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CHAPTER 1
Why Political Philosophy?
We all know the picture of the philosopher that Aristophanes drew in the Clouds for both philosophers and nonphilosophers. As he is shown to us in this most famous and thought-worthy of comedies, the philosopher, consumed by a burning thirst for knowledge, lives for inquiry alone. In choosing his objects, he allows himself neither to be led by patriotic motives or social interests nor to be determined by the distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, useful and harmful. Religious prohibitions frighten him as little as do the power of the majority or the ridicule of the uncomprehending. His attention is fixed on questions of the philosophy of nature and of language, in particular, on those of cosmology, biology, and logic. By the keenness of his mental powers, the intransigence of his scientific manner, and the superiority of his power of discourse, he casts a spell on his pupils and gains co-workers, who assist him in his zoological experiments, astronomical and meteorological observations, or geometrical measurements. His self-control and endurance enable him to withstand every deprivation that results from carrying out his scientific projects. By contrast, he lacks moderation. Piety and justice do not count among the qualities on which his reputation is based. Authority and tradition mean nothing to him. In making his innovations, he no more takes into consideration what is time-honored than in his teaching he takes account of the vital needs of the society on whose fringes he places himself along with his friends and pupils. The laboratory in which he pursues his studies is supported for the most part by voluntary donations and owes its existence, moreover, to its relative seclusion and inconspicuousness. It is like a bubble connected to its surroundings only by a modest exchange of air. However, the precautions taken by the school are so insufficient and the restrictions on entrance so slight that outsiders can be allowed in, if they so desire, without close scrutiny of their fitness and can thereby become witnesses to the most shocking statements and arguments. Such as when the philosopher reveals to a neophyte in almost as many words that the supreme God who is honored in the political community not only does not exist but also does not deserve to be honored, and therefore is not a God.
The picture I have briefly sketched of the pre-Socratic philosopher in the Clouds stands with reason at the beginning of my attempt to answer the question concerning what political philosophy is and to what end it is needed. For pre-Socratic philosophy not only precedes the turn to political philosophy historically but at the same time is prior to it in substance. In view of that turn, the Clouds has to be accorded a key role, regardless of whether the philosopher with whose name it is most intimately linked and who embodies the pre-Socratic philosopher in Aristophanes' comedy — Socrates — himself made that turn in advanced years or whether the turn from the pre-Socratic Socrates to the Socrates of political philosophy was carried out by Plato and Xenophon. In either case, one may justly attribute great importance to the catalytic effect the play had on a process of world-historical significance. Here I am thinking primarily not of Socrates' conviction by the people of Athens in the year 399, although this event did contribute decisively to the unmistakable signature of political philosophy, and although Aristophanes almost literally anticipates both of the later charges in his comedy: Socrates does not believe in the Gods in whom the polis believes but instead has introduced new divinities, and he corrupts the youth. Where the historian may above all have the death of Socrates in mind, it is fitting that the philosopher give thought to the birth of political philosophy. And it is here that the poet of the Clouds deserves the praise proper to the midwife.
The critique to which the play subjects the pre-Socratic Socrates is not the critique of an enemy. If the comedy anticipates both of the charges brought in the trial before the people's court, then it does so with the telling difference that, on the one hand, Aristophanes includes himself among the new divinities of his Socrates, the clouds, lending them his voice and even placing himself at the head of the rest, and, on the other hand, the youth whom Socrates "corrupts" in the Clouds is corrupted by his own father before everyone's eyes and brought to Socrates with a corrupt intention, before he ever falls under the dangerous influence of philosophic teachings. The course of the action of the comedy — beginning with the head of the school, who hovers in the airy heights and there devotes himself to his natural philosophic contemplations, and ending with the destruction of the entire phrontisterion or "thinkery" by a simple citizen who, driven by moral indignation, actively supported by a slave, and applauded by a God, burns down the house of Socrates and his companions — contains a clear warning. It is the warning of a friend, and Aristophanes gives it to Socrates well in advance. Whether concern for his friend or other considerations and motives were decisive for the poet need not occupy us here.
For political philosophy, four points of the critique that Aristophanes in his way levels against the young Socrates are of particular importance. The first thing that the pre-Socratic philosopher lacks is self-knowledge. He is wanting not only in the insight into what is good for him, or the Socratic daimonion that would keep him from getting involved with men and things that are not good for him. He lacks, above all, a clear awareness of the degree to which he and his friends are dependent upon the political community within whose walls they live and what consequences philosophic inquiry and teaching have or can have for the foundations of this political community, for the force of its laws and institutions, for the integrity of the family, for the political opinions and religious convictions of its citizens. Closely connected with the first point of criticism is, second, the apparent incapacity of the philosopher to argue convincingly for the philosophic way of life, and, third, the almost equally disturbing inability to defend it effectively. In all three respects — self-knowledge, the justification of one's own activity, and protection from external attack — the poet lays claim to a position of superiority for himself since he knows how to steer the opinions of the citizens with his means, since he knows how to shape the political-theological reality in which the philosopher must assert himself. The poet's superior powers of formation are in the end grounded — and we thereby arrive at the fourth point — in a superior understanding of the politika, as well as in a better knowledge of human nature. Unlike Socrates and his pupils, who devote themselves in the seclusion of their phrontisterion to the study of the physiologia, Aristophanes and the other clouds, who in his comedy address the public, speaking to both the wise and the unwise, are aware of the diversity of human natures, of intellectual abilities, and of psychic needs. The word "soul" does not once cross the lips of Aristophanes' Socrates.
The four points of Aristophanes' critique lead us on a straight path to the fourfold determination of political philosophy, which we wish to treat in what follows, or to the fourfold answer to the question of why philosophy must make the turn to political philosophy. The four moments of the answer concern first the subject matter of political philosophy, second the political defense of the philosophic life, third its rational justification, and fourth political philosophy as the locus of the philosopher's self-knowledge. As we shall see, the four moments are so intertwined with one another that together they constitute an articulated and internally dynamic whole. What constitutes the rank of the critique Aristophanes presents in what in the poet's own judgment is the wisest of his comedies is precisely that his critique requires one answer: It provokes a philosophic founding. This raises it above and beyond even the most penetrating confrontation in modernity with that "one turning point and vortex of so-called world history" and distinguishes it from all other attempts to initiate the trial of Socrates anew that were inspired by Aristophanes' critique after more than two millennia. Nietzsche's critique of "theoretical man," which takes up Aristophanic motifs so as to turn them against the Platonic Socrates, is part of Nietzsche's own political philosophy. Intrinsically, it presupposes the philosophic founding of which we are speaking here and moves, not only historically, along the path that that founding marks out. The political attack of a Sorel, by contrast, which takes aim at Socrates the citizen of Athens and is interested in the philosopher only insofar as he exerted influence as a public person, may appeal to the conservative spirit out of which Aristophanes' critique is held to have been born. But it hardly approaches the force of a critique that, although or precisely because it breathes the spirit of friendship, is able to promote the most fundamental reflection and finally to compel a turn that makes a distinction in the whole.
A distinction in the whole is made by the turn to political philosophy insofar as philosophy can achieve the fulfillment of its reflexivity solely in political philosophy. The political philosophy at issue here is a special part and mode of philosophy, and we are speaking of it in constant consideration of the meaning it possesses for philosophy tout court. The fourfold determination of the cause that occupies us has only tangentially to do with the usage of the concept as it is commonly encountered today, where it is applied indiscriminately to political theories of any and every kind. It most certainly has nothing to do with the inflated use of the epithet "political philosophy" to describe arbitrary political opinions, programs, and convictions, as has recently become fashionable. Since the end of the ideologically established division of the world and the decline of the political utopias that had prevailed until then, the appeal to "political philosophies" has experienced a boom. But even where fundamental questions of political theory are given thought or the foundations of the res publica are discussed with great seriousness, we still do not have political philosophy. Neither the competent theoretical approach to political questions and problems nor one's seriousness in dealing with them is, taken on its own, proof of political philosophy. It is no more equivalent to a "philosophie engagée" than to a "public philosophy" or to a "Philosophie der bestehenden Ordnung." Political philosophy achieves its ownmost task neither in establishing political meaning, in uplifting and edifying the public, nor in educating citizens in morality or in offering practical guidance for political action — regardless of how great or slight political philosophy's contribution in such matters may be considered. This task, which distinguishes it from all others, the task it possesses as philosophy and for the philosopher, is what we have in view when attempting to answer the question Why political philosophy?
Political philosophy has as its object the political things: the foundations of the political community, the duties and rights of its members, the ends and means of their action, war and peace internally and in relation to other political communities. Although political philosophy, as far as its subject matter is concerned, makes up merely a part of philosophy, it by no means has a narrowly circumscribed segment of human life as its object. Nor do we meet in this object, say, an autonomous domain of life that exists alongside a number of autonomous domains of life or "provinces of culture" of equal rank. The central questions of political philosophy, the questions of the best political order, of the right life, of just rule, of the necessary weight of authority, knowledge, and force, can be properly raised only in conjunction with those other questions of the nature of man, of his place between beast and God, of the abilities of the human mind, the capacities of the human soul, and the needs of the human body. The object of political philosophy is thus the human things in the comprehensive sense, and the questions of political philosophy all lead back to a question that is posed to man as man: the question of what is right. If he wishes to answer it seriously, if he seeks to gain clarity for himself, he finds himself faced with conflicting claims. He is subject to the law of the political community, the commandment of God or of men, and he meets with answers that are advanced with the demand for obedience or with the will to enforcement. The question of what is right is posed to man, in other words, in the sphere of the political. In this way, both the rank of the political is indicated and its urgency for philosophy is designated.
In view of the urgency of the political, how is it to be explained that philosophers could ever disparage or neglect the confrontation with the political things? I shall limit myself here to three brief remarks toward a possible answer: Precisely those conflicting political and theological claims that induce the philosopher to question the nomoi with regard to what precedes or founds them, and that thereby lead him to the discovery of physis, induce him to follow his own nature; the insight into the conventional character of political institutions confirms him in the rightness of his way of life, which is determined by his inclinations. His thirst for knowledge and his thought are aimed at the whole; at first glance, the political things do not seem to have any exceptional significance within it; contemplation of the unchanging, reflection on the first principles, or even listening to the dispensation of Being seems, on the contrary, to be worthy of far greater esteem than is the occupation with the political or the merely human in all its frailty, irrationality, and uncertainty. And can the philosophic understanding of the political things not also be regarded as secondary, in the sense that knowledge of the most universal principles or laws of nature must come first, since only such knowledge makes it possible to leave the shadow-world of opinions behind and lift the political into the realm of knowledge and accord it its proper place therein?
To these and similar considerations, which shed light on the sense in which philosophy precedes political philosophy, we respond: The political turn of philosophy occurs not least due to the insight that the expectations of philosophy and the valuations of the philosophers must themselves be subjected to scrutiny that can be carried out only on the path of confrontation with the political things. The notions of the sublime, the noble, or the beautiful, which are bound up with philosophy, must be questioned with regard to their dependence on the political, moral, and religious opinions within the political community that the philosophers seek to transcend, no less than must the desire for devotion to truth or the will to certainty, each of which is in danger, in its own way, of fostering a new dogmatism or a self-forgetfulness of philosophy. What is dearest to philosophy must be subjected to its most critical investigation. That holds also for the pre-Socratic belief that the political could be elucidated most compellingly in light of the first principles or that the opinions, conventions, institutions of the polis could be reconstituted on the basis of a preceding knowledge of what truly is, a position that Plato calls to mind in the Republic's image of the cave in order to follow it, with a critical intention, to its most extreme consequence, the postulate of the philosopher-king. This holds no less for the prospect of a bios theoretikos that finds its perfect self-sufficiency in the happy contemplation of the noble and most sublime things — likewise a pre-Socratic vision — for which Aristotle erected a monument in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. This holds, in short, for an ideal of wisdom that dissociates a universal knowledge of principles from the philosopher's self-knowledge or severs an allegedly pure knowledge from that knowledge which grows out of suffering and is lent wings by joy.
Let us return to our argument. If the central questions of political philosophy are related to the question of what is right, and if this question is posed to the philosopher in the sphere of the political, then for political philosophy this means that it cannot evade the risk of the political. From the occupation with its object arises the necessity of political caution, just as possibilities of political influence are opened up. Put differently: Its object conditions its mode. From the beginning, political philosophy was therefore always also political philosophy, political action by philosophers, and was in fact forced by the prevailing circumstances to be primarily political action in the service of philosophy: the protection and defense of the philosophic life or an act of a politics of friendship that includes the interests of future philosophers. But, as we have seen, philosophy does not require protection only at the moment it publicly thematizes the question of what is right and enters into the more precise investigation of the political things. As a way of life, philosophy is in itself an answer to the question of what is right. It knows friendship and enmity. It, therefore, remains — whether it accounts to itself for such or not — fundamentally in need of political defense.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion"
by .
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