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Arendt, Rawls, and Public ReasonAuthor(s): Mark ButtonSource: Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 31, No. 2, Special Issue: Religion and Politics (April 2005),

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Arendt, Rawls,

and Public Reason

Over the

past

several

decades,

a

general

consensus has taken

shape

among

a diverse

group

of

scholars

concerning

the moral

and

political

significance

of

public

reason as a standard for

political dialogue

between

citizens

in

pluralistic

liberal democracies.1 While the modern notion of

public reason can be traced back most immediately to Kant, contempo

rary

theorists have

pressed

this idea into the service of

establishing

the

guidelines

and values in

accordance

with which citizens of

diverse and

incommensurable

moral,

religious,

and

philosophical perspectives may

nonetheless come to stable

and

mutually acceptable agreements

about the

basic institutions of

political

society

and

concerning

the most fundamen

tal

questions

that

confront democratic

societies.

Working

with the

(Kant

ian)

ideal that

any

action or

judgment

that will affect

others,

to be mor

ally legitimate,

must be

acceptable

(or

capable

of

being

made

acceptable)

to all those affected, public reason claims to offer the procedural means

and the substantive

values

by

which the moral

validity

of

political judg

ments

can be vouchsafed.

In

this

regard, public

reason has been

closely

identified

with standards

like

reciprocity,

impartiality,

the "moral

point

of

view,"

and

democracy

itself.2

To be

sure,

a host of

contemporary

thinkers

have offered

numerous

critiques

of

public

reason

in

recent

years,

raising

doubts about the coher

'John

Rawls,

Political

Liberalism

(New

York: Columbia

University

Press,

1996

[1993]);

Kent

Greenawalt,

Private Consciences

and Public Reasons

(New

York: Oxford

University

Press,

1995);

Charles

Larmore,

The Morals

of Modernity

(New

York: Cam

bridge

University

Press,

1996), chapters

6 and

7;

Robert

Audi,

Religious

Commitment

and Secular

Reason

(New

York:

Cambridge

University

Press,

2000);

Stephen

Macedo,

Diversity

and Distrust:

Civic Education

in a Multicultural

Democracy

(Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard

University

Press,

2000),

chapter

7.

2Thomas

Nagel,

"Moral Conflict and Political

Legitimacy,"

Philosophy

and Public

Affairs

16

(1987):

215-40;

T.M.

Scanlon,

What We Owe

to Each Other

(Cambridge,

Mass. : Harvard

University

Press,

1998),

chapter

1

Jiirgen

Habermas,

The Inclusion

of

the

Other,

ed. Ciaran

Cronin

and Pablo De Greiff

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

MIT

Press,

1998),

chapter

2;

John

Rawls,

"The

Idea of Public Reason

Revisited,"

in John Rawls: Collected

Papers,

ed. Samuel

Freeman

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

University

Press,

1999),

chap

ter 26.

)

Copyright

2005

by

Social

Theory

and

Practice,

Vol.

31,

No. 2

(April

2005)

257






258

Mark Button

ence,

plausibility,

and fairness of this standard for liberal

justification.3

One central

question

that is raised

by

this

general

turn to

public

reason in

contemporary political thought is what role, if any, religious or other

equally comprehensive

doctrines or

perspectives

should

play

in

public

political

argument

and

decision-making.

How far are citizens

appropri

ately guided

by

their

religious

or moral convictions when

they

enter the

public

domain

and address

important political questions

with

others

in a

condition of extensive

religious,

moral,

and

philosophical

diversity?

One

of

the

basic

issues

at stake here is

whether

there are

good

moral

and

civic

reasons

(not just

wise

prudential ones)

for

thinking

that certain limits or

restrictions should be attached

to

the use of

religious arguments/reasons

in the public political domain.4 A wide range of liberal theorists have

made

compelling

answers to

this

question

in the

affirmative,

arguing

that

citizens

in

pluralistic

democracies have a moral and

political duty

to

conduct their

public political

discussions in accordance with

principles

and

values that

it

would be reasonable

to

expect

other

free

and

equal

citi

zens to

accept.5

In

this

paper

I draw on

an

unlikely

source,

the

political thought

of

Hannah

Arendt,

to

challenge

the idea of

public

reason as a

normative

standard for the conduct of

political

discourse

in

pluralistic

liberal de

mocracies and to outline the beginnings of an alternative to it. I refer to

Arendt as an

unlikely

source for

help

in these matters

because,

as

most

readers of

Arendt are

aware,

she makes some rather stern

distinctions

between what are for her

properly public/political

activities and what

must be

kept private.6

Yet it would be a

mistake

to

presume

that Arendt's

3See for

example,

James

Bohman,

"Public Reason and Cultural Pluralism:

Political

Liberalism and

the

Problem of Moral

Conflict,"

Political

Theory

23

(1995):

253-79;

Veit

Bader,

"Religious

Pluralism:

Secularism or

Priority

of

Democracy?"

Political

Theory

27

(1999):

597-633;

Bhikhu

Parekh,

Rethinking

Multiculturalism: Cultural

Diversity

and

Political

Theory (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard

University

Press,

2000),

chapters

3

and

10;

Paul J.

Weithman,

Religion

and the

Obligations

of

Citizenship

(Cambridge: Cambridge

University

Press,

2002),

chapter

7;

John

Horton, "Rawls,

Public Reason

and the Limits of

Liberal

Justification,"

Contemporary

Political

Theory

2

(2003):

5-23.

4See Mark

Tushnet,

"The Limits

of the Involvement of

Religion

in the

Body

Politic,"

in

J.E.

Wood,

Jr.

nd

D.

Davis

(eds.),

The Role

of

Religion

in the

Making ofPublic

Policy

(Waco,

Tex.:

Dawson Institute of

Church-State

Studies,

1991),

pp.

191-220;

Greenawalt,

Private Consciences

and Public

Reasons,

chapter

1.

5Robert

Audi,

"The

Separation

of

Church and State

and the

Obligations

of

Citizen

ship," Philosophy

and Public

Affairs

18

(1989):

259-96;

Joshua

Cohen,

"Deliberation and

Democratic

Legitimacy,"

in A. Hamlin and P. Pettit

(eds.),

The Good

Polity (Oxford:

Basil

Blackwell,

1989), pp.

17-34;

Amy

Gutmann

and Dennis

Thompson,

"Moral Con

flict and

Political

Consensus,"

Ethics 101

(1990):

64-88;

Stephen

Macedo,

"Transforma

tive

Constitutionalism and the Case of

Religion:

Defending

the Moderate

Hegemony

of

Liberalism,"

Political

Theory

26

(1998):

56-80.

6For a critical

discussion of Arendt's

political thought

on these

points,

see Hanna

Pitkin,

"Justice: On

Relating

Private and

Public,"

Political

Theory

9

(1981):

327-52;






Arendt, Rawls,

and Public Reason

259

demarcations between the

public

and

private

participates

in

or can be

grafted

onto the

secular-religious

distinction

that is

such a

prominent

fea

ture of the debates surrounding contemporary political liberalism.7 In

deed,

it

is

precisely

because

Arendt's

political thinking

cannot be

mapped

out

in

relation

to the

ongoing theoretical-political

dispute

be

tween

liberalism and

religion

that her

political thought

can

provide

im

portant

new

insights

into

the

contemporary controversy

that surrounds

the idea of

public

reason.

While Arendt's

conception

of

politics

is in its

own

unique way

bound

up

with

a series of

seemingly rigid

demarcations

(between

the

political

and the social or

economic,

for

example),

her

approach

to

the self

and

political action, as well as her understanding of the stakes of sustaining

an

open political

realm more

generally,

create

a critical

space

in which

to

challenge

the basic conceit of liberal

public

reason: that

participation

in

the

grammar

of

public

reason is the

sign

of one's moral

standing

as a

good

and reasonable democratic

citizen. Yet the

purpose

of this

paper

is

not

only

critical,

but constructive. I

will

argue

that

by

turning

to Arendt's

appreciation

for the role of self-disclosure

in

political speech

and

action,

we are

provided

with a model of

political dialogue

that can

expand

in

powerful

ways

the

meaning

and

significance

of "the

public

use of rea

son.

Before

making my

case

for this Arendtian

alternative,

I

discuss

briefly

John Rawls's

conception

of

public

reason,

because

it

represents

one of the most

persuasive

accounts of

how

contemporary

liberal

phi

losophy responds

to the

question

of

religious

and other so-called com

prehensive

doctrines in

politics.

By

addressing

a

particularly

influential

version of

public

reason,

I will show how

an Arendtian

perspective

raises

critical

questions

about the

operation

of such

a

standard,

while account

ing

for

many

of the values

that liberals

rightly

cherish

without the kinds

of constraints and limitations that they propose. This is not to say that

there are no

limits to

public

discourse,

but rather

that the nature of the

boundaries of

the

public

realm

need to be

fundamentally

rethought

and

ultimately

expanded.

In this

regard,

I will also

indicate in the conclusion

Margaret

Canovan,

Hannah

Arendt:

A

Reinterpretation

of

Her Political

Thought (Cam

bridge:

Cambridge

University

Press,

1992), chapter

7;

Seyla

Benhabib,

The Reluctant

Modernism

of

Hannah Arendt

(Thousand

Oaks,

Cal.:

Sage

Publications,

1996),

chapter

5.

7For

critical treatments

of

the

secular-religious

divide

within

contemporary

liberal

ism,

see

Charles

Taylor,

"Modes

of

Secularism,"

in R.

Bhargava

(ed.),

Secularism

and

Its

Critics

(Delhi:

Oxford

University

Press,

1998), pp.

31-53; Bader,

"Religious

Pluralism,"

pp.

597-633;

William

Connolly,

Why

am Not a

Secularist

(Minneapolis:

University

of

Minnesota

Press,

1999);

and

Jeffrey

C.

Isaac,

Matthew

F.

Filner,

and

Jason

C.

Bivins,

"American

Democracy

and the New

Christian

Right:

A

Critique

of

Apolitical

Liberal

ism,"

in Ian

Shapiro

and Casiano

Hacker-Cordón

(eds.),

Democracy's Edges

(Cam

bridge:

Cambridge University

ress,

1999),

pp.

222-64.






260

Mark Button

to this

paper

how Arendt's

political theory

can be marshaled to

challenge

some of her

own,

in

my

view

unsustainable,

distinctions

between the

po

litical and the non- or pre-political. After presenting the liberal case for

public

reason,

I will

show

what

is

potentially

lost from an Arendtian

view

by

the

operation

of such

a

standard and

why

this matters

for con

temporary politics.

I will then turn

to a

discussion

of

mutual

respect,

civic

friendship,

and the

challenges

of truth claims

in the

political

do

main in an effort to address some of the normative

goods

of

public

rea

son without

sacrificing

the

practical

conditions

necessary

for what

Arendt calls the

political

disclosure of humanitas and

with it the

precon

ditions for valid

political judgments.

Rawls and Public Reason: The Grammar of Liberal

Citizenship

For

Rawls,

public

reason

provides

the

guidelines

in accordance with

which citizens and

public

officials should

apply

the

principles

of a

politi

cal

conception

of

justice

to

specific questions

of law and

policy,

most

especially

those issues

that

Rawls refers to as "constitutional essentials"

and issues of

"basic

justice."8

Public reason

is,

quite self-consciously,

an

idea whose

purpose

is to

bridge

the

ever-looming gap

between

theory

(and

specifically,

a liberal

political

conception

of

justice)

and the tumul

tuous

world of

political practice

and

public inquiry.

As

such,

liberal

pub

lic

reason

contains

both

substantive

(liberal)

principles,

such as the val

ues of

equal

liberty

and

equality

of

opportunity,

and

procedural

standards

that

seek to

specify

the

type

of

reasoning

and the form of

public argu

mentation that is

appropriate

for a diverse

democratic

society

committed

to liberal

legitimacy.

Rawls introduces the idea of

public

reason as an

"ideal

conception

of

citizenship

for

a constitutional

democratic

regime."9

For

Rawls,

the no

tion of a

properly

public

form of

reasoning

is

fundamentally

about how

to conceive

the

type

of

relationship

and the kinds of

moral

duties

that

exist for citizens in a

democracy,

citizens

who,

at least in

theory,

hold

ultimate

political power

and

who,

again

in

theory,

are

ultimately respon

sible for the

exercise of

coercive

public

laws over

one another.

Rawls

argues

that the

ideal of

citizenship,

as

expressed by

the

requirement

of

public

reason,

"imposes

a

moral,

not a

legal,

duty—the

duty

of

civil

ity."10

As

Rawls

conceives of

it,

this

duty

of

civility

imposes

a

moral ob

ligation

on citizens to be

ready

and able to

offer

explanations

as to the

basis of one's public arguments, political advocacy, or vote in terms that

8Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

214.

9Ibid.,

p.

213.

'"ibid.,

p.

217.






Árendt, Rawls,

and Public

Reason

261

others

can

reasonably

be

expected

to endorse.

Specifically,

legitimate

forms

of

public justification require

that citizens

"appeal only

to

pres

ently accepted general beliefs and forms of reasoning found in common

sense,

and

the

methods and conclusions of

science when these are not

controversial."11

Rawls's

position

is

frequently interpreted

as one that

seeks

to

exclude

or otherwise

privatize

religion

or other

comprehensive

moral and

phi

losophical

views.12 Yet it is not

quite

accurate to refer to

public

reason as

an effort to

privatize

or "bracket"

religious

or other

comprehensive

modes of

expression,

and this is because far more is involved here.

Rawls's last contributions to these

questions

show

that he

sought

to

ex

pand his view of public reason to allow for the inclusion of comprehen

sive doctrines

in

public

argument.

The crucial

"proviso"

that he attached

to

this

liberalization

(or

widening)

of

public

reason is that

reasonable

[comprehensive]

doctrines

may

be introduced

in

public

reason at

any

time,

provided

that

in

due course

public

reasons,

given by

a reasonable

political

conception,

are

presented

sufficient

to

support

whatever the

comprehensive

doctrines are introduced to

support.13

By

putting

it in

just

this

way,

Rawls shows on the one hand that he is

concerned to have public discourse reflect a commitment to general ac

cessibility

for all citizens

in a

pluralistic

society

even

as

the modes of

public

argument

are

diversified;

on the other hand

this

proviso

also

sug

gests

that the real

argumentative weight

in

public

deliberations must be

carried

by

liberal

public

reason since

this

stipulated

limitation strives

to

make redundant

(or

rather

superfluous)

the

religious

views

whose con

tent must be

fully

accounted for

by nonreligious

(or

non-comprehensive)

values

in order to stand

up

to liberal

scrutiny—that

is,

to be deemed rea

sonable

and

publicly

justifiable.

The reason

for this

type

of moral and

political weighting is that there "are many nonpublic reasons but only

one

public

reason."14

The

nonpublic

status of

"comprehensive

doctrines"

does

not mean that

they

are

essentially private,

but their

presumed

non

generalizability

(and/or

nonaccessibility)

renders

the

public political

em

"ibid.,

p.

224.

12See in

this

respect

the

arguments

of

Jeremy

Waldron,

"Religious

Contributions

in

Public

Deliberation,"

San

Diego

Law Review 30

(1993):

817-48;

David

Hollenbach,

"Public

Reason/Private

Religion?

A

Response

to

Paul

J.

Weithman,"

Journal

of Religious

Ethics 22

(1994):

39-46;

Robert

Audi

and Nicholas

Wolterstorff,

eligion

in

the

Public

Square:

The

Place

of

Religious

Convictions

in Political

Debate

(Lanham,

Md.: Rowman

and

Littlefield,

1997);

Andrew

Murphy,

"Rawls

and

the

Shrinking Liberty

of Con

science,"

Review

of

Politics

60

(1998):

20-44.

"Rawls,

Justice as Fairness:

A

Restatement,

ed. Erin

Kelly (Cambridge,

Mass.: Har

vard

University

ress,

2001),

p.

90;

see

also

Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

pp.

li-liii.

14Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

220;

"The Idea of

Public Reason

Revisited,"

p.

583.






262 Mark Button

ployment

of such

views

deeply problematic,

and absent certain liberal

impediments

(i.e.,

the

proviso)

these claims are

judged

potentially

coer

cive.

At its

core, then,

the idea of

public

reason claims to

provide

a

moral

standard

of

reciprocity

and mutual

respect

that instructs citizens of a

plu

ralistic

democracy

to eschew those forms

of

reasoning

and modes of ar

gument

that

they

cannot

reasonably

expect

others to endorse or assent

to;

or,

in

accordance

with Rawls's

proviso,

one should

always

be

ready

and

capable

of

supplementing

those claims or

"grounding

reasons" with

nontheistic,

nonsectarian

public

reasons.15 This

is how

contemporary

lib

eralism understands what

respect

for

persons requires.

If a stable

political

consensus under conditions of ethical and philosophical pluralism is the

goal,

then

(shadowing

Rawls's own move

away

from

"metaphysics")

public

dialogue (and political philosophy)

should avoid

or

seek to

mini

mize

long-standing philosophical

controversies.16 As Rawls makes

plain,

this

criterion

"imposes very

considerable

discipline

on

public

discus

sion"17—a

point many

of Rawls's defenders seem to have

overlooked,

with a

few notable

exceptions.18

The idea of

public

reason

applies

not

only

to

institutions

like the

U.S.

Supreme

Court

(which

Rawls calls an

"exemplar

of

public reason"),

but also to citizens in a wide

range

of

pub

lic political activities like advocacy, campaigning, voting, and so on. Ad

ditionally,

while Rawls is most

concerned to establish the

operation

of

public

reason on matters of "constitutional

essentials,"

where basic issues

of

rights

and liberties are

at

stake,

he is

admirably forthright

in acknowl

edging

that "it

is

usually highly

desirable to settle

political questions

by

invoking

the values of

public

reason."19

One useful

way

to understand

public

reason

is to

view it as a kind of

language

requirement

for

liberal

citizenship.

To

adopt

and

practice

the

moral

duty

of

citizenship

that is

conveyed by

public

reason is to

"adopt

a

certain form of discourse."20 Political liberals seek to institutionalize

public

reason as

the official

language

for

public

political argument.

It is

not the

only

language you

will hear in

politics,

but

it

should of

right

be

the dominant

one at the end of the

day.

Not

everyone

will be a

native

speaker,

but

everyone

will

be

expected

to

learn it and

use

it,

"in due

course,"

as it

were. In this

respect,

the

Rawlsian

proviso

is a

requirement

i5See

also

Amy

Gutmann and

Dennis

Thompson,

Democracy

and

Disagreement

(Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard

University

Press,

1996), chapter

2.

6Rawls,

"The Idea of

an

Overlapping

Consensus,"

Collected

Papers,

p.

429.

17Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

227.

l8See,

for

example,

Paul

Weithman,

"Rawlsian

Liberalism and

the

Privatization of

Religion:

Three

Theological

Objections

Considered,"

Journal

of

Religious

Ethics 22

(1994):

3-28;

and

Weithman,

Religion

and the

Obligations of

Citizenship,

chapter

7.

19Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

215.

20Ibid„

p.

242.






Arendt,

Rawls,

and Public Reason

263

that

compels

a moral

duty

on citizens who would

draw on

comprehen

sive doctrines in

public argument

to be fluent in more than

one

language.

More directly, liberal public reason is a kind of political Esperanto that

aims to

help

citizens live

on

"the surface" of their

political

relations

with

one

another,

providing

a

necessary

second

tongue

for

properly public

(i.e.,

moral and

civil)

engagement.

Other

"nonpublic" languages

drawn,

for

example,

from

churches,

sacred

texts,

or moral

philosophy

must ei

ther be set

aside

or

readily

translated in the

public

domain

according

to

the rules of liberal

grammar.

But

secular

(that

is,

non-sectarian and non

comprehensive)

political

translation itself

is a

moral

duty

of

citizenship,

not a task that can be

sloughed

off to

others,

at

least if one desires to be

judged a reasonable and civil person. Since no language is really separa

ble from the broader

culture of

which

it

is

an

integral part, public

reason

represents

more

than

just

the form of

reasons

and the kinds of

arguments

that are

employed

in

public,

but

also

highlights

a

specific way

in

which

citizens are to understand themselves

and relate

to

one

another

over

time.21

What is

important

to stress here

is that Rawls and other

contemporary

liberals

encourage

the

adoption

of the standards of

public

reason and a

form of liberal

bilingualism

because it not

only

addresses the essential

question of how to justify coercive laws in a pluralistic social environ

ment under various

"burdens of

judgment,"

but also because

it

casts the

political

relation of citizens

in a constitutional democratic

regime

as one

of "civic

friendship."22

The "civic" side of this "civic

friendship"

is

con

tained

by

public

reason's

injunction

to

appeal only

to

political

values

(not

comprehensive

philosophic

or

religious

values,

or at least

not exclu

sively)

when it comes

to

public political

discourse.

The rather

surprising

notion of

"friendship"

here comes from

the norms of

reciprocity,

civility,

and trust that Rawls believes

will

proliferate

with the

deployment

and

cultivation of liberal public reason. Public reason, then, is not just a mat

ter of

specifying

the

legitimate (epistemic) grounds

for

arguments

that

address

questions

of

basic

justice

or the use

of coercive

power,

it is

a

normative

(moral)

model of

citizenship

that seeks to

shape

the contours

and dimensions of

the

public political

sphere,

the

language

and

argu

ments

heard

therein,

and the

dispositions

and character

of all those

who

participate

in democratic

political

argument.

In

sum,

to

understand

and

comport

oneself

as a democratic

citizen,

in

accordance with this

liberal

frame,

means

that

one

has absorbed

the values and

procedures

of

public

reason. In this sense, the "proviso" is not just a task of (epistemic) sup

plementation—or

a test of valid

public

arguments—but

also

fundamen

21

See

Rawls,

"The

Idea of Public Reason

Revisited,"

p.

574.

22Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

li.






264

Mark Button

tally

a

project

of moral/civic

preparedness.

With

political

liberalism's commitment to an "ideal of

citizenship"

and a specific form of civic friendship in mind, it isn't accurate to claim

that Rawlsian liberalism

and

public

reason

express

a commitment to

"epistemic

abstinence"

or to

"higher

order

impartiality."23

We

might

more

accurately

refer to

this

commitment

as one of moral and civic trans

formation via

the

linguistic/moral

thrust of

public

reason.

I

raise this

point

not to rehearse the familiar

charge

that

contemporary

liberalism is

only

another sectarian

political

doctrine

traveling

under the

specious

guise

of official

neutrality.

That

contemporary

liberals are committed to

(or

are at least now

more

willing

to

acknowledge)

the

political

conse

quences and the cultural-transformative effects of their conception of

moral

citizenship

is

a

qualified

advance

in the coherence of liberal

politi

cal

theory.24

Yet a central

question

remains,

and

that

is whether

qualities

like civic

friendship,

mutual

respect,

and

reciprocity

are

adequately

ac

counted for or

generated by political

liberalism and

public

reason so

un

derstood. In

my

view,

these

important

civic

qualities

are

seriously

con

strained and

potentially jeopardized

by

liberal accounts

of

public

reason.

I

what follows

I

draw

on

certain features of

Hannah Arendt's

political

thought

to indicate

why public

reason

might

have a

constraining

effect

on values of civic friendship and norms of reciprocity, and to show that

there is an alternative

way

of

conceiving

these

political goods

that does

not

depend

on the

restrictions of liberal

public

reason.

Arendt, Humanitas,

and the Relevance of the Public Realm

Within the

extensive

scholarship

dedicated

to

Hannah Arendt's

political

thought,

there is

significant

disagreement concerning

both how her the

ory

of action

and the

public sphere

should be

understood,

and what

po

litical

consequences

(if

any) might

follow from

adopting

one or another

privileged

interpretive reading

of Arendt's

theory.

There

are

many

excel

lent

analyses

of these

interpretive

battles and the

issues

at

stake within

them.25

The one

thing

that

nearly

all of

Arendt's

interpreters

have been

23See,

respectively, Joseph

Raz,

"Facing

Diversity:

The Case of

Epistemic

Absti

nence,"

Philosophy

and Public

Affairs

19

(1990):

3-46;

and

Nagel,

"Moral Conflict and

Political

Legitimacy,"

pp.

215-40.

24This is an

integral

feature of recent works

by

Macedo and

Barry;

see

Macedo,

Di

versity

and

Distrust;

and Brian

Barry,

Culture

and

Equality:

An

Egalitarian Critique of

Multiculturalism

(Cambridge,

Mass.:

Harvard

University

Press,

2001).

25See for

example,

Maurizio Passerin

d'Entrèves,

The Political

Philosophy of

Han

nah

Arendt

(London:

Routledge,

1994),

chapter

2;

Bonnie

Honig

(ed.),

Feminist

Interpre

tations

of

Hannah

Arendt

(University

Park:

Pennsylvania

State

University

Press,

1995);

and Dana R.

Villa,

Arendt

and

Heidegger:

The

Fate

of

the Political

(Princeton:

Princeton






Arendt,

Rawls,

and Public Reason

265

able to

agree

upon

is that

there

are

significant

tensions within her

theory

of action and the

public sphere.

These tensions

(for

some,

contradictions)

have been explored along a number of different axes: the expressive and

the

communicative

models of

action,26

the communicative and the in

strumental-strategic,27

the

agonal

versus

the

narrative,28

and elitist/heroic

versus

democratic/participatory.29

Doubtless these and

many

other inter

pretive

divisions will continue to mark the

study

of Arendt's

political

thought

for the foreseeable

future,

and

some

of this

(at

least

where schol

ars

recognize

that the tensions in Arendt's

thinking

are themselves a

par

tial

reflection

upon

the

very

conditions

of

contemporary

democratic

po

litical

life,

requiring

exploration,

not

resolution)

is all to the

good.

Yet

my aim in what follows is not to engage Arendt's critics, but rather to

consider what

consequences

and what alternative

possibilities

Arendt's

political

theory might

hold for us when focused

upon

the

question

of the

relationship

between

religion

and liberal

public

reason.

In contrast to Rawls and

political

liberalism more

generally,

political

speech

and action for Arendt are not

solely

or

ultimately

about the rea

soned

justification

of one's

pre-existing positions

to others

in

a

public

forum.

Rather,

according

to

Arendt,

the raison d'être of

public

words and

deeds

is

self-disclosure,

the disclosure of one's

unique

humanitas to oth

ers in a plural, political context. "In acting and speaking, men show who

they

are,

reveal

actively

their

unique personal

identities

and

thus make

their

appearance

in the human world."30 This

is,

to be

sure,

a

complicated

and difficult

way

of

thinking

about

political

speech,

for while it

does not

deny

the

importance

of common

decision-making,

such

a view

takes the

essential

significance

of

politics

out of

the domain of the

strictly

instru

mental mode of interest

articulation/acquisition,

means-ends

rationality,

or consensus

formation.

Instead,

Arendt's vision of

politics emphasizes

the

intangible

"web" of human

inter-relationships

that are created be

tween people when they enter a public political space. Public words and

deeds are

always,

of

course,

about some

objective,

material

concern

or

reality,

but

what

is

of

equal importance

for Arendt are the immaterial

University

ress,

1996),

chapter

1.

26d'Entrèves,

The Political

Philosophy of

Hannah

Arendt,

pp.

83-85.

27Jürgen

Habermas,

"Hannah Arendt's Communications

Concept

of

Power,"

Social

Research

44

(1977):

3-23.

28Benhabib,

The Reluctant Modernism

of

Hannah

Arendt,

chapter

5.

29See

Margaret

Canovan,

"The Contradictions

of Hannah

Arendt's Political

Thought,"

Political

Theory

6

(1978):

5-26; Bhikhu Parekh, Hannah Arendt and the

Search

for

a New Political

Philosophy

(London:

Macmillan,

1981);

and

Jeffrey

C.

Isaac,

"Oases

in the Desert:

Hannah Arendt on Democratic

Politics,"

American Political Sci

ence

Review 88

(1994):

156-68.

30Hannah

Arendt,

The Human Condition

(Chicago:

University

of

Chicago

Press,

1958), p.

179.






266

Mark Button

webs of

relationships

that form whenever

people

gather

in

a

public

po

litical context. As

the

metaphor

of the "web"

suggests,

this

quality

of

the

political is somewhat intangible and exceedingly fragile and perishable:

Its

peculiarity

is

that,

unlike the

spaces

which are the work of our

hands,

it does not sur

vive the

actuality

of the movement

which

brought

it into

being,

but

disappears

not

only

with the

dispersal

of men ... but

with

the

disappearance

or arrest of the

activities

them

selves. Whenever

people gather together,

it is

potentially

there,

but

only potentially,

not

necessarily

and not forever.31

An

important

feature of

Arendt's

understanding

of the nature and

value of

public

speech

and

action

is that she does not think that actors

within a plural public sphere have full or autonomous control over the

self that is

ineluctably

disclosed or revealed

through

their words and

deeds.

Drawing upon

a connection to both Ancient Greek

religion

and

Roman

sources,

Arendt

argues

that

the disclosure

of "who"

someone

is,

in contradistinction to "what"

somebody

is,

... is

implicit

in

everything somebody says

and

does.

It can be hidden

only

in

complete

silence

and

perfect

passivity,

but its

disclo

sure can almost never be achieved as a willful

purpose

... On the

contrary,

it is more than

likely

that

the

"who,"

which

appears

so

clearly

and

unmistakably

to

others,

remains hid

den

from

the

person

himself,

like the daimon in Greek

religion

which

accompanies

each

man

throughout

his

life, always looking

over his shoulder from behind and thus visible

only

to those he encounters.32

In a

public

laudatio

for Karl

Jaspers, given

in the same

year

as the

publi

cation of The Human

Condition,

Arendt makes an

explicit

connection

between this idea of

an

overseeing

God or

spirit

and an individual's

unique

humanitas,

which Arendt

tends to

treat

as

non-subjective

person

ality

or distinct humanness:

This

daimon ... this

personal

element in a

man,

can

only

appear

where a

public space

exists;

that is the

deeper significance

of the

public realm,

which

extends

far

beyond

what

we

ordinarily

mean

by political

life. To

the extent

that

this

public space

is also

a

spiritual

realm,

there is manifest in it what

the Romans

called humanitas,33

For

Arendt,

this

non-subjective

(non-controllable)

humanitas is

risked,

acquired,

and

ultimately

extended as a

gift

to

others when we

make our

"venture into

the

public

realm."

What

light

does

Arendt's

stress on the

revelatory,

nonmanipulatable

dimensions of

political

action

and

public identity

throw on liberal

efforts

to

construct forms of

public justification

to

govern

and

discipline politi

3lIbid.,p.

199.

32Il

33H

p.

173.

32Ibid.,

p.

179-80.

33Hannah

Arendt,

Men in Dark Times

(New

York: Harcourt

Brace

Jovanovich,

1968),






Arendt,

Rawls,

and Public Reason

267

cal discourse and

citizenship?

One immediate

consequence

of

entertain

ing

this Arendtian stress

on

the

disclosive

dimensions

of

speech/action

is

that liberal attempts to secure substantive and procedural standards of

public/secular

reason,

in advance of

public engagements

on

questions

of

common

concern,

will

likely

mean

that

the full

revelatory potential

of

public

political

life will have been

significantly

diminished. The kind

of

guidelines

that

political

liberals offer

by way

of

disciplining

citizens

into

an

appropriate

form of

political reasoning represents,

from

an

Arendtian

perspective,

an

attempt

to

respond

to the conditions of human

plurality

in

ways

that

ultimately

condition and constrain that

pluralism

in

accordance

with

a certain set of

(liberal)

standards. Of

course,

contemporary

liberal

theorists like Rawls and Macedo fully acknowledge this. If Arendt were

to counsel

something

different,

on the basis of her

understanding

of the

self

and the

requirements

for a

public space

of

appearance,

so much

the

worse for

political

action as

implicit

self-disclosure,

political

liberals

would

likely

say.

But what are

the

consequences

of

short-circuiting

the

disclosive

aspects

of

speech

and action

upon

which Arendt

put

so

much

significance?

One

way

to address this

question

is to first note that a

primary

as

sumption

at work

in

political

liberalism is that

religious

adherents

(as

the

holders of fixed "comprehensive doctrines") speak from their position as

believers with a

telos attached to them like a chain. The doctrines are

fixed,

their

political

identities

stable,

their

voices sectarian and univocal.

Contemporary

liberal

theory

often treats

opinion

as

something

that is

formed

prior

to

entering

the

political

domain

(in

the

"background

politi

cal

culture"),

and

public

reason

comes into

play

as a

particular

mode of

discourse

by

which to

safely regulate

the

reciprocal exchange

of

these

pre-established points

of view. Two

points

of contrast

with

Arendt

should be made here. The

first,

drawing

on her own

unique reading

of

Kant, emphasizes that thought and opinion formation themselves depend

upon

conditions of

publicity,

and critical

publicity

in

particular.34

This is

a condition in which the

testing

of

one's

position

arises from the

critical

interaction with other

people's

form of

thinking.

Such

a

condition,

Ar

endt

argues,

"presupposes

that

everyone

is

willing

and able

to render

an

account of

what

he

thinks

and

says."35

Yet

rendering

an

account

and tak

ing responsibility

for

what one

thinks

is not a

process

of

proof

or rational

justification,

and it is not

a

process

that can

really get

off

the

ground

if

publicity

itself is

already

defined and

given

distinct normative value in

accordance with one pre-given standard or logic of reasoning. In the fol

34Hannah

Arendt,

'Truth and

Politics,"

in

Between Past and

Future

(New

York: Pen

guin

Books,

1961), pp.

227-64,

at

pp.

234-35.

35Hannah

Arendt,

Lectures on Kant's

Political

Philosophy,

ed. Ronald

Beiner

(Chi

cago:

University

f

Chicago

Press,

1982),

p.

41.






268

Mark Button

lowing

reply

that Arendt

gave Mary

McCarthy

when

pressed

to defend

her own

partitioning

of the social and

the

political,

Arendt

speaks

to

the

historical and institutional variability of the standard of publicity, and

with it the

importance

of

keeping

that standard

open

to a

variety

of con

cerns and

voices,

including questions

of

religious

faith:

Life

changes constantly,

and

things

are

constantly

there that want to be talked about.

At

all

times

people living

together

will

have

affairs that

belong

in the realm of

the

public—

"are

worthy

to

be

talked about in

public."

What these matters are

at

any

historical mo

ment

is

probably

utterly

different. For

instance,

the

great

cathedrals were the

public

spaces

of the

Middle

Ages.

The town halls came later. And there

perhaps they

had to talk

about

a matter which is not without

any

interest either: the

question

of

God.

So what

becomes

public

at

every given period

seems to me

utterly

different.36

The

point

then is not

only

that

publicity

is never

a

singular quality,

some

thing

that can

be

affixed to

one

pre-political

standard

(science

or "com

mon

sense")

without

sacrificing

the

potential meaning

and

power

of

pub

licity,

but also that its status as an

open

field

(a

living potentia)

is a con

stitutive feature of a free

political

life

in

common with others.37

The second

point

of contrast that needs to be made is that if we

grant,

with

Arendt,

that it is never

simply

the case that an individual's

compre

hensive

view

speaks

in a

clear,

unidirectional

way

to issues in the

public

domain,

but rather that the self is also

ineluctably spoken

or revealed in

the

pubic exchange

of words and

deeds,

then accounts of

public

dis

course that continue

to treat

subjects

as discrete carriers of fixed

pre

political

claims

(and

fashion rules of

engagement

in accordance with this

view of

political

actors)

will

inevitably

lead us

astray.

By misconstruing

or

simply flattening

the

complicated relationship

between the self

and

the

selfs

public/political identity, political

liberals

treat the "fact of reason

able

pluralism"

as a condition that

always

exists outside of the

self,

on

the

surface,

and hence

containable. Yet the essential "boundlessness" and

agent-revealing quality of public speech and action suggests, at the very

least,

that these

standards will

always

be frustrated. For

Arendt,

"[^imitations

and boundaries

exist within the

realm of human

affairs,

but

they

never offer a

framework that can

reliably

withstand the

onslaught

with which each new

generation

must insert itself."38

Historically

speak

ing,

it

is

by

contesting

the limitations

and boundaries of what

passes

as

"public"

that

new interests

and constituencies

become

political subjects

as well

as the

subjects

of

liberal-democratic

justice.

More

normatively,

36

Arendt,

"On Hannah

Arendt,"

in M.A. Hill

(ed.),

Hannah Arendt: The

Recovery of

the Public

World

(New

York: St. Martin's

Press,

1979),

p.

316.

37See also

Arendt,

"What

is Existential

Philosophy?"

in

Jerome Kohn

(ed.),

Essays

in

Understanding:

1930-1954

(New

York: Harcourt Brace and

Company, 1994), pp.

186

87.

38Arendt,

The Human

Condition,

p.

191.






Arendt, Rawls,

and Public

Reason 269

what

is

at

stake,

according

to

Arendt,

"is the

revelatory

character without

which

action and

speech

would lose all human relevance."39 That

is to

say, it is humanitas and its related values that are at stake with public

reason

and

the

moral

regulation

of the

public political

domain,

not sim

ply religion

or

comprehensive

doctrines

as

such.

To be

sure,

political

liberals are not naïve about the difficulties en

tailed

by

a criterion like

public

reason,

but there is little evidence that

they

have

taken

a full

accounting

of the

ways

in

which

politics depends

upon,

or

simply

is,

the

space

of

appearance

that rises

directly

out of

peo

ple acting together,

rather than the

derivative,

manipulable

condition for

coming

to decisions

about the

legitimate

use of coercive

power

(as

im

portant as those decisions are). Yet, political liberals endeavor not only

to

give political

standards and

guidelines

for

public

reasoning,

they

also

seek to fashion the

deeper self-understanding

of citizens

qua

citizens

af

ter

these

justificatory

standards. What I am

stressing,

by way

of

contrast,

is the

deep

(at

times,

tragic)

sense

in

which,

as

figures

as

diverse as

Sophocles,

Marx, Oakeshott,

and Arendt

argue,

the

political

is not

fully

within rational human control or contrivance. For

Arendt,

the sources of

unpredictability

and

contingency

in

politics

have

nothing

to do with the

role of

something

like

fortuna

or an

Hegelian

Geist,

and

everything

to do

with the revelatory features of public speech and action. The "who" of

the

speaker,

one's distinctive

personal

identity,

or

humanitas,

of which

religious

convictions are

ineluctably

a

part,

will

always

find

public

ex

pression

whenever and wherever

people

act

politically.

Hence,

from an

Arendtian

perspective,

it

is

both fruitless and inhuman

(in

Arendt's sense

of that

term)

to define one's

religious

and/or moral

conceptions

as

part

of

one's

"nonpublic

identity,"

as Rawls does.40 As Arendt

argues:

To

dispense

with this

disclosure,

if

indeed

it

could

ever be

done,

would mean to trans

form men into

something

they

are

not;

to

deny,

on

the other

hand,

that

this disclosure

is

real and has

consequences

of its own is

simply

unrealistic.41

The

revelatory, nonsovereign,

and

tragic

dimensions of

the self and

po

litical action

may simply

be taken as

an

instance

of Arendt's irreducible

difference

from liberalism.

And

that,

of

course,

would

be

right,

as

nu

merous

scholars have

shown.42 Yet

it

would

be a mistake to

suppose

that

39Ibid.,p.

182.

40Rawls,

"Justice as

Fairness: Political

not

Metaphysical,"

Philosophy

and

Public

Affairs

4

(1985):

223-51,

p.

241.

41Arendt,

Human

Condition,

p.

183.

42See Bonnie

Honig,

Political

Theory

and the

Displacement

of

Politics

(Ithaca:

Cor

nell

University

Press,

1993),

chapter

4;

Frederick

Dolan,

"Political Action

and the

Un

conscious:

Arendt and

Lacan on

Decentering

the

Subject,"

Political

Theory

23

(1995):

330-52;

Villa,

Arendt and

Heidegger, chapters

1 and

5.






270

Mark

Button

nothing

else

might

follow

from

placing

this Arendtian

perspective

into

conversation

with

political

liberalism

and to

forgo

a critical reflection

upon how her understanding of public speaking and acting under condi

tions

of

pluralism

might challenge

and amend

the liberal standard of

pub

lic reason that has reached such

a

position

of

prominence

today.

Common Sense/Sensus

Communis

The above discussion of the essential and

ineluctable role of self

disclosure in

public

life

bears

directly upon

further

problems

with the

liberal idea of

public

reason

because it

suggests

that,

among

other

things,

the disclosive dimension

of

political agency,

which

political

liberalism

short-circuits and

constrains,

is

fully wrapped up

with

both

our sense of

reality

and the formation of

something

like

a sensus

communis,

or com

mon sense. Recall that in

seeking

to

give

content to

public

reason in a

way

that would not run

afoul

of the basic condition

of

"reasonable

plural

ism,"

Rawls

argues

that

in

making public

justifications

about issues of

basic

justice

citizens are to

appeal,

"only

to

presently accepted

general

beliefs and forms of

reasoning

found in common sense."43

Rawls

runs

into a certain amount of

trouble

by incorporating

the idea of common

sense

into his standard for

public justification,

because it introduces both

an historical

and cultural dimension into his

theory

that doesn't otherwise

mesh well with

his

analytic categories.

As

he seems to

recognize,

what

passes

for

generally accepted

beliefs and "common sense" in the antebel

lum

American

South

is

not what most

political

liberals would want to

endorse.

Hence,

Rawls has to undertake

some

rather

significant

addenda

to make his idea of

public

reason work for

figures

like the abolitionists or

Martin

Luther

King,

Jr.,

who

might

otherwise be taken as the

perfect

counterfactuals to the

principles

of

public

reason,

since

they

advocated

for

political

change

at different historical moments in

ways

that

freely

and

effectively

drew

upon

"comprehensive" religious

views.44

By

contrast,

Arendt held a clear

sense of the

power

imbalances and

the

disproportionate

effects on

ethno-religious

minorities

in

accepting

something

like

appeals

to common

and

historically/culturally

condi

tioned

standards of sense and

belief. In

discussing

the terms and

con

straints of Jewish

emancipation

in

Europe

in the nineteenth

century,

Ar

endt

argued

that

Jews could

only

achieve real

emancipation

if

they

were

accepted

as

Jews,

not as

"parvenus,"

or Jews

acting

or

being

secular. In

her

biography

of Rahel

Varnhagen,

Arendt

exposes

the

underlying politi

cal

and

cultural

dynamics

that

renders

assimilation for

religious

and eth

43Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

p.

224.

"Ibid.,

pp.

247-52.






Arendt,

Rawls,

and

Public Reason

271

nic minorities

a

process

of

interiorizing

self-hatred. In a

context of anti

Semitism,

secularization

or

assimilation into dominant

"public

stan

dards" of being entails a powerful measure of self-renunciation for many

Jews.

At the

same

time,

such

"public"

standards and

beliefs demand a

degree

of

self-guardianship

that

is

nearly

impossible

to

sustain,

but

which

nonetheless

can

have

disproportionate

and

disfiguring

effects on a

personal

life.45

Yet the notion of

"common sense" still

plays

a

powerful

role in Ar

endt's

thinking,

but

one

that,

unsurprisingly, depends

on the

condition

of

a

political space

that

allows for

the self-disclosure of citizens. For

Arendt

common sense is an

open,

révisable

political

product

of

multiple per

spectives focusing together upon one common issue or concern.

Common sense ... discloses to

us the nature of the world insofar as

it is

a

common

world;

we owe to

it

the fact that our

strictly private

and

"subjective"

five

senses and their sen

sory

data can

adjust

themselves to

a

non-subjective

and

"objective"

world which we have

in common and

share

with

others.

Judging

is

one,

if not the

most,

important

activity

in

which this

sharing-the-world-with-others

comes to

pass.46

In

short,

it is

hard to see

how a

standard like "common

sense,"

as an

op

erative

quality

in the

political

act of common

judging—as

both Arendt

and Rawls see it—can be confidently held as a source of justice if that

principle

does not seek to maximize

the fullest

expressions

of as

many

people

as

possible.

To

keep

such a standard from

functioning

as

merely

an

ideological

construct of a

particular

historical-cultural

moment,

to

minimize

the

possibility

that

appeals

to "common

sense" are little more

than a

disciplinary

norm

of

political-discursive

domestication,

common

sense has

to be

figured

as

the sensus

communis,

that

is,

something

that

cannot exist

apart

from the

activity

of

judging, acting, revealing

persons.

Hence,

common sense cannot

be understood as a set of fixed

"general

beliefs"

if it is to sustain an

enabling relationship

to democratic citizen

ship,

but rather should be seen as a set of

common

practices

or

ways

of

life that are

constantly subject

to what Arendt calls the

"incessant talk" of

politics.

In

this

regard,

an

Arendtian sensus communis

seems closer to

what

Hans-Georg

Gadamer calls an historical

horizon,

which

is

always

in

motion and never

closed,

than it does to Rawlsian common sense.47

45In addition to her

biography

of

Vamhagen,

especially

relevant here

is her discus

sion of

Kafka's

Castle,

"The Pariah as

Rebel,"

in The Jew as Pariah: Jewish

Identity

and

Politics in

the Modern

Age,

ed. Ron H. Feldman

(New

York: Grove

Press,

1978),

pp.

83

90.

See

Arendt,

Rahel

Varnhagen:

The

Life of

a Jewish

Woman,

revised

ed.

(New

York:

Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich,

1974).

46Arendt,

"The Crisis

in

Culture,"

in

Between

Past and

Future,

pp.

197-226,

at

p.

221.

47See

Hans-Georg

Gadamer,

Truth

and

Method,

2nd

ed.,

revised

(New

York:

Contin

uum,

1994).

"In fact the horizon

of the

present

is

continually

in

the

process

of

being






272

Mark Button

Mutual

Respect, Reciprocity,

and

Philia

Politike

Up to this stage in the argument I have sought to show what might be

lost,

from an Arendtian

perspective,

by

the

adoption

of a standard of

pub

lic reason for

determining

the

legitimate

grounds

and

guidelines

for the

conduct of

political

discussion

in

pluralistic

democracies. In the remain

der of this

paper

I want to show how Arendt's

political

theory

seeks

to

address some of the basic values that

political

liberals like Rawls want to

establish—such as

equal

freedom,

mutual

respect,

and civic

friendship—

but does so without the kinds of restrictions

and sacrifices that

public

reason introduces into

the

public political

forum.

As we have seen, public reason in Rawls and other contemporary lib

eral thinkers

represents

more than

just

an

attempt

to

justify

the

legitimate

grounds

for

legal

coercion

under

conditions

of

pluralism,

but also seeks

to

fashion,

in tandem

with

this former

project,

a

specific conception

of

normative

(moral)

citizenship.

This can be seen

clearly

when Rawls ar

gues

that

the criterion of

reciprocity expressed

in

public

reason is de

signed

to

"specify

the nature of the

political

relation

in a

constitutional

democratic

regime

as one of

civic

friendship."48

Hence the

question

is

not whether the

(very

old)

category

of civic

friendship

is sustainable un

der "the fact of reasonable pluralism" and the "burdens of judgment," but

rather how civic

friendship

is to be

cultivated

in a

society

marked

by

ex

tensive and

incompatible religious

and

philosophic

differences. We

want

to insist on the

importance

of mutual

respect,

tolerance,

and fairness in

free,

pluralistic

societies,

but how are

these

values

cultivated and stabi

lized over time? As we have

seen,

liberal

public

reason

gives

a

particular

answer

to these

questions.

Yet we need to ask the

following:

Does mu

tual

respect

and

civility

under conditions of

extensive

religious

and

phi

losophical diversity

require

the

operation

of

Rawlsian

public

reason,

un

derstood as

appeals

to

standards that are

already well-accepted as "gen

eral beliefs"

and

provided by

"common

sense"? Is the

duty

of

reciprocity

violated,

as Rawls

and others

argue, by

invoking

the

"grounding

reasons"

or

deepest

values that

animate and motivate

one's

participation

in

poli

tics? Does

the kind of

civility

and mutual

respect

that is

generated

by

the

observance of

public

reason

provide

an

adequate conception

of demo

cratic

citizenship

and

democratic

politics?

formed because we

are

continually having

to test all our

prejudices.

An

important

part

of

this

testing

occurs in

encountering

the

past

and in

understanding

the

tradition from which

we come.

Hence the horizon of the

present

cannot

be formed without the

past.

There is no

more an isolated

horizon

of the

present

in itself than

there are historical

horizons which

have

to be

acquired.

Rather,

understanding

is

always

the

fusion of

these horizons

suppos

edly

existing by

themselves"

(p.

306).

48Rawls,

"The Idea of Public

Reason

Revisited,"

p.

579.






Arendt, Rawls,

and Public

Reason

273

By

taking

Arendt's

political

theory seriously

and

marshaling

it

in this

setting,

the

answer to

these

questions

is

no,

and the

reasons for this

nega

tive response are drawn from her understanding of the importance of the

revelatory qualities

of

political speech

and action. In

Arendt it is

clear

that both

mutual

respect

and

civic

friendship fully depend

upon

the dis

closure of one's

humanitas,

the "who" of the

person—the

very qualities

we have

already

seen that

political

liberalism

seeks to do

without. As she

argues

in The Human

Condition:

What

love is

in

its

own,

narrowly

circumscribed

sphere, respect

is in the

larger

domain of

human affairs.

Respect,

not unlike the Aristotelian

hilia

politike,

s a

kind of "friend

ship"

without

intimacy

and

without

closeness;

it is a

regard

for the

person

from the dis

tance which the space of the world puts between us.49

What

Arendt

compels

us to ask

of

political

liberalism and of the idea

of

public

reason

is how mutual

respect,

let alone

friendship,

could ever

be

thought

to arise between

people

who

see

it

as an incumbent feature of

that

relationship

to

withhold, avoid,

detach,

or

transfigure

what

may

well

be

the most

significant

thing

about

them—their

faith,

their

conception

of

the

good,

their sense of

values

and

the source of those values. Is

public

reason a

necessary

and

appropriately

chastened

way

of

understanding

the

prospects of civic friendship and the nature of the duty of civility under

conditions of

pluralism?

For Arendt the answer is

clearly

no,

and

yet

I

don't think that Rawls and Arendt are

simply talking past

one another on

these

important points.

This is

important

to stress

because,

like

Rawls,

Arendt is committed to the values of

democratic

constitutionalism,

plu

ralism,

and modern

(negative)

rights.50

Yet

(again

like

Rawls)

she does

not want

to

forgo qualities

like

civility,

mutual

respect,

and

civic friend

ship

in our

political

life.

Still,

to

understand the

differences here we will

have

to take our cues for the

conceptualization

and

practice

of

these

vir

tues from a source other than liberalism, and for Arendt this means the

Greeks and Romans.51

What

comes out of

her

reading

of these

traditions

(among

other

things)

is a

powerful

sense of the

political

relevance of

friendship.

The essence of this

friendship

consisted

(as

one

might

expect

of the

Greeks)

in

talking. "[The

Greeks]

held that

only

the

constant

inter

change

of

talk united citizens

in a

polis.

In

discourse

the

political impor

tance of

friendship,

and the

humanness

peculiar

to

it

were made mani

49Arendt,

The Human

Condition,

p.

243.

50See

Arendt,

The

Origins of

Totalitarianism

(New

York: Harcourt Brace Jovano

vich,

1973), pp.

290-302,466.

SIFor

an

effective critical

rejoinder

to

Arendt's

supposed "nostalgia"

for the

Greeks,

see

Roy

Tsao,

"Arendt

against

Athens:

Rereading

The Human

Condition,"

Political The

ory

30

(2002):

97-123.






274

Mark Button

fest."52

By repeatedly stressing

the interconnections

between

friendship, po

litical discourse, and humanitas, Arendt helps us to see that there is

something

essentially self-defeating

about

any

model of

respect

or civic

friendship

that

depends

on a

"method

of avoidance" to come about.

It

is

self-defeating

because it overlooks or denies

the

inevitable role

of

disclo

sure

and

humanitas in our

political

relationships—a

factor

that must be

accounted

for in our

political

lives even when those associations are con

centrated

upon

"reaching

an

altogether worldly,

material

object."53

Hence,

friendship—political

friendship

for Arendt—consists

in address

ing

what stands between

people,

in the sense of

what both unites and

separates people. The idea here is not that in doing so everyone will nec

essarily

come to like

everybody

else,

nor of course

that

everyone

will

come to

some

kind of

agreement

about a

particular conception

of the

good,

but

rather

that in

"talking

about

what is between

them,

it becomes

ever more common to them."54

What

is

important

for Arendt is

that

this idea

of

making

things

com

mon between

plural

selves,

and

forming

bonds of civic

friendship

in

turn,

requires

a

space

of critical

publicity

in which one's "truths" can

be dis

closed

and

engaged by

others. "The

political

element in

friendship

is that

in the truthful dialogue each of the friends can understand the truth in

herent in

the other's

opinion

... This kind of

understanding—seeing

the

world from the other

fellow's

point

of

view—is the

political

kind of

in

sight par

excellence."55 From an Arendtian

perspective,

values like mu

tual

respect

and the norms of

reciprocity

are not

violated

or

harmed

by

citizens

invoking

their

comprehensive religious

or

philosophic

views in

public;

to the

contrary,

the conditions for mutual

respect

and

civic friend

ship

are

provided

by

individuals

honestly

speaking,

as

far

as

they

are

able,

their "truths" as

they

see them. This is not a sufficient

condition for

the endurance of a common public world, but it is a necessary one.

Whereas

the criterion of

reciprocity

is

ultimately

constrained

by

a

par

ticular

form of

reason-giving

in

political

liberalism,

reciprocity

for Ar

endt is

a cultivated

sentiment that

is

ultimately

concerned with

sustaining

an

open,

common world

between

plural subjects.

For

Arendt,

no

humanly

meaningful

political

in-between or

commons

can

take

shape

between

citizens,

and

no civic

friendship

can

arise,

with

out

speech

and

action that

is able—as far

as

speech

can—to reveal

the

"who" of each

person

in his

unique plurality.

Had Arendt

lived

long

enough to witness it, she may well have viewed recent liberal efforts to

"Arendt,

Men

in Dark

Times,

pp.

24,

81-94.

"Arendt,

The Human

Condition,

p.

183.

54Arendt,

"Philosophy

and

Politics,"

Social Research 57

(1990):

72-103,

p.

82.

"Ibid.,

pp.

83-84.






Arendt,

Rawls,

and Public Reason

275

formulate

guidelines

of

public

reason as

another one of a

long

line of

understandable but ill-advised

attempts

to

overcome the

contingency

and

unpredictability of political action and plural public spaces, a move that

embraces

instrumental

poiësis

over

praxis.

Whereas

the moral

burden in

public

reason

requires

that

one be

prepared

to translate and/or

supple

ment one's

"comprehensive"

views

with

pre-established

forms of reason

ing

and liberal rules of

justification,

the

moral burdens in Arendt's con

ception

of

public reasoning

relate in a

distinctly

different

way

to citizens

as both

speakers

and listeners. In the

first

case,

it

prompts

individuals to

speak

their "truths" as

fully

as

possible,

and does so

with the

understand

ing

that the

public political

world can

gather

and

separate

people

only

so

long as the commons (and with it the sensus communis) is conceived as a

free and

plural space

of

appearance.

In the second

case,

it

encourages

the

formation of sincere

listeners,

that

is,

persons

who will

imaginatively

and

sympathetically

strive to understand the world from the other's

point

of

view.

Hence,

reciprocity

in an Arendtian frame is both a

precondition

for

and a

product

of a commitment to an

open

and shared

political

world:

"For the world is not humane

just

because

it

is made

by

human

beings,

and

it

does

not

become

humane

just

because the human voice sounds in

it,

but

only

when

it

has

become the

object

of discourse."56 These

ideas

introduce the last dimensions of Arendt's political theory that I will dis

cuss here that bear on the liberal idea of

public

reason: Arendt's

analysis

of the

relationship

between "truth" claims

and the

public political sphere.

Truth in

Politics,

or

Learning

to be Human

Out of

a

concern

for the

potentially

coercive dimensions

of

religious

and

other

comprehensive

"truth" claims under

conditions of

pluralism,

liberal

public

reason

encourages

certain modes

of

speech/behavior

in an effort

to maximize the formation and

stability

of democratic

majorities

on fun

damental

questions

of

justice.

Running throughout

Arendt's

writings,

from her dissertation

on Saint

Augustine

to her

writings

on totalitarian

ism and

political

judgment,

is

a no less

significant

concern with the an

tagonistic

relationship

between

truth and

politics,

as well as

religious

belief

and

politics.

What is

usually

remembered about

this discussion

is

either Arendt's

anti-foundational

assertion

that from

"the

viewpoint

of

politics,

truth

has a

despotic

character,"57

or her

critical assessment

of the

turn

to

religious

"absolutes"

during

various

political

founding

mo

ments.58 Yet Arendt's treatment of rational,

philosophic,

or

religious

56Arendt,

Men in Dark

Times,

p.

24.

57Arendt,

"Truth and

Politics,"

p.

241.

58Arendt,

On Revolution

(New

York:

Viking

Press,

1963),

chapter

5;

and see also The






276

Mark

Button

truth and its

relationship

to

politics

and

citizenship

is

a

great

deal more

interesting

and

complex

than

simply declaring

such standards either ir

relevant for or pernicious to the political sphere and political freedom.

Taking

creative cues from Socrates

and

Cicero,

as well as

Lessing

and

Jaspers,

Arendt

mapped

out

an alternative

way

of

conceiving

the rela

tionship

between

religious

or

philosophic

truths

and

public political

dia

logue,

an

understanding

that entails more than

simply

declaring

truth

claims above or

beyond

the

political.

This

alternative

understanding

highlights

another avenue

with which to contest

the constraints that lib

eral

public

reason

places

on the

conduct of

political

discourse

and,

more

broadly,

the moral valences of

contemporary citizenship.

For Arendt, all truths, philosophic or religious, necessarily become

opinions

when

they

enter the

public

sphere: episteme

becomes doxa moi

in the context of the

diversity

of

points

of

view in a

plural public

world.

If

we

accept

the idea

that there is more coercive than

persuasive

content

in truth claims—that

is,

they

are claims

that demand

recognition,

not

consent or

agreement—the question

for

Arendt,

as with

Rawls,

is

whether there is

any

place

for truth in

politics.

The trouble is that

factual

truth,

like

all

other

truth,

peremptorily

claims to be acknowl

edged

and

precludes

debate,

and debate constitutes the

very

essence of

political

life. The

modes of

thought

and communication that deal with

truth,

if seen from the

political per

spective,

are

necessarily

domineering; they

do not take into

account other

people's opin

ions,

and

taking

these into account is the hallmark of all

strictly political thinking.59

The

problem

of

religious

or

philosophical

truths from the

perspective

of

contemporary

liberalism is likewise that such

claims are

partisan

or

sectarian and

considered

nongeneralizable

or

nonaccessible under the

conditions of

pluralism

and the burdens of

judgment.60

Given

Arendt's

concerns about the nature

of truth

in

relation to the

public

domain,

and in

particular

truth's absolutist

character

in

a

sphere

that is

pluralistic

and

relative

by

definition,

we

might suppose

that

recent liberal

efforts to con

struct fair

terms of mutual

exchange

on

questions

of common

political

concern are

practical

attempts

to

respond

to

what Arendt

called the "an

cient

antagonism"

between

truth and

politics.

Additionally,

Arendt's

concern

to

preserve

the

autonomy

of

the

political sphere

and to

safeguard

it

from either

philosophical

rule or

instrumental

rationality

might

be seen

as

roughly

equivalent

to

political

liberalism's

approach

to

overarching

conceptions

of

truth.

This,

I

think,

would be a

mistake.

Arendt's obvious

concern with the

coercive

dimension of truth claims

(the absolute)

not

withstanding,

the

appropriate

political

response

to

the

presence

of

such

Life

of

the Mind

(New

York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich,

1978),

pp.

195-217.

59Arendt,

"Truth and

Politics,"

p.

241.

^See

Rawls,

Political

Liberalism,

pp.

54-58.






Arendt,

Rawls,

and Public Reason

277

claims

is not

to

avoid,

bypass,

or

transpose

them into a liberal

key

(the

Rawlsian

proviso),

but to

"humanize" them

through

constant

public

talk.

To say that truth claims or "comprehensive doctrines" can be "hu

manized"

through public

engagement

is to

say,

on the one

hand,

that

such claims are not

beyond public accessibility,

mutual

understanding,

or

critical

scrutiny,

nor are

they

a

priori non-reciprocal.

But this also

means,

as Arendt

argues,

that

"we humanize

what

is

going

on in the world and in

ourselves

only by speaking

of

it,

and in the course of

speaking

of it we

learn

to

be human."61

Arendt,

following

Jaspers

(but

also Socrates and

Cicero),

saw distinct

political

value

not

merely

in endless

conversation,

but

in a

specific

form of

"limitless

communication,"

one

that

"signifies

faith in the comprehensibility of all truths and the good will to reveal and

to listen as the

primary

condition for all human intercourse."62 "Truth"

can coexist

with the

political,

Arendt

insists,

but

"only

where it is hu

manized

through

discourse,

only

where each man

says

not what

just hap

pens

to occur to

him at

the moment but

what he

'deems truth'."63 This

kind of

"truth

talk,"

with its obvious

depth

and

personal

salience,

can

help

establish the common

inter-spaces

that

both link

and

separate

citi

zens,

providing

the

very

conditions for

a

specifically

civic form of

friendship.

None of this is made

possible,

however,

if we

are

already

predisposed, given certain analytic liberal categories, to see in every phi

losophic/religious

truth claim the

inscrutable,

non-accessible,

or

greedy

demand for

power

and

unqualified

submission.

What

accounts for this

significant

difference

in

regard

to the

role

of

"truth"

in

politics?

Part

of

the answer is that whereas

both

Rawls

and

Arendt

(like Aristotle)

give

central

political significance

to

logos

(or

rea

soned

speech),

Arendt views

logos

itself as

subject

to

productive

trans

formations

through

critical

publicity

in a

way

that

public

reason does

not

allow. In

doing

so,

Arendt directs us to

an alternative form of

public

speech and action that might take its basic orientation and ethos from a

statement

by Lessing,

a line that Arendt

deems "the most

profound

thing

that has ever

been

said

about the

relationship

between

truth and human

ity:

'Let each

man

say

what he deems

truth,

and let truth itself

be com

mended unto

God.'"64

Arendt draws

optimism

and

joy

out of

Lessing's recognition

of hu

man

limitation,

or

what Rawls calls the

"burdens of

judgment":

it

is

pre

cisely

because

we are

never

collectively

certain of the

truth that

we are

able

to have an

engaging,

vibrant,

and

meaningful public

life,

one

that

6lArendt,

Men

in Dark

Times,

p.

25.

62Ibid.,

p.

85;

see

also

Arendt,

"Concern

with Politics

in Recent

European

Philoso

phical

Thought,"

in

Essays

in

Understanding, pp.

441-43.

63Arendt,

Men in Dark

Times,

p.

30.

"Ibid.,

p.

31.






278

Mark Button

can

draw

upon

without

needing

or

believing

it

possible

to settle on one

comprehensive

view. To

be

effective, however,

one must be

willing

to

undertake what we might call the Socratic requirement—to speak one's

truth as

fully

as one

can, or,

put

more

modestly,

to

speak

one's doxa

truthfully.

That is to

say,

then,

that

what

one deems

truth

matters to

poli

tics and

needs

to be

spoken publicly.

This is

necessary

because

the

public

realm and

the

moral

validity

of

political judgment

depend upon

maximiz

ing

the innumerable

perspectives

of

others,

and

focusing

these views on

each and

every question

that

enters the

public

domain.

To

be

sure,

this

process

also entails a certain amount of

risk,

because one must be

ready

to watch

one's

"truths" become one

opinion among many

in

the

public,

and to risk this disclosure and public consideration is to accept the idea

that

these "truths"

may undergo

revision or

change.

This

is,

at least in

part, why courage

and moderation rank so

high

on Arendt's scale of

po

litical

virtues.65

On these

points,

Socrates was an

exemplar

for Arendt:

"Socrates wanted to make the

city

more truthful

by

delivering

each of the

citizens their

truths.

The

method

of

doing

so is

dialegesthai, talking

something through,

but this dialectic

brings

forth truth not

by destroying

doxa or

opinion,

but

on

the

contrary

reveals doxa in its own

truthful

ness."66 Once

again,

the end

result

was

not

arriving

at one

acceptable

general truth, because "to have talked something through ... seemed re

sult

enough."67

This

is

the

knowledge

that friends

possess.

Nothing

could be more different from liberal "methods

of avoidance"

or

public reasoning

requirements

than this. As a

consequence,

and to

help highlight

what this

Arendtian

conception

of

public dialogue

is

driv

ing

at,

we

might

identify

two sets of

practical

lessons that can

be derived

from the above

discussion.

First,

for

contemporary

liberals,

the

point

is to

stress that

there

may

be

more truth in doxa than

they suppose,

but more

importantly,

the

process

of

considering

these truths

helps

to constitute

our common political world, offers incentives to participate in it, and

provides

the

terms

and the

spirit

of

civic

friendships.68

Public

reasoning

65See

Arendt,

The

Human

Condition,

pp.

35-36,

191.

66

Arendt,

Philosophy

and

Politics,"

p.

81.

67Ibid„

pp.

81-82.

68Another

way

to

see this

commitment at work

in Arendt is

to observe that for

her

(and

Kant),

it

would be absurd

to

hold

to

the old

Latin

adage:

"Let

justice

be

done

though

the

world

may perish."

This

evaluation

changes,

however,

if we

replace

justice

with truth.

In

doing

so,

Arendt

argues,

"the sacrifice of truth

for the survival

of the world

would be

more futile than the sacrifice of

any

other

principle

or virtue. For while we

may

refuse

even to

ask

ourselves

whether life

would still be

worth

living

in a

world

deprived

of such

notions

as

justice

and

freedom,

the

same,

curiously,

is not

possible

with

respect

to the

seemingly

so

much

less

political

idea

of truth ... No

permanence,

no

perseverance

in exis

tence,

can even

be

conceived of

without men

willing

to

testify

to what is and

appears

to

them

because it is."

"Truth and

Politics,"

p.

229.






Arendt,

Rawls,

and

Public Reason

279

itself will

always

be

plural (never

singular)

and

will

ineluctably

draw

upon

a

diverse

set of

ideas, doctrines,

and

energies

whose latent

political

possibilities we shall never be able to fully predict or control. Second,

for the adherents of

any

particular

truth

(religious

or

otherwise),

we

might

counsel

the

following:

truth will become doxa in the

political

arena and will remain

so

until,

humanized

through

public

discourse,

it

is

turned into

something

that could be

democratically

"held" as a truth

through

open

discourse,

persuasion,

and

agreement.

For some this will

surely

be a hard

pill

to

swallow,

but this fact alone cannot

justify

the

foreclosure

of

public political engagement

or

the

curtailment of humani

tas.

Conclusion

If

reciprocity

and civic

friendship

are what

political

liberals

want,

then

it

is the

idea of

public

reason

they

should abandon.

I

have

argued

that with

an

appropriate

concern for the absolutist dimensions

of

any

truth claim

(religious

or

secular),

Arendt

provides

a

perceptive

vision of

the

self

and

politics

that is more

open

to

and

critically engaged

with the

deepest

di

mensions of

persons

(humanitas).

If we are interested in mutual

respect,

meaningful

forms of

toleration,

and the cultivation of civic forms of

friendship,

this

perspective

provides

a first

step

towards a more

promis

ing

alternative than liberal

public

reason. To be

sure,

adopting

this Ar

endtian

conceptual

frame,

as I have

presented

it,

is not without its own

internal

problems.

Indeed,

the

Arendtian-inspired perspective

that

I have

utilized

here to contest

the limits of

public

reason

may

also

need to be

employed against

Arendt

herself,

or at least certain

features of Arendt's

own

understating

of the boundaries

of the

public

realm.

Many

critics

have

rightly

pointed

out

that Arendt seeks to

limit

the

conduct of

public,

political

exchange

to those matters that are, in her view,

properly

and

authentically political.

The

critical thrust of these

arguments

is

that the

nature of

Arendt's own boundaries

on the

political

are

so austere as to

foreclose

the

entry

of

issues and

organized

claims

that have become

es

sential

in modern

politics,

things

like social

welfare,

economic

justice,

and education.69

There is

simply

no

denying

the fact

that Arendt views

many

of

these

kinds

of issues as not

appropriately

political.

This does

not

mean,

how

ever,

that such matters

are

unimportant,

or

that

they

are

inconsequential

for the establishment of a vibrant

political

sphere

according

to Arendt. In

69Habermas,

"Hannah

Arendt's Communications

Concept

of

Power";

Pitkin,

"Justice:

On

Relating

Private and

Public";

Margaret

Canovan,

"Politics as Culture:

Hannah

Arendt

and the Public

Realm,"

History

of

Political

Thought

6

(1985):

617-42.






280 Mark Button

fact,

exactly

the

contrary

is

true.70

Nonetheless,

Arendt's

understanding

of socio-economic

concerns as

part

of the

necessary, pre-political

condi

tions for the full exercise of human freedom holds little persuasive

weight

for

those who

recognize

that

passing

the threshold of

the

political

(inclusion

on

the

public agenda)

is itself one of the

primary

conditions

for

having

the

so-called "social"

question

addressed

in

the first

place.

Yet

if we

highlight

those dimensions of

Arendt's

political thought

that have

been utilized here to

question

the restrictions of liberal

public

reason

(self-disclosure,

humanitas,

and civic

friendship),

Arendt

provides

criti

cal resources with which to

challenge

the coherence and

stability

of her

own exclusions.

Indeed,

if we

give

these

qualities priority

in

our under

standing of political speech and action, Arendt's various attempts to fix

the

political

in

abstract,

non-contextual terms

are as

unavailing

as

politi

cal

liberalism's

fabrication of a monovocal standard

of

public

reason.

The

possibilities

of an

open,

disclosive

space

of

appearance, taking spe

cific

shape

within

the in-between

of

plural

selves,

may

thus

be

seen as

virtuously crosscutting,

from both a

theoretical

and

practical

point

of

71

view.

Mark

Button

Department of Political Science

University

of Utah

[email protected]

70See

especially

here

"What is

Freedom?" in

Between

Past

and

Future,

pp.

143-72,

at

pp.

149-50.

7'Earlier versions of this

paper

were

presented

to the

Tanner Humanities

Center of

the

University

of

Utah and at the Annual

Meeting

of the

Western Political

Science

Asso

ciation,

Denver, Colo.,

March

2003.1

would like to thank all

those who

participated

in

these

discussions,

especially

Ed

Wingenbach.

For their

helpful

comments on

earlier

drafts

of

this

article,

I

would also like to thank

Lisa

Disch,

David

Gutterman,

Chandran

Kukathas,

and Linda

Zerilli.

arendt, rawls, and public reason - mark button

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