Kant and Arendt on Human Nature
Boris Goubman
It is well known that I. Kant’s doctrine greatly influenced different currents of the 20-th century existential thought. H. Arendt’s anthropology should be considered among the most profound versions of creative assimilation and revaluation of the Kantian ideas within the framework of existential philosophy. Different aspects of her anthropology were revealed by R. Bernstein, R. Beiner, J. McGowan, D. May, D. Villa, and others. However, the specific problem of the Kantian influence on the formation and development of Arendt’s anthropology is far from being solved. Its careful examination demands particular attention to different stages of Arendt’s philosophical development, internal and external factors that made her interest in Kant’s philosophy gradually growing.
As a student of M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers, Arendt was always quite attentive to the major themes of Kant’s philosophy. She considered transcendental phenomenological reflection as a very important tool for creating anthropology permitting to penetrate into the resources of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. At the same time, her treatment of the Kantian legacy varies greatly on the way of transition from «The Human Condition» (1958) to the posthumously published works «The Life of the Mind» (1978) and «Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy» (1982). Such changes were determined by political experience and reflective efforts aimed at drawing an integral picture of human cultural creativity.
Paying her tribute to the main tenets of existential philosophy, Arendt emphasized the distinction between the world of freedom and empirical reality. Her persuasion was that, despite all the empirical limits of human activity, it should not be viewed as irretrievably suppressed by the existing circumstances due to the fact of unrestricted inner freedom of the existential subject. Arendt thought that Kant was the best representative of the tradition revealing the tragedy of human existence: «Its greatest representative is Kant, to whom the spontaneity of acting, and the concomitant faculties of practical reason, including force of judgment, remain the outstanding qualities of man, even though his action falls into the determinism of natural laws and his judgment cannot penetrate the secret of absolute reality (the Ding an sich)» (Arendt 1989: 235). The American philosopher never hesitated to acknowledge her deep indebtedness to Kant’s «Critique of Practical Reason» analyzing the roots of freedom, moral dimension of human action in politics. It gave Jaspers the right to express his solidarity with Arendt saying that they are united in following the true spirit of Kant’s practical philosophy. In 1956, he wrote to Arendt: «Sometimes I think to myself that you are at work on two political books and that we perhaps, or almost certainly, coincide in our outlook (derived from Kant) and complement each other in the subject under discussion» (Arendt, Jaspers 1992 : 308). Focusing on human freedom and its significance for politics, Arendt concentrated first on the analysis of different layers of man’s practical activity.
In her treatment of the relations between labor, work, and action in «The Human Condition», the American philosopher was evidently influenced by Kant. Even her interpretation of labor and work should be understood in the light of her vision of Marx as a true disciple of Kant who was looking at man as a creator of a specific cultural universe. If labor is related to a purely reproductive biological life process, work is aimed at creating a human world through the application of man’s purposive rational activity to the transformation of what is given as nature. «The anthropocentric utilitarianism of homo faber has found its greatest expression in the Kantian formula that no man must ever become a means to an end, that every human being is an end in himself» (Arendt 1989: 155). In her description of work, Arendt is close not only to K. Marx, but also to M. Weber. Man’s practical activity, she claimed, finds its highest expression in action which should be taken as a basis of intersubjective communication most clearly revealed in artistic activity, speech, and politics (Arendt 1989: 177). In the sphere of politics, Arendt believed, one should find the most close proximity between the views of Kant and Marx. She wrote that a revolutionary desire to protect justice separates Marx «most profoundly from Hegel and unites him...in not entirely visible but very powerful way with Kant» (Arendt, Jaspers 1992 : 160). Understanding Marxist praxis as an important device of social criticism, Arendt definitely interpreted it in terms of Kant’s practical philosophy permitting to find the universal moral criterion for evaluation of human conduct.
Eichmann’s trial considerably stimulated Arendt’s anthropological reflection and her interest in the opportunity to resist «the banality of evil» from the standpoint of the absolute moral obligation contained in the categorical imperative. She is persuaded that action as the utmost expression of man’s cultural and political creativity should have as its horizon the absolute moral obligation. No less important is the theme of the widespread nonresistance to evil, inability to recognize it which puts on the agenda the question of the anthropological roots of man’s blindness regarding these phenomena. Arendt’s transition from the analysis of the vita activa to the interpretation of the vita contemplativa was motivated by her practical concern with «the banality of evil» and theoretical interest in different facets of the life of the mind. Thus, two anthropological strategies necessarily complement each other portraying the totality of the human existence on the basis of transcendental reflection. The unity of two anthropological approaches is present in Arendt’s works throughout her academic career. It should be understood as a basic feature of her vision of man. This idea is present in her correspondence with Jaspers even prior to the publication of «The Human Condition». The transition from the vita activa to the vita contemplativa found its expression in her essay «The Crisis of Culture: its Social and Political Significance» published in «Between Past and Future» (1961). In this essay, Arendt concentrated on the creation of cultural world, its production in the process of human action which is bound together with the faculty of judgment (Arendt 1993 : 219 - 221). This judgment ability bridges the gap between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa due to its ties with action. Two aspects of the anthropological theory should be fruitfully developed, Arendt believed, on the basis of careful reconsideration of Kant’s legacy.
Like in her approach to the vita activa, Arendt found in the Kantian doctrine the source of inspiration of her interpretation of the vita contemplativa in «The Life of the Mind» but never followed it as a simple pattern for repetition. Rather, she was looking for certain hidden opportunities contained in it which should orient and guide existential thought in its search for a more complete vision of man. Analyzing thinking, willing, and judging as the main facets of the life of the mind, Arendt tried to reinterpret the major ideas of Kant’s philosophy in the light of the contemporary anthropological problems.
Interpreting the faculty of thinking, Arendt approached it in the existential perspective which is different from the original intentions of Kant’s epistemology. However, she thought it quite appropriate to uncover the existential significance of the Kantian vision of the activity of consciousness in its different aspects. In such a perspective, knowledge is viewed as one particular part of the life of consciousness. Arendt’s agreement with Heidegger regarding the crisis of European metaphysical tradition should be viewed as a prerequisite of her search of the foundations of the existentially conditioned thinking faculty. Under the surface of epistemology, she believed, one can discover the existential background of thinking. Following the Kantian line of the reflective understanding of consciousness, Arendt considers it necessary to ascend from the sensibly given to the activity of intellect and reason in order to reach the true existential nature of thinking.
The starting point of Arendt’s interpretation of man’s consciousness is the identification of appearance and Being. «In this world which we enter, appearing from a nowhere, and from which we disappear into nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide» (Arendt 1978, I : 19). Living beings, men and animals, according to Arendt, are of this world playing roles of subjects and objects. Arendt agreed with Kant that any philosophical or scientific effort to find a ground of certain phenomena should start with the world of appearance (Arendt 1978, I : 27). She went even further and declared her support for the reversal of the metaphysical hierarchy leading to the value of the surface and the priority of appearance. This means, of course, open criticism of Kant’s belief in « things in themselves». With the collapse of the old metaphysical dichotomy, there appears a task of phenomenological description of this permanently changing reality as a point of departure in the anthropological reflection on the vita contemplativa. Arendt believed that the interpretation strategy proposed in the works of M. Merleau-Ponty may be taken as a pattern of fruitful description of the world of appearance. Referring to his argument, the American philosopher came to the conclusion that knowledge of the human psyche, of the soul, should be supplied by our bodily organs. In the world of appearance, we should also find constant features constituting human personality.
Together with the common sense, the five bodily senses, Arendt claimed, intentionally create our picture of reality. Using them, we are geared to our body, but thinking activity gives us a chance to get rid of the bonds of our flesh, of the heavy burden of reality. In the world of thinking, we are endowed, according to Arendt, with the ability to leave for a time the world of appearance and get to another level of the life of the mind. Appealing again to the ideas of «The Critique of the Pure Reason», Arendt brought in the center of discussion Kant’s treatment of the relations between reason (Vernunft) and intellect (Verstand) and tried to offer a new interpretation of these two man’s faculties. Kant considered intellect as a faculty dealing with the sensibly given whose primary aim was to build a picture of concrete phenomena of reality with the help of a priori categories. The function of reason lies, according to such an approach, in the production of ideas giving a vision of the fundamental philosophical problems (Kant 1964 : 348). Arendt was not completely satisfied with the way Kant interpreted the functions of reason and intellect looking for hidden opportunities for a broader understanding of the two faculties.
Reconsidering Kant’s views, Arendt claimed that in the life of consciousness reason (Vernunf) played the leading part as related to the sphere of the creation of meaning, while intellect (Verstand) was longing for truth. This means that reason should be taken as a real well of thinking when compared with intellect’s passion for knowledge and instrumental truth. In the example of contemporary science, Arendt tried to reveal the degradation of truth into mere verity. Thus, the world of appearance looks as a constant menace to the potential thinking ability of the intellect. As a result, Arendt came to the following conclusion: «Kant’s famous distinction between Vernunft and Verstand, between a faculty of speculative thought and the ability to know arising out of sense experience...has consequences more far-reaching, and even perhaps quite other, than those he himself recognized» (Arendt 1978, I : 63). The priority of meaning over any kind of knowledge and truth, which is a corner-stone of Arendt’s interpretation of the vita contemplativa, makes her theoretical views quite close to different versions of contemporary hermeneutics putting on the agenda a really significant problem.
Thinking itself appeared, Arendt believed, as a certain existential capacity inherent in the contemplative approach to the universe. The Greeks found it to be a kind of immortality permitting man to stand above the flux of the events of everyday life, and the achievement of this state was considered as a primary task of philosophy. For the Romans, thinking revealed itself in the philosophical attempts to get over the unhappiness of life. In any event, the discovery of the thinking ability brought in the forefront of philosophical debate the problem of meaning, and Arendt believed that Socrates profoundly expressed its birth in the inner dialogue. «Consciousness is not the same as thinking; acts of consciousness have in common with sense experience the fact that they are «intentional» and therefore cognitive acts, whereas the thinking ego does not think something but about something, and this act is dialectical: it proceeds in the form of a silent dialogue» (Arendt 1978, I : 187). The inherent duality of the Socratic dialogue points to the plurality of meaning. A truly human existence is inconceivable, according to Arendt, without the thinking faculty.
Beginning with the Kantian vision of the functions of reason, Arendt went on to the existential interpretation of the three major faculties of the mind - thinking, willing and judging. They were understood within the existential vision of man’s being in time. Despite the fact that she came to quite original philosophical conclusions, Arendt’s train of thought is quite similar with that of Heidegger. Taking thinking as a point of departure of her analysis of man’s being in time, Arendt interpreted it as related to the capacity to get above the flux of the changing circumstances and stay in the moment of present. Located in the present, thought should be conceived as a line going to infinity. Then, the faculty of judgment should appear as associated with the past. Graphically, it stretches from the present infinitely in the direction of the past. Another faculty is rooted in the present, and its vector goes infinitely to the future. It is human will. All three faculties are bound together by the changing moment of the present. «In other words, the location of the thinking ego in time would be the in-between of past and future, the present, this mysterious and slippery now, a mere gap in time, toward which nevertheless the more solid tenses of past and future are directed insofar as they denote that which is no more and that which is not yet. That they are at all, they obviously owe to man, who has inserted himself between them and established his presence there» (Arendt 1978, I : 208). In her belief in the priority of the present over other tenses, Arendt is definitely following St. Augustine who considerably influenced her anthropological views. Choosing the present as a focal point of her analysis of man’s existence, she is more close to J.-P. Sartre than to M. Heidegger. This preference reveals its importance in her analysis of faculties of will and judgment.
The problem of will, according to Arendt, could make its appearance only on the soil nourished by the idea of creation developed within the context of Hebrew -Christian tradition. Pagan Antiquity knew only cyclical pattern of cosmic change which could not give birth to something really new within the eternal recurrence of what had already happened. Man, according to the Hebrew-Christian credo, was created after the image of God. Therefore, he is able to spontaneously use the faculty of will. Arendt thought that the problem of will became the area of profound discussions of Christian philosophers. Her own understanding of will is closer to St. Augustine and Duns Scotus than to St. Thomas Aquinas. Criticizing Hobbes and Spinoza, Arendt praised Kant’s understanding of the faculty of will. «Kant’s Will is neither freedom of choice (liberum arbitrium) nor its own cause; for Kant, sheer spontaneity, which he often called «absolute spontaneity» exists only in thinking. Kant’s will is delegated by reason to be its executive organ in all matters of conduct» (Arendt 1978, II : 149). While Hegel spoke about the priority of the future in his rationalist doctrine, Nietzche, Arendt believed, got back to the cyclical vision of eternal recurrence, thus putting an insurmountable obstacle on the way of will’s declared passion for creating new and unpredictable phenomena. The American philosopher evidently regarded Kant’s treatment of the problem of will as preferable to Heidegger’s «will-not-to-will».
If will is regarded as a direct prelude to action, the faculty of judgment should be interpreted as rooted in the past and providing understanding of concrete phenomena. Offering her own vision of the faculty of judgment, Arendt wanted to give its existentially oriented analysis based again on Kant’s approach to this problem. In his «Critique of Judgment», Kant differentiated between two types of judgments - the determinant and the reflective ones. The determinant judgment subsumes the empirically given to the already existing concept, whereas the reflective judgment gives birth to the universal on the basis of the particular sense data (Kant 1966: 115). Looking at the reflective judgment as a tool of creation of the tissue of culture, Arendt planned to write the third part of «The Life of the Mind» on this issue, but this work was never finished, and one can get a more or less complete impression of her project reading «Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy».
The faculty of judgment, Arendt believed, should be based on common sense and human capacity of imagination. Common sense creates a ground for mutual understanding when we get in touch with other people and become partners in conversation looking for acceptable meanings of the events in the world. Like Heidegger, Arendt tried to constructively assimilate the Kantian theory of productive imagination. Kant, according to the American philosopher, «suggests that imagination is actually the common root of other cognitive faculties, that is, it is the «common, but to us unknown, root» of sensibility and understanding, of which he speaks in the Introduction to the «Critique of Pure Reason» and which, in its last chapter, without naming the faculty, he mentions again» (Arendt 1982: 81). On the basis of imagination «schema», I can put myself in the situation of another person thus making the intersubjectively meaningful world.
«Spectators exist only in the plural. The spectator is not involved in the act, but he is always involved with his fellow spectators. He does not share the faculty of genius, originality, with the maker or the faculty of novelty with the actor; the faculty they have in common is the faculty of judgment» (Arendt 1982: 63). Thus, judgment was for Arendt a contemplative faculty determining the permanent transformation of the horizon of world’s understanding. It is a tool of creation of meaningful pictures of the world that appear in culture due to the efforts of historians and politicians. Her theoretical vision is quite close to that of Walter Benjamin, and in a broader perspective to the ideas of R. G. Collingwood, M. Heidegger, H.-G. Gadamer, P. Ricoeur and others.
Thus, the faculty of judgment is a tool permitting to create the intersubjectively meaningful and permanently changing cultural world where one should hear the voice of the other, understand the reasons of his or her unhappiness, and resist the concrete phenomena of evil. Arendt thought that a really sound political philosophy could appear on this anthropological basis. She believed that Jaspers was a thinker who understood the true spirit of Kant’s legacy uncovering his unwritten political philosophy. Obviously, under the influence of Jaspers, she came to the conclusion that the faculty of judgment was not only contemplative, but should be understood as a prerequisite of the political action aimed at combating the «banality of evil».
The idea of humanity present in any human being, Arendt believed, should be taken as a real basis of the unity of the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. « It is by virtue of this idea of mankind, present in any single man, that men are human, and they can be called civilized or humane to the extent that this idea becomes the principle not only of their judgments but of their actions. It is at this point that actor and spectator become united; the maxim of the actor and the maxim, the «standard», according to which the spectator judges the spectacle of the world, become one. The, as it were, categorical imperative for action could read as follows: Always act on the maxim through which this original compact can be actualized into a general law» (Arendt 1982: 75). In the final instance, the man of action and the spectator become unified by the commandment of Kant’s categorical imperative. Despite the existing differences of societies and cultures, this universal human foundation, Arendt claimed, should be the nucleus of the common sense of a contemporary man playing a significant role in his interpretation of the world and practical resistance to various forms of evil.
Throughout her academic career, Arendt was increasingly influenced in her anthropological reflection by the ideas of Kant’s philosophy. A non-orthodox reading of Kant led her to the original interpretation of man’s vita activa and vita contemplativa permitting to create a picture of the totality of human existence. Following Kant, she believed that universal moral foundations expressed in the categorical imperative should guide a human person in her theoretical and practical activity, in the constant resistance to the «banality of evil».
References
Arendt, Hannah. «The Crisis of Culture: its Social and Political Significance», in Between Past and Future. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind. One - Volume Edition. Vol. I - II. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978.
Arendt, Hannah, Jaspers, Karl. Correspondence. 1926 - 1969. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1992.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritika sposobnosti sujdenja, in Sochinenja v shesti tomakh. T. 5. Moscow: Mysl’, 1966.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritika chistogo razuma, in Sochinenja v shesti tomakh. T. 3. Moscow: Mysl’, 1964.