Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy
Whitehead and Continental Philosophy in the Twenty-First Century: Dislocations
Surprise at the Intersection of Phenomenology and Linguistics
Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice
Reviewed by: Christopher Black (Texas A&M University)
Introduction
Taking Turns With the Earth offers to the reader a rich and incisive analysis of intergenerational justice, especially as it relates to issues pertaining to the environment. With intergenerational ethics being relevant to so many issues that we face today, this book offers a timely theoretical analysis of the nature of our obligations to non-contemporary others.
This book makes clear that the theoretical nature of obligations to future generations is fraught and contested terrain, and Fritsch spends a sizable amount of time early in the text outlining the major ontological problems and methods in intergenerational justice (IGJ), of which there are multitudes. At times, especially in the early expository sections, so much theoretical matter is covered in such close succession that it becomes theoretically dense. The multifarious forms of epistemic problems, interaction problems, world-constitution issues, and nonexistence challenges, and the various responses to each problem almost blur together into one mass. But if taken slowly and deliberately, this expository portion is tremendously helpful towards understanding the state of the IGJ literature. Within this section, too, certain portions – such as the discussion of the nonidentity problem (34) and the challenges it raises to common moral concepts such as autonomy and personhood – raise especially powerful challenges to IGJ in general, but also ones that Fritsch ably responds to. Only after this expository portion do we get to Fritsch’s original contributions to the topic, which include his major claim and two models of intergenerational justice that follow from it.
He responds to the epistemic and ontological problems associated with intergenerational justice by promoting a social ontology that is attuned to what he calls the “ineluctability” of normativity, and which deals directly with “the relations among subjectivity, time, and generations.” Fritsch identifies a basis of normativity which he thinks need be recognized for an ontological account of IGJ to be adequately normatively sensitive. Specifically, he claims that both natality and mortality, or the fact that we are always already living in the time of birth and death, should be considered constitutive of moral subjectivity. Moral subjectivity is a term which he thinks contains both moral status (being a legitimate object of moral concern) and moral agency (the capacity to freely choose a course of action). This moral subjectivity-constituting view of birth and death – which he expands upon further in chapter two – foregrounds the two models of IGJ which he introduces in chapters three and four, respectively. The first model of IGJ that Fritsch proposes is indirect reciprocity, which he elaborates further into his idea of asymmetrical reciprocity. This model is meant to capture the role that indebtedness to previous others plays in giving to future others. The model is exemplified as follows: “A gives to B who ‘returns’ the gift to C (so for example, from past to future via the present.” (11) The second model of IGJ – which is outlined in chapter 4 – is the idea of “taking turns.” Fritsch argues this model is more appropriate for holistic or quasi-holistic objects (such as the earth or nature) because such holistic objects cannot be divided up and distributed like a cake. Whereas reciprocity depends upon substitutability, taking turns does not depends upon this principle. Thus, the latter model is better equipped to deal with holistic, intergenerational, indivisible “objects” in a way that the former is not.
Summary
Now that I have quickly outlined the general structure of book I will undertake a more detailed summary, with an eye towards identifying the way of thinking about IGJ (i.e. the presentist view) that Taking Turns With the Earth resists, and then I will summarize the alternatives models to the presentist view that Fritsch offers in this book. Following that I will offer a few comments about the strengths and weakness of this book.
The book starts out quickly with a series of salvos directed towards a certain set of people whom Fritsch refers to as “presentists.” Presentists are those who exist as if they gave “birth to themselves.” Such people believe themselves to be self-standing individuals that are ontologically unrelated to past or future generations. Consequently, and critically, Fritsch (with continual reference to Stephen Gardiner) claims that because of this ontological short-sightedness presentists are subject to a form of “moral corruption.” Such corruption, it seems, is derived from a lack of social-ontological self-awareness, and results in a lack of care or adequate moral concern for noncontempories (both past and future, but especially future). Presentists’ lack of moral concern for noncontempories reveals itself most clearly on issues relating to the climate and non-renewable energy use. It is certainly true that conversations about these topics often reveal that there are many people who simply do not care about the welfare of individuals who will live, say, three or more generations down the line. (This is the concept of “non-overlapping future people” illustrated on page 21.) The general nature of Fritsch’s indictment of presentism is compelling, and his concerns about intergeneration ethics are well warranted, but I think that it would be helpful if his idea of moral corruption (3) were given more explication, especially as many who participate in “presentist” practices (heavy dependence on fossil fuels by driving daily, for example) probably do so unreflectively or out of sense of perceived necessity. Fritsch’ concept of moral corruption seems to imply a moral quality more active and malicious than this, though. Instead, however, the indictment of moral corruption is given as just so.
Fritsch then argues that recently certain issues that are intergenerationally relevant, such as climate change, have come nearer to the center of public consciousness, and in doing so have made the topic of intergenerational justice more approachable. Notwithstanding these shifts in public approachability, he argues that there is still a prevailing – or at least a significant – mythology of the temporally and historically isolated individual alive today, and he sets it as his task to debunk the myth of this kind of individualism in this book. In the introductory section he seems to come very close to claiming that those who hold to ideals such as individuality or autonomy, or perhaps even those who even believe that individuals exist at all, do not have the capacity to have care-filled relationship with contemporary or noncontemporary others. Surely it is the case that our identities are significantly extended through past and future, but it also seems that individuals are the kinds of being – and perhaps the only kinds of beings – that are capable of the capacity to care, be they a dog, a frog, or a friend. Crowds can’t care, only the individuals in them, at least if we are talking about the kind of care that can turn into moral corruption, not the kind of synergetic “care” that a superorganism (i.e. an ant colony or a coral reef) might be said to have for itself. But, to be clear, it seems that the idea of individuality that he is resisting is an idea of something like the liberal or the neo-liberal self, not an idea of selfhood like Heidegger’s authentic Dasein or Levinas’ other-constituted moral subject, and in the overarching scheme of this book this interpretation seems more sensible. Indeed, later in the book Fritsch uses Heidegger’s “being-towards-death” as a stepping-stone (45/46) to get towards Levinas’ modified, intergenerationalized interpretation of self: being-for-beyond-my death (l’être-pour-au-delà-da-ma-mort). (67) Upholding an intergenerational idea of self is critical to moving beyond a presentistic idea of self and, if Fritsch is right about presentism leading to moral corruption, then eschewing a presentistic idea of selfhood should lead us towards a better ontological alternative. As the title of Chapter 1.4 states: “Ontological Problems Call for Ontological Approaches.”
To make the ontological adjustments that Fritsch argues that we need, the argument of the book turns towards an engagement with Levinas. Fritsch specifically engages with the intersections of time, normativity, and sociality that can be found in Levinas’ thought. Levinas offers a way of thinking about death, temporality, sociality, and normativity in a way that is helpful to Fritsch’ project of re-orienting IGJ. Fritsch seems to rely most heavily on Levinas’ thinking about temporality, and for good reason, because – as will soon be shown – this section adds strength to this book’s argument. Fritsch demonstrates that for Levinas death is not an isolating, individualizing event – as the existentialist pathos of Heidegger would have us believe – but that it is instead an inherently interpersonal, historical event. Levinas agrees with Heidegger that meaning and agency depend of death, but contra Heidegger Levinas maintains that one’s own death is always inaccessible, and that it is only known in and through the experience of others. For Levinas death is ever futural and never calculable; because of this, it is possible to psychically murder someone, but it is impossible to morally annihilate someone. (76) Moral traces, vestiges, and memories of the moral other remain in a meaningful order beyond their physical death – even if the body is dead, there is no total annihilation of the other.
Levinas’ argument that a meaningful order exists beyond one’s death and his claim that death is a fundamentally interpersonal event, paired with Levinas’ assessment that our being is always already existing between the “immemorial past” and the infinite future, leads Fritsch towards his development of a model of ethical responsibility based upon Levinas’ idea of fecundity (fecondité). Taking adequate precautions (86-91), Fritsch uses fecundity to argue that fecundity makes manifest the claim that relations with future people are not an afterthought but, instead, should be thought of as the exemplification of ethics in general. (88) It is the natal-mortal exposure to one’s child that both opens one up to a meaningful sense of time beyond one’s own life-span, but which also simultaneously hearkens back to the past, to previous generations – to those that gave birth to the parents, and the parents’ parents, and so on. At this nexus – in the fecund sense of time between birth and death – moral subjectivity emerges. This fecund nexus demonstrates to us phenomenologically the kind of temporal being that we are, and also simultaneously infuses both the past and the future with ineluctable moral significance.
At this point, after having argued that we are the kinds of beings that exist as being-for-beyond-my-death and also always in relation to the past, Fritsch begins to turn the argument towards his reciprocity based model of IGJ, which is the first of the two models he proposes in this book. Section 2.5 (“Intergenerational Reciprocities,” 91) introduces the language of reciprocity by stating: “If subjectivity can give birth to a fecund future only by owing to previous others, then its moral-ontological historicity can be captured by a Janus-faced form of reciprocity that refers both backward and forward.” Despite the wordiness of this passage – a regular trait in this book – the introduction of this concept is well-timed, and through its phenomenological descriptions this section does well to set up the normative argument for indirect reciprocity that Fritsch will soon move to. But before doing this, and immediately after introducing the idea of reciprocity, Fritsch invokes Butler’s theory of cohabitation – a theory which argues that Levinas’ distinction between my life and the lives of others is too strong – to gain support in order to help him begin his theory of indirect (or asymmetrical) reciprocity. This interpretive reworking and clarification is needed because Levinas himself held a strongly negative view of the concept of reciprocity (92), and this caveat does well to demonstrate that Fritsch is well aware of the limitations of using Levinas to support his model of reciprocity.
After introducing the basic idea of reciprocity in view of the ontological-normative claim that we exist fundamentally as past and future oriented (and constituted) beings, Fritsch expands the concept of reciprocity beyond its traditional mutualistic usage and argues that a tripartite understanding of reciprocity would better serve our ethical purposes. That is, if we are to understand ourselves, ethically speaking, in terms of the concept of fecundity. This tripartite usage of the concept of reciprocity a distinguishing factor that makes Fritsch’s model of indirect (asymmetrical) reciprocity distinctive. Indirect reciprocity is called “indirect” because the person that what I may owe is not limited exclusively to the person from whom I initially received something, but also to others. Traditional mutualistic ideas of reciprocity depend on the assumption that morally relevant parties will exist in a shared space of time and that the perspectives of morally relevant parties can be simply reversed. They also depend upon the idea that the person who deserves reciprocity is the same person as the one who gave the first gift of exchange in the first place. However, Levinasian temporality and fecundity reveals this basic notion of reciprocity to be incomprehensive. Indirect reciprocity is a sense of reciprocity that cannot be distilled into a traditional form of simple, direct, presentist exchange, but instead extends beyond it. (94) This model of reciprocity calls for “giving back” to the future what is received from the past, even though the recipients of the gift are not the same as those who gave the gift in the first place.
Soon after these clarifications – and roughly halfway through the book – Fritsch introduces two major figures in the book: Derrida and Marcel Mauss. Fritsch uses this middle portion to expound further on the idea of indirect reciprocity. He makes the case that because we are indebted to others from the past this should play a role in our giving to others in the future, even if the “gift” we give to future others is dramatically asymmetrical or altruistic. Because of this second part, Fritsch argues that the notion of indirect reciprocity should be expanded into what he calls asymmetrical reciprocity. (107) Derrida’s critique of Levinas and The Gift by French sociologist Marcel Mauss figure heavily into this portion.
There are two critical elements to asymmetrical reciprocity that make it asymmetrical, and they form the bedrock of this distinctive way of thinking about IGJ. The traditional formulation of indirect reciprocity states that “(past) A gives to (present) B who ‘returns’ the gift to (future) C.” (108) Fritsch argues that this should be traditional formulation should be elaborated into asymmetrical reciprocity first because “if A’s gift is co-constitutive of B (i.e., is part of what allows B to be B), then B cannot ever fully repay the debt; full appropriation would amount to full self-annulment. Thus, the gift remains inappropriable, excessive, and asymmetrical for B, who therefore must free herself from the debt in some way.” (108) According to this argument one cannot fully repay a debt to the original donor without in some way substantially undermining or annulling their identity; the gift, and by extension the repayment, are inextricable from both the donor and the recipient. (Shades of the nonidentity problem appear here.) The debt can only be repaid – in some way, shape, or form – to future others; other others than those who first gave the gift. The second element of asymmetrical reciprocity takes into consideration the excessive, overflowing characterr of this sort of debt. Since this form of debt can never be fully returned to the original donor, this form of debt is always outstanding. Thus, those in the present are always in the process of “giving back” to the future. Thus, in this idea of continual future-oriented obligations constituting our normative being, we can see how this theory of asymmetrical reciprocity links up with Levinas’ of being as being-for-beyond-my-death.
Marcel Mauss is invoked in order to give a concrete sociocultural example of this sort of asymmetrical reciprocity standing at the center of a community’s ethos. Also Mauss is presumably used to suggest that since this sort of gift-receiving-and-giving can be witnessed in certain archaic cultures, then perhaps it can be used as a model of intergenerational relations for our modern world. In the cultures that Mauss studied the donor is not separable from the thing given, but also at the same time the donor is not taken to be the sole owner of the gift. Instead the gift is understood to come from the clan, tribe, traditions, and ancestors. The recipient receives some of the donor’s spirit (in Maori hau or mana), and this spirit co-constitutes both donor and recipient. The obligation to reciprocate originates in the fact that in accepting the gift the recipient assimilates into themselves something that is fundamentally inassimilable (the mysterious elemental spirit of the gift), and thus it necessarily overflows them. Because it overflows, it cannot but be passed on to future others, and in being passed on to the future it is in a sense returning to its own past. This idea, as we can see, in many ways parallels the Levinasian structure of fecundity. An ontological claim (that the gift itself is unassimilable) leads to a moral claim (that one should not try to make it theirs alone, but ought to pass it on.) An example of this kind of gift would be food, for the food in one’s mouth – at least the kind of food that the cultures Mauss studies would eat – bespeaks the presence of ancestors; it would not come about without the gift inheritance of food-related gifts like tilled land, knowledge about farming, hunting, fishing, and so forth. (112) To account for the “return obligation,” that is, the obligation to pass the gift on, the gift is said to be imbued with an active spirit that wishes to return to its origin – to its clan, tribe, tradition, or ancestors. This model of socio-economy stands in marked contrast to the utility-maximizing agency that comprised the bedrock of Hobbes’ society, and indeed “the gift” offers an alternative model for the basis of the social contract. For Mauss the foundation of society (at least in the one’s he reports on) is the gift that comes from the past and demands to be “returned” to future others.
Derrida is brought in to serve as a check on Mauss. Derrida warns against Mauss’ “Rousseauist schema” which attempts to find an absolute bedrock of normativity in some far-off archaic origin. Both Derrida and Mauss agree that there is an element of the “unpossessable” in the gift, but Derrida rejects Mauss’ foundationalism, and resists the idea that a singular normative origin can be found. Fritsch agrees that there is an issue with this sort of Rousseauism in Mauss – and that there is an issue in trying to identify a point of origin in normative life – but does not think it is sufficiently troublesome to motivate us to overlook the role that gifts play in intergenerational relations. They allow us an opportunity to see a normativity that binds past generations to future generations, and thus are relevant to helping understand the nature of intergeneration normativity. Fritsch spends the rest of this chapter outlining more of Derrida’s thoughts about reciprocity and the gift, and defends his view against a variety of potential critiques. He responds to the claim that asymmetrical reciprocity blurs the boundary between gift and exchange, and between private life and the world commerce, by suggesting (via Given Time) that this challenge – and challenges like this – presume the existence of utility-maximizing agents on the one hand, and the family one the other, whereas such a substantial distinction cannot be made. (152).
The nuanced section on asymmetrical reciprocity nicely leads into the introduction of the second and final model of IGJ that Fritsch introduces: Turn-Taking. While asymmetrical reciprocity is meant to show how the indebtedness to previous generations plays a role in our obligation to give to (and to care about the welfare of) future people, even if the gift is asymmetrical or altruistic, taking turns is meant to provide a model for intergenerational sharing of things that cannot be returned partially or incompletely. That is, taking turns is concerned with holistic or quasi-holistic “objects” of sharing, such as the earth or nature. Fritsch argues that there are three merits to the turn-taking model of IGJ. First, turn-taking demonstrates that there are ways other than the reciprocity of the gift that, normatively speaking, take into account the ontological presence of the dead and the unborn in our lives. Secondly, turn-taking is better with respect to quasi-holistic and holistic object in a way that reciprocity is not, because reciprocity implies owing to the future an “equivalent among substitutables” and needs a “common metric to calculate such equivalents.” (155) Reciprocity is inadequate when discussing holistic objects such as the natural environment, the earth, or nature, because substitutability is not a principle that can easily applied to such totalizing entities. However, turn-taking can account for how to treat such holistic objects. Finally, taking turns better treats questions of intergenerational justice as inherently political questions. By citing Aristotle’s Politics Fritsch argues that this is so because a fundamental model of justice relies on the sharing of nonsubstitutable political offices. Turn-taking, Fritsch argues, is the model that free equals ought to take when attempting to share an object that is not divisible like a cake. (155) Fritsch notes this this basic idea of taking turns has received hardly any attention in the IGJ literature, and – in a very general way – this is surprising since this idea can be applied to a wide range of things, from political offices to the earth itself. It is a model that provides a helpful way of thinking about IGJ in the context of holistic, indivisible, intergenerational objects, and for this reason it is a needed (and a very helpful) contribution to this book.
In a method not unlike that one found in the portion on asymmetrical reciprocity, which relied on the temporality of the “time of life and death” to reconceive of past-present-future obligations, in this chapter on turn-taking Fritsch invokes Derrida to deconstruct (“depresentify”) presentism, and to reconceptualize life as a matter of “lifedeath,” or even as “lifedeathbirth.” (161) This is meant to aid in understanding the ontologically connected, co-constitutive nature of the relation between living and nonliving generations.
After a few more forays through Derrida and Aristotle, Fritsch turns towards clarifying precisely what he means by turn-taking by laying out his model of “double turn-taking.” It has two components in its most general formulation: T1 and T2. T1 is the turning of the self back towards itself over time. “Given the noncoincidence of time, no identity is simply given. Any self must, from the beginning, seek to return to itself, promising itself to its future self.” The second part of the turn is T2, which takes into account the differential contexts that the self passes through, but which are always constitutive of the self in the first place. This is the turn toward the other: “To affirm oneself as oneself is to affirm the context without which one could not be what one is, and that means to welcome unconditionally the future to-come as an alterity within itself.” (167) This two-step model of turn-taking can be applied specifically to intergenerational relations, but also to environment issues. For the former, intergenerational relations, the attempted self-return would take place in and through birth from previous generations, and the turn towards the other takes place insofar as we turn towards the next generation. For the latter, the environment, the attempted self-return takes place by the consumption of biospherical resources, and the turn towards the other is the turn towards the earth upon death and also through life’s continuous exchange with nature. (173)
In summary of this discussion of double turn-taking Fritsch says “saying yes to turn-taking means accepting that I receive power from previous others and will leave it to others.” (173) In general the idea of turn-taking being an appropriate model for intergenerational sharing of holistic objects seems good and well-justified, however the level of theoretical detail and distinction-adding in this chapter seems unnecessary, and at times it seems to obfuscate the main point of turn-taking rather than clarifying it.
Final Comments
This general critique mentioned in the previous paragraph applies throughout this book. In this book, as hopefully I have able to show in this review, there are many excellent, lucid, and compelling sections. The early section on ontological problems in IGJ, the middle section on Levinas and fecundity, and the following section on Mauss and asymmetrical reciprocity were each particularly clear, well-argued, and engaging. However, these rich and rewarding veins of thought are often buried beneath mounds of distinctions, caveats, and repetitions. Sometimes it gets hard to dig through, because the essential matter of the main argument is not always separated from additional theoretical matter. Moreover, the book tends to go on a bit longer than needed and to lose steam at the end. Chapter four – the section which introduces turn-taking as a model of IGJ – gives way to a chapter five. This final chapter, while fascinating if standing on its own, seems primarily to turn around and rehash ideas previously covered in a way that is not terribly helpful to the overall experience of the book. This chapter concerns itself with life as lifedeath and the terrestrial claim over the corpse, both ideas which were previously covered. At this point I only have a few tiny, almost trifling critiques. First, there is a slight tendency to introduce very complex issues and then to simply say “I will not be able to discuss these interpretations here.” (115, for example) This leads to bit of expectation disappointment. Secondly, there is also a slight tendency to compile lists of “ists” and isms,” sometimes almost seemingly for its own sake. (212, for example.) This is certainly not a big deal, but just worth noting.
If the preponderance of critique that I offer about this book is in the form of writing critique, and anodyne critique at that, then that speaks to the strength of this book as a strong work philosophical scholarship. Philosophically, I only suggested a concern about Fritsch’s use of “moral corruption” (which I mentioned in my 4th paragraph), and a concern about the idea of “self” that Fritsch is employing (which I mentioned in my 5th paragraph). This book is tremendously well-researched and takes pains to be sure that no theoretical stone goes unturned. Appropriate sources are consulted at appropriate times, and the limitations of claims are clearly articulated. More importantly, this book addresses a pressing ethical issue in our world today. What do we owe to future others, especially in view of our growing knowledge about climate issues? If Fritsch is right, then we owe a lot, and certainly much more than many people take the time to consider that we do. And we owe this to the future because of who, how, and, perhaps most importantly shown by this book, where we are. Taking Turns With the Earth offers a vast reservoir of theoretical material to help us re-conceptualize the nature of our ontological and normative relation to both past and future noncontempories, and it demands that we pay attention to our status as interpersonal beings always living in the time of life and death. In doing so it calls for us to develop our ethical self-understanding, and this call is not just thrown out haphazardly. Instead, this call is motivated and supported by astute philosophical argumentation.
Neunzig Jahre ›Sein und Zeit‹
The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov
Reviewed by: Thomas Nemeth (USA)
Kojève’s slim volume, a translation of a two-part article that originally appeared in 1934/35, while its author was conducting his famous seminars on Hegel in Paris, is itself an “adaptation,” as the translators’ put it, of a 1926 dissertation submitted as a dissertation in Heidelberg under the supervision of Karl Jaspers. This French-language article “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev” was not Kojève’s first presentation of Solovyov’s ideas. He had previously published in 1930 a short piece entitled “Die Geschichtsphilosophie Wladimir Solowjews,” presumably also culled from his dissertation. Kojève was also not the first Russian to submit a dissertation to a German university on Solovyov. Fedor Stepun had already in 1910 – only a decade after Solovyov’s death – submitted a dissertation also with the title Die Geschichtsphilosophie Wladimir Solowjews to Heidelberg University.
Alexandre Kojève’s name needs little introduction to Western audiences familiar with secondary literature on Hegel. The notes from Kojève’s Parisian lectures at the École Pratique des Hautes Études on the Phenomenology of Spirit have long been available to English-speaking philosophy students. Kojève, born Aleksandr Kozhevnikov in Russia in 1902, had by all accounts a unique personality. In the same year that he completed his dissertation, he moved to Paris, where another well-known Russian émigré scholar/philosopher Alexandre Koyré happened to have established himself as early as 1912 after Husserl had rejected his dissertation. (Despite this, Koyré remained on quite friendly terms with his former mentor, who attended Koyré’s dissertation defense in Paris.) Later in life after World War II, Kojève worked in the French Ministry of Economics and from there was instrumental in establishing the European Common Market. Although a Marxist, at least of sorts, he was invited to Berlin in 1967 by radical students to whom he allegedly advised that they should turn their attention instead to learning ancient Greek!
Kojève’s book can be read from two distinct viewpoints. We can, on the one hand, comb the text for Kojève’s own positions at the time of its writing. Bearing in mind his later emphasis on the Hegelian dialectic and in particular on the master-slave riposte Kojève made famous in his reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology, we can attempt to see its anticipation here. Indeed, there are good grounds for doing just that, and we find within the pages of this book a considerable discussion of the Absolute vis-à-vis the Other. Within the framework of Kojève’s concern, this is both understandable and cannot be held to be inappropriate or incorrect. Kojève’s familiarity with Schelling and Hegel as well as with the German mystical tradition is clearly evident throughout his text. Whether Kojève’s emphasis on Solovyov’s debt to those German writers is excessive or not is for the reader to determine. No one has seriously questioned, however, that Solovyov owed a great debt to Hegel and the later Schelling, even though specific references to the latter in Solovyov’s writings are virtually non-existent.
On the other hand, one can read Kojève’s book apart from its author’s later writings, taking it as what it purports to be, namely, a secondary text on Vladimir Solovyov, which is how we shall approach the book here. Solovyov is likely to be a name less familiar to an English-speaking philosophical audience. Although generally regarded as the greatest Russian philosopher of the nineteenth century, his works are almost invariably classified as belonging to religious philosophy. We find in them, especially his early writings, hardly a trace of the concerns that would rivet either the budding German neo-Kantian movement or the logic of such figures as Bolzano, Frege, or Husserl. Solovyov, instead, was deeply religious in that his beliefs were carried over into his philosophical investigations, something that cannot be said about the other figures mentioned. Solovyov did seek to express his religious faith in the form of a philosophy employing his knowledge of both the history of philosophy and philosophical terminology, suitably adapted of course. Thus, a reader coming with contemporary analytic sensibilities will look in askance at such claims as that ideal Humanity, the Soul of the World (note the capitalizations) is an individual, free, and independent being (58). Kojève, especially in his later pages, is particularly prone to such statements without comment, let alone critical assessment. Solovyov, certainly, writes in such a manner. However, should a twentieth-century philosopher let such a claim pass freely? There are countless additional statements that Kojève affirms as Solovyov’s position and that the former fails to question or to clarify. To be sure, he offers a masterful paraphrase, but it is just that and no more than that.
We see, then, that Kojève is correct in seeing the starting point and the center of gravity of Solovyov’s thought lies in metaphysics. What Kojève does not make sufficiently clear is that his characterization applies most poignantly to the early Solovyov, but, arguably to be sure, not to his later works. Indeed, Kojève focuses almost exclusively on the early Solovyov, though he does reference from time to time Solovyov’s 1889 Russia and the Universal Church, which appeared originally in French and in some proffered periodizations belongs to Solovyov’s middle period.
As with most Solovyov-scholars, Kojève sees Solovyov’s literary activity falling into three distinct periods. Doing so is in keeping with Solovyov’s own fixation on triadic schemes. Kojève in his earlier German-language essay on Solovyov’s philosophy of history from 1930 found that the first period featured a philosophy of history under the influence of the Slavophiles. During a second period a Catholic influence predominated, and the third period or standpoint, which was also the briefest, was represented by just one writing, the three conversations known in English translation as War, Progress and the End of History from 1900. This appeared just a short time before Solovyov’s death. We could object to Kojève’s particular delimitations, but we should keep in mind that his concern in this early essay was with Solovyov’s philosophy of history, not his metaphysical system. Unfortunately, Kojève was noticeably silent on just when this supposed “Catholic period” in Solovyov’s thought began, but presumably it extended until the writing of the 1900 piece.
In the book under review here, Kojève offered a different periodization for Solovyov’s philosophical works, presumably owing to the book’s different orientation – but, nevertheless still three and only three periods. Kojève finds that the first one serves as a historical and critical introduction to Solovyov’s metaphysical system, a system that he had already in his mental possession by this time. Kojève, unfortunately, fails to demarcate how long this period extended. But it surely includes Solovyov’s first major writing, viz., his magister’s thesis The Crisis of Western Philosophy, for he there declares, as Kojève notes, that a definitive metaphysical system would emerge on Russian soil in the near future. Kojève is somewhat misleading in stating that this system would, in Solovyov’s eyes, be his own. The metaphysical system Solovyov had in mind at the time of writing his Crisis text was that presented by the Eastern Church Fathers. Contrary to Kojève’s claim, Solovyov had neither a fully formed system at this early date nor would he ever if by that we mean Solovyov had already conceived all the details. For example, when he published his major systematic work the Critique of Abstract Principles he had not yet, nor would he ever, have a hammered out comprehensive philosophy of art. Kojève characterizes the second period of Solovyov’s activity to be the shortest, and during this time he presented an outline of his metaphysics. It is from the works of this period that Kojève will draw much of his discussion. The third period is the longest. However, since Solovyov apparently at this time lost much of his interest in theoretical questions and in metaphysics proper, it is of little concern to Kojève. Indeed, the latter has little to say about the works stemming from this last phase in Solovyov’s thinking. What is hard to countenance is Kojève’s dismissal of those works on the grounds that by 1890 – and thus just after the publication of Russia and the Universal Church – Solovyov had completed the elaboration of his metaphysics and would not make any changes to it important enough to mention. In light of the fact that Solovyov explicitly rewrote his ethics resulting in The Justification of the Moral Good and started a revision of his “theoretical philosophy” immediately after doing so, it is hard to assent to Kojève’s claim.
Kojève draws his discussion of Solovyov’s metaphysics from three early works in addition to the 1889 one. Although Kojève recognizes that there are obscurities, inaccuracies, contradictions, and shortcomings in Solovyov’s works, these are not often carefully indicated. Kojève also charges Solovyov’s thinking with being often abstract and superficial, more religious than philosophical. Yet, Kojève avoids philosophical, i.e., rational, and secular criticism of that thinking. As have many other commentators on these writings, Kojève sees a marked inspiration from Schelling in Solovyov’s constructions. Kojève goes so far as to say that Schelling served almost exclusively as Solovyov’s model and that the German Idealist’s philosophy lay at the root of nearly all of the Russian’s metaphysical ideas. What Kojève does not point out is the fundamental differences between Schelling and Solovyov. One of the most striking, of course, is that for the former the “positive” reconstruction of Christianity is merely the first step on the road to a philosophical metaphysics, whereas for Solovyov his elaborations are meant as an expression of the truth of Christianity. Solovyov had no intention of replacing Christianity with philosophy of any sort.
Notwithstanding the alleged influence of Schelling, we cannot be surprised that Kojève sees as well a dialectic of the “Other” in Solovyov’s metaphysics, although he finds that dialectic to be the most obscure and most abstract part of it. Those interested in Kojève’s thought for its own sake can surely find much of interest here. Most curious, though, is that instead of seeing Solovyov’s discussion as drawn from Hegel’s Phenomenology, Kojève sees it as a “simplified and impoverished paraphrase” of the relevant speculations found in Schelling, who, in turn, is largely indebted to Jakob Böhme (23). In a sense, we cannot truly be surprised. Others even more recently, such as Zdenek David, have recognized the influence of the German mystic Böhme on Solovyov and Russian religious philosophy in general. Solovyov may have first turned to Böhme through the former’s philosophy professor at Moscow University Pamfil Jurkevich and the spiritualist circle around Ivan Lapshin, a civil servant, orientalist, and father of the St. Petersburg philosophy professor Ivan Ivanovich Lapshin. Kojève, in turn, may have been alerted to this German source of Solovyov’s own metaphysics through the 1929 book on Böhme by his friend Koyré.
Kojève, of course, recognizes that there is a certain “kinship” between the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and Neoplatonic teachings, but he finds that kinship to be extremely vague. What kinship there is between the Christian doctrine and Neoplatonism can be easily explained through the influence of Neoplatonism on early Christianity, when the latter was still in its formative stages. Solovyov himself gave neither any direct indication nor any evidence of the source or sources of his own conception of the Christian Trinity. We have no basis to hold that Solovyov was directly influenced by Plotinus or any of his disciples here. For Kojève, Solovyov saw his own version of the Trinitarian doctrine arising from his idea of the Absolute independently of the Christian tradition to which he otherwise expressed such allegiance. Solovyov’s conviction in his originality in this matter is illusory and shows the extent to which Solovyov thought was permeated by dogmatism. He believed that thinking through his religious experience he could deduce all dogmatic truths including that of the Trinity. In Kojève’s eyes, the speculations of the German Idealists, rather than the Neoplatonists, served as Solovyov’s more immediate source (28).
What we have seen thus far forms a section of the book that Kojève calls “The Doctrine of God.” The next section, “The Doctrine of World” is frankly more metaphysical, if that is imaginable. Kojève provides a faithful recounting of Solovyov’s early metaphysical position, but without extended critical reflection on it from the standpoint of concrete, empirical substantiation. Solovyov’s conception of Divine Humanity is above all the “culmination and crown” of his religious metaphysics (31). Whereas we can affirm that it is the crown of that doctrine, it strains logic to hold that it, in the same breath, is also the starting point of Solovyov’s doctrine of the world. How it can be both the culmination and starting point is unclear unless we distinguish in some ill-defined manner Divine Humanity from the world. Solovyov, after all, has precious little to say about the world apart from humanity. Even more egregious, though, is Kojève’s assertion that Solovyov’s idea of Divine Humanity, being the “keystone” of his metaphysics, is, for that reason, the pivot of his entire philosophical system. Such an assertion may be true on the face of it for Solovyov’s early writings, but it needs demonstration when affirmed of the writings stemming from the last decade of Solovyov’s life.
Kojève is on firmer grounds in claiming that the presentation of Sophia in Solovyov’s metaphysics and that in his alleged mystical experience is enormous. Since the manuscript material related to Sophia has now been widely available for some years, the reader can easily confirm Kojève’s statement that many of the elements in the mysticism associated with Sophia have equivalents in Solovyov’s early metaphysics. Yet, Kojève correctly recognizes that the Sophia depicted in that metaphysical doctrine cannot be the image he supposedly saw as a vision while sitting in the British Museum’s library and which directed him to proceed forthwith to Egypt.
Kojève holds that whereas Solovyov purports to analyze the dialectical notion of the Absolute deductively to obtain his doctrine of God, the doctrine of World employs an empirical method. It is to Kojève’s credit to recognize that Solovyov does not adhere rigorously to these two respective methods in their respective domains. In fact, Kojève is, if anything, too polite. In both doctrines, the assumptions made are staggering in number. Solovyov sees the entire doctrine of God as merely a rational deduction from what is contained in a mystical intuition of divine love. He makes no allowance for those who are unable to intuit this Godly presence, and the premises for his a posteriori, inductive doctrine of the World are similarly not ones with which everyone would agree. The early Solovyov has God doing this and that spelled out in language just as questionably appropriate as the general idea being expressed. On what basis Solovyov determines that God imparts freedom to his creation and then separates Himself from that creation is anyone’s guess. Kojève, following in Solovyov’s footsteps, apparently feels no trepidation in using the word “freedom” in conjunction with the Soul of the world, but Kojève provides no non-circular definition of the term. Indeed, even an idea itself can be characterized as free! Again to Kojève’s credit, he recognizes that Solovyov is indebted to others, particularly to Schelling, which can come as a surprise to no one. Immersed as he was in the metaphysical aspects of German Idealism, Kojève finds Schelling behind Solovyov’s formulations, with the general ideas and structure being similar (71).
There is little here in Kojève’s work that we can easily characterize as phenomenological, focusing as it does on the early metaphysics of Solovyov. Kojève makes no attempt to provide a non-metaphysical reading. Certainly, Solovyov himself understood his position as definitely, even defiantly, religious. But what we, as readers, can ask is why this work at this time. The translators in their introduction admirably discuss the difficult writing style Kojève employed. To their credit, were it not for their comments the reader would likely not realize the points they make. The English is generally smooth and flows as gently as one could wish given the abstruse subject matter. Knowing something about Kojève’s writing style might tell us something about Kojève, but it does little for our knowledge of Kojève’s thoughts on Solovyov. It would have been helpful if the translators had situated this work within Kojève’s corpus and at least have compared the ideas presented with those found in his work on Solovyov in German. Perhaps that was not their intention. But if we look at this extended essay as an intended contribution to scholarship on Solovyov, we can ask what its relationship was at the time of its original appearance to other works on Solovyov in general but particularly to those in the French-speaking world.
Unfortunately, the translators also do not inform us why they singled out this work for their efforts. Is it outstanding in some special manner compared to others? Were it not for the fact that Kojève later became widely known for his Hegel-interpretation would they have translated it nonetheless? Most regrettably, the translators do not situate Kojève’s work within the body of Solovyov-scholarship in recent years. They take no account of the vast literature in either Russia or the West that has appeared particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Again, the question, then, arises: Why this work at this time? Is Kojève’s extended essay in some manner better than recent work on the same topic?
The translators’ references can be confusing or at least troublesome. Whereas the translators make the appropriate references to Solovyov’s works, these are to the now obsolete first edition of the collected works from the first decade of the 20th century instead of availing themselves of the far more accurate and detailed 21st century ongoing edition together with its detailed commentary. Additionally, the references given are always to the mentioned Russian edition even when an English-language translation exists. This poses an obstacle to anyone without knowledge of Russian but who wishes to pursue some idea further. It certainly would also have been helpful to mention the title of the individual work by Solovyov, rather than simply the volume and page number within the set of the collected works.
In conclusion, whereas the advanced student of Solovyov may find Kojève’s work unnecessary, those largely unacquainted with the ideas of the Russian religious philosopher will find this to be a splendid introduction as well as further evidence of the infiltration of German Idealism into Russia.
In Vivo: A Phenomenology of Life-Defining Moments
Zeichenhorizonte: Semiotische Strukturen in Husserls Phänomenologie der Wahrnehmung
"Moses the Egyptian" and Other Writings on Freud and Arendt
Reviewed by: Sebastian Müngersdorff (University of Antwerp)
This translation of Hans Blumenberg’s posthumously published text “Moses the Egyptian” offers the Anglophone world insight into a political aspect of Blumenberg’s thought that remains obscured within his other translated works. Blumenberg’s discussion of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem evinces a skeptical stance towards any rigid belief in the power and persuasiveness of truth. Blumenberg proves highly critical of Arendt’s assessment of the Eichmann trial. He disagrees with her analysis, arguing that it fails to discern the symbolic and mythical aspects of the trial. According to Blumenberg, the political core of the event was in fact a mythical act of state-founding, which Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann as a family man or buffoon neglects. Thus, according to Blumenberg, Arendt lacks the political vigor necessary for understanding what was taking place at that symbolic moment in history. Blumenberg’s own view, however, leads to the difficult question of whether the political use of myth can ever be legitimized at certain critical moments. He does not answer this question nor does he offer any tools or strategies by which to distinguish a rightful use of political myth from a harmful one.
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It is difficult to imagine contemporary German academic life without the name Hans Blumenberg. This is not to say that Blumenberg has shaped the academic context or its institutions; rather, it refers to Blumenberg’s presence in current discussions. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Derrida, Blumenberg’s presence is a posthumous one. Although he had a central role in the group Poetik und Hermeneutik, gave lectures, contributed to newspapers and other publications and corresponded with Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes, Siegfried Kracauer, Hans Robert Jauss and other prominent figures, he was never a public intellectual. He distanced himself from public debates and avoided making pronouncements of his opinions. This public reticence was likely an important factor in the delayed reception of his work, especially in the Anglophone world. Unlike with Jürgen Habermas, for example, Blumenberg’s work has had to speak for itself, solely on its own terms. Nonetheless, Blumenberg’s work offers reasons not only for why his thought was undervalued during his lifetime but also for why it has become so enthusiastically received and engaged today.
First, Blumenberg’s work is characterized by a certain inaccessibility. His main works are bulky, with chapters that are often so erudite as to overwhelm an interested reader; moreover, his texts generally do not immediately identify what exactly is at stake, what question is being addressed or what central claim is being made. Readers of Blumenberg will find that they receive descriptions rather than definitions. His style is idiosyncratic and the implicit references within his texts are manifold. This renders him a philosopher who resists any quick or easy usability. Nonetheless, his work is rich and meticulously elaborated, thereby offering many leads to different traditions. Indeed, Blumenberg contributed to the fields of phenomenology, history, philosophy of technology and philosophical anthropology. He published on literature and aesthetics and developed a theory of metaphor; he remains an important voice in the debate concerning secularization and, in recent years, the political aspects of his thought have gained increasing attention. During the last years of his career, Blumenberg appears to have focused exclusively on the elaboration of his archive rather than on publishing finished texts. The image of an archive as a sort of rich, untapped mine of undiscovered gems has certainly helped to foster his present-day popularity. As Ahlrich Meyer notes, since “his death in 1996, more books have appeared under his name than he published between 1960 and 1989” (71-2).
Against this background, the translation of Blumenberg’s Rigorism of Truth finds its place. First published in German in 2015, Rigorismus der Wahrheit is one of Suhrkamp’s many posthumous Blumenberg publications. These publications generally share a comparable strategy: a contemporary Blumenberg scholar brings together particular texts or discovers notable fragments or unfinished texts in the Blumenberg archive in Marbach; these discoveries resonate with important aspects of Blumenberg’s thought, and the subsequent publication will include an extensive and elucidating afterword by the editor. Nicola Zambon, for example, brought together Blumenberg’s writings on phenomenology from the 1980s, Anselm Haverkamp compiled a volume of Blumenbergs aesthetic and metaphorologic writings, Ulrich von Bülow and Dorit Krusche collected unpublished fragments concerning central water metaphors such as ‘source’ and ‘stream’, Angus Nicholls and Felix Heidenreich published a chapter that Blumenberg had originally withheld from his Work on Myth and Alexander Schmitz and Bernd Stiegler presented an edition of Blumeberg’s writings on technology and re-published Blumenberg’s contributions on literature as well as unpublished essays and lectures. Ahlrich Meyer, who worked with Blumenberg in Münster, has done the same for Rigorism of Truth, collecting from the archive Blumenberg’s text “Moses the Egyptian” along with his preliminary studies and other thematically related texts.
Along with Nicholls and Heidenreich’s discovery of Blumenberg’s chapter on ‘prefiguration’, Rigorism of Truth has been received as a critically important text revealing Blumenberg’s political interests. It gives insight into certain more articulated political views that remained hidden during his lifetime. When Blumenberg published Arbeit am Mythos in 1979, the absence of any discussion of myth in political terms immediately stood out. Moreover, he has been criticized for the rehabilitation of myth and for his mainly literary understanding of culture. It is striking indeed that Blumenberg discussed myth in the aftermath of the Second World War, referring to Goethe, Kafka, Freud and many others without mentioning Hitler or the political dangers of myth. In contrast to Cassirer, Arendt and Adorno, Blumenberg appears not to have aspired to an understanding of ‘the relapse into myth’ during National Socialism. His book reads mostly as a defense of myth against the overly rigid distinction between mythos and logos. This is even more surprising given that Blumenberg himself was targeted by the Nazi regime. The revelations from the Nachlass, however, spurred researchers to study the subtext of Blumenberg’s work and bring out its implicit political meaning. As it is a general characteristic of Blumenberg’s style to remain at a distance, displaying a “sense of irony” (93) and embarking on various intellectual detours rather than addressing a topic directly, this approach has been fruitful in articulating the more hidden political aspects of Blumenberg’s work. The English translation of Rigorism of Truth opens this ‘political Blumenberg’ to the Anglophone world. In “Moses the Egyptian”, Blumenberg not only draws attention to the importance of myth in the realm of politics, but also directly addresses Judaism and Zionism. Angus Nicholls thus calls this text “without doubt one of the most personal and revealing texts to have emerged from the Blumenberg Nachlass” (Nicholls 2016, 31).
Moreover, the publication offers interesting insights into Blumenberg’s style and his method of working. Ahlrich Meyer’s elucidating footnotes indicate the range of materials that Blumenberg incorporates into his texts. “Moses the Egyptian” itself counts only 12 pages, but Meyer adds 100 footnotes tracing the text’s many sources. The first paragraph, for example, contains 15 footnotes. To be sure, continually turning to these notes and references can interfere with the work’s readability; nonetheless, they are valuable, as they provide necessary background information that both explicates several implicit references and contributes to a fuller understanding of the text.
Moreover, the excerpts and preliminary studies following “Moses the Egyptian” underscore the extensive work Blumenberg conducted before he condensed his findings into a single text. This sheds a light on how Blumenberg used the card-index files that he filled with citations, excerpts, comments, and reflections. At the end of his life these files contained over 24,000 cards. From this ‘treasury’ he compiled lectures, chapters and books. As Meyer remarks, “[a]ny reader wondering why these books often seem to make so many leaps and are full of unexpected connections, why their author largely dispenses with the linear development of his thoughts […] will learn […] that Blumenberg’s oeuvre is the product not least of the ingenious architecture of his card files” (72). Likewise, the picture of the first pages of Blumenberg’s reading log for 1978 sheds additional light on his way of working, as well as revealing his zest for work. It would appear that, between January 6 and March 5 of that year, Blumenberg read, or at least engaged with, no less than 31 books. Rigorism of Truth thus not only offers a more personal and political Blumenberg; it also gives his readers a look into his method.
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What is central in Blumenberg’s “Moses the Egyptian” is a critical stance towards both Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and Hannah Arendt’s famous discussion of the Eichmann trial in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. As the title Rigorism of Truth immediately suggests, Blumenberg recognizes a certain shared rigorism at work in the publication of these two books. Moses and Monotheism was published in 1939, shortly after the pogroms of 1938 and “at the apex of Hitler’s power”, during a period when “the number of Jews expelled from Germany and Austria rose sharply” (12). Freud himself had just been forced to flee Vienna for London, and it was at this crucial moment that he issued his analysis of Moses, “depriving the Jews, in their most dreadful hour, when everything was being taken from them, of their best man” (2). According to Freud, “Moses had in fact been an Egyptian, who had transmitted to the Jewish people the monotheistic cult of Akhenaten” (12), after which, in an act of patricide, the prince was killed. This led to Freud’s famous hypothesis that Moses was not actually a Hebrew but rather the Egyptian slain father of Judaism. Moreover, the memories of the Jewish people were “devised to cover up the murder of the cultural hero” and “became the source of a ritualized self-punishment, whose forms and obligations […] were to anticipate the singular organization of the art of survival that bestowed upon the Jews the ability to withstand all future desert and captivities” (4). Freud recognized the controversial potential of this hypothesis, even noting that he did not “like offending” his “own people” (12), but published the book nonetheless. Blumenberg, rather than looking for some suppressed or secret hatred against Freud’s “fellow men” (12), recognizes in him “no other motive to justify this publication but the absolutism of truth” (3). Despite the historical situation, Freud clung to science and his “love of truth”, “even when it was uncomfortable and unpleasant” (12). Moreover, in the psychoanalytic scheme concerning resistance, the anticipated inconvenience following from his study may have encouraged Freud’s endeavor, as the “general premise for resistance as a criterion might be [this]: what people gladly accept cannot be the truth” (59). And in light of the many conflicts and trials in the history of science it is understandable to think that “the power of truth” grows “stronger even in the face of resistance” (59).
For Blumenberg, Hannah Arendt’s book was the result of comparable convictions, not least as she published her controversial analysis at a symbolic moment as well, risking much in the name of truth. According to Blumenberg, “She believes in the truth – that is her truth, she can neither change nor prevent” (5). A critique of this rigorous belief in the truth is a first important argument in Blumenberg’s text. As he writes, “(n)othing is less certain than that the truth wishes to be loved, can be loved, should be loved” (3). Or put more sharply: “There is no love of truth. Maybe because there can be none” (5).
Throughout his career, Blumenberg contended with the question of ‘truth’. Mostly anti-Platonic, he defended a skeptical position that would be sensitive to the rhetorical efforts necessary to afford truth its privileged position. Already in 1957, Blumenberg published a text concerning ‘light’ as the metaphor of truth in Western thought. As the title Rigorism of Truth indicates, his distanced stance towards “the absolutism of truth” (3) is also present in his discussion of Freud and Arendt. Amongst the many ‘absolutisms’ opposed by Blumenberg’s philosophical analyses – including ‘reality’, ‘rules’, ‘the master’, ‘dreams and wishes’, ‘reason’, ‘institutions’, and ‘being’ – is the absolutism of truth. He works against what he describes as one of the most “intimate convictions of European history”, namely, “that the truth will triumph” (57). This critique corresponds with Blumenberg’s attention to myth, metaphor, and rhetoric. In his work, Blumenberg draws attention to other aspects of human culture which can serve a legitimizing function, carry a certain rationality or have laws of their own. In setting a Platonic trust in truth, these aspects can be neglected and become dangerous.
In contrast to what Arendt seems to suggest in her Truth and Politics, Blumenberg answers the question “Must one always tell the truth?” with “Surely not” (51). And this immediately is Blumenberg’s main concern as regards Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann: “What Hannah Arendt does not understand about the whole Eichmann trial is the veiled tendency to provide the Israeli state with a founding myth” (47). In other words, her determination to reveal the truth and the ‘real’ character of Eichmann leads her to ignore other, perhaps more important dimensions of the Eichmann process. The pre-occupation with (scientific) truth thereby becomes the opposite of what it proclaims to be (clear-sightedness, proof, right) and becomes the irrationality which it avows to eradicate. In this respect, Blumenberg’s text on Freud and Arendt can be read along familiar lines of his other work.
However, as he develops his central argument concerning the rigorism of truth, Blumenberg also adds several other notable ideas. Unlike in his discussion of Freud’s Moses, Blumenberg engages critically with Arendt’s Eichmann. He disapproves of Freud’s ‘love for truth’, his rigidity and his timing, yet does not criticize Freud’s hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, a hypothesis that challenges the origins of Judaism. In stark contrast, however, Blumenberg fundamentally calls into question Arendt’s analysis of Eichmann as a buffoon (Hanswurst). In the years since publication of her book, many have argued against Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann. Bettina Stangneth, in her Eichmann Before Jerusalem (2014), gathers information which convincingly shows that Arendt was misled. As Felix Heidenreich writes, “Eichmann was all but stupid; in contrast to Arendt’s analysis we now have good reasons to consider him a vicious murderer and liar” (Heidenreich 2015, 532). Blumenberg’s critique, however, is not an effort to undermine Arendt’s claim of the ‘banality of evil’ by showing that Eichmann was actually a sort of Iago or Macbeth, someone permeated by diabolic or demonic evil. On the contrary, as concerns Arendt’s characterization of Eichmann, Blumenberg seems to agree. He has “all respect for the rightness of such considerations” (8) and calls them “[h]istorically justified” (48). However, whereas Arendt seeks to reveal Eichmann as “the petit bourgeois run wild” (50), Blumenberg brackets Eichmann’s real character and points to the symbolic function of Eichmann as a “scapegoat” (51), labeling him Israel’s “negative founding figure” (50). Nonetheless, it is questionable whether Arendt was indeed insensitive to this dynamic and more likely that she decided to oppose it. Yet Blumenberg’s reproach is that she did not offer any account of the symbolic aspect of the trial, this “mythical necessity of archaic violence” (46). What was at stake politically in the Eichmann trial was precisely Eichmann’s “entering the national myth as the vanquished necessary enemy” (9). For Blumenberg, this proves that Arendt was “completely unsensitive to the political” (47). Herewith Blumenberg’s rhetoric comes into play. For example, he recalls that in her famous interview with Günter Gaus, Arendt proudly characterized herself as a political thinker, not a philosopher (6-7, 9, 46-47). Blumenberg goes on to claim that she missed the political core of the trial: “Hannah Arendt had completely failed to recognize the cathartic significance of the official act getting the man guilty of genocide” (45-46).
Moreover, according to Blumenberg, Arendt not only neglected what was happening politically – a mythical act of state legitimization – but also worked against it. It may be perfectly correct that Eichmann was a clown and buffoon; however, regardless of his actual character, in his political function of being transfigured into the “negative founder of the state” (10) he cannot at the same time also be turned into “a figure of ridicule” (11). As Blumenberg states, “[O]ne cannot have both at once: the analysis and the myth” (9).
As in his Work on Myth, Blumenberg’s text highlights the importance of mythical dimensions for the understanding of human existence. In this specific case, he argues that one cannot understand politics without acknowledging the mythical aspects that shape and legitimize it. He even goes a step further, suggesting that scientific truth and the attempt of objective analysis is often powerless against “what is necessary […] in a mythical sense” (8). This analysis immediately raises several questions. Does this mean that political myth is necessary and legitimized? Does this convert all politics into a post-truth politics? Does this eradicate the possibility of distinguishing between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ political myth? Or does this mean that, in this specific case, at that specific moment of history, Blumenberg thought it was merely “a precarious nation-state” engaged “in the creation of its own political myth” (Nicholls 2016, 30)? Rigorism of Truth yields no answers here and it remains doubtful whether we can accurately deduce that Blumenberg thought it was right and just that Eichmann was used as a scapegoat. The text resists such direct interrogation. Blumenberg instead shows himself as a philosopher who prefers understanding over judging. He avers: “One may be fervently opposed to this ritual; but first one must have understood what it means to the others [i.e., the victims and witnesses] and to what insignificance this meaning condemns one’s criticism” (8). In this line, Blumenberg does not argue against Arendt in order to defend the Eichmann trial as a legitimate act of state-founding. Rather, he opposes Arendt because of his different analysis of the political situation. From this perspective, he does not particularly defend myth against the rigorism of truth via a position in the old tension between mythos and logos. Instead, he suggests that when we want to understand politics, we cannot let ourselves be blinded by rigid belief in the power of truth and science. We must take the symbolic and mythical side of things seriously.
Nonetheless, scholars have interpreted the text as being more personal than that. Although his politically charged chapter on Präfiguration clearly shows that Blumenberg cannot simply be read as an advocate for the political use of myth, Heidenreich, Nicholls and Meyer seem to suggest that, in this particular case, Blumenberg defends the political use of myth. As Heidenreich summarizes: “Exposed to imminent threat, questioned by many states in the region, desperately trying to integrate Jews coming from all the corners of the earth, the young nation of Israel needed a political myth, Blumenberg claims” (Heidenreich, 532). In this context, Ahlrich Meyer refers to Blumenberg’s being a Halbjude per “Nazi racial doctrine” and states that Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem “must have hurt him quite considerably” and that his text “Moses the Egyptian” reveals “that an interest in Judaism was a hidden constant in his life” (93). Nicholls calls the text “a life-expression in the deepest sense” (Nicholls 2016, 32). He writes that the themes “touched him personally as a German of Jewish ancestry” and that “Moses the Egyptian” raises the question of whether there are “exceptional circumstances – such as, for example, the need to create a Jewish homeland in the wake of the Shoah – under which the deployment of political myth is unavoidable and for that reason defensible” (Nicholls 2016, 10). Blumenberg indeed refers to ‘a state of exception’ from which legitimacy emerges, seemingly justifying the way in which the trial was addressed. Yet, when using that word, Blumenberg concludes that this ‘state of exception’ was called upon, instead of appealing to a state of exception himself (7). His assessment of “Moses the Egyptian” remains ambiguous. On the one hand, his argumentation need not be a defense or a theoretical legitimation. It can be read as an argument from within the mythical logic that was deployed in order to better understand the situation, without deciding in its favor. For this reason, one should be careful in equating the argumentation in “Moses the Egyptian” with Blumenberg’s own assessment of the situation. On the other hand, Blumenberg’s text draws attention to the mythical, which in this case is the perspective of ‘the young nation of Israel’. Thus, it is arguable that Blumenberg’s harshness and often pointedly ironical formulations show a concern which is in fact beyond philosophical analysis and understanding. Bajohr, for example, notes that Blumenberg’s judgement of Arendt “is so unfair that it can almost only be explained by a deep offence of his own identity” (Bajohr 2015, 55). He places Blumenberg next to other “mostly Jewish critics of Eichmann in Jerusalem”, arguing it is difficult to maintain Christian Vollers’s claim that Blumenberg “has probably never been a convinced Jew” (Bajohr 2015, 57). Yet biographical explanations – especially regarding an unpublished text of a thinker who is difficult to characterize – tend to remain suggestive and speculative. Moreover, beneath the central argument by which Blumenberg rejects Freud’s and Arendt’s rigorism is yet another argument complicating the issue.
In discussing Arendt and her findings that Eichmann’s knowledge of Judaism was derived from Theodor Herzl’s Judenstaat, Blumenberg states that “in Zionism”, Eichmann “found what he had sought to create by force” (5). He writes that the “extermination was, blasphemous though it may sound, only a variant forced by circumstance of the idea of relocation” (7). He mentions the Madagascar Plan (in which Germany would relocate the Jews of Europe to Madagascar) and Eichmann’s visit to Haifa in October 1937, implying an identity between Nazi and Zionist interests in which extermination became a more practical “remolding of the idea of expulsion” (52) – “a truth simply unbearable for the present generation” (53). The index card on which this paragraph is based is titled “Zionism Taken at Its Word”, suggesting that the Holocaust was a literal translation of the Zionist need “to firm ground under the feet of the Jews” (7). Only after reading Arendt’s name next to the exclamation “What odium!” (53) does it become clear that these sentences are a critical continuation of Arendt’s accusations of Zionism. However, whereas the previous alarming lines remain an elaboration of an Arendtian theme, at the end of his text Blumenberg makes a controversial move. That is to say, he brings Eichmann close to Moses. Nicholls mentions this only in passing, calling it “disorienting and shocking” (Nicholls 2016, 27). It now becomes clear why Blumenberg does not challenge Freud’s claim about Moses being an Egyptian. He needs Freud’s analysis in order to suggest that, “like Moses”, Eichmann had to “be killed” (5). This enfolding of Eichmann onto Moses forwards the claim that “[s]ome states are founded by their enemies” (5). Blumenberg draws this controversial similarity in “the irrealis mood” (11), imagining what Freud would have thought of the Eichmann trial. As Blumenberg writes, Freud “would have immediately recognized […] the mythical dimension of killing the negative hero of the state” (11). He continues: “Freud would, one hardly dares to think it, have projected onto Moses the Egyptian, who was barred from setting foot in the Promised Land, the monstrosity of Adolf Eichmann, whose ashes were more than that very country could bear” (12). Despite the veil of the subjunctive and an appeal to Freud’s logic, it is Blumenberg who makes the association. He even reads the scattering of Eichmann’s ashes over the Mediterranean Sea as “a last act of diaspora in the literal sense” (54). This demonstrates how seriously he understood Eichmann as the negative founder of Israel, an understanding completely in line with Freud’s analysis of an Egyptian Moses as the murdered “cultural hero” (4).
This highly provocative parallel and finishing note, which ‘one hardly dares to think’, blurs the understanding of Blumenberg’s “Moses the Egyptian”. In light of this conclusion, one wonders whether the text can be read as a defense of “the role played by the Eichmann trial in the formation of Israel’s national identity” (Nicholls 2016, 27). “As Freud took Moses the man from his people, so Hannah Arendt took Adolf Eichmann from the State of Israel” (5), Blumenberg writes as a critique; however, in the conclusion, he establishes an intrinsic and controversial connection between the two. Yet Blumenberg did not publish this text during his lifetime. Nicholls may be right when he concludes that “Blumenberg appears to have written ‘Moses der Ägypter’ primarily for himself” (33). Perhaps “this most personal of texts” is indeed “merely a case of private ‘working-through’ (durcharbeiten)” (Nicholls 2016, 32). However, I would suggest another conclusion, in which his choice not to publish the text is an important element of his central argument and becomes a symbolic stroke in which he moves away from the rigorism he criticized in Freud and Arendt. In the beginning of the text he writes: “In my turn prepared to court indignation, I am aghast at the deep-rooted similarities between Moses and Monotheism and Eichmann in Jerusalem” (5). At this point in the text it remains unclear how deep-rooted in the heart of Jewish history Blumenberg saw these similarities. Nonetheless, the first part of the sentence clearly indicates an outward intent on Blumenberg’s part to be willing to face possible outrage, as did Freud and Arendt. On February 10, 1988, however, Blumenberg wrote to Henning Ritter that for “many years”, he had “an essay, ‘Moses der Ägypter,’ under lock and key, which brings together the monstrous behind-the-back connivings [Hinterrücklichkeiten] of Freud and Arendt. Essentially, it was only my consideration for Hans Jonas that prevented me from allowing anybody to read it.”[1] Rather than being a document of personal working-through, it seems that Blumenberg re-enforces his argument against Freud and Arendt’s rigorism, by abandoning his own truth in favor of Hans Jonas – a mutual friend of Arendt and Blumenberg. Just like Freud and Arendt, Blumenberg made a controversial analysis and, like them, he recognized the potential for indignation. However, in contrast to Freud and Arendt, who, according to Blumenberg, could not keep their own truths for themselves by being mindful of an entire people in a precarious situation, for Blumenberg one friend sufficed to give up his own quest for truth. Thus, this posthumous publication shows that Blumenberg not only payed serious philosophical attention to symbolic dimensions of human existence, but also acted in accordance with it.
Cited Works:
Angus Nicholls, “Hans Blumenberg on Political Myth: Recent Publications from the Nachlass,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 65, (January 2016): 3 – 33.
Felix Heidenreich, “Political Aspects in Hans Blumenberg’s Philosophy,” Revista de Filosofia Aurora 27, no. 41 (2015): 523 – 539.
Hannes Bajohr, “Der Preis der Wahrheit. Hans Blumenberg über Hannah Arendts »Eichmann in Jerusalem«,” Merkur 69, no. 792 (May 2015): 52 – 59.
[1] Hans Blumenberg to Henning Ritter, 10 February 1988, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, quoted in Hannes Bajohr, “Der Preis der Wahrheit: Hans Blumenberg über Hannah Arendts Eichmann in Jerusalem,“ Merkur 69 (2015) 5: 57. See aslo Nicholls, 32-3 and Heidenreich, 533.