint. See his Personalism, tr. Phillip Mairet (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1952) 39, 59-64.
38. CP, 56-57.
39. CP, 84.
40. For an interesting account of the self, see Edward Ballard’s Man and
Technology: Toward the Measurement o f Culture (Pittsburgh: Duquesne Uni
versity Press, 1978) esp. 124-129, and his Principles o f Interpretation (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1983), esp 216-225. See also FL, 139.
41. My conclusions about selves mesh well with those reached by Paul Ri-
coeur in his Soi-mime comme un autre (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990).
The Human Way of Being (pp. 97-113)
1. A case can be made for also mentioning Hegel and Marx in this context.
But this is not the place to make it.
2. For Heidegger’s critique, see for example Being and Time, tr. by John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 122-
134, hereafter cited as BT, and his Nietzsche, tr. by Frank A. Capuzzi and
edited by David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982), IV, 96-
122.
3. See Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1984), 515.
4. The interpretation I propose, though developed independently, fits well

with the interpretations of the ‘I’ in evidence in Robert Sokolowski’s Moral
Action (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), esp. 156-174. See in
this connection my “The Ego Revisited,” Journal o f the British Society for
Phenomenology, Vol. 21, January 1990, 48-52.
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, tr. by Walter Kaufmann and R. J.

Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), 267-270.
6 . 1do not suggest that these writers all share a common position. Nor do I
suggest that I have done justice to the complex thought of any one of them.
I make no claim to contribute here to the scholarly discussion of any of their
Notes 251
works taken as a whole. Rather, I want to assess a widespread contemporary

view in support of which these writers have regularly been invoked.
7. Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” in his Image -Music -Text, ed.
and tr. by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 143. Hereafter
cited as DA.
8. DA, 145.
9. DA, 148.
10. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, tr. by Robert Hurley,
Mark Seem, and Helen Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983), 16. Hereafter cited as AO .
11. A O , 20.
12. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, tr. by Brian
Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 3.
13. Stanley Fish, “How To Recognize a Poem When You See One,” in his Is
There A Text In This Class? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980),
325.
14. There is some evidence that Foucault was not wholly hostile to a con
stituting subjectivity in his last works. But exactly what he pointed to, as
Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Robinon show, is by no means clear. See their
“Conclusion” and Foucault’s “Afterword” in their Michel Foucault (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982), 205-226.
15. Michel Foucault, The Order o f Things, tr. by A. M. Sheridan Smith (New
York: Vintage Books, 1973), 387.
16. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology o f Knowledge, tr. by A. M. Sheridan

Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 116-117. Hereafter cited as AK.
17. A K , 122.
18. A K , 169.
19. See Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Th6baud, Just Gaming, tr. by
Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 73-88.
20. Charles Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” in Foucault: A Criti

cal Reader, ed. by David Couzens Hoy (Oxford and New York: Basil Black-
well, 1986), 89. Hereafter cited as FCR.
21. FCR, 90.
22. Ian Saunders, “The Concept Discourse,” Textual Practice, 2, 1988, 230.
My emphasis. Hereafter cited as CD.
23. CD, 231. My emphasis.
24. CD, 230.
25. An excellent source for the contemporary status of criticism concerning

Heidegger’s views on what it is to be human is the set of papers of the 1989
Spindel Conference published in The Southern Journal o f Philosophy, Vol. 28,
Supplement.
26. Conversations with Fred Dallmayr have helped me to clarify my account

of the human. Whatever flaws remain are, of course, wholly mine.
27. BT, 114-122.
28. BT, 156-157.
29. BT, 233.
30. Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems o f Phenomenology, tr. by Albert

Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 171. Hereafter
cited as BP.
31. BP, 297. See also 278.
32. BP, 278-279.

Notes 253
33. Martin Heidegger, ‘T h e Origin of the Work of Art,” in his Poetry, Lan-
giiage and Thought, tr. by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row,
1971), esp. 62, 66-68, and 77-78. Hereafter cited as OA.
34. OA, esp. 46-50, 63-64, and 68-70.
35. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, tr. by Alphonso
I .ingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 159-160. See also
104. Hereafter cited as VI.
36. VI, 133. See also 120 and 124.
37. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1959), 169. Hereafter cited as HC.
38. HC, 171-172.
39. Calvin Schrag’s reply to my critique of his Communicative Praxis at the

October 1989 meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy shows that there is substantial agreement between us about what
it is to be human. See Communicative Praxis (Bloomington: Indiana Univer
sity Press, 1986), esp. Parts 1 and 2.
40. I acknowledge a tension here between my position and that of some

versions of religious thought which speak of our destiny to an afterlife.
Though I do not think my position is incompatible with one which looks to
an afterlife, it does conflict with any view which permits slighting this life for
the sake of an afterlife.
41. See in this connection my “Heidegger: Spokesman for the Dweller,” The
Southern Journal o f Philosophy, Vol 15, no. 2, 1977, 189-199.
42. Paul Ricoeur, “The Tasks of the Political Educator,” Philosophy Today,
Vol. 17, no. 2, 1973, 145.
4 3 .1 have developed in more detail the interpretation of the human way of

being as being en route and the political consequences thereof in my The
Politics o f Hope (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).
44. For more detailed discussion of these characteristics of human existence

see my “Relational Freedom” in this volume.
45. See in this connection Paul Ricoeur, “Ethique et politique,” Esprit, no.
101, mai 1985, 1-11.
46. See in this connection Gabriel Marcel, Creative Fidelity, tr. by Robert
Rosthal (New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1964), esp. 38-57.
Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics (pp. 117-137)
1. Tendencies toward these two positions can be found in the entire history
of Western thought prior to the seventeenth century. But the modern works
exhibit these two positions in their starkest form. For a somewhat fuller
discussion, see my “Renovating the Problem of Politics,” in this volume.
2. See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, tr. by Martin Ostwald (Indianapolis:

The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1962), 1160b 1-11. Hereafter cited as NE.
3. I have suggested, in my aforementioned essay, that Heidegger, too, his

Nazi involvement notwithstanding, provides clues pointing to a promising
third way. See also Gregory Schufreider, “Heidegger on Community,” Man
and World, Vol. 14, 1981, 25-54 for an excellent defense of the claim that
totalitarianism is incompatible with Heidegger’s thought.
4. See my “Merleau-Ponty’s Political Philosophy: Its Nature and Its Chal

lenge,” in this volume.
5. In the words of Johannes B. Metz, “The unity and co-ordination of reli

gion and society, as well as religions and social existence, was acknowledged
in former times as an unquestionable reality.” See his “Religion and Society
in Light of a Political Theory,” in The Future o f Hope, ed. by Walter H.
Capps (Philadelphia: The Fortress Press, 1970), 137. Hereafter cited as FH.
6. S. Harent, “Espdrance,” in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, ed. by A.

Vacant and E. Mangenot (Paris: Librairie Letouzey, 1939), Vol. 5, part 1,
609. Translations from this article are mine. Hereafter cited as DTC.
Notes 255
7. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, II, q. 40 art. 1.
8. DTC, 611. My emphasis.
9. See Rudolf Baultmann, “E \H L$” in Theological Dictionary o f the New

Testament, ed. by Gerhard Kittel, tr. and ed. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Col, 1966) Vol II, 521-522.
Hereafter cited as TD.
10. TD, 522-523.
11. TD, 518. He cites Plato, Philebus 39e and Laws 644c and Aristotle, Me
taphysics XI, 1072bl8, Rhetoric II, 1368a2-30, and De Memoria I, 449bl0ff.
12. H. Frankel, quoted in TD, 519.
13. TD, 521.
14. Seneca, Epistle V, quoted in DTC, 612.
15. This does not appear to be a distinguishing feature of hope. Hope ap
parently shares it with other acts such as love, despair, etc.
16. Ernst Bloch dissociates confidence from hope but gives no compelling
reason for doing so. See his “Man as Possibility,” in The Future o f Hope, ed.
by Walter H. Capps (Philadelphia: The Fortress Press, 1970), 67. In general,
much of what I say is consonant with central features of Bloch’s descriptions
of hope, provided that his Marxism and atheism are not taken as essential
features of these descriptions. See his Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1959). For criticisms of Bloch’s Marxism and atheism see
Alois Edmaier, Horizonte der Hoffnung (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrick Pustet,
1968), esp. 232-239.
17. Disagreements over the character and extent of the openness of the fu
ture can lead to distinctions within hope between those acts of hope which
are sensible and those which are foolish and vain.
18. See Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, tr. by Emma Crauford (London: Vic
tor Gollancz, 1951), 29-67. Hereafter cited as HV.
19. HV, 67.3
20. HV, 60.
21. Mahatma K. Gandhi, Hindu Dharma (Kalupuri: Navajivan Press, 1950),

48. Hereafter cited as HD.
22. Bhagavad-Gita tr. by Swami Swarupananda (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama,

1956), 57.
23. HD, 14.
24. HD, 9, 23, 24, 34, 314ff.
25. HD, 38-39. Gandhi is apparently making reference here to Christian

texts for the sake of his English, and Western, audience. I assume that he is
nonetheless faithfully recounting a thoroughly Hindu approach.
26. Frank Reynolds, “The Two Wheels of Dhamma: A Study of Early Bud
dhism,” in The Two Wheels o f Dhamma ed. by Bardwell L. Smith (Cham-
bersburg, PA: American Academy of Religion, 1972), 30. Hereafter cited as
TWD.
27. TWD, 32. See also T!\e Mahavamsa or the Great Chronicle o f Ceylon, tr.
by Wilhelm Geiger (Colombo: Ceylon Government Information Department,
1960). Hereafter cited as GCC.
28. GCC, 47.
29. GCC, 39.
30. TWD, 27.
31. GCC, 47.
32. GCC, 50.

Notes 257
33. Confucius, Analects, ed. and tr. by William E. Soothill (New York: Para
gon Book Reprint Corp., 1968) BK XIV, Chapter XIII, 683. Hereafter cited
as CA.
34. CA, Book XIX, Chapter I, 883-885.
35. See, for example, CA, Book XIV, Chapter XXXIII, 691-693.
36. See Wolfgang Eberhard, “The Political Function of Astronomy and As
tronomers in Han China,” in Chinese Thought and Institutions, ed. by John
K. Fairbank (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 37. Hereafter
cited as CTI. See also The Sacred Books o f Confucius, tr. and ed. by Ch’u
Chai and Winberg Chai (New Hyde Park: University Books, 1965), 163-164.
37. John K. Fairbank, The United States and China (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971), 120-121. Hereafter cited as USC. Fairbank notes,
though, that the reason for this abstention from statism was a matter of
circumstance rather than theory. Confucianist governments were only a
superficial layer of the whole society.
38. See W. T. DeBary, “Chinese Depostism and the Confucian Ideal: A

Seventeenth-Century View,” in CTI, 176.
39. CTI, 194.
40. The superhuman, of course, is not always construed as personal. But it is

always construed as that with which it is both sensible and beneficial to ally
oneself. The superhuman is never the merely impersonal, if the term “im
personal” is taken to refer only to the correlative opposite of the personal.
41. NE, 1160a 9-29. Note in this connection the emphasis given by John
Rawls to fraternity. See his A Theory o f Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press,
1971), 105ff. Hereafter cited as TJ.
42. See Michael Oakeshott, “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of

Mankind,” in his Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (New York: Basic
Books Publishing Co., 1962), 243-247.
43. Their very closeness partially explains why they can be such fierce com
petitors. As a matter of fact, they have often competed. Consider the his
tory of the Holy Roman Empire. This competition has also occurred even
in Confucian China. See USC, 112 and 117, and C. K. Yang, “The Function
al Relationship between Confucian Thought and Chinese Religion,” in C77,
290. Whether art, too, can be thought of as a competitor with religion and
politics for the fundamental position in a community or whether art is an
equiprimordially fundamental reality is an intriguing and important issue
which cannot be developed here. For hints about such questions, see Hei
degger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr.
by Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1978) and Mikel
Dufrenne, Art et politique (Paris: Union Gendrale d’fiditions, 1974).
44. I must leave open here the question whether religion is essentially total
ized or whether it too can be totalizing without attempting to be totalized.
45. Though I tend to believe that politics is essentially non-totalizable and

that therefore hope belongs to the essence of politics, I do not wish to assert
this strong thesis here.
46. For criticism of the individualistic notion of freedom and defense of this
relational notion, see my essay “Relational Freedom” in this volume.
47. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, ed. by Claude
Lefort, tr. by Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1968), 129. Hereafter cited as VI. See also his The Prose o f the World, ed.
by Claude Lefort, tr. by John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), 144.
48. VI, 144.
49. NE, 1155a 15.
50. NE, 1155a 29. Though my position is in important ways at variance with
TJ, Rawls, too recognizes the centrality of respect. He says: “In particular,
I assume that being a member of some community and engaging in many
forms of cooperation is a condition of human life.” TJ, 438. See also 44,178,
and 441.
Notes 259
51. See in this connection Mikel Dufrenne, Art et politique (Paris: Union
G6n6rale d’feditions, 1974), 19. My own assessment of institutions is more
“benign” than is Dufrenne’s.
52. See Louis Althusser, “Ideologies et appareils iddologiques d’foat,” La

Pensie,, No. 151, Juin, 1970. Sartre, too, ultimately rejects institutions on the
grounds that they embody power and power is intrinsically alienating. See,
for example, his Life Situations, tr. by Paul Auster and Lydia Davis (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 84.
53. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 143.
54. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures, tr. by John O’Neill
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970) 40.
55. FH, 150.
56. Patriotism is not necessarily tied to one’s natal land. Obviously, one can
adopt citizenship elsewhere. But to adopt citizenship is also to adopt the
heritage that goes with it.
57. See in this connection HD, 14; and Alasdair Maclntrye, After Virtue (No
tre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 236-237.
58. See in this connection my “Politics and Coercion” in this volume.
59. On the political importance of forgiveness, see Hannah Arendt, The

Human Condition (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), 215-219.
60. Marxism, too, has claimed to find a bound to legitimate violence in the
condition that violence must aim to eliminate violence. See Maurice Mer
leau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, tr. by John O’Neill (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1969), xvii; and Joseph L. Walsh, Revolutionary Violence in Merleau-
Ponty, Marx, and Engels, unpublished dissertation, Brandeis University, 1975.
61. This distinction between the critical and dogmatic roles is similar to the
distinction between critical and dogmatic concepts used by Hans-Georg Gad-
amer in his Truth and Method, tr. by Garrett Barden and John Cumming
(New York: The Seabury Press, 1975), 471.
62. In preparing this essay, I have been greatly helped by the advice and
criticism of Thomas R. Flynn, Thomas Ganschow, George Howard, and
Shanta Ratnayaka.
The Place of Hope in Politics (pp. 139-158)
1. See John Dunn, Rethinking Modem Political Theory (Cambridge: Cam

bridge University Press, 1985) 171-172. Hereafter cited as RMPT. See also
Sheldon Wolin, “Max Weber: Legitimation, Method, and the Politics of
Theory,” Political Theory, Vol. 9, no. 3, 1981, esp. 404.
2. On the enthymematic arguments and their proper subject matter see Aris
totle, Prior Analytics, 24a21-24bl5 and Rhetoric, 1356b3-1357al8 and
1402b21-23.
3. In political thought, if anywhere, one must start in medias res. There is no

Archimedean point of either support or departure.
4. My account of the domain of politics is heavily indebted to, but does not
simply repeat, Wolin’s. See his Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown
and Co., 1960) 7-11. Hereafter cited as PV.
5. Aristotle, Politics, 1252al-1253a38.
6. Paul Ricoeur, “Ethique et politique,” Esprit, no. 101, mai 1985, 1-11.
7. Wolin has accurately pointed out antipolitical tendencies which would

either eliminate politics or so fragment it so as to render it practically im
potent. See PV, 407-429.
8. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 56-57 and 203-204, and his
Themes From The Lectures A t College de France 1952-1960, tr. by John O’
Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 40-41.
Notes 261
9. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sigps, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1964) 4, 35. For some details of the una
voidable international character of contemporary life see Soedjatmoko, "Edu
cation Relevant to People’s Needs," Deadalus, Vol. 118, No. 1, Winter 1989,
211-218. I do not, though, endorse all of Soedjatmoko’s recommendations.
How indebted I am in this essay to Merleau-Ponty can be seen from my The
Politics o f Hope (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986) esp. 23-42.
Hereafter cited as PH.
10. See in this connection, Hans Jonas, The Imperative o f Responsibility (Chi
cago: University of Chicago, 1983) esp. 1-24. Hereafter cited as IR.
11. See Robert Dahl, Dilemmas o f Pluralist Democracy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1982) 92-137. Charles Taylor, from a quite different point
of departure, reaches much the same conclusion. See his Hegel and Modem
Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) esp. 70-154.
12. See Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior, 2nd ed. (New York:
Macmillan, 1957) esp. 78-80, and his Models o f Man, Social and Rational
(New York: Wiley, 1957) esp. 196-200. For noteworthy criticisms of this
managerialism see PV, 419-429 and Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre
Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981) 24-30.
13. See Ferenc Feher, “Redemptive and Democratic Paradigms in Radical

Politics,” Telos, no. 63, Spring 1985, 150-154. Hereafter cited as RDP.
14. See Joel Whitebook, “The Politics of Redemption,” Telos, no. 63, Spring
1985, 157. Hereafter cited as POR.
15. See RPD, 148, 151-154, and POR, 158.
16. Martin Jay, “Fin-de-Siecle Socialism,” Praxis International, Vol. 8, No. 1,

April 1988, 10. As Jay makes clear, some Leftist thinkers, e.g., Paul Breines
and Richard Wolin, still maintain faith in the possibility of redemption.
Hereafter cited as FSS.
17. FSS, 10, citing Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Soci
alist Strategy, trans. by Winston Moore and Paul Commack (London: Verso,
1985) 190.
18. See Jurgen Habermas, Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jurgen
Habermas, ed. by Peter Dews (London: Verso, 1986) 212.
19. POR, 162. Whitebook cites in his support Agnes Heller’s “The Dissatis
fied Society,” Praxis International, vol. 2, no. 4, January 1983, 361.
20. POR, 165. The same reasons which prompt one to accept a politics of
maturity show the bankruptcy of what I have elsewhere called the politics of
vision and the politics of will. See PH, 2-3 and passim.
21. The gerundive form desideranda unlike the participial form desiderata,
has normative connotations.
22. Montesquieu’s The Spirit o f the Laws in many ways exemplifies these
desideranda.
23. See in this connection Benjamin Barber, The Conquest o f Politics: Liberal
Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)
and Michael Walzer’s review of it entitled, “Flight from Philosophy,” The
New York Review o f Books, Vol XXXVI, no. 1, February 2, 1989, 42-44.
24. Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits o f Justice (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1982) 179. Hereafter cited as L U .
25. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, tr. by Garrett Barden and
John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), 285 and his Reason In The
Age O f Science, tr. by Frederick G. Laurence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981)
80.
26. See L U , 183. Sandel’s argument is directed against political liberalism

of the Rawls and Nozick sorts. To the extent that the politics oiMundigkeit
shares Enlightenment roots with liberalism, his'argument also affects it.
Notes 263
27. Julius Moravscik, “Communal Ties,” Proceedings and Addresses o f The

American Philosophical Association, Supplement to Vol. 62, no. 1, Septem
ber, 1988, 220.
28. See Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. by George H.
Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 1-2 and passim. See
also my “Ideology, Utopia, and Responsible Politics” in this volume, and
Anthony Giddens, “Reason Without Revolution? Habermas’s Theorie des
Kommunikativen Handelns,” Praxis International, Vol. 2, no. 3, October 1982,
333-334.
29. See Richard J. Bernstein, “The Rage Against Reason,” Philosophy and
Literature, Vol. 10, no. 2, 205. Bernstein’s cautions against the dangers of
violently imposed “virtuous” interaction are well taken.
30. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis o f European Man and Transcendental Phe
nomenology, tr. by David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1970), 280.
31. John Dunn, Rethinking Modem Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1985), 42. Hereafter cited as RMPT.
32. See my “Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics,” in this volume. Here
after cited as HRP. See also PH, 105-119.
33. It is worth noting that in the Philebus Plato says that human existence is
determined not merely by the aisthesis which receives the present but also by
the mneme of the past and the elpis (hope) of the future.
34. Nicholas Lash, A Matter o f Hope (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1982), T il. Lash argues that Marx’s “vision of the future ... remained
optimistic, prematurely transcending desperation in the imagination, and did
not, therefore, mature into hope,” 270. See also Jerald Wallulis, “Hope,
Loyalty, and the Need for Critical Distance,” Logos, Vol 5, May 1984. I
abstain from comment here on Lash’s criticism of Marx.
35. The superhuman, of course, is not always construed as personal. But it is

always construed as potent and as something with which it is both sensible
and beneficial to be linked. The superhuman is never merely impersonal, if
the term “impersonal” is taken to refer only to the negation of the personal,
to that which is wholly indifferent to human persons.
36. RMPT, 102.
37. See Joseph J. Godfrey, A Philosophy o f Human Hope (Dodrecht: Mar-

tinus Nijhoff, 1987), 142-146 and passim. Hereafter cited as HH. Godfrey
does not draw the implications of hope for politics. But his study, building
as it does upon analyses of hope presented by Kant, Ernst Bloch, and Gab
riel Marcel, makes a significant contribution to political reflection.
38. Godfrey shows that any defensible ultimate hope rests on sonje set of
background beliefs. See HH, 169-175.
39. For a good discussion of the difference between mere desire and hope,
see Gabriel Marcel, “Desire and Hope,” in Readings in Existential Phenome
nology, ed. by Nathaniel Lawrence and Daniel O’Connor (Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice Hall, 1967) 277-285.
40. So far as I can tell, my account of hope is consistent with Ernst Bloch’s
description of what he calls subjective or hoping hope. If there is a disagree
ment between us, and I am not sure that there is, it would be about his view
of objective hope. Objective hope, for Bloch, is hope for the “highest good.”
People give content to this formal notion by way of “real symbols.” “And a
real symbol,” Bloch says, “is one where the thing signified is still disguised
from itself, in the real object, and not just for the human apprehension of
that thing.” An example of these symbols is the Christian symbol of the
kingdom. These symbols, however multiple and diverse, must all point to
some as yet indiscernible unitary objective, some definitive terminus that
Bloch speaks of as an Ithaca. Nothing in my account requires that there be
this sort of unitary, “noumenal,” Ithaca for hope to make complete sense.
How strongly Bloch would insist upon this unity is open to question. Fur
ther, it is not clear that Bloch would give, as I do, unequivocal priority to the
persons in whom one hopes over the state of affairs for which one hopes.
See Ernst Bloch, The Principle o f Hope, tr. by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice,
Notes 265
and Paul Knight (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986), III, 1312-1376, esp.
1346-1347 and 1365-1373.
41. Disagreements about how and to what extent the future is open can lead
to distinctions between sensible hopes and foolish or vain hopes.
42. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, tr. by Emma Cranfurd (London: Victor
Gollancz, 1951) 67. Hereafter cited as HV. My description of hope owes
much to Marcel. But it does not imply, as he seems to, that all genuine
hope ultimately presupposes the existence of a personal God. See in this
connection HRP, 460.
43. The following exemplifies a hope in humans which is not explicitly politi
cal. “Humanism is a way of hoping, or wishing men to be brothers one with
another, and of wishing that civilizations, each on its own account and all
together, should save themselves and save us. It means accepting and hoping
that the doors of the present should be wide open to the future, beyond all
the failures, declines and catastrophes predicted by strange prophets .... The
present cannot be the boundary, which all centuries, heavy with eternal trage
dy, see before them as an obstacle, but which the hope of man, ever since
man has been, has succeeded in overcoming.” Fernand Braudel, “The His
tory of Civilization” in his On History, tr. by Sarah Matthews (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago Press, 1980) p. 217.
44. It is worth noting that the specific “future time” toward which a hope is
oriented is not sufficient to distinguish political from religious hope. All
political hope is, to be sure, “this worldly.” But all religious hope need not
be “otherworldly.” See Pedro Ramet, “The Interplay of Religious Policy and
Nationalities Policy in the Soviet Union” in his Religion and Nationalism in
Soviet and East European Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984)
esp. pp. 3-4.
45. Alasdair MacIntyre has seen something of the sort of political hope
which I describe. He argues that the Hegelian, and Marxian, concept of
alienation and its overcoming rests upon a hope which is distinct both from
“the religious faith that was its predecessor, and from the scientific depen
dence on would-be predictions of inevitable progress.” Strictly speaking,
MacIntyre says, Marxist humanism does not claim to make a warranted
prediction about a transition to socialism. It does not pretend to prescribe a

specific solution for the problem of alienation. But it does claim to “specify
certain characteristics that any solution must possess.” If one admits that no
solution to political problems is definitive, then this sort of specification of
characteristics of solutions is what I too claim as the result of political hope.
See his Marxism and Christianity (New York: Schocken Books, 1968) 89-90.
I neither endorse nor reject MacIntyre’s claims about Marxism. I only note
our agreement about the existence, or at least the possibility, of political
hope.
46. On the possibility and importance of such a belief, see HH, 172.
47. See PH, 2-3, and passim.
48. The negative connotations associated with presumption and despair can
not be avoided. But since each of them can animate politics, their can
didacies deserve consideration here.
4 9 .1 was guided to see these two possible orientations as forms of despair by

Kierkegaard’s analysis of despair in Sickness Unto Death.
50. For a good example of politics of containment in practice, consider the

dealings of the several governments arranging the treaties terminating World
War I. Each government tried to contain every other one, whether ally or
foe. For a clear account of these dealings see David Stevenson, The First
World War and International Politics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988).
51. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by

Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), II, 44, 65, and 70, and
his Epistola de Tolerantia, ed. by R. Klibansky and J. W. Gough (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1968), 15-16. See also RMPT, 42-43 and 46.
52. I have no conceptual basis for claiming that it is impossible that there be
other candidates for this role of fundamental orientation. But to my knowl
edge history provides no grounds for considering any others. All political
claims concerning proper attitudes of which I am aware can be analyzed in
terms of the candidates I have discussed here.
Notes 267
53. See in this connection IR, esp. 1-10. It is of course virtually certain that
biological factors will eventually lead to the termination of the human race.
But that will be unavoidable. Hope precludes avoidable risks of annihilation
of the human species.
54. See CT, 220. See also Heidegger’s distinction between proper and dis
torted care or solicitude (Filrsorge) in Being and Time, tr. by John Macquar-
rie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) 158-159.
55. Godfrey, following Marcel, sees hope as ideally aiming at mutual love.
See HH, 45-46 and esp. 113. Also see HV, esp. 49-50. This linking of hope
to love leads me to think that the sort of hope Marcel and Godfrey have in
mind is religious rather than political.
Politics and Coercion (pp. 161-174)
1. For a detailed presentation of this position and its connection with the
works of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, see my “Renovating the Problem of
Politics” in this volume. Hereafter cited as RP.
2. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. Joseph Bien (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1973), 28.
3. My distinctions between first and third person expressions make use of

leads provided by Georges Gusdorf in his Traite de I’existence morale (Paris:
Colin, 1949), 75-85.

Books, 1959), 218. Hereafter cited as HC.
5. Obviously I have not given a complete account of these four types of ex
pressions. I think that it would be profitable to explore further the charac
teristics of the different types of expression. But what I have presented is
sufficient for present purposes.
6. Support for, but not proof of, these claims can be found in my “On
Speech and Temporality,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 18, Fall 1974,171-180.
7. See HC, esp. 178-184 and 220-221, and her “Reflections on Violence,”
New York Review o f Books, Feb. 27, 1969, 19-31. Throughout this paper,
when I use the term “consent” I am not using it in a Lockean sense. That is,
I do not hold that consent establishes or inaugurates the body politic de
novo.. Rather, consent in this context involves an acknowledgment that one
is born into a heritage which pre-delineates, without causally d e te r m in in g , his
destiny. Later in the paper, I use the metaphor “circle of consent.” Again,
this circle is not inaugurated de novo by the contemporaries who inhabit it.
Rather, the circle is acknowledged as that community into which they are
born and which provides the concrete basis, e.g. language, particular history,
models, etc., from which one’s own expressive activity springs.
8. Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, tr. by Emma Craufurd, (London: Victor

Gollancz Ltd., 1951), 67. Hereafter cited as HV. See also HC, 219-223.
9. HV, 29-67.
10.1 find oblique support for this claim in HC, 220. Marcel notes that what
I would call circles of consent have a duty “to remain in a sort of state of
active expectation or availability in relation to other groups moved by a dif
ferent inspiration....” See his Man Against Mass Society, tr. by G. S. Fraser,
(Chicago: Henry Regency Co., 1962), 268. Marcel does not satisfactorily
distinguish, however, between you-expression and we-expression.
11. See RP.
12. It should be pointed out that since there can be any number of reasons
for the absence of consent, the moral, as opposed to the political, legitimacy
of coercion depends upon the grounds of the lack of support.
13. Just as the different types of expression give rise to tensions in the inter
course among men, so too the intrinsic possibility of each man’s engaging in
different types of expression gives rise to an irreducible tension within each
man. I would claim, though I will not argue it here, that it is the necessity of
coping with this tension within a man that gives rise to ethics. The Aristote
lian distinction between ethics and politics and the orientation of ethics to
politics articulates, I think, the complexity of the issues arising from man’s
inherent possibility of engaging in multiple types of expression.
Notes 269
14. Arendt has noted the antipolitical character of love (a form of we-expres-
sion) in HC, 218, and the antipolitical tendency of both philosophy (a form
of it-expression) and art (a form of I-expression) in Between Past and Future
(New York: The Viking Press, 1968), 233-246 and 215-218.
15. John Locke, The Second Treatise o f Government (Indianapolis: The

Bobbs-Merrill Col, 1952), 31-35. I do not, of course, accept the theory of
consent necessary for establishing the political realm which Locke advocates
in this work.
16. Arendt, too, has seen the connection between power and coercion. See
HC, 169-171.
Ideology, Utopia and Responsible Politics (pp. 175-189)
1.Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. by George H. Taylor

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Hereafter references to this
work will be indicated by page numbers incorporated into the body of the
text.
2.For Ricoeur, the social “has more to do with the roles ascribed to us with
in institutions, whereas the cultural involves the production of works of intel
lectual life....The social encompasses the different roles ascribed to us by
varying institutions. The cultural, on the other hand, has more to do with
the medium of language and the creation of ideas” (323 fn.l).
3.See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, trans. by Louis Wirth and Ed
ward Shils (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1936), 75.
4,One principal locus for the manifestation of the ideological function is

courts of law. Robert Cover writes:
The jurisgenerative principle by which legal meaning proliferates in
all communities never exists in isolation from violence. Interpreta
tion always takes place in the shadow of coercion. And from this
fact we may come to recognize a special role for courts. Courts, at
least the courts of the state, are characteristically "jurispathic." It is
remarkable that in myth and history the origin and justification for a
court is rarely understood to be the need for law. Rather, it is un
derstood to be the need to suppress law, to choose between two or

more laws, to impose upon laws a hierarchy. It is the multiplicity of
laws, the fecundity of the jurisgenerative principle, that creates the
problem to which the court and the state are the solution.
Robert Cover, “The Supreme Court 1982 Term, Forward: Nomos and Nar
rative,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 97, No. 4, 1983, 40. Hereafter cited as
NN.
5.There is a striking similarity between Ricoeur’s description and assessment

of utopia and that presented by Thomas R. Flynn in his “The Use and Ab
use of Utopias,” The Modem Schoolman, Vol. 53, No. 3, 1976, 235-264.
Unlike Ricoeur, though, Flynn does not correlate utopia with ideology. Nor
does Flynn emphasize the imaginative character of utopia.
6.1ndependently of Ricoeur, Robert Cover describes law too as a product of

the imagination. He writes: “Law may be viewed as a system of tension or
a bridge linking a concept of a reality to an imagined alternative—that is, as
a connective between two states of affairs, both of which can be represented
in their normative significance only through the devices of narrative. Thus,
one constitutive element of a nomos is the phenomenon George Steiner has
labeled ‘3116^1/: ‘the “other than the case,” the counterfactual propositions,
images, shapes of will and evasion with which we charge our mental being
and by means of which we build the changing, largely Active milieu for our
somatic and our social existence.’ But the concept of a nomos is not ex
hausted by its ‘alternity’; it is neither utopia nor pure vision. A nomos, as a
world of law, entails the application of human will to an extant state of af
fairs as well as toward our visions of alternative futures. A nomos is a pres
ent world constituted by a system of tension between reality and vision.” NN,
9. The passage quoted from Steiner is from After Babel (London and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1975), 222.
7.See in this connection my The Politics o f Hope (London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1986), 140-146. Hereafter cited as PH.
8.The only utopias in question here are those which call for practical action
to implement them. In agreement with Mannheim, Ricoeur says: “A utopia
is not only a dream, but a dream that wants to be realized. It directs itself
Notes 271
toward reality; it shatters reality .... The thrust of utopia is to change reality”
(289).
9.Ricoeur himself makes an analogous argument in his effort to mediate the

Habermas-Gadamer debate concerning the scope of hermeneutics. See his
“Ethics and Culture,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 17, no. 2, Summer 1973, esp.
163-164. And Habermas, for his part, has noted: “Reflection dissolves sub
stantiality because it not only confirms, but also breaks up, dogmatic for-
ces....Reflection does not wrestle with the facticity of transmitted norms
without leaving a trace. It is condemned to be after the fact; but in glancing
back it develops retroactive power.” “A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and
Method,” in Understanding and Social Inquiry, ed. by Thomas McCarthy and
Fred Dallmayr (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 358.
10P H , passim.
ll.F o r a discussion of the conditions for defensible coercion, see PH, 169-
175.
Does Anarchy Make Political Sense? (pp. 191-206)
1. Aristotle, Politics, 1266a 1-5, 1293b 29. Hereafter cited as P.
2. P, 1292a 30-32.
3. See especially Reiner Schurmann, “Political Thinking in Heidegger,” So

cial Research, 45, 1978, 191-221, hereafter cited as PTH; “Questioning the
Foundation of Practical Philosophy,” Human Studies, I, 1978, 357-368, here
after cited as QF\ “The Ontological Difference and Political Philosophy,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 40, 1979, 99-122, hereafter cited
as ODP\ and Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, tr.
by Christine-Marie Gros (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987),
hereafter cited as HBA.
4. HBA, 288.
5. H BA, 253.
6. ODP, 122.
7. HBA, 288, my insertion.
8. //& 4, 270, 273-275.
9. 240.
10. HBA, 240.
11. /ffi/4, 242.
12. PTH, 220; QF, 367; ODP, 101. In this latter piece Schiirmann says:
“Action ... is here not only a consequence of understanding but also its con
dition.”
13. HBA, 281.
14. HBA, 255-260.
15. HBA, 264.
16. HBA, 260-264.
17. HBA, 265-269.
18. HBA, 270-275.
19. HBA, 279. My emphasis.
20. HBA, 280 and 260.
21. HBA, 280. See also PTH, 115, and ODP, 111-115.
22. HBA, 243.
23. Hubert Dreyfus, for example, gives a subtly and importantly different cast
to the politics one can derive from Heidegger. Like Schiirmann, Dreyfus
sees that Heidegger encourages us to resist the “totalizing, normalizing un-
Notes 273
derstanding of being” that holds sway in this epoch dominated by technologi

cal or technocratic thinking. To resist this totalization, Heidegger, like Fou
cault, though less radically, calls for the preservation of the “endangered
marginal and local.”
The call to preserve the marginal and the local is not a call to try to
revive some cultural paradigm and its practices, e.g., Greek republicanism,
from the past. Rather, according to Dreyfus, Heidegger “would say that we
should, indeed, try to preserve such practices, but they can only save us if
they are radically transformed and integrated into a new understanding of
reality.” And we ourselves cannot produce this new understanding. It can
only come to us as a gift. Though we can see what is needed, the only thing
we can do about it is to dispose ourselves to receive this new gift. Thus,
Dreyfus concludes: “We must preserve the endangered species of practices
that remain in our culture in the hopes that one day they will be pulled to
gether in a new paradigm rich enough and resistent enough to give new
meaningful direction to our lives. This is what I have called Heidegger’s
super-passive optimism.” See Hubert L. Dreyfus, “On the Ordering of
Things: Being and Power in Heidegger and Foucault,” The Southern Journal
o f Philosophy, Vol. 28, Supplement, 1989, 83-96, esp. 91-95. See also John
Haugeland, “Dasein’s Disclosedness,” The Southern Journal o f Philosophy,
Vol. 28, Supplement, 1989, 51-74, esp. 65-67.
24. See my The Politics o f Hope (London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1986)
2-3, 100-101. Hereafter cited as PH.
25. See Hans Jonas, The Imperative o f Responsibility (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1984), esp. 6-11.
26. Sartre describes this devolution in his Critique o f Dialectical Reason, tr. by
Alan Sheridan-Smith and ed. by Jonathan R6e (London: New Left Books,
1976) I, 345-504.
27. HBA, 292-293.
28. H BA, 288-289.

29. If Schiirmann should claim that anarchic praxis simply will befall people,
then it is hard to see how his position,if not mere wishful thinking, is not a
prediction of some sort. But predictions must rest on positive evidence, not
mere negative evidence such as the evidence that the metaphysical era is
over.
30. QF, 367.
31. HBA, 271.
32. HBA, 279. My emphasis.
33. PTH, 221. My emphasis.
34. See in this connection, ODP, 122.
35. See Dennis H. Wrong, Power (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1988), 113-123.
36. HBA, 273. See also QF, 365.
37. See PH, esp. 102-103 and 142-143.
38. See Herbert Simon, Administrative Behavior (New York: Macmillan,

1947), esp. 38-39 and 109-119.
39. Lawrence J. Biskowski, “Contingency, Irony, and Democracy: The Van

ishing Citizen in Richard Rorty’s Political Thought,” unpublished manuscript,
4. Hereafter cited as CID.
40 .1 take this example from Mark Selden, “Reassessing Maoism in the Light
of the Democratic Movement in China,” unpublished lecture at the Univer
sity of Georgia, May 4, 1990.
41. See in this connection CID, 18-21.

Notes 275
In stitu tio n s an d Power (pp. 207-226)
1. Frank Lentriccia, Criticism and Social Change (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1983), 50-51.
2. See Wlad Godzich, “Afterword: Religion, State, and Post(al) Modernism”

in Samuel Weber, Institution and Interpretation (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987). Hereafter cited in the body of the text as II. Both
Godzich and Weber acknowledge a major debt to Paul De Man. Godzich’s
“Afterword” is explicitly framed as a reply to Lentriccia. For present pur
poses I will concentrate on Godzich’s contribution and will not deal with
Weber, even though Weber’s work is not without interest. Further, see John
D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1987). Hereafter cited in the body of the text as RH. As Caputo makes
plain, he is heavily indebted to Kierkegaard and Heidegger as well as D er
rida. Unlike Godzich, he makes no mention of Lentriccia. Elsewhere,
though, Caputo does defend Derrida against charges of political irrespon
sibility. See Caputo’s “Beyond Aestheticism: Derrida’s Responsible Anar
chy,” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 18. 1988, 59-73.
3. See Herbert Spiegelberg, Steppingstones Toward an Ethics for Fellow Ex-

isters (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986) for several essays pertinent to an “ethics of
otherness.” His view is vastly different from Caputo’s.
4. As Caputo makes clear (RH, 272), his ethics of Gelassenheit is much in
debted to Emmanuel Levinas. See Levinas, Totality and Infinity, tr. by Al-
phonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), esp. section 3.
5. Perhaps the fit would be even more comfortable if Caputo would not
regard his defiant subversion as religious.
6. See in this connection my “One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s

Philosophy of Language and His Political Philosophy,” Tulane Studies in
Philosophy, Vol. XXII, 1980, esp. 74-77.
7. It is worth recalling that Kierkegaard treats defiance as a species of des

pair, one which consists in denying the self s relatedness to the Divine Power.
Caputo’s defier in effect tries to disclaim its full historicality and sociality.
See Kierkeggard, Fear and Trembling and Sickness Unto Death, tr. by Walter
Lowrie (Garden City: Doubleday Books, 1954), 200-207.
8. See Edward Goodwin Ballard, Philosophy and the Liberal Arts (Dor
drecht: Kluwer, 1989), 295.
9. See in this connection Frank Lentriccia, “On Behalf of Theory” in Criti

cism in the University, ed. by Gerald Graff and Reginald Gibbons (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1985), 108-109.
10. See Plato, The Republic, 501a.
11. Aristotle, Politics, 1261al0-30, 1266al-5, 1279al7-21, 1293b29.
12. Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cam
bridge University Press, 1985), Vol. 2, 191. Hereafter PHS.
13. PHS, Vol. 2, 209.
14. Merleau-Ponty, Adventures o f the Dialectic, tr. by Joseph Bien (Evanston:

Northwestern University Press, 1973), 143. Hereafter cited in the body of
the text as AD . See also James Miller, History and Human Existence (Berke
ley: University of California Press, 1979), 209-212.
15. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the Lectures at the College de

France, 1952-1960, tr. by John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1970) 40-41. Hereafter cited in the text as TL.
16. See Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror tr. by John O’Neill (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1969), 1. Hereafter cited in the text as HT.
17. See Merleau-Ponty, Sigits, tr. by Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: North

western University Press, 1964), 35. Hereafter cited in the text as S.
18. For an earlier version of this claim, see SNS, 152. In another, related
context, Merleau-Ponty said: "The pressure of the individual in the institu
tion and of the institution in the individual is evident in the case of linguistic
change. It is often the wearing down of a form which suggests to us a new
Notes 277
way of using the means of discrimination which are present in the language
at a given time.... The contingent fact, taken over by the will to expression,
becomes a new means of expression which takes its place, and has a lasting
sense in the history of this language." See his In Praise o f Philosophy, tr. by
John Wild and James Edie (Evanston: Northwesetern University Press,
1963), 55.
19. Bernhard Waldenfels, “The Ruled and the Unruly: Functions and Limits
of Institutional Regulation,” in The Public Realm, ed. by Reiner Schum ann,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 191-192.
20. See Anthony Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982) esp. 28-39. Hereafter
cited in the text as PCST.
Books, 1959), 179-80.
22. See in this connection Charles Sherover, “The Temporality of the Com
mon Good: Futurity and Freedom,” The Review o f Metaphysics, Vol.
XXXVII, no. 3, March 1984, 496.
2 3 .1 have tried to indicate some of the main features of such a politics in my

The Politics o f Hope (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).
Index
Aeschylus 121 Capitalism 6, 17, 40, 46, 49

Althusser, L. 86, 133 Caputo, J. 208-212, 214, 215, 216,
Anarchy x, 6, 77, 78, 174, 180, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222, 225
183, 186, 191, 192, 194-196, Castaneda, H.-N. 92
199, 201, 202, 203, 206, 219, Chiasm 6, 22, 108
222 Claudel, P. 47
Aquinas, St. Thomas 74 Coercion 14, 33, 66, 67, 82, 135,
Arendt, H. 4, 108, 109, 165, 224, 136, 157, 161, 162, 163, 165,
228 169, 170-174, 201, 202, 230
Aristotle 3, 4, 75, 77, 120, 130, Communism xi, 6, 7, 9, 15, 40, 46
132, 140, 191, 200, 219, 228 Confidence 87, 119, 120, 122,
Art 7, 10-13, 16, 228, 229 123, 124, 126, 129, 131, 133,
Asoka 126, 127 134, 150, 151, 203, 209
Authority 4, 14, 66, 67, 83, 105, Confucius 127
144, 178, 179, 185, 191, 230 Consent 66, 144, 156, 166, 167,
Autonomy 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 44, 168-174, 178
65-70, 72, 77, 112, 113, 117, Conservatism 208
140, 144, 161, 220, 223, 224 Containment 153, 154, 157
Ballard, E. 96 Courage 32, 119, 123, 124, 126,
Barthes, R. 98-100 129, 131, 133, 134, 147, 150
Berlin, I. 65 Creon 4
Bernauer, E. 85 Custom 69, 81, 99
Biskowski, L. 204 Dahl, R. 141, 142
Blanchot, M. 227 De Jouvenel, B. 230
Bruzina, R. 1 De Man, P. 212
Bultmann, R. 120 Deconstruction 207-209, 213, 214,
Burke, K. 177 218, 222
Deleuze, G. 98-100 Forgiveness 47, 79, 136

Democracy 58, 60, 113, 142, 143, Foucault, M. 98, 99,101-103, 210,
145, 191, 199 214, 216
Democritus 121 Frankel, H. 121
Derrida, J. 227 Freedom 5, 32, 34, 41, 43, 47, 51,
Descartes, R. 65, 67, 85, 91 56, 59, 62, 65, 66, 67-83, 96,
Despair 47, 48, 81, 119, 123, 148, 105, 106, 115, 117, 125, 131,
149, 152, 153 132-135, 142, 144, 154, 155,
Destiny 13, 14, 126, 162, 168, 162, 220, 221, 222, 230
194, 201, 229 autonomous freedom 65,
Discourse x, 3, 14, 22-24, 26, 27, 66, 67, 68, 71, 77, 82,
28, 30, 32, 61, 68, 70, 72, 73, 83, 84
83, 91, 93, 94, 101-104, 131, relational freedom 63,
133, 177, 181, 192, 217 65, 73, 77, 78, 80, 83,
Dufrenne, M. 220, 223 84, 131-133, 135-137
Dunn, J. 147 Gadamer, H.-G. xi, 145, 214, 227
Eckhart, M. 195 Gandhi, M. 125, 126
Economics 9, 101, 112, 129, 140, Geertz, C. 85, 86, 94, 177, 178,
142, 156, 157, 166, 192, 195, 180, 184
203, 205 Giddens, A. 86, 95, 220, 223, 224
Engels, F. 176 Godfrey, J. 149
Equality 125, 132, 213 Godzich, W. 208, 212-214,
Esteem 71, 76, 78, 151, 155 217-220, 222, 223, 225
Fanaticism 46, 123, 150, 189 Guattari, F. 99, 100
Fideism 46, 48, 49, 182, 187, 188, Habermas, J. 10, 143, 180, 182,
189 184, 227, 229, 230
Finitude 17, 22, 28, 31, 34, 35, 51, Harent, S. 119
61, 72, 82, 111, 112, 116, 131, Hegel, G. x, 33, 52
132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 141, Heidegger, M. xi, 3, 4, 6, 7,
144, 145, 151, 172-174, 196, 10-15, 17, 63, 86, 88, 89, 91,
220, 223, 225 94, 98, 105, 106, 107, 108,
Fish, S. 99, 101 161, 191, 195, 196, 208, 209,
Force xi, 14, 42, 52, 60, 98, 211, 228, 229, 230
102, 104, 118, 125, Heraclitus 121
128, 135, 166, 167, Historicality 16, 51, 55, 61, 65,
178, 187, 192, 193, 111, 112, 145, 152, 184, 186,
207, 208, 230 1%, 214, 219, 220, 223, 225
Index 281
History 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, 14, 20, 23, Kristeva, J. 98

27-29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38-43, 45, Laclau, E. 98, 113
48, 49, 51, 52-59, 68, 72, 73, Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 227
83, 86, 87, 89, 91, 100, 102, Law 32, 69, 81, 128, 132
111, 117, 118, 126, 128-131, Lentriccia, F. 207, 208, 214
133, 145, 152, 161, 162, 168, L6vi-Strauss, C. 86
169, 176, 182, 185, 191, 192, Levinas, E. 227
196, 198, 199, 204-206, 208, Liberalism 6, 7, 9, 56-58
216, 217, 219, 221, 225 Liberty 34, 67, 124, 196
Hobbes, T. 65, 67, 97, 196, 197 Locke, J. 97, 147, 154, 172
Hope xii, 46, 47, 58, 60, 115, 116, Lyotard, J.-F. 98, 102
118-137, 139, 143,145-158, Machiavelli, N. 5, 7, 39, 47, 48
167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 188, MacIntyre, A. 89, 90
206 Mannheim, K. 177, 180-182, 187
Humanism 9, 32, 33, 35, 53, 57, Marcel, G. xi, 46, 124, 151, 167,
229 228
Husserl, E. 3, 25, 69, 71, 75, 115, Marx, K. 8, 33, 41, 53, 56, 175,
147, 148, 152 176, 177, 180
Ideology 175-189, 195 Marxism 1, 5, 15, 17, 33, 39, 49,
Institutions 6, 7, 12, 13, 38, 41, 51-54, 56, 117, 176, 177, 178,
42, 43, 45, 52, 56, 57, 58, 196
60-62, 66-68, 83, 128, 131, 132, McBride, W. 2
133, 134, 136, 207, 208, McGinn, C. 92, 93
210-225 Mercy 57, 81
Interrogation 29-31, 35, 59, 60, Merleau-Ponty, M. xi, xii, 1, 2, 3,
71, 105, 107, 108, 111, 141 6-10, 12-15, 17, 19, 20-49,
Intersubjectivity 22, 29, 31, 34, 51-62, 69, 70, 71, 72, 105,107,
38, 41, 42, 43, 51, 59, 61, 65, 108, 118, 132, 133, 141,
68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 77, 78, 83, 161-163, 167, 207, 214,
111, 117, 118, 131 220-225, 228
Jay, M. 139, 143 Metaphysics 4, 6, 11, 46, 63, 191,
Jonas, H. 197 192-194, 196, 199, 202-206,
Justice 52, 57, 81, 82, 105, 125, 208, 209, 214
139, 144, 147, 222 Metz, J. 133
Kant, I. 97 Mill, J.S. 97
Kenny, A. 86, 94 Morality 44, 81
Kierkegaard, S. 215 Moravscik, J. 146, 152, 156
Mouffe, C. 98, 113 Presumption 47, 48, 119, 123,

Nietzsche, F. 63, 99, 191 150, 152, 153, 157, 202
Nihilism 110,201 Quietism 208, 214, 222
Nozick, R. 145 Rawls, J. 67, 145
Oakeshott, M. 130 Reform 45, 48, 210
Pacifism 189 Religion 119, 125, 130, 131, 133,
Palmier, J.-M. 228 140, 156, 179, 205, 212, 216,
Partridge, P. 65-67 217
Patience 119, 124-126 Renunciation 125, 126
Patriotism 125,131, 134, 135 Repentance 136
Pindar 121 Resignation 41, 57, 153, 154, 222
Plato 4, 120, 191, 197, 218 Respect 54, 61, 73, 78-80, 111,
Poggeler, O. 228 112, 127, 132,135, 136,137,
Political education 130, 156, 186, 146, 147, 148,151, 152,155,
187 156, 157, 165, 211, 225
Politics of hope 37, 46, 47, 48, 49, Responsibility xi, xii, 57, 63, 66,
118, 131, 135, 137, 156, 157, 79, 89, 96, 98, 129, 136, 194
188, 225 Revolution 16, 32-34, 48,169, 205
Politics of Miindigkeit 143, 144, Ricoeur, P. xi, xii, 86, 90, 91, 110,
145, 146, 147, 152 140, 175, 176,177, 178,179,
Politics of redemption 142, 143, 180, 181, 182,183, 184,185,
144, 152 186, 187, 188, 189
Politics of vision x, 118, 152, 196, Rousseau, J.-J. 5, 15, 67, 97
203 Saint-Simon, H. de 180
Politics of will or might x, 196 Sartre, J.-P. xi, 33, 41, 44, 67, 68,
Power 4, 8, 10, 14, 35, 42-46, 48, 69, 77, 198, 199, 221
53, 66, 67, 72, 73, 82, 85, 94, Saunders, I. 103, 104
95, 99, 111, 121, 124, 126, 127, Saussure, F. 38, 39, 41, 70
128, 137, 139, 142, 166-170, Schrag, C. 2, 97
172-174, 178, 179-181, 183, Schum ann, R. 191, 192, 194,
184, 185, 186, 188, 202, 203, 195, 196-204, 206
207-215, 217-221, 223, 224, Science 3, 10, 12, 25, 27, 41, 44,
225, 230 53-55, 69, 92, 117, 176, 177,
Praxis 35, 48, 69, 169, 176, 177, 210
178, 193, 195, 198, 199-201, Seneca 121
204, 206 Silence 2, 19-25, 27-31, 34, 35, 36,
94, 197
Index 283
Simon, H. 142,203
Sisyphus 110, 215
Sokolowski, R. 3, 227
Sophocles 121
Spiegelberg, H. 82
Taminiaux, J. 21-23
Taylor, C. 67, 102-104, 220
Taylor, G. 175
Technology 10-12, 17, 38, 69, 192,
193-195, 210, 229
Totalitarianism 77
Trotsky, L. 33
Tyranny x, 4, 6, 77, 117, 118, 129,
130, 131, 136, 137, 174, 180,
191, 196, 198-200, 218, 219
Utopia 143, 156, 175, 176, 179,
180-189, 220, 224
Violence 2, 14, 32, 47, 51-61, 192,
194, 199, 201, 209, 211, 221,
222, 224, 228, 230
Voluntarism 49
Waldenfels, B. 220, 222, 223
Walzer, M. 82
Weber, M. 56, 178, 180
Weber, S. 212
Whitebook, J. 143, 144
Whiteside, K. 51, 52, 55, 56, 58,
59, 61
Wilshire, B. 1
Wolin, S. 140
Zimmerman, M. 227, 229
Contributions to Phenomenology
IN COOPERATION WITH
THE CENTER FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH IN PHENOMENOLOGY
Editor: William R. McKenna, Miami University
Editorial Board:
David Carr (University of Ottawa), Lester Embree (Duquesne University), Jose
Huertas-Jourda (Wilfred Laurier University), Joseph J. Kockelmans (The Pennsyl
vania State University), Algis Mickunas (Ohio University), J. N. Mohanty (Temple
University), Thomas M. Seebohm (Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Mainz),
Richard M. Zaner (Vanderbilt University).
Publications:
1. F. Kersten: Phenomenological Method. Theory and Practice. 1989
ISBN 0-7923-0094-7
2. E. G. Ballard: Philosophy and the Liberal Arts. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0241-9
3. H. A. Durfee and D.F.T. Rodier (eds.): Phenomenology and Beyond. The Self
and Its Language. 1989 ISBN 0-7923-0511-6
4. J. J. Drummond: Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism.
Noema and Object. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0651-1
5. A. Gurwitsch: Kants Theorie des Verstandes. Herausgegeben von T.M.
Seebohm. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0696-1
6. D. Jervolino: The Cogito and Hermeneutics. The Question of the Subject in
Ricoeur. 1990 ISBN 0-7923-0824-7
7. B.P. Dauenhauer: Elements of Responsible Politics. 1991
ISBN 0-7923-1329-1
Further information about our publications on Phenomenology are available on request.
Kluwer Academic Publishers - Dordrecht / Boston / London

BERNARD P. DAUENHAUER
Elements of Responsible Politics
The essays collected in this volume address a set of issues crucial to

contemporary political thought and action. Some of these issues, e.g.
freedom and political agency, are perennial. Others spring from distinctive
features of our present situation that are likely to become permanent, e.g.
the globalization of economics and politics, the military threat to the
continued existence of the human race, and ecological degradation.
These essays do not pretend to provide either a complete analysis of or a
specific prescription for any of these matters. But they do bring to light
elements essential for any responsible grappling with them either in
thought or in practice.
These essays develop and extend the position Dauenhauer initially
articulated in his The Politics of Hope (1986), a position that draws
heavily on Aristotle and Merleau-Ponty and incorporates valuable contribu
tions from Gadamer and Ricoeur.
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS CTPH7 ISBN 0-7923-13

(Contributions To Phenomenology, Vol. 7) Bernard P. Dauenhauer-Elements of Responsible Politics-Kluwer (1991)

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

(Contributions To Phenomenology, Vol. 7) Bernard P. Dauenhauer-Elements of Responsible Politics-Kluwer (1991)

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

BERNARD P.

William R. McKenna, Miami University (Editor)

The purpose of this series is to foster the development of phenomenological philosophy

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,

Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates

Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada

In all other countries, sold and distributed

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the Netherlands

Edward Goodwin Ballard

Renovating the Problem of Politics ............................................... 3

One Central Link Between Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of

Merleau Ponty’s Political Thought: Its Nature and

Merleau-Ponty on Politics, History, and V iolence....................... 51

Relational Freedom and Its Political Consequences ...................65

The Interpretation of the Human Way of Being and Its

Hope and Its Ramifications for Politics ........................................117

The Place of Hope in Politics ........................................................ 139

Politics and Coercion ...................................................................... 161

Ideology, Utopia, and Responsible P o litics................................... 175

Does Anarchy Make Political S e n s e ? .............................................191

On Institutions and Power: Deconstruction and an Alternative . 207

I acknowledge with gratitude the permissions I have received from pub­

This collection of essays draws together work done during a period of

practical. In specifying these elements, this collection in effect presents a

plete repudiation of either rationalism or voluntarism. Rather, it salvages

Thought,” ties my reflections on silence and the restraint involved therein to

Robert Sokolowski in Husserlian Meditations, writes:

Heidegger situates Husserlian themes within the wider context of the

Western philosophy, from Plato onward, has been marked by at least a

and what is to be achieved in politics. But he can hardly be said to have

Thus, on one approach, the classical tension between philosophy and

If history does not have a direction, like a river, but a meaning, if it

Second, in this same work, Merleau-Ponty proceeds to argue for a non-

I take it from the general thrust of Merleau-Ponty’s political thought that

questionable political conduct on the part of a thinker certainly

In what follows I do not claim to present Heidegger’s own views. My

The establishing of truth in the work is the bringing forth of an entity

Projective speech is speech which in preparing the sayable simul­

Heidegger understands institution in a three-fold sense: as bestowing

2) Rulers hold their right to command by reason of their virtuosity in acting,

3) The truth of political conduct comes to be in the actual doing of political

6) Far from being autonomous, political conduct is the expression of the

These elements, to be sure, do not yield a complete political theory. So

As I noted at the beginning of this paper, the classical political tradition

the scope of the issue, as Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger prompt us to do, is

Defensible political conduct is a doing-anew-with-a-difference-in-the-

1) Revolution, in the sense of a radical rupture with a people’s past, owing

2) A politics which claims ahistorical justification is either blind or menda­

3) A definitive politics, a politics whose saying claims to have left nothing

and His Political Thought

The term ‘silence’ appears in many different contexts in Merleau-Ponty’s

Thus, since every conceivable being is related either directly or in­

But Jacques Taminiaux has called to attention an evolution of capital

The world of silence is the perceptual world, the Lebenswelt, which

In this new conception of the chiasm, the intertwining of perception and

Let me defend now this preliminary thesis. The intentional analysis of

Perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s most concise articulation of the scope of the

Languages are so sensitive to the interventions of general history and

Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that this essential incompleteness in dis­

There is a sort of indistinction between the act of speaking and the

I acknowledge with gratitude the permissions I have received from pub

Projective speech is speech which in preparing the sayable simul

2) A politics which claims ahistorical justification is either blind or menda

Thus, since every conceivable being is related either directly or in

Merleau-Ponty goes on to say that this essential incompleteness in dis

The phenomenon of silence with its basic characteristics provides sub

But even if my amendment is left aside, Merleau-Ponty’s claims concern

Just as Merleau-Ponty denies the possibility of pure thought and com

a component of a whole. None is self-subsisting with an independent posi

When politics is thought according to the model of parlance, the charac

Let me now turn to an assessment of the consequences of Merleau-Pon

of hope is resolutely and unremittingly committed, so weaken it in the execu

successful political action requires a mode of thought that, at a mini

In this paper I want to present reasons for rejecting Whiteside’s judg

To make my case, I will concentrate on the topics of history and vio

During the first period of his political thought, Merleau-Ponty is une

Since, in respect of the future, we have no other criterion than prob

political obligation [is] grounded in a decision, to submit to a sover

But perhaps the spirit animating the interpretation of freedom as auton

maintaining alliances. Alliances in their practical application cannot justifiab

Death does not just “belong” to one’s own Dasein in an undifferen