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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset 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