Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy of Natality

198 Pages·1989·20.72 MB·English

by  Patricia Bowen-Moore (auth.)

HANNAH ARENDT'S PHILOSOPHY OF
NATALITY
Hannah Arendfs
Philosophy of
Natality
Patricia Bowen-Moore
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Nazareth College of Rochester, Rochester, New York
M
MACMILLAN
© Patricia Bowen-Moore 1989
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1989
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First published 1989
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bowen-Moore, Patricia, 1946-
Hannah Arendt's philosophy of natality.
l. Childbirth. Philosophical perspectives.
Theories of Arendt, Hannah, 1906-1975
I. Title
128' .5'0924
ISBN 978-1-349-20127-3 ISBN 978-1-349-20125-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20125-9
Dedicated to my parents, Carl and Gertrude
Bowen, who first welcomed me into the world.
Their lives, their faith, their love and their
friendship have been, for me, the most pro
found testament to the miracle of birth and
beginning.
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 BEGINNING AT THE BEGINNING 1
2 PRIMARY NATALITY: THE SUPREME CAPACITY 21
3 POLITICAL NATALITY: THE REBIRTH OF BEGINNING 42
4 TERTIARY NATALITY: THE NASCENT CHARACTER
OF THE LIFE OF THE MIND 69
5 THE PROMISE OF NATALITY 101
Notes and References 162
Bibliography 182
Index 186
vii
Acknowledgements
My interest in the thought of Hannah Arendt, particularly Arendt's
notion of natality, had its philosophical genesis under the guidance
of James W. Bernauer, S.J., during my doctoral years at Boston
College. If Arendt's philosophy is an introduction into a new way
of thinking, Jim Bernauer's method of teaching and direction
testifies to this experience in concrete form. In this process of thesis
direction, I was often reminded of a laudatio Arendt paid her
philosophy teacher. Her praise echoes my own experience exactly,
and so, I find it altogether fitting to allow Arendt to speak for me:
'Thinking has come to life again; the cultural treasures of the past,
believed to be dead, are being made to speak, in the course of
which it turns out that they propose something altogether different
from the familiar, worn-out trivialities they had been presumed to
say. There exists a teacher: one can perhaps learn to think.' I am
indebted to Jim Bernauer for his support during the process of
research and writing and for his quality of friendship which was
as much a part of the completion of this project as were his superior
theoretical, critical and practical contributions. In addition, I wish
to thank him for allowing me to reprint sections of my article,
'Natality, Amor Mundi and Nuclearism in the Thought of Hannah
Arendt', which first appeared in Bernauer, James, S.J. (editor),
Amor Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt,
Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, Volume 26, Boston College
Studies in Philosophy VII (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987.)
I would like to thank Professor Hans-Georg Gadamer for granting
me interviews during the years 1982-4. Professor Gadamer's
recollections of Arendt as a personality and a scholar, his assess
ment of the philosophic climate during the war years of Nazi
Germany, his capacity for story-telling, and his generosity in
agreeing to read and to comment upon portions of the original
text, play no small part in the development of this effort.
Words of gratitude and affection are always inadequate when
one wants to articulate the excellence of love, friendship and
support experienced over the years. A simple thank you, then,
will have to suffice for what words fail to express. To my sisters
and brothers, godparents, in-laws, relatives and friends near and
ix
x Acknowledgements
far, and to my godchildren, Maryrose and Brad. Special words of
gratitude are owed Nazareth College of Rochester for awarding
me a grant in 1987 toward the completion of this project, and to
Stephanie Pascuzzi, not only for preparing the typescript for the
editor, but also for her friendship, patience and understanding
during the more hectic times, and to John Edelman, for reading
the final page proofs and for being a valued friend and colleague.
A most sincere thank you to my editor, Pauline Snelson, and to
my consulting editor, Keith Povey, for their helpful advice and
support in the final preparation of this manuscript for publication.
Finally, and especially, to my husband and best friend, Johnny
the most precious of all the routine miracles of my existence and
truly the most inexplicable - Amo: volo ut sis.
PATRICIA BOWEN-MOORE
The author and publishers gratefully acknowledge permission from
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for permission to use material from
the following Arendtian volumes: excerpts from The Origins of
Totalitarianism, copyright © 1951, 1958, 1966 by Hannah Arendt,
renewed 1951 by Mary McCarthy; excerpts from The Human
Condition by Hannah Arendt, copyright © 1958 by the University
of Chicago Press; excerpts from The Life of the Mind: Thinking,
copyright © 1971 by Hannah Arendt, copyright © 1977, 1978 by
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; excerpts from The Life of the Mind:
Willing by Hannah Arendt, copyright © 1978 by Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc.; excerpts from Crises of the Republic, copyright ©
1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 by Hannah Arendt reprinted by permission
of the publisher. The author wishes also to thank The Viking Press
for permission for use of materials in the following Arendtian
volumes: Between Past and Future, copyright © 1968; Eichmann in
Jerusalem, copyright © 1962, 1965; and also to Faber & Faber Ltd
for On Revolution, copyright © 1963, 1965. Every effort has been
made to trace all the copyright-holders, but if any have been
inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make
the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
1
Beginning at the Beginning
1 THE WRITER'S CONTEXT
It is the nature of beginnings that they be difficult. To make a
beginning of any sort is to be confronted by the arbitrary and
the obscure, the unprecedented and the unexpected. Beginnings
themselves are formidable because they tend to elude observation
and defy examination. Once a beginning is made, the experience
of its sheer novelty is succeeded by an event whose parameters are
more clearly defined. Hence, the difficulties peculiar to beginnings
recede into obscurity and defy their own recovery. Yet we do start
new projects in word or in action or in thought despite the
conundrum of novelty. We are compelled by the persistence with
which the unexpected and the unpredictable appear with bold
regularity. That this experience holds true for the writer can be
attested to by anyone who has commenced writing. And when
the subject of this discourse is the nature of beginning, the beginning
is especially opaque. Yet we must begin somewhere, and so we
begin at the beginning.
The following discussion introduces the theme of beginning as
it is found in the thought and experience of Hannah Arendt.
Arendt's term for the notion of human beginning is natality by
which she describes three human experiences: factual natality -
birth into the world; political natality - birth into the realm of
action; and theoretical natality - birth into the timelessness of
thought. With Hannah Arendt, the notion of human natality is
elevated as a philosophical thematic alongside its countercurrent
experience, the condition of mortality.
As an introduction to the overall consideration of the status of
natality in the thought of Hannah Arendt, the category of natality
is approached from three perspectives. Firstly, the context of
natality as a philosophical theme is juxtaposed alongside its
ultimate boundary, mortality. Natality and mortality are here
proposed not as philosophical disjunctives but rather as themat
ically and existentially joined within the context of human experi-
1
2 Hannah Arendt's Philosophy of Natality
ence. Secondly, the category of natality is situated within the
framework of those sources which most influenced Hannah Arendt.
These sources include Arendt's teachers, Martin Heidegger and
Karl Jaspers; Arendt's doctoral dissertation on 'St Augustine's
Concept of Love'; and Arendt's personal fate as a Jewess in the
hostile climate of Nazi Germany. Each source contributed to
Hannah Arendt's concern for the category of natality and the
novelty inherent in human beginnings as that potentiality which
informs and pervades human experience. Lastly, Arendt's under
standing of natality is viewed from the standpoint of what she
called amor mundi, in which the potentiality of human beginnings
is directed toward the world and for the sake of the world rather
than toward oneself in isolation from the world and for the sake
of oneself independent of others. Thus, natality is disclosed as an
entirely world-oriented (that is, worldly) phenomenon whose
capacity for beginning anew ideally is for the sake of the durability
and futurity of the world we hold in common.
II THE CONTEXT OF NATALITY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL
THEME
Hannah Arendt understood human birth as something more than
a biological event or the result of natural processes. Rather, Arendt
saw in the experience of birth the human capacity to relate to one's
own potentiality for beginning, that is to say, the capacity to be in
a vital relation to one's birth as an event of novelty and unpreceden
ted potentiality for the new. In Arendt's philosophy, there is a shift
from the ordinary understanding of birth as a factual experience to
birth as a philosophical category. Natality, as a fact of being, is the
name Arendt gives to our way of being this original event inasmuch
as our birth infuses us with the possibility of beginning, the
potentiality which pervades every aspect of our lives. The category
of natality stands in direct contrast to the tradition's preoccupation
with death and the condition of mortality as that phenomenon
which impels us to philosophise at all. However, if natality and
mortality as philosophical themes stand in contrast to each other
they are not thereby philosophical disjunctives.
The notion of death is no stranger to philosophy. From Plato to
Heidegger the fact of mortality, the fact that human beings must
die, has preoccupied the western philosophical tradition no less