Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
XXI, 2019, 3
www.units.it/etica
ISSN 1825-5167
2
3
Monographica I
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND THE UNPOLITICAL
9 Danilo Manca
Marco Menon The dialectical link between Political
Philosophy and the Unpolitical.
Guest Editors’ Preface.
21 Elena Alessiato Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo:
l’impolitico
35 Marco Menon Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota
sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
59 Danilo Manca Il disincanto del filosofo
Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura
impolitica della filosofia
93 Rodrigo Cachón Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo
Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation
of the Political
115 Pierpaolo Ciccarelli The “Concept of the Political” in its Genesis.
The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
143 Ieva Motuzaite Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am
Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
169 Antoine Pageau-St- Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s
Hilaire Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
201 Nathan Pinkoski The Allegory of the Cave and The Problem of
Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
4
Monographica II
NORMATIVITÀ E VULNERABILITÀ: A PARTIRE DALLA PRATICA DEL
DIRITTO
Symposium
Hans Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion
Varia
Monographica I
DANILO MANCA
Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa
danilomanca30@gmail.com
MARCO MENON
Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa
marco.menon@cfs.unipi.it
ABSTRACT
Between the 19th and the 20th century, German culture experienced a conflict between two
apparently opposite tendencies. The first leads thinkers to detach themselves from the dominant
ideology of the time; the second bears on the need to take a stand on the crisis of modern West-
ern civilization. The category of the Unpolitical is meant to interpret the former. Yet, by this
term, we do not necessarily mean an attitude aimed to abandon the activities characterizing the
life in the community or to ignore the debate concerning political affairs. The adjective “unpolit-
ical” has not to be automatically identified with “anti-political”. Rather, it designates a way to
address political issues that characterize those who reject to live in the city without asking what
their life consist of, what kind of behaviours and dispositions it requires, and what ends does it
have. The essays collected in this monographic issue of Ethics & Politics investigate the relation
between the city (understood as a model embracing both society and the modern State) and the
thinker (construed in a very broad way, so as to include the philosopher, the artist, the historian,
the writer, etc.). The main aim is to explore the various possible ways in which the life of an
individual mind can interact with the life of the historical community.
KEYWORDS
Political philosophy; the unpolitical; civilization; crisis of modernity; phenomenology; apolitia.
The question concerning what role should a philosopher have in the city is as
old as philosophy itself. As Plato taught us, when the philosopher moves her ques-
tioning gaze from the stars onto the cave of human affairs, she inevitably throws
herself into a dangerous situation. Her aim is to dispute with her fellow citizens the
laws of the city (the nomos), not necessarily to weaken them but, above all, to
10 DANILO MANCA & MARCO MENON
understand what assumptions we make as a guide for our life and eventually con-
sider the possibility that this horizon does not coincide with the whole.
By so doing, the philosopher’s attitude inevitably questions the behaviours of her
fellow citizens, who, therefore, are not inclined to accept it as a possible way of living
in the city. This explains why the philosophical way of life has often been seen as
unpolitical. Yet, by this term, we do not necessarily mean an attitude aimed to aban-
don the activities characterizing the life in the community or to ignore the debate
concerning political affairs. The adjective “unpolitical” has not to be automatically
identified with “anti-political”. Rather, it designates a way to address political issues
that characterize those who reject to live in the city without asking what their life
consist of, what kind of behaviours and dispositions it requires, and what ends does
it have. Such a consideration led Leo Strauss to identify this disposition to question
life in the city with that branch of philosophy that we should more appropriately call
“political”. In this way, the unpolitical encroaches the political.
As is to be expected, the scholars do not agree upon the way of describing the
unpolitical nature of philosophy no less than they often contrast each other about
the way of circumscribing the sphere of the political. This volume would like to give
a contribution to this debate focusing on some exemplary cases where a dialectical
link between the political and the unpolitical emerges with particular evidence.
The starting point of our issue is inevitably the thought of that intellectual who
allowed the notion of the “unpolitical” to enter the cultural, philosophical and po-
litical debate of the last century: Thomas Mann.
In the first article of the volume, Elena Alessiato tries to demonstrate how, if
examined in its complexity not excluding his implicit saying, Mann’s position could
not be interpreted as merely anti-political. It is rather a perspective from which one
can critically consider the transformation of the State in a mere mechanism affirm-
ing the democratic and egalitarian paradigm of Zivilisation. Mann contrasts this par-
adigm with that of the Kultur in which he sees how the values of German artistic
and philosophical tradition are summarized. This does not simply entail a rejection
of politics. As Alessiato explained, Mann substantially endorses Weber’s realism by
identifying politics with the art of government and by acknowledging the necessity
of the State to assure order in society.
This also leads Alessiato to compare Mann’s perspective with a book by Roberto
Esposito, Categories of the Impolitical. Though Esposito explicitly takes a distance
from Mann’s term “unpolitical” , Alessiato demonstrates that he shares with Mann
1
two theoretical assumptions: first, the realistic tendency to locate the impolitical
within the horizon of politics understood as a destiny; second, the will to identify
the impolitical with the capacity to break with the politics from within, or, as
1 See R. Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico (Bologna: Il Mulino 1988), 7 e 14, Eng. trans. by C.
Parsley: Categories the Impolitical (New York: Fordham University Press 2005), 1 and 8.
11 The Dialectical Link between Political Philosophy and the Unpolitical. Guest Editors’ Preface
Esposito puts it : “The impolitical is not something other than the political, but only
the political itself as seen from a point of view that ‘measures’ it against something
that it neither is nor can ever be: the political’s impossibility. In this sense, there is
not a duality, but only difference. And this difference is a question of the perspective
of the gaze, not the object that is gazed upon—and even less its subject” . 2
Esposito’s conception of the impolitical is quite close to the one we are adopting
in this volume insofar as by this he offers a perspective that is not merely anti-polit-
ical but critically addresses the political issue from within, as the quotation above
clearly shows. The difference lies in the fact that Esposito considers the impolitical
“as a category internal to modernity” . On the contrary, one of the aims of the edi-
3
tors of this volume is to ask to what extent the category of the unpolitical is rooted
into the life of Socrates and into the way Plato’s art of dialogue depicts the relation-
ship between the philosopher and the city. Therefore, by insisting on the affinity
between Mann’s category of “Unpolitisch” and Esposito’s category of the impoliti-
cal, Alessiato allows us to think of a unique paradigm connecting all modern intel-
lectuals, either those who would like to take a distance from their present for keep-
ing the value of modern culture alive (as Thomas Mann), or those who highlight the
crisis of modernity by returning to the ancients.
Following this direction, in the second article of the volume, Marco Menon leads
back to the origin of the opposition between the unpolitical and the anti-political by
focusing on the real meaning of Jacob Burckhardt’s notion of apolitia. Menon ex-
amines some of Burckhardt’s main interpretations (in particular, those of Cassirer,
Löwith, Salomon, and Croce) to demonstrate that Burckhardt’s detachment from
political affaris shares many affinities with the unpolitical attitude of ancient philos-
ophers. In Menon’s view, Burckhardt’s apolitia amounts to a critical movement
aimed at establishing a spiritual connection with the past. This allows the intellectual
to service a high ideal of humanity and to contrast barbarism through the develop-
ment of a deep sense of history.
In this context, Löwith’s interpretation of Burckhardt’s apolitia appears to be
particularly significant insofar as it suggests that apolitia coincides with the capacity
of taking a distance from the historical horizon in which we are immersed as citizens
in order to study the development of human culture over the centuries from a phil-
osophical perspective. Nonetheless, Leo Strauss thought that, by assuming Burck-
hardt as his model, Löwith still fit into the tradition of modern historicism without
leading back to the way of living of late antique philosophers, as he held.
2 Esposito, p. xii-xiii, eng trans. p. xxi-xxii. Notice that the English translator of Esposito’s book
avoids using the term “unpolitical”. He opts for “impolitical”, while, by following one of the English
translation of Mann’s Reflection, he adopts “non-political” instead of “unpolitical”, which would be a
calque from the German “Unpolitisch”. On one hand, this evidently helps differentiating the two
concepts but, on the other, hides their latent connection.
3 See ibid., p. ix, eng trans. p. xiv.
12 DANILO MANCA & MARCO MENON
Focusing on this and the other contrasts emerging from the correspondence be-
tween the two thinkers, in the third article of the volume, Danilo Manca attempts
to outline two different models for rethinking the way out of the crisis of modernity.
On one hand, Leo Strauss revaluates Socrates’s political philosophy characterized
by the act of questioning all things (in particular on the laws and the gods of the city)
and remaining in the community. On the other hand, Löwith takes a distance from
political affairs by radicalizing historical consciousness on behalf of the adoption of
philosophical scepticism. Contrary to what we might believe, Löwith’s position can-
not be reduced to an anti-political attitude in contrast to Strauss’s political one.
Manca strives to demonstrate that there is a political motive in Löwith’s apolitia as
well as there is an unpolitical motive in Strauss’s recovery of ancient political philos-
ophy. Following Paul Valéry’s reflection on history, art and nature, at the end of his
life Löwith depicts the return to the cosmos as a way of contrasting modern secular-
ization, which brought to an overwhelming politicization of culture. On the contrary,
Socrates’s questioning is rooted in the desire for wisdom that brings the philosopher
out of the city’s cave in search of truth and virtue. Thus, for Löwith, the unpolitical
consists in the refutation of history and the recovery of the biological nature,
whereas for Strauss, the unpolitical is one with the trans-political attitude of the phi-
losopher.
In his return to nature and to an ordinary way of living, Löwith is profoundly
influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger; Leo Strauss on the contrary, in his recovery
of natural right against the historicist worldview, is inspired by Husserl’s call for a
return to things themselves.
In the fourth article of the volume, Rodrigo Chacón delves deeper into Strauss’s
paradoxical non-political political philosophy by considering to what extent this per-
spective is connected to Strauss’s re-elaboration of Husserl’s critique of natural un-
derstanding and the naturalistic worldview of natural sciences. In this way, Chacón
argues that the true sense of the unpolitical in Strauss must be sought in his embrace
of Husserl’s idealistic quest for rigorous science. Since from this perspective nature
remains an idea, the non-political foundation of the political can be only approxi-
mated asymptotically. This argument also allows Chacón to point out that Strauss’s
conservatism, often identified with his classical preference for a closed society, is
continuously challenged in his works by a particular form of utopia, which Chacón
sees inhabited by people willing to live the conflict between competing horizons, i.e.
Athens and Jerusalem, the ideal of nature and that of revelation.
Continuing to reflect on Strauss’s debt to Husserl’s phenomenology, in the fifth
article of the volume, Pierpaolo Ciccarelli tries to demonstrate that Strauss offers a
phenomenological reading of Schmitt’s Der Begriff des Politischen in his famous
and widely debated review of this text. Seen from a phenomenological perspective,
Schmitt appears to Strauss as an unpolitical thinker. Ciccarelli contrasts Schmitt’s
affirmation of the political with the natural view epitomized by a passage from
13 The Dialectical Link between Political Philosophy and the Unpolitical. Guest Editors’ Preface
traditionally associated with Strauss, but from Arendt's point of view. Interpreting
Plato esoterically, Arendt exposed the political motivations that underlie Plato's
presentation of the allegory of the cave. These political motivations are the origin of
the allegory of the cave's distortion of political phenomena. Instead of re-actualizing
ancient political philosophy as Strauss sought, Arendt aimed at gaining a clear com-
prehension of political phenomena purified from Plato's unpolitical distortions. In
the second part, Pinkoski attempts to demonstrate that Hannah Arendt would de-
serve more than Strauss the tag of a non-metaphysical thinker because she inter-
preted Plato's doctrine of the ideas primarily through Plato's political motivations
for arranging them as he did. Strauss, by contrast, used the doctrine of the ideas to
raise the question of what nature is, interpreting this doctrine in light of the authen-
tically metaphysical issue of the nature of all things.
In the ninth and last article of the volume, Daniel Conway focuses on Arendt’s
The Banality of Evil intending to describe justice as the other of politics, namely as
the positive content of the unpolitical. The article reconstructs the duality of political
justice and jurisprudential justice. Arendt's problem was not so much Eichmann per
se, but the new figure of a criminal with banal motivations that he embodied. Which
canon of justice could be applied to a criminal without clear criminal intention?
According to Conway, an answer to such a question can be found in the epilogue
of her essay, whereby Arendt shows that at the origin of the justice done in Jerusa-
lem there is the voice of politics. This entails a double outcome. On one hand, the
deferral to politics reveals a deficit of justice in Jerusalem or the affirmation of an
archaic and barbaric canon of justice. On the other, the entailment of politics pro-
duces the "tremor" of Justice, inviting future jurisprudence to create a new, improved
modern canon of justice in the form of a robust network of institutions devoted to
the administration of international law.
The articles of this volume outline an articulated but homogenous path showing
that philosophy cannot avoid having to do with the city (in the different historical
form, from Greek polis to modern historical society, culture and State) and, at the
same time, that the political task of philosophy cannot be understood unless the
philosopher keeps a distance from the city. The unpolitical designates nothing other
than the philosopher’s mode of living in the city, keeping the way out continuously
alive. In this sense, the unpolitical coincides with the theoretical moment of the
philosopher’s attitude. More specifically, the unpolitical is the moment of philo-
sophical inquiry concerning life in which the philosopher lays a foundation for her
very own method of questioning the community, and her way of being part of that
a community.
15 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 15-34
ISSN: 1825-5167
CONSIDERAZIONI SU UN CONCETTO
AMBIGUO: L’IMPOLITICO
ELENA ALESSIATO
Università di Torino – Università Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli
elena.alessiato@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
With reference to Thomas Mann's Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen the present paper
addresses the controversial question: who is the unpolitisch? The topic is developed in three
steps. The first one points out the inherent ambiguity of the concept, artistically thought by
Mann as a part of a broader cultural issue typifying the German spirit. The second part focuses
on the peculiarity of Mann's comprehension of the unpolitisch, both distinguishing it from
other concepts with which it is often confused (apolitical, anti-political), and identifying its
conceptual structure. This is pinpointed in the simultaneous presence of divergent attitudes and
perspectives, making Mann's view of the world always "double", pluralistic, stratified, and
multidimensional – intrinsically ambiguous. Finally, the third section parallels Mann's viewpoint
with one of the most recent theories about the unpolitisch, that of the Italian philosopher
Roberto Esposito. What ensues is a framework accounting for Mann's ambivalent and
paradoxical stance in front of the war and the Reich policy of his time, justified in the name of
the fight for the "proper" German culture.
KEYWORDS
Unpolitisch; Thomas Mann; apolitical man; "double optic" (doppelte Optik); German
militarism; German culture.
1.
16 ELENA ALESSIATO
17 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
18 ELENA ALESSIATO
10
Mann, Considerazioni, p. 33. Cfr. anche ibidem, p. 306.
11
Ibidem, p. 210. In un altro passo del testo Mann ribadisce che “i dissidi spirituali della
Germania sono dissidi ben poco nazionali, quasi puramente europei; privi, o quasi, di una comune
tinta nazionale, gli elementi in contrasto si fronteggiano senza comporsi in una sintesi. Nell’anima
della Germania vengono gestiti i contrasti spirituali dell’Europa, gestiti nel senso della maternità e
della rivalità. Questo è il destino peculiare, nazionale, della Germania, la quale resta sempre il
campo di battaglia, anche se non più fisico […] almeno spirituale dell’Europa” (ibidem, p. 74). Il
riferimento è naturalmente alla polemica, che le Betrachtungen testimoniano, con il fratello
Heinrich. L’esplicitazione dello stesso pensiero si ritrova nella lettera all’amico Ernst Bertram del
25/11/1916, dove Thomas Mann scrive: “Vero, anche troppo vero, ciò ch’Ella dice sul destino della
Germania. Non è per megalomania, ma solo per necessità e abitudine alla contemplazione interiore
se questo destino io lo vedo simboleggiato e personificato da tempo in mio fratello e in me. Credo
da molto tempo che è e sarà impossibile, per motivi più interni che non esterni, far della politica in
Germania. Sento profondamente che, come mio fratello, ma in altro modo, mi sto togliendo di
influire sul presente germanico. Tutto nasce dal fatto che non siamo una nazione. Siamo piuttosto,
qualcosa come un compendio dell’Europa, e le sue sintesi spirituali si contrappongono, in noi,
senza una sintesi nazionale. Non esiste una solidarietà e una suprema unità tedesca. Dicono che le
guerre europee non si combattono più sul suolo tedesco? Eccome si combattono! Anzi, esse
saranno sempre guerre fratricide”, Thomas Mann, Ausgewählte Briefe (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer,
1961); tr. it. Lettere, a cura di I.A. Chiusano (Milano: Mondadori, 1986), p. 115.
12
Ibidem, p. 89, ove si legge: “Eppure anche qui non dimentico del tutto che rientra quasi nel
carattere tedesco comportarsi in maniera non-tedesca o addirittura antitedesca”.
19 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
2.
13
La prima occorrenza del termine nella nostra lingua è testimoniata in Antonio Maria Salvini,
Lezione XXVII. Sopra il ballo, in Id., Prose Toscane (Venezia: Pasinelli, 1734), pp. 270-276 (274).
14
Roberto Esposito, Oltre la politica. Antologia del pensiero “impolitico” (Milano: Mondadori,
1996), p. 7.
15
Molti dizionari enunciato il significato di impolitico in termini di negatività, come “contrario a
una politica accorta, politicamente inefficace o inopportuno”, “contrario alle regole di una politica
abile e conveniente” e, per estensione, “malaccorto, imprudente”: cf. ad esempio il Vocabolario
della lingua italiana, II (Roma: Treccani, 1987) o Salvatore Battaglia, Grande Dizionario della
Lingua Italiana, VII (Torino: UTET, 1995), p. 489.
16
Cfr. Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (München: dtv, 1971), p.
301.
17
Alberto Asor Rosa, Thomas Mann o dell’ambiguità borghese (Bari: De Donato, 1971), p. 69.
20 ELENA ALESSIATO
21 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
25
Mann, Considerazioni, p. 159.
26
L’espressione con cui Nietzsche si autodefinisce der letzte antipolitische Deutsch compare
solamente nell’edizione di Karl Schlechta letta da Mann in Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in drei
Bänden, II (Hanser: München 1954), p. 1073.
27
Cfr. Jacob Grimm − Wilhlem Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. XI/3 (1936) (Leipzig:
Hirzel, 1854-1971, 1985), pp. 1227-1228, cit. in L. Monti, Thomas Mann e le “categorie
dell’impolitico”, p. 144.
28
L’equiparazione viene ripetuta innumerevoli volte nel corso dell’opera. Tra quelle più
significative si veda Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 49, 267 e 310. Nel già citato articolo Kultur und
Sozialismus Mann riassume così la tesi fondamentale del libro: “Era l’identità di politica e
democrazia, e il naturale carattere non tedesco di questo complesso, cioè la naturale estraneità dello
spirito tedesco verso il mondo della politica o della democrazia, al quale esso contrappone il
concetto impolitico e aristocratico di Kultur come ciò che è propriamente suo”: Mann, Kultur und
Sozialismus, p. 261. Sui diversi possibili significati del processo di democratizzazione nel dibattito
moderno cfr. Frank Fechner, Thomas Mann und die Demokratie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,
1990), pp. 297-302.
29
Mann, Considerazioni, p. 134.
30
Ibidem, p. 138.
22 ELENA ALESSIATO
3.
Essenziali in questo quadro le pagine del capitolo conclusivo delle Betrachtungen dedicato a
31
23 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
24 ELENA ALESSIATO
39
Ibidem, p. 50.
40
Ibidem, p. 297. Sull’affinità spirituale tra Bismarck e Goethe si veda il saggio del 1949 in cui
Mann analizza il fenomeno del “grande uomo” nelle tre figure che per lui incarnano in maniera
diversa ma complementare l’essenza del germanesimo, ossia Lutero, Bismarck e Goethe: cfr.
Thomas Mann, Die drei Gewaltigen, in Id., GW, X; tr. it. I tre colossi, in Id., Nobiltà dello spirito,
pp. 375-385.
41
Contro la degradazione economicista e commercial-imperialista tanto dello Stato quanto della
guerra Mann usa parole forti, rivendicando, per contrasto, della guerra – guerra tedesca − una
funzione “teleologica”, ordinatrice e conservatrice. Cfr. Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 260-261sgg.
42
Sulla politica come demonologia pioniere fu naturalmente il testo di Gerhard Ritter, Die
Dämonie der Macht (München: Oldenbourg, 1948), a cui si rifà l’ormai classico studio di Dolf
Sternberger, Drei Wurzel der Politik, in Id., Schriften, II, 1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1978), in partic.
pp. 157-265; tr. it. Le tre radici della politica, a cura di R. Scognamiglio (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001).
La schematizzazione/concettualizzazione di Sternberger permette di osservare che il discorso
manniano è pervaso da un’ambiguità nella trattazione della politica e dello Stato derivante dal
sovrapporre due approcci diversi alla politica, classificati da Sternberger in politologico e
demonologico. Il primo intende la politica come esercizio della mediazione e relativizzazione del
dissidio, il secondo come esercizio del potere e assolutizzazione del conflitto.
25 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
43
Cfr. Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 165, 262-263. Cf. anche ibidem, pp. 260 e 265.
44
Interessante la lettera di Mann a Samuel Fischer (12/4/1916) in Hans Wysling (a cura di),
Dichter über ihre Dichtungen, 14/I: Thomas Mann, Teil I: 1889-1917 (Passau/Frankfurt a.M.:
Heimeran/Fischer, 1975), pp. 636-637.
45
Roberto Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988, nuova ed. 1999), p.
XV.
46
Mann, Considerazioni, p. 166.
26 ELENA ALESSIATO
però gli permetterà il pur minimo tentativo di regolare i contenuti del suo
lavoro”.47
La libertà tedesca, la vitalità anti-intellettualistica del Geist, la fatalistica
concordanza di scelta e dovere, la priorità dell’etica sul fatto estetico, la fiducia
nell’autorità e la fede nell’unità spirituale del cosmo, la concordanza tra
indipendenza individuale e solidarismo organicistico, tra personalismo etico e
statalismo di matrice sociale, l’esaltazione delle gerarchie e delle differenze, la
tutela a base morale del principio di autonomia accanto a quello a base etica del
principio di obbedienza: sono questi i concetti e i valori con cui Mann misura,
giudica e critica la realtà, e in particolare la forza madre della realtà, la politica.
Sono queste le istanze in cui si dispiega la categoria della Kultur, fatta valere non
solo come nobile sistema didascalico di regole ma soprattutto come dinamica
prospettica di trasvalutazione.
La compresenza di queste due coordinate teoriche, quella realistica e quella
idealistica, esemplifica e riassume la tipicità manniana di rapportarsi alla realtà in
modo stratificato e perciò polivalente. Ciò vale nell’ambito della rappresentazione
artistica, dove spesso la narrazione mette a tema il dissidio tra le istanze del Leben
e quelle del Geist, tra natura e spirito, ma allo stesso modo qualifica anche
l’atteggiamento di Mann verso le realtà della storia e della politica, aprendo alla
possibilità di giudizi diversificati. Così, a seconda dei casi, l’uomo può essere
personalità o individuo, la collettività è qualificabile come popolo o come massa,
la modernità è Kultur o Zivilisation, la storia è destino o progresso, la realtà si
presta a essere campo di conquista e dominio della Macht o del Leben,
l’esperienza artistica è riconducibile alla vita o allo spirito, la guerra è
alternativamente genio e demone, atto dello spirito o spietata strategia, epifania
metafisica o barbaro, secolare ingranaggio. Le Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen
costituiscono una miniera ricchissima di simili dualismi, e da qui consegue la loro
talvolta snervante imprendibilità concettuale.
Lo sdoppiamento risulta particolarmente evidente nel caso dello Stato. Questo
è inteso, da un lato, solo come apparato organizzativo del potere, una macchina
impersonale affidata alla gestione di tecnici esperti e burocrati di professione. Al
contempo però è applicata allo Stato la figura morale della persona(lità), cosicché
vengono a valere anche per la persona-Stato, che è la nazione, gli imperativi
morali e le aspettative etiche che condizionano e determinano l’operare
dell’individuo singolo.48 Lo Stato nazionale è così fatto espressione della moralità,
della mentalità e del modo d’essere spirituale di un intero popolo che da quello,
nella persona delle sue élites, si sente guidato e rappresentato, non tanto attraverso
47
Ibidem, p. 259.
48
Si vedano quei passi delle Considerazioni dedicati a delineare la differenza tra il mero Stato
come apparato meccanicistico e la nazione come soggetto metafisico della storia, custode di valori e
personalità: cfr. ibidem, pp. 259 e 280-292.
27 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
28 ELENA ALESSIATO
55
Cf. Ulrich Karthaus, Die Freiheit des Unpolitischen. Der Künstler im Reich der
machtgeschützten Innerlichkeit, in H. Oberreuter e R. Wimmer (a cura di), Thomas Mann, die
Deutschen und die Politik (München, Akad. Verlag, 2008), pp. 9-24.
56
Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 261 e 262.
57
Ibidem, p. 272.
58
Ibidem, p. 582.
59
Ho messo al centro la nozione di “doppia ottica” nella mia ricostruzione dell’impolitico
manniano in Elena Alessiato, L’impolitico. Thomas Mann tra arte e guerra, Il Mulino, Bologna
2011, pp. 256sgg. Sulla derivazione di questa modalità visuale-intellettuale dal poliprospettivismo
estetico di Mann, codificato nella categoria di “arte stereoscopica”, rimando a ibidem, pp. 181-197,
29 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
anche irritante rispetto alle richieste di linearità e coerenza proprie di una logica
esplicativa, raziocinante, illuministica, strettamente politica. Mann ne è
consapevole e anche orgoglioso: “la contraddizione non è tanto in me quanto
nelle cose”, in conseguenza del fatto che “il dominio del pensiero tedesco nel
mondo non significherebbe di certo il dominio della politica. Perché il pensiero
tedesco non è politico”60. Si esprime qui, nuovamente, l’ambiguità sfaccettata del
Geist tedesco, il suo essere − con le parole di Wagner ricordate da Mann − “un
abisso senza fondo”.
Al suo confronto, alla fine, la politica è solo un fatto, ma un fatto che ha
assunto la portata e la necessità di un “destino”. 61 Essa dispiega agli occhi del
realista la sua irresistibile onnipervasività, il suo potere contaminante ma, in nome
dell’esigenza − esigenza del cuore, dello spirito, del sentimento 62 − di non
permettere il suo sovrapotere totalizzante, per una volta questo potenziale è visto
anche dall’impolitico, tedesco e artista, come un’occasione di senso e insieme
come un alibi conveniente anche rispetto al proprio agire da intellettuale, al
proprio parlare politicamente incisivo: “L’antipolitica − scrive infatti Mann − è
anch’essa una politica, giacché la politica è una forza terribile: basta solo sapere
che esiste e già ci si è dentro, si è perduta per sempre la propria innocenza”.63 Ne
consegue l’impossibilità di sottrarsi alla sua influenza, o comunque la difficoltà di
rinunciare ai suoi mezzi. Per questo anche l’impolitico, per difendere dalle insidie
fagocitanti della politica i valori in cui crede e si riconosce, quelli della Kultur,
dello spirito, della metafisica, della musica e dell’individualità, scende nell’arena e
fa la guerra. Fa politica, ma il suo sguardo, anche quello con cui giudica i fatti
storici e politici che si dispiegano sanguinosamente in quegli anni sui terreni
dell’Europa, rimane ‘altro’, diverso, e rivolto ad altro, in alto, oltre: a quei valori
con riferimento originario a Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 235-243. Ho approfondito la relazione tra
atteggiamenti estetici diversi e corrispondenti posizioni politiche in Mann in Elena Alessiato, “Arte e
politica nelle Considerazioni di un impolitico di Thomas Mann”, Scienza & Politica, 43 (2010): pp.
73-95. Proietta la questione artistica nel quadro di una filosofia estetica e della vita Hans Dieter
Heimendahl, Studien zur Lebensphilospohie Thomas Manns in den “Betrachtungen eines
Unpolitischen”, “Der Zauberberg”, “Goethe und Tolstoi” und “Joseph und seine Brüder”
(Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1998), pp. 9-138. Per una rappresentazione sintetica ma
incisiva dell’atteggiamento dell’artista Mann, con attenzione a varie fasi e tei, si sceglie Lothar
Pikulik, Thomas Mann. Der Künstler als Abenteurer (Paderborn: mentis, 2012).
60
Thomas Mann, Briefe II 1914-1923, in Id., GKFA, cit., 22 (2004): p. 236.
61
Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico, p. 18.
62
Sottolineano la rilevanza di queste componenti dagli esiti doppi e contraddittori, tra gli altri,
Dieter Borchmeyer, “Politische Betrachtungen eines angeblich Unpolitischen”, in Thomas-Mann-
Jahrbuch, 10, (1997):, pp. 83-104 e Thomas Sprecher, Hans Rudolf Vaget e Cornelia Bernini (a
cura di) nel “Vorwort” a Mann, Briefe II, pp. 9-21 (14). Utile per più di un aspetto è il commento
di Hermann Kurzke posto a introduzione dell’edizione critica del testo: Thomas Mann,
Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, in GkFA, 13, 2, pp. 9-144.
63
Mann, Considerazioni, p. 418.
30 ELENA ALESSIATO
che non sono politici e dai quali, in accordo con la sua sensibilità d’artista, la
politica dovrebbe essere guidata nei suoi fini e plasmata nei suoi contenuti.64
4.
65
Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico, p. XXVIII.
66
Ibidem, pp. 139-140.
31 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
tentativo prende le mosse dal fatto che alcuni caratteri evidenziati da Esposito
nella sua articolata ricostruzione-interpretazione dell’impoliticità sono
parzialmente applicabili o riscontrabili anche nella prospettiva di Mann. A
cominciare dall’affermazione dell’anima realista dell’impolitico. Questa si
manifesta agli occhi di Esposito nella collocazione dell’impolitico all’interno della
realtà della politica e nell’indissolubilità del suo destino dalla “politica come
destino”67. Solo dal riconoscimento dell’evidenza per cui “la forza è tutto”68 e tutto
è potere, gli deriva – o più probabilmente è lui ad assumersi − il compito
scomodo, talvolta disperato, di mantenersi vigile marcatore dei limiti del politico,
implacabile testimone di ciò che il politico non è e non ha il potere di essere. Ha
affermato Esposito in un’intervista:
L’impolitico, in qualche modo, determina, confina la politica nel suo elemento
realistico di puro fatto, di semplice fatto, diciamo così; e quindi sfugge al corto
circuito teologico-politico che tende invece a definire questo fatto come valore, a
valorizzare il fatto della politica. Naturalmente ciò non vuol dire che la prospettiva
dell'impolitico, identificando la politica nel suo elemento fattuale, perda ogni
riferimento a una alterità; solo che considera questa alterità – il bene, la giustizia, il
valore – come qualche cosa di indicibile politicamente. […] L’impolitico in
definitiva, non contrappone alla politica un’altra realtà, ma semplicemente identifica
la realtà della politica per quello che è, senza farne l’apologia; cioè mantiene un
atteggiamento, come dire, di riserva mentale rispetto a un’ipotesi di valorizzazione,
di apologia della politica69.
67
Ibidem, p. 18.
68
Ibidem, p. 22.
69
Roberto Esposito, “Le categorie della politica”, Vivarium, Napoli (2 giugno 1993).
70
Thomas Mann, Die Stellung Freuds in der modernen Geistesgeschichte, in Id., GW, X, pp.
256-280; tr. it. La posizione di Freud nella storia dello spirito moderno, in Id., Nobiltà dello spirito,
pp. 1349-1375 (1361).
71
Mann, Considerazioni, pp. 259sgg e 267sgg.
32 ELENA ALESSIATO
72
Cerca di darne conto Bruno Bosteels, “Politics, Infrapolitics, and the Impolitical: Notes on the
Thought of Roberto Esposito and Alberto Moreiras”, The New Centennial Review, 10 (2010): n. 2:
New Paths in Political Philosophy, pp. 205-238.
73
Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico, p. XXI.
33 Considerazioni su un concetto ambiguo: l’impolitico
34 ELENA ALESSIATO
Non fa sconti a Mann Fritz Stern, Die politische Folgen des unpolitischen Deutschen, in
79
Michael Stürmer (a cura di), Das kaiserliche Deutschland. Politik und Gesellschaft 1870-1918
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 1970), pp. 168-186.
35 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 35-57
ISSN: 1825-5167
MARCO MENON
Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa
marco.menon@cfs.unipi.it
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the nature of Burckhardt's apolitia, and raises the question as to the real
meaning of his detachment from political things. The first part presents some major interpreta-
tions of Burckhardt alleged "Greek" unpolitical attitude (Ernst Cassirer, Karl Löwith, Albert Sa-
lomon, Benedetto Croce), and shows how these authors understood Burckhardt's contempla-
tive stance almost as a philosophical one. The second part offers a brief historical reconstruc-
tion of Burckhardt process of detachment, mostly drawing on his correspondence. The third
part analyses the meaning of Burckhardt's transcendence of the present in the past, namely, the
way in which the historian wins a critical perspective on the present by concentrating on history.
This process of detachment from the present is interpreted in its "political" aspects; as shown in
the fourth part, Burckhardt's apolitia amounts to a critical movement aimed at the recovery of
the spiritual connection with the past. In this way, the paper maintains that his apolitia is, in
truth, in service of a higher ideal of humanity, namely, a specific idea of civilization which must
be understood in contradistinction to barbarism. The essence of barbarism is the absence of
historic consciousness; it is only the awareness of a fundamental continuity in the flowing of
human things that allows the flourishing of man's spiritual life.
KEYWORDS
Jacob Burckhardt, history, apolitia, modernity, barbarism, civilization.
Nell’indagare la natura della vita dedicata alla conoscenza, uno dei luoghi clas-
sici da cui prendere le mosse è senza dubbio l’indimenticabile descrizione dei
“corifei” proposta da Socrate nel Teeteto, un passo che merita di essere riportato
per intero:
36 MARCO MENON
Costoro [scil. i veri filosofi] dunque in primo luogo fin da giovani ignorano la stra-
da che porta alla piazza, e anche il tribunale, il palazzo del consiglio o qualunque al-
tro luogo in cui si tengono le riunioni della città. Non prendono visione né ascoltano
le leggi e i decreti, tanto orali quanto messi per iscritto; a loro non viene in mente
neppure in sogno di prendere parte attiva a dispute di eterie finalizzate alla conqui-
sta delle cariche pubbliche, convegni, banchetti e feste con suonatrici di flauto. Che
qualcuno nella città abbia origini illustri o volgari, o una qualche colpa derivi a lui
dagli antenati, tanto in linea maschile che femminile, al filosofo sfugge ancora più di
quanti boccali occorrano per misurare l’acqua del mare. E neppure sa di non sapere
tutte queste cose, perché non se ne tiene lontano per acquisire una buona reputa-
zione, ma perché veramente solo il suo corpo si trova nella città e vi soggiorna, men-
tre il pensiero, giudicando tutte queste cose di poco e di nessun valore, disprezzan-
dole vola dappertutto, “nelle profondità della terra”, come dice Pindaro, misuran-
done la superficie, e “al di sopra del cielo” studia le questioni astronomiche, e inda-
ga in ogni luogo tutta quanta la natura degli enti ciascuno dei quali considerato nel
suo aspetto universale, senza abbassarsi a niente di ciò che gli è vicino (173c-174a)1.
Il carattere più eclatante della vita condotta dal filosofo, come appare dalla de-
scrizione di Socrate, è la sua totale estraneità alla vita politica e alle faccende della
città, compresa l’inconsapevolezza di tale estraneità (“E neppure sa di non sapere
tutte queste cose”). Un’estraneità e un’ignoranza, probabilmente e parzialmente,
determinate dal disprezzo, da parte del filosofo, per ciò che è effimero, meramen-
te umano, come suggerito dalle Nuvole di Aristofane: questa commedia presenta,
pur esasperandone i caratteri, un Socrate che corrisponde al ritratto del vero filo-
sofo presentato dal Teeteto. Il Socrate di Aristofane si concentra esclusivamente
sull’indagine delle cose divine o naturali, si mostra sprezzante nei confronti dei
non filosofi (che descrive o insulta definendoli pecore, sassi, numeri), ed è irre-
sponsabilmente inconsapevole del debito, forse non solo meramente materiale,
che contrae con la propria comunità politica2.
La marcata tendenza al distacco dalle cose umane, dalla vita politica, o dalle
sorti della propria città o patria, sembra essere una caratteristica ricorrente, forse
tipica, per quanto non necessaria, di quella che, se non strettamente vita filosofica,
può essere chiamata vita contemplativa o vita della mente. Una vita, in altre paro-
le, esclusivamente dedita all’attività intellettuale, sia essa quella, appunto, del filo-
sofo, oppure dello storico, del poeta, del pensatore religioso, dell’artista in senso
lato. Una vita che in ogni caso richiede raccoglimento, concentrazione, infine tra-
scendimento delle preoccupazioni o degli interessi della città o comunità politica
di appartenenza. Questa tendenza al distacco può assumere varie forme concrete:
la secessione o esodo dalla “terra dei filistei” può avvenire, senza essere per questo
1 Platone, Teeteto, a cura di Franco Ferrari (Milano: BUR, 2011), pp. 353-355.
2 Al proposito si rimanda al commento di Leo Strauss, Socrate e Aristofane, trad. it. di Mar-
co Menon (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2019). Il Socrate di Aristofane viene descritto da Strauss come un-
political.
37 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
meno radicale o profonda, anche in foro interno, ovvero senza diventare in senso
stretto anacoreti del deserto. Un esempio celebre e più vicino alla nostra epoca è
quello di Friedrich Nietzsche (che apolide lo era davvero)3, il quale sembra in
qualche maniera aggiornare il passo platonico già citato laddove, nella terza Ab-
handlung della Genealogie der Moral, illustra la natura dell’ascesi (in senso extra-
morale, come condizione per raggiungere uno specifico stato ottimale) caratteriz-
zante la vita della mente:
libertà da costrizione, molestia, frastuono, da affari, doveri, cure; chiarezza in testa;
danza, balzo e volo dei pensieri; un’aria buona, fine, limpida, sgombra, asciutta co-
me lo è l’aria sulle cime, dove ogni essere animale diventa più spirituale e mette le
ali; tranquillità in tutti i sotterranei; tutti i cani messi per benino a catena; nessun la-
trato di inimicizia e di villosa malevolenza; nessun verme roditore di ambizione feri-
ta; viscere umili e sottomesse, diligenti come ruote di mulino, ma lontane; estraneo
il cuore, in un altro mondo, di là da venire, postumo – in definitiva, nell’ideale asce-
tico, costoro [scil. i filosofi] pensano al sereno ascetismo di un animale divinizzato e
divenuto alato, il quale, più che starsene quieto, volteggia al di sopra della vita (Ge-
nealogia della morale, III.8)4.
3 Il titolo di una recente biografia del filosofo dell’eterno ritorno ricorre ad un gioco di paro-
le che allude al senso profondo della condizione di non appartenenza implicata dall’apolitia: Mas-
simo Fini, Nietzsche. L’apolide dell’esistenza (Venezia: Marsilio, 2002).
4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogia della morale, trad. it. di Ferruccio Masini, in Opere di
Friedrich Nietzsche, a cura di Giorgio Colli e Mazzino Montinari, VI/II (Milano: Adelphi, 1968), p.
311.
5 Cfr. Heinrich Meier, Warum politische Philosophie? (Stuttgart-Weimar: J.B. Metzler,
2000).
38 MARCO MENON
ché, almeno per il fatto di possedere un corpo, non possono evitare di vivere in
città, o in una comunità formata, in grossa misura, da altri esseri umani che non
hanno alcun interesse per la conoscenza fine a se stessa. Una situazione in cui, per
forza di cose, è impossibile evitare che le attività e le ambizioni politiche dei “mol-
ti” abbiano ricadute su chi conduce una siffatta vita. E per questa ragione si pone
la questione di come mantenere un rapporto equilibrato con il mondo delle fac-
cende umane, tutelando la libertà, la continuità e l’integrità della propria attività in-
tellettuale e contribuendo al bene della propria comunità d’appartenenza. È pos-
sibile far convivere le esigenze contrapposte del pensiero e della società? Ma so-
prattutto, si tratta davvero di una discontinuità irriducibile?
Queste pagine proveranno ad articolare tale problematica concentrandosi su
un autore che non appartiene al canone della tradizione filosofica, ma che ciono-
nostante può essere a pieno diritto inserito nel pantheon della vita contemplativa:
Jacob Burckhardt. A più riprese, la figura di Burckhardt è stata oggetto di critiche
per il suo presunto atteggiamento estetizzante nei confronti della storia, atteggia-
mento che implicava un distacco altero nei confronti delle vicende a lui contem-
poranee, dei destini della sua città, Basilea, attraversata da inquietudini rivoluzio-
narie e spettatrice dell’ascesa dello stato prussiano, di cui rappresentava pratica-
mente la polarità opposta; un distacco, in altre parole, che diventando esempio di
condotta intellettuale in rottura con il saeculum, avrebbe ispirato una pericolosis-
sima tendenza nei suoi successori ammirati che, arroccati nella fortezza del pen-
siero, avrebbero dileggiato la vita politica perché volgarmente stravolta dagli ecces-
si democratici moderni, senza lasciare spazio però ad alcuna strada alternativa e
percorribile, indebolendo fatalmente gli anticorpi del pensiero nei confronti delle
pulsioni tiranniche che nel novecento avrebbero preso poi il sopravvento6. Il caso
di Burckhardt diventa ancora più complesso se poi si prende in considerazione il
fatto che la sua fortuna postuma è dovuta, in gran parte, e con particolare enfasi
6 Su questa critica ricorrente si vedano ad esempio Fritz Stern, The Failure of Illiberalism.
Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (New York: Knopf, 1972), p. 8: «Intellectually,
the schools sought to prepare the universal man, but not the public-minded citizen»; ivi, p. 17: «to
pretend to be unpolitical at a time of violent social change and unrest is in itself a support of the ex-
isting order»; Jörn Rüsen, “Jacob Burckhardt. Political Standpoint and Historical Insight on the
Border of Postmodernism”, History and Theory, 24 (1985), p. 246: «Burckhardt's attempt to rein-
force the cultural values of Old Europe by an aesthetic remembrance of their role in the past has
led to an apolitical attitude of educated people [...] We have to learn that the culture critique from
this point of view is a hidden ally of the disaster it laments»; Lionel Gossman, “Jacob Burckhardt:
Cold War Liberal?”, The Journal of Modern History, 74 (2002), pp. 563-564: «[Burckhardt’s] out-
look, in the end, despite the close, almost obsessive attention he paid to contemporary politics, was
fundamentally unpolitical, if not antipolitical. In that respect, he remained profoundly attached to
the neohumanist and idealist tradition that many modern scholars consider at least partly responsi-
ble for the unfortunate political history of Germany in the nineteenth century and the disastrous
consequences it produced in the twentieth»; Egon Flaig, “Jacob Burckhardt, Greek Culture, and
Modernity”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 79 (2003), pp. 7-39, passim.
39 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
nel mondo anglosassone, al carattere quasi “profetico” delle sue diagnosi sul pre-
sente e sui destini della modernità7. Un destino ambiguo, per il fatto di essere visto
da molti, al contempo, come una sorta di saggio rabdomante della storia, e come
cattivo maestro che in parte avrebbe indirettamente contribuito all’avverarsi di
quel futuro militaresco e tirannico che tanto temeva come esito del movimento
vorticoso innescato dalla Rivoluzione – quasi una self-fulfilling prophecy. A tenere
assieme entrambi i volti di questa fortuna postuma è un tratto distintivo: il Burc-
khardt apolitico, contemplativo, estetizzante. Un distacco che sembra essere con-
dizione di possibilità sia di uno sguardo storicamente penetrante, sia di un irre-
sponsabile senso di superiorità nei confronti della prosaica e confusa concretezza
della partecipazione alla vita politica.
Mettendo momentaneamente tra parentesi le critiche e le esaltazioni postume,
qui si tenterà di interrogare la posizione assunta da Burckhardt distinguendo due
momenti, o due aspetti, della sua dinamica intellettuale. Da un lato, l’intima ne-
cessità di prendere le distanze dal presente, dal proprio tempo, dalla vicenda epo-
cale che gli sembrava destinata alla catastrofe (parti 1, 2, 3), abbracciando una
forma esistenziale di apolitia; dall’altro, la dedizione all’insegnamento e il legame
nei confronti dell’Università di Basilea, grazie a cui, in maniera certo peculiare, ha
rivestito un ruolo pubblico di primo piano (parte 4 e conclusione). Pensare questa
combinazione risulta di massimo interesse. Perché la “sintesi” ottenuta dalla presa
di posizione burckhardtiana offre non solo una prospettiva originale sul rapporto
fra pensiero o conoscenza e impegno civile, ma anche la possibilità di riformulare
il problema posto in apertura, guardando la contrapposizione fra cittadinanza e
apolitia alla luce di quella tra attuale e inattuale8.
Una delle voci più autorevoli ad aver valorizzato il bìos theoretikos incarnato da
Burckhardt è stata senza dubbio quella di Karl Löwith, che nel 1936 ha pubblica-
to quella che forse resta l’opera di maggior respiro filosofico sullo storico basilee-
se. Jacob Burckhardt. Der Mensch inmitten der Geschichte è un testo importante
sia per lo studio dell’opera e del pensiero dell’autore della Kultur der Renaissance
in Italien, sia per la comprensione della biografia intellettuale dello stesso Löwith,
che portava a compimento una sorta di “conversione” da Nietzsche a Burckhardt,
ovvero quanto gli appariva un autentico superamento del moderno e delle aporie
del Wille zur Macht, verso una ritrovata misura (Mitte und Mass) contemplativa,
scettica, mediterranea, come il filosofo di Heidelberg scriveva il 13 luglio 1935
all’amico e collega Leo Strauss, che invece si mostrava molto meno entusiasta al
riguardo9.
Löwith comprendeva Burckhardt come un rappresentante eccellente della vita
ascetica e contemplativa sulla scorta degli anacoreti cristiani, dei pagani alla fine
dell’impero, e dei filosofi cinici o epicurei al tramonto della polis; la crisi non epi-
sodica ma epocale, il tracollo delle istituzioni civili e la corruzione dilagante della
vita politica costringono i migliori ad una forma di ascesi che è diventata veicolo di
trasmissione del patrimonio spirituale di queste epoche a quelle successive10. Bur-
ckhardt stesso sembrerebbe essersi pensato, in analogia con queste figure, ma so-
prattutto alla luce del modello filosofico di Epicuro e Diogene, come “asceta in-
tramondano” il cui compito era quello di mantenere in vita la connessione vitale
con il passato. Nella lettura di Löwith, Burckhardt «si sottrasse alla prassi politica
preferendole una libera considerazione del mondo storico convinto, come gli an-
tichi, che la teoria sia la cosa migliore […] Il sapere gli serviva prima di tutto come
liberazione dalla follia e dai falsi bisogni e la hedoné significava per lui il gioioso
9 Cfr. Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften. Bd. 3. Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zu-
gehörige Schriften – Briefe, hrsg. v. Heinrich Meier und Wiebke Meier (Stuttgart-Weimar: J.B.
Metzler, 2001), pp. 652-654; ed. it. Leo Strauss-Karl Löwith, Oltre Itaca. La filosofia come emigra-
zione. Carteggio (1932-1971), a cura di Carlo Altini, trad. it. di Manuel Rossini (Roma: Carocci,
2012), pp. 124-125. Vale la pena di riportare il commento di Strauss, ivi, p. 657; trad. it., pp. 128-
129: «Concordo volentieri con lei che Burckhardt sia stato il rappresentante ideale della modera-
zione antica nel XIX secolo, ma i temi del suo filosofare sono possibili solo a causa della “smodera-
tezza” moderna: nessun filosofo antico era uno storico. Questo non dipende dalla mancanza di un
sesto senso, ma proprio dal senso di quello che all’uomo compete sapere, sarebbe a dire, qual è il
suo “modo e misura”. No, caro Löwith, Burckhardt non va proprio». Per una ricostruzione com-
plessiva della vicenda filosofica di Löwith, si veda Orlando Franceschelli, Karl Löwith: le sfide della
modernità tra Dio e nulla (Roma: Donzelli, 1997).
10 John R. Hinde, Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity (Montreal-Kingston:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), p. 136.
41 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
stato d’animo con cui l’uomo è in equilibrio con se stesso»11. Un distacco che, sen-
za ricadute nel mito dell’eccezionalità o dell’avvento di una nuova o superiore
forma di vita, rivela una salute superiore, forse quella stessa forma di “grande salu-
te” tanto agognata da Nietzsche e invece manifestata, proprio in virtù dell’essere
misura a se stesso e capace di autentica moderazione, dal suo più anziano e sobrio
collega: «Burckhardt, seguendo il modello filosofico della tarda antichità, si è assi-
curato il godimento dell’esistenza proprio grazie a quel suo genere di ascesi, e la
semplicità della sua vita rinunciataria è la condizione per il suo sapersi godere la
ricchezza del mondo»12.
Löwith sarebbe stato comunque solo il primo di una serie di intellettuali a met-
tere in evidenza il carattere apolitico dell’attitudine di Burckhardt nei confronti del
mondo e della storia. Un anno dopo, in un celebre scritto (La storiografia senza
problema storico) Benedetto Croce faceva risalire la scelta contemplativa di Burc-
khardt ad un eccesso di pathos, ovvero ad un’esperienza biografica legata alla sua
attività di pubblicista durante i moti degli anni ‘40: «il Burckhardt non si ritrasse
dal mondo circostante e dalle sue lotte pratiche per inclinazione di placido studio-
so che cerca tranquillità; ma se ne distaccò per troppa passione, diventata insop-
portabile sofferenza, nella breve esperienza che ebbe a fare delle cose politiche
della Svizzera tra il 1840 e il '44»13. Alcuni anni più tardi, in occasione della pub-
blicazione delle Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen in traduzione inglese con il tito-
lo di Force and Freedom, due ebrei tedeschi emigrati negli Stati Uniti si sarebbero
espressi con termini di grande ammirazione nei confronti dello storico basileese,
ribattendo idealmente al giudizio di Croce e avvicinandosi a quello di Löwith.
Ernst Cassirer, in una breve ma appassionata recensione del 1944, sottolineava,
tra le altre cose, un aspetto che tocca direttamente la questione qui in esame. Nel
riconoscere la “visione profetica” di Burckhardt, egli spiegava come tale capacità
di giudizio fosse resa possibile e necessaria dalla sua concezione della conoscenza
storica e della conoscenza in senso lato. Burckhardt rappresentava, agli occhi di
Cassirer, «uno dei più recenti testimoni dell’idea classica di una pura vita contem-
plativa», in pieno accordo con l’ideale dei pensatori greci e che, alla stessa manie-
ra, elevava la contemplazione sulla vita activa.
La recensione continuava sostenendo l’esistenza di «due sole alternative, tra cui
dobbiamo scegliere. Da una parte, la volontà di potenza […] dall’altra, la volontà
di conoscenza, e in primo luogo di conoscenza intuitiva – cioè storica»14. L’anno
11 Karl Löwith, Jacob Burckhardt. L’uomo nel mezzo della storia, trad. it. di Laura Bazzica-
lupo (Bari: Laterza, 1991), p. 300.
12 Löwith, Jacob Burckhardt, p. 301.
13 Benedetto Croce, “La storiografia senza problema storico”, La critica, 35 (1937), p. 425.
14 Ernst Cassirer, “Force and Freedom: Remarks on the English Edition of Jacob Burc-
khardt’s «Reflections on History»”, The American Scholar, 13 (1944), pp. 415, 416. - La celebre
condanna burckhardtiana della Macht an sich böse è stata discussa e rilanciata da schiere di pensa-
42 MARCO MENON
seguente (1945), il sociologo Albert Salomon pubblicava un lungo review essay in-
titolato Jacob Burckhardt: Transcending History15, un testo che l’autore dichiarava
essere in parte il frutto di alcune conversazioni con Leo Strauss sul tema, e che
forse non a caso propone una lettura che insiste sulla possibilità di trascendere il
proprio tempo con il pensiero e di liberare l’individuo pensante dai condiziona-
menti delle opinioni dominanti della propria epoca. Una lettura che si dimostra in
pieno accordo con la tesi di fondo di Cassirer in merito alla questione centrale:
«Burckhardt non ammette mai che questa» attitudine contemplativa e apolitica nei
confronti del presente «era l’autentica attitudine filosofica degli antichi […] la con-
dizione umana più alta è il perseguimento di una vita nello spirito disinteressato di
una comprensione simpatetica. Solo una tale purificazione personale può rendere
trasparenti gli aspetti intellettuali e morali dell’azione umana»16.
tori e commentatori e meriterebbe una trattazione dedicata, per cui qui ci si può solo limitare ad
un’osservazione e ad alcuni rimandi bibliografici. Il significato della condanna sembra mostrare la
fermezza, da parte di Burckhardt, nel rifiutare la teodicea dello Stato, ovvero la giustificazione della
violenza intrinseca ad ogni processo politico (la formazione e il consolidarsi di ordine nel risponde-
re al bisogno di sicurezza) alla luce di quanto di positivo ne può scaturire: la violenza è un fatto ne-
cessario ma nondimeno un male e va quindi sempre condannata e contenuta. Cfr. Laura Bazzica-
lupo, Il potere e la cultura. Sulle riflessioni storico-politiche di Jacob Burckhardt (Napoli: Edizioni
Scientifiche Italiane, 1990), p. 97. Per confronto si vedano almeno Hans Urs von Balthasar, Teo-
drammatica 4. L'azione (Milano: Jaca Book, 1986), pp. 140-142; Löwith, Jacob Burckhardt, p. 113-
115; Otto Brunner, Per una nuova storia costituzionale e sociale, a cura di Pierangelo Schiera (Mi-
lano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000), pp. 191-193; Martin Heidegger, Parmenide, a cura di Franco Volpi
(Milano: Adelphi, 2005), pp. 173 sgg.; Carl Schmitt, Dialogo sul potere, a cura di Giovanni Gurisatti
(Milano: Adelphi, 2012), pp. 31-35.
15 Alberto Salomon, “Jacob Burckhardt. Transcending History”, Philosophy and Phenome-
nological Research, 6 (1945), pp. 225-269. A proposito della figura di Salomon, autore, tra le altre
cose, di The Tyranny of Progress. Reflections on the Origins of Sociology (New York: Noonday
Press, 1955), si vedano Claudius Härpfer, “Wir humane Spätlinge. Albert Salomon und die Fas-
zinazion Jacob Burckhardts”, in Peter Gostmann (ed. by), Verlassene Stufen der Reflexion: Albert
Salomon und die Aufklärung der Soziologie (Wiesbaden: VS, 2011), pp. 121-136; Id., Humanis-
mus als Lebensform: Albert Salomons Verklärung der Realität (Wiesbaden: VS, 2009); Peter
Gostmann, Beyond the Pale: Albert Salomons Denkraum und das intellektuelle Feld im 20.
Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014) (al rapporto con Strauss sono dedicate le pp. 247-
275).
16 Salomon, “Jacob Burckhardt”, p. 235. - Certo, può essere obiettato a queste letture, Burc-
khardt non era e non voleva essere un filosofo. A ciò si potrebbe replicare che limitando la conce-
zione della filosofia a quella sistematica di Hegel, o a quella “gnostica” di Schelling, Burckhardt
chiaramente non può essere in nessun modo accostato alla filosofia. Se invece si intende, in senso
più ampio, un determinato atteggiamento di fronte alle cose umane e al mondo, allora è possibile
seguire i giudizi di Cassirer e Salomon e avvicinare lo storico basileese ai greci. In fondo, storia e fi-
losofia sembrano condividere l’oggetto di indagine, e differenziarsi nell’approcciarvisi: come testi-
moniato dalla Einleitung del Neues Schema dei corsi sullo studio della storia, se «la filosofia […] af-
fronta veramente e con risolutezza il grande enigma generale della vita, allora risulta ben al di sopra
della storia la quale, nel migliore dei casi, persegue invece quel fine in modo insufficiente e indiret-
to», Jacob Burckhardt, Über das Studium der Geschichte: der Text der «Weltgeschichtlichen
Betrachtungen» auf Grund der Vorarbeiten von Ernst Ziegler, hrsg. v. Peter Ganz (München: C.H.
43 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
Sul distacco dalla politica, lo stesso Burckhardt è molto esplicito nelle comuni-
cazioni private, e la fonte privilegiata è l’epistolario con il più anziano dei fratelli
Schauenburg, Hermann. Vale la pena di citare due lettere, entrambe dell’inverno
1846, che possono mostrare la radicalità della scelta apolitica dello storico. È dato
per assodato, in letteratura, che l’esperienza, già ricordata, come redattore della
Basler Zeitung tra il 1844 e il 1845 abbia lasciato il segno sul giovane studioso in
attesa di una collocazione professionale all’altezza del suo talento e delle sue
aspettative. E, quasi a commento e giustificazione della sua irremovibile rinuncia a
ulteriori coinvolgimenti, Burckhardt scrive all’amico il 28 febbraio 1846:
con me, la libertà e lo Stato non perdono granché. Con uomini come me non si
costruisce affatto uno Stato; perciò voglio, finché vivo, comportarmi bene e prende-
re parte a ciò che mi sta attorno; voglio essere un buon individuo privato, un amabi-
le compagnone, un’anima eccellente; per queste cose ho un talento che voglio svi-
luppare. Con la società in grande stile non posso più avere a che fare; nei suoi con-
fronti mi comporto istintivamente in maniera ironica; quello che mi sta a cuore è il
dettaglio. Ho l’educazione e la routine necessarie per arrangiarmi, in caso di necessi-
tà, con la politica in senso elevato, solo che non voglio più averci nulla a che fare,
perlomeno non nella confusione del nostro paese17.
Qualche giorno più tardi, in una lettera del 5 marzo, Burckhardt trova altre pa-
role, ancora più enfatiche, per giustificare il proprio ritiro dalla politica. Egli mani-
festa la sua volontà di riempirsi gli occhi della cultura della vecchia Europa, prima
dell’irrompere, percepito come inevitabile, della barbarie, per poter, una volta che
Beck, 1982), p. 226; ed. it. Sullo studio della Storia. Lezioni e conferenze (1868-1873), a cura di
Maurizio Ghelardi (Torino: Einaudi, 1998), p. 4. Ed è lecito assumere che quello di Burckhardt sia
il “migliore dei casi”. Per un’introduzione critica a questo testo il riferimento è Maurizio Ghelardi,
“I corsi introduttivi allo studio della storia di J. Burckhardt. Una rilettura delle Weltgeschichtlichen
Betrachtungen”, Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia toscana di scienze e lettere La Colombaria, 51
(1986), pp. 229-364. Per Burleigh T. Wilkins, “Some Notes on Jacob Burckhardt”, Journal of the
History of Ideas, 20 (1959), p. 130, in realtà anche in Burckhardt sarebbe presente una filosofia del-
la storia, per quanto alternativa al modello progressista offerto dai suoi contemporanei influenzati
da Hegel.
17 Jacob Burckhardt, Briefe. Vollständig und kritisch bearbaitete Ausgabe. Mit Nutzung des
handschriftlichen Nachlasses hergestellt von Max Burckhardt, voll. I-X (Basel-Stuttgart: Insel Ver-
lag-Schwabe Verlag, 1949-1986), qui vol. II, p. 209. Sulla venatura ironica del distacco burckhard-
tiano, si veda Thomas A. Howard, Religion and the Rising of Historicism. W.M.L. De Wette, Ja-
cob Burckhardt, and the Theological origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 168: «an apolitical and ironic detachment made
up a central feature of his Weltanschauung and self-understanding […] his retreat was conditioned
by the conviction of fundamental absence and uncertainty, tempered only by private nostalgia and
delight in the aesthetic remains of Europe’s dogmatic past […] Burckhardt was the proto-
postmodern ironist par excellence seeking ekstasis in the purely private flight from the master narra-
tives of his time».
44 MARCO MENON
la Rivoluzione avrà dato sfogo ai suoi demoni e avrà quindi esaurito il proprio
corso, bei der unvermeidlichen Restauration tätig sein, essere attivo nell’inevitabile
restaurazione. E procede quindi con un’ammonizione, riguardante il carattere po-
liticamente esplosivo della demagogia, e che mostra la sua diffidenza nei confronti
del popolo:
Voi tutti ignorate ancora la natura del popolo, e quanto facilmente esso si trasformi
in plebe barbarica. Non sapete quale tirannide verrà esercitata sullo spirito, con il
pretesto che la cultura [Bildung] è un’alleata segreta del capitale che bisogna distrug-
gere. Totalmente folli mi appaiono quelli che sperano, grazie ai loro filosofemi, di
guidare il movimento e di tenerlo entro i binari. Sono i feuillants dell’imminente
movimento; quest’ultimo però si svilupperà proprio come la Rivoluzione francese
nella forma di un evento naturale, e si tirerà appresso tutto quello che la natura
umana ha in sé di infernale. Non vorrei più vivere questi tempi, se non fossi costret-
to a farlo18.
Queste due lettere, per quanto campione molto ristretto, mostrano chiaramen-
te sia la presa di posizione esistenziale di Burckhardt rispetto alle vicende politiche
della sua epoca, sia una ferma comprensione della natura del movimento innesca-
to dalla Rivoluzione francese e votato ad esasperare i toni dello scontro politico in
contrapposizioni radicali. Dello stesso tenore una lettera al teologo, poeta e rivo-
luzionario Gottfried Kinkel (10 dicembre 1846), parimenti molto eloquente a
proposito della posizione assunta da Burckhardt: «Per me, la politica è cosa mor-
ta; quello che faccio, lo faccio come essere umano [Mensch]»19. L’amico e collega,
al contrario, si era lasciato trascinare dal radicalismo politico, che alla fine lo
avrebbe costretto all’esilio20.
Il 1789 era, agli occhi di Burckhardt, il presupposto fondamentale da cui tutta
la politica successiva, direttamente o indirettamente, positivamente o negativamen-
te, non poteva che essere profondamente, essenzialmente condizionata («la Rivo-
luzione ha avuto risultati che ci condizionano totalmente e costituiscono parte in-
tegrante della nostra idea di diritto e della nostra coscienza, e che quindi non pos-
siamo più eliminare da noi stessi»21). Ed era proprio la necessità che questo radica-
ze della modernità. Una biografia intellettuale di Jacob Burckhardt (Roma: Edizioni di storia e lette-
ratura, 2016), pp. 3-58.
22 Lettera a Kinkel 19 aprile 1845, in Burckhardt, Briefe, vol. II, p. 157.
23 Burckhardt, Historische Fragmente, p. 224; trad. it., p. 255: «nostro compito non è profe-
tare, ma indicare i riecheggiamenti a partire dall'inizio della Rivoluzione in poi. Vogliamo sapere su
quale onda della grande tempesta noi vaghiamo». Sulla critica della democrazia di massa, si veda
David Gross, “Jacob Burckhardt and the Critique of Mass Society”, European Studies Review, 8
(1978), pp. 393-410.
24 La formula “ondate della modernità” appartiene al lessico straussiano; non sembra tuttavia
improprio utilizzarla in questo contesto, anche alla luce della seconda citazione alla nota preceden-
te.
25 Burckhardt, Historische Fragmente, p. 205; tr. it cit., p. 236; cfr. ivi, pp. 205-206; trad. it.,
p. 236: «Eguaglianza e partecipazione al governo in virtù del suffragio universale sono diventate
concetti equivalenti (finché forse un nuovo dispotismo non insegni che può anche esistere
un’eguaglianza sotto di lui)».
26 Cfr. John R. Hinde, “The Development of Jacob Burckhardt’s Early Political Thought”,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1992), p. 435; si veda anche Hinde, Jacob Burckhardt and the
Crisis of Modernity, pp. 8-12.
46 MARCO MENON
27 Löwith sostiene che in Diogene «Bruckhardt ha interpretato, non da ultimo, se stesso» (Ja-
cob Burckhardt, p. 155); cfr. Gossman, Jacob Burckhardt, cit., p. 560; si veda inoltre André Laks,
Jacob le Cynique: Philosophes et philosophie das la Griechische Culturgeschichte, in Leonhard
Burckhardt und Hans-Joachim Gehrke (hrsg.), Jacob Burckhardt und die Griechen (Basel:
Schwabe, 2006), pp. 325-335.
28 Jacob Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, in Gesammelte Werke (Basel-Stuttgart:
Schwabe & Co., 1978), vol. VIII, p. 366; ed. it Storia della civiltà greca, trad. it. di Maria Attardo
Magrini (Firenze: Sansoni, 1974), vol. II, p. 636.
29 Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. VII, p. 355; trad.
it., vol. II, p. 100. Leo Strauss sembra quasi riprendere, o quanto meno condividere, queste osser-
vazioni laddove scrive che «La vita filosofica veniva considerata dai pensatori classici come fonda-
mentalmente differente dalla vita politica. E nella misura in cui la vita politica avanzava una istanza
universale, cioè nella misura in cui la città non lasciava spazio per una vita privata che fosse qualcosa
di più che economica, la vita filosofica, che è necessariamente privata, necessariamente divenne op-
posta alla vita politica», Leo Strauss, Lo spirito di Sparta o il gusto di Senofonte, in Giampero Chivi-
lò e Marco Menon (a cura di), Tirannide e filosofia. Con un saggio di Leo Strauss e un inedito di
Gaston Fessard sj (Venezia: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, 2015, p. 300).
30 Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. VII, p. 355; trad.
it., vol. II, p. 100.
31 Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte, in Gesammelte Werke, vol. VII, pp. 357-358;
trad. it., vol. II, pp. 103-104. Per una lettura post-cristiana, e non greco-filosofica, del pessimismo di
Burckhardt (come quella suggerita in Delio Cantimori, Storici e storia. Metodo, caratteristiche e si-
gnificato del lavoro storiografico [Torino: Einaudi, 1971], p. 116), si veda Howard, Religion and the
47 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
Non bisogna però intendere questo distacco esclusivamente come una forma di
reazione alla condizione decadente e corrotta della comunità politica. L’ascesi fi-
losofica o contemplativa è una forma di vita che mostra il limite della politica, nel
senso che l’uomo non si esaurisce, per Burckhardt, nell’essere un cittadino.
L’eccedenza spirituale, sia essa intellettuale (conoscitiva) o artistica (creativa), che
caratterizza l’essere umano è, si potrebbe dire, una caratteristica naturale che ren-
de possibile all’individuo, qualora la sua “grande salute” glielo permetta, il tra-
scendimento dell’orizzonte politico32. Nel caso specifico dello storico, trascendere
le cose politiche significa sottrarsi alla cattura del presente; significa trascendere la
propria epoca, nel pensiero, e assumere uno sguardo che trova come polarità op-
posta il passato. Una sorta di alchimia del contrasto che relativizza il presente sen-
za assolutizzare il passato, cioè senza renderlo venerabile in quanto tale, e che
alimenta la capacità di comprendere la continuità – ovvero l’elemento storico33.
Il tratto apolitico necessario allo storico emerge in due passi paralleli di due Einlei-
tungen (rispettivamente Zwischenblätter e neues Schema) alle lezioni sullo studio
della storia:
Rising of Historicism, secondo cui l’atteggiamento dello storico basileese nei confronti delle faccen-
de mondane è determinato da un residuo cristiano, per quanto secolarizzato, che ne informa la
Weltanschauung, ovvero il dogma peccato originale: «Burckhardt’s pessimism has in fact a pro-
foundly Christian – and explicitly premodern Christian – pedigree. It may be described as a secular-
ized continuation of the idea of original sin, an abiding attachment to the orthodox world of his fa-
ther. Burckhardt does not stress the ontological basis of this idea […] but rather its social conse-
quences […] The residuum of original sin furnished Burckhardt with a social and anthropological
realism and intellectual modesty in stark contrast to his more visionary and epistemologically self-
assured contemporaries» (p. 158). Sull’argomento si consideri anche Ghelardi, Le stanchezze della
modernità, pp. 118 e seguenti.
32 Ghelardi, Le stanchezze della modernità, p. X, parla del «presupposto antropologico» di
Burckhardt, secondo il quale «l’agire umano è frutto di un eccesso pulsionale. Per Burckhardt
l’esistenza umana è caratterizzata da un cinetismo che può condurre ad esiti distruttivi quando esso
si esprime come egoismo e mera aspirazione al potere, ma anche ad una lucida trasformazione del-
la realtà quando esso viene sublimato e incanalato in una forma “artisticamente” produttiva»; sulle
radici di questa visione, cfr. ivi, pp. 209-216.
33 Che il trascendimento del presente nello studio dell’elemento storico non significhi
l’accesso ad un punto di vista assoluto viene mostrato con raffinatezza da Chiara Lefons, “Jacob
Burckhardt o della civiltà come cittadinanza”, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Clas-
se di Lettere e Filosofia, 14 (1984), p. 1381: «Lo sguardo storico è, esso stesso, oggetto di una diffici-
le conquista: se la sola chiave per la comprensione della vita storica nel suo multiforme fluire è data
unicamente dalla consapevolezza della continuità e della multiformità del mutamento, allo storico
spetta il compito di criticare l’assolutizzazione di ogni “punto di vista”, compreso il proprio, per at-
tingere una conoscenza del passato, se non totalmente libera, almeno consapevole della misura del
condizionamento esercitato dal presente. Nella continuità del mutamento, infatti, passato e presente
si fronteggiano e sono separabili solo grazie a un’interruzione che l’artificio della mente può impor-
re al divenire. […] La coscienza storica nega la “naturalità” del movimento e crea, attraverso
l’opposizione del presente al passato, le condizioni per il passaggio dalla coercizione della “necessi-
tà” alla manifestazione della “libertà”».
48 MARCO MENON
Di fronte a simili forze storiche l’individuo del nostro tempo è solito sentirsi del
tutto impotente e finisce abitualmente per cadere al servizio del partito che muove
l’attacco o di quello che resiste. Pochi contemporanei sanno «andare spiritualmen-
te oltre» gli eventi, e nel far ciò la loro soddisfazione non risulta forse neppure
troppo grande poiché hanno dovuto abbandonare tutti gli altri in servitù. Solo in
epoche più tarde lo spirito potrà librarsi, perfettamente affrancato da un simile
passato35.
Di norma l’individuo cade preda della Macht che si afferma storicamente con
la massima Berechtigung momentanea, sostenuta da forme di vita di ogni tipo
(«costituzioni, ceti privilegiati, una religione profondamente intrecciata con tutto
quanto è proprio del tempo, un grande ceto di possidenti, un costume sociale
compiuto, una determinata concezione giuridica» 36 ). Inevitabile, sempre per la
maggioranza, finire al servizio di un partito o di un altro (un asservimento quindi
alla politica); partiti che vengono contrapposti in quanto opposizione e attacco, e
che nella Basilea del tempo potrebbero essere riconosciuti, rispettivamente, nei
conservatori e nei liberali o nei democratici. I pochi che riescono a non cadere
preda di queste potenze e riescono a non “lasciarsi schierare” trascendono quindi
la contrapposizione politica attuale, e possono osservarla da una prospettiva remo-
ta, seppure immanente allo stesso fluire storico. E questo si suppone essere il caso
di Burckhardt, che dobbiamo perciò intendere come al di là del partito che attac-
ca e del partito che si oppone.
Superare spiritualmente le cose significa allora conquistare una «libertà in mez-
zo alla coscienza dell’enorme e generale dipendenza e al fluire delle necessità»37,
tenendo ferma, con spirito scettico (uno scetticismo che Burckhardt intende in
senso non dogmatico, e che si sarebbe tentati di qualificare come autenticamente
filosofico) semplicemente la prospettiva vom duldenden, strebenden und handel-
den Menschen wie er ist und immer war und sein wird (dell’uomo che soffre, ane-
la, agisce, così com’è sempre stato, è, e sarà).
La ragione per trascendere, nel pensiero, la prospettiva storico-politica in cui
siamo presi in virtù di una enormen allgemeinen Gebundenheit (enorme e gene-
rale dipendenza) è quindi sia esistenziale, sia conoscitiva, e non necessariamente
determinata dai momenti di decadenza o corruzione – i quali offrono, chiaramen-
te, una ragione in più per guadagnare il punto d’osservazione desiderato. I con-
temporanei hanno, infatti, una Verpflichtung gegen die geistige Vergangenheit (un
dovere nei confronti del passato spirituale), che chiede di ricostruire l’intero oriz-
zonte passato dello spirito38. Questa Pflicht (dovere) rende necessaria l’assunzione
di una Aufgabe (compito) della conoscenza39, che trova forse il suo maggiore osta-
colo proprio nel legame con ciò che è proprio, ciò che Burckhardt identifica ri-
correndo al termine Absichten, intenzioni che possono guidare, inconsapevol-
mente, lo sguardo dello storico e contrarne l’ampiezza.
La nostra pretesa di conoscenza, già nella registrazione di dati storici, si imbatte
dunque in una folte siepe di intenzioni, le quali cercano di presentarsi nella veste
della tradizione. Inoltre, “noi” non siamo in grado di liberarci completamente dalle
intenzioni del “nostro tempo” e della nostra personalità, e questo fatto è forse il
nemico peggiore della conoscenza. […] Se la storia deve aiutarci anche solo in mi-
nima parte a sciogliere il grande e arduo enigma della vita, allora dobbiamo tornare
indietro dalle regioni dell’ansia individuale e temporale e incamminarci verso una
contrada ove il nostro sguardo non sia più immediatamente turbato dall’egoismo40.
42 Su questo punto si rimanda a Cantimori, Storici e storia, p. 149, che vedeva in Burckhardt
«una quasi esasperata volontà di comprendere, capire, intendere e fare intendere qual sia la realtà
delle cose; onde il suo distacco può apparire non tanto “scientificamente” spassionato quanto inve-
ce “esteticamente” disinteressato: mentre forse si potrebbe dire che il puro sforzo d’intendere e ca-
pire realmente e onnilateralmente assorbe il Burckhardt in maniera così profonda e singolare, da
indurre a cercare un’altra indicazione: quella giovanile della libera ricerca, della “scuola”; oppure,
forse, si potrà parlare proprio del “distacco” della “meditazione”?»; nonché Joachim Fest, Wege zur
Geschichte. Über Theodor Mommsen, Jacob Burckhardt und Golo Mann (Zürich: Manesse Ver-
lag, 1992), p. 88: «Es war ein Rückzug, sogar eine Flucht, und die kritischen Einwände, die immer
wieder und bis heute gegen Burckhardts Wendung ins Apolitische und sogar Antipolitische laut
wurden, treffen sämtlich zu: daß er den Geist der Zeit verabscheut, die Idee von Fortschritt und
Massenglück als Irrweg angesehen und sich vor dem Neuen, das da heraufkam, in ein Zauberreich
des Schönen und Kontemplativen zurückgezogen habe; sogar der Gedanke der Massenbildung
schien ihm unerträglich und ein Widerspruch in sich. […] Seine Verteidiger, die angesichts seiner
zahllosen weiteren, ungeniert “reaktionären” Einlassungen auf die “differenzierte” Persönlichkeit,
ihre Ängste und Widersprüche verweisen, gehen, wie ungewollt auch immer, von der Berechtigung
des Vorwurfs aus, daß der Affekt gegen die Politik ein Versagen vor den Forderungen des Tages
einschließe, ganz, als ob die Erkenntnisarbeit nicht auch ihre Forderungen und Ansprüche kenne»
(corsivo aggiunto).
43 Burckhardt, Über das Studium der Geschichte, p. 117; trad. it., p. 253, corsivo aggiunto.
44 Si vedano le osservazioni di Yoshihiko Maikuma, Der Begriff der Kultur bei Warburg,
Nietzsche und Burckhardt (Königstein im Taunus: Athenäum, 1985), pp. 229-231, 254-264.
51 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
Come lasciato trasparire dalla chiusura del passo appena citato, Burckhardt, nel
suo movimento di pensiero dal presente al passato per il illuminare il presente,
non restava impenetrabilmente indifferente alla propria epoca e alla propria Hei-
mat. La sua sete di conoscenza, che prende forma concreta nella sua sensibilità
acutissima per la continuità storica, implica rinuncia ma non alienazione o dimen-
ticanza di sé. Il distacco contribuisce a comprendere, ad afferrare il presente, non
ad obliterarlo. E proprio per questo rende possibile una presa di posizione sem-
pre più consapevole nei confronti dell’epoca contemporanea. Da ciò emerge il ca-
rattere ambiguo e affascinante dell’apolitia di Burckhardt: proprio perché ascesi
intramondana non motivata da sentimento religioso, ma da un hohes Bedürfnis
autenticamente umano, essa vede meglio la vita, il mondo, e grazie a questo “ve-
der meglio” vede anche più in là, oltre le tensioni, le illusioni, le speranze e le tra-
gedie del momento45. In questo “vedere oltre” sembra emergere quello che si po-
trebbe indicare paradossalmente come il tratto più “politico” del pensiero storico
di Burckhardt.
Nel cercare di comprendere questa ambiguità, è importante mettere a tema la
possibile confusione della sua attitudine fondamentale ed esistenziale con un suo
presunto “liberalismo conservatore”. Negli ultimi decenni, una certa letteratura, in
particolare prodotta da studiosi americani, si è posta infatti energicamente la que-
stione del suo pensiero politico, cercando di inquadrarlo ricorrendo a categorie
appartenenti al contesto post-rivoluzionario, e di proporlo come figura intellettua-
le eventualmente arruolabile fra le schiere dei padri nobili dell’una o dell’altra
corrente di political thought. Per limitarci ai contributi principali, Burckhardt è
stato accostato ad Alexis de Tocqueville e a John Stuart Mill perché considerato,
come questi suoi contemporanei, un “liberale aristocratico”, categoria che combi-
na una certa flessibilità prudenziale nei confronti della necessaria discontinuità ri-
spetto all’Ancien Régime e tuttavia mantiene una ferma preferenza nei confronti
della cultura della vecchia Europa, su tutti il modello classico che non deve essere
sacrificato per nessun motivo sull’altare dell’uguaglianza democratica46.
Ancora, in Burckhardt è stato visto un pensatore politicamente affine a Benja-
min Constant e Montesquieu, che nel ricostruire e analizzare il destino della polis
greca non avrebbe fatto altro che mettere in luce la natura e i limiti dello stato
45 Burckhardt, Historische Fragmente, p. 200; trad. it., p. 231: «Qui importa vedere come la
nostra generazione reggerà alla prova. Possono venire tempi terribili, di sofferenza profonda. Noi
vorremmo conoscere l'onda sulla quale vaghiamo nell'oceano, ma siamo quest'onda stessa. Tuttavia
l'umanità non è ancora votata alla distruzione, e la natura continua a creare, benigna come sempre».
46 Cfr. Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism. The Social and Political Thought of Jacob
Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (New York-Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
52 MARCO MENON
47 Cfr. Gossman, Jacob Burckhardt; Lionel Gossman, “Per me si va nella città dolente.
Burckhardt and the polis”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 79 (2003), pp. 47-59.
48 Richard Sigurdson, “Jacob Burckhardt’s Liberal Conservatism”, History of Political
Thought, 13 (1992), p. 507; cfr. anche ivi, 511, dove viene mostrato che l'uomo di stato conservato-
re non ha soluzioni migliori ai problemi della modernità rispetto a quelle proposte dal socialista o
dal democratico o del liberale. Tutte queste posizioni, presupponendo come a priori storico la Ri-
voluzione, sono complicazioni ulteriori della stessa modernità che Burckhardt giudica nel comples-
so destinata alla catastrofe.
49 Su questo punto di grande utilità è l’osservazione di Salomon, Jacob Burckhardt, p. 237:
«Burckhardt’s so-called "history of civilization" is a phenomenological description of the human si-
tuation in a historical setting. This study of human intentions and attitudes is related to a frame of
reference which is constituted by the interdependent structure of invariables, which indicate specific
acts and intentions. Unfortunately, Burckhardt has described them as social institutions – state, reli-
gion, culture. He intends to say: human conduct and social action can be attributed to certain acts
that express basic needs and intentions. These acts are: power, devotion, and creative intelligence
[…] we cannot imagine any period which cannot be referred to this fundamental structure».
53 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
può trovare il proprio fiorire nei soli mezzi da questa messa a disposizione. Politi-
camente, ciò significa che Burckhardt può percorrere un tratto di strada assieme a
conservatori e liberali, senza potersi o volersi identificare con loro, e sapendo ad
ogni modo che questi non potrebbero seguirlo oltre una certa soglia.
Per quanto la posizione di Burckhardt implichi un atteggiamento nei confronti
della politica in larga parte sovrapponibile ad un certo conservatorismo liberale e
moderato, anche riformista, senza però che ciò implichi corrispondenza o identi-
ficazione, bisogna tenere inoltre conto del fatto che, come già accennato, l’attività
di Burckhardt come educatore, considerata anche la sua “ascetica” lealtà nei con-
fronti di Basilea e delle sue istituzioni, soprattutto dell’Università, può essere inte-
sa come una forma sensu lato di azione politica50. Beninteso che parlando di poli-
tica civilizzatrice non si pensi ad una azione finalizzata all’acquisizione di potere, o
dominata dal Wille zur Macht (nel senso già menzionato di Cassirer), bensì come
tentativo di mantenere viva la connessione con il passato spirituale europeo per
mostrare, concretamente, che né lo Stato né la democrazia possono avanzare pre-
tese totalizzanti sulla vita degli uomini. La libertà che sta a cuore a Burckhardt, in-
fatti, non è una libertà in senso stretto politica, la libertà del cittadino o del patrio-
ta; non è nemmeno una libertà economica, la libertà del capitalista o del busi-
nessman; è la libertà dell’essere umano che pensa, immagina, crea: una libertà spi-
50 Una lettura in chiave politica dell’opera di Burckhardt, con particolare attenzione ai mate-
riali delle lezioni sullo studio della storia, è stata proposta in Bazzicalupo, Il potere e la cultura, dove
la dimensione del “politico” non viene ridotta a quella del potere, ovvero alla Potenz dello Stato,
ma finisce per includere anche la Potenz della Kultur, che però assume una prospettiva essenzial-
mente critica nei confronti della tendenza espansiva della Macht. In particolare merita di essere cita-
to almeno un passo da cui emerge con chiarezza come la burckhardtiana Kulturgeschichte implichi,
contro le filosofie della storia che divinizzano il divenire storico dello Stato moderno e lo pensano
mediante la categoria di “progresso”, un «ripensamento originale delle categorie della storia e del
tempo [...] volto ad uscire dai vincoli del concetto di progresso e di sviluppo necessario e a reintro-
durre [...] un tratto problematico e responsabile [...] questo è il vero impegno politico di Burckhardt
verso il presente. Questo impegno, di natura politica, a rinnovare lo schema storiografico è la ragio-
ne del suo modello che dà la possibilità di spezzare l'omogeneità progressiva, la quale nel metabo-
lizzare il passato, lo perde e lo dimentica; un modello che tenta di riallacciare un asimmetrico e sti-
molante rapporto con il passato mediante la costante “natura umana” che attraversa la storia» (pp.
237-238). Un’interpretazione politica della Bildung burckhardtiana viene suggerita anche da Hinde,
Jacob Burckhardt and the Crisis of Modernity, pp. 16, 18, 20, 25, ma soprattutto in questo passag-
gio alle pp. 302-303: «purposeful withdrawal into a contemplative life can be as legitimate a re-
sponse to crisis as rebellion, and as politically and ideologically motivated. To assume an aestheticist
position is not to “de-politicize” or “de-ideologize” oneself or one’s work […] Burckhardt’s aesthetic
act of historical observation and contemplation […] is at its core a “process of Bildung” – a process
of self-cultivation that is innately ideological […] this highly individualistic notion of self-cultivation
provided the ultimate refuge from the rationalistic ethos of the modern world […] it is questionable
whether or not he withdrew from the “saeculum” […] the learning, discipline, and culture of the
secular ascetic is a highly public and civic practice […] he fled neither from life nor politics […] He
chose to stay in Basel because Basel was his patria, his home, and where he felt he belonged». Si
veda però anche quanto già sostenuto in Löwith, Jacob Burckhardt, pp. 143-144, 150, 191, 303-304.
54 MARCO MENON
Sia le popolazioni ancora “prigioniere” delle loro mitologie e saghe tribali, sia
gli “americani”, ovvero popoli “colti” ma incapaci di pensare storicamente o di
cogliere la storicità, vengono detti barbari, perché entrambi sono affetti da Geschi-
chtslosigkeit. Nel caso dei popoli europei, è proprio la tempesta del 1789 che mi-
naccia il livellamento egalitario dello spirito e quindi lo smarrimento della connes-
sione spirituale con il passato. È l’effetto previsto dell’onda lunga della Rivoluzio-
ne francese che fa scrivere a Burckhardt la seguente confidenza, che appare inol-
tre come una dichiarazione programmatica: «prima che irrompa la generale bar-
barie (perché altro non prevedo per il momento), voglio riempirmi per bene gli
occhi, godendomi una cultura aristocratica per poi un giorno, quando la rivolu-
zione sociale si sarà un attimo sfogata, poter essere attivo nella inevitabile restaura-
zione»54.
Nello specifico, è l’interpretazione della storia moderna, della storia europea a
partire dalla Rivoluzione francese, come progresso, a minacciare gravemente la
connessione con il passato spirituale, quel continuum in cui consiste esattamente
das Geschichtliche, perché la tendenza che anima la concezione del progresso
porta a liquidare nel presente il passato, ad assumerlo solo come fase preparativa,
preliminare, e quindi idealmente a “disfarsene”, perché quello che del passato
conta davvero, è sublimato nel presente in una sorta di “immanenza” compiuta e
soddisfatta di sé. In altre parole, comprendere la storia come progresso porta, se-
condo Burckhardt, a smarrire la storicità della storia, e a rinchiudere l’uomo con-
temporaneo in un nuovo “guscio” artificiale, una gebildete Barbarei, appunto,
come quella che caratterizza gli americani e che potrebbe contagiare anche gli eu-
ropei55. È importante perciò osservare quale fosse l’intento educativo delle lezioni
über das Studium der Geschichte o, come si potrebbe riformulare il titolo della
raccolta di appunti (destinati zum Verbrennen, ad essere bruciati), über das Stu-
dium des Geschichtlichen56.
Come emerge dalle parole di Burckhardt nella Einleitung al neues Schema,
«Non abbiamo alcuna intenzione di formare degli storici, tanto meno degli storici
universali. La nostra misura la ricaviamo da quella capacità che ogni persona dota-
ta di una formazione accademica avrebbe il dovere di sviluppare in se stessa fino a
un certo livello. Noi trattiamo infatti non tanto lo studio della storia, quanto lo
studio dell’“elemento storico” [vom Studium des Geschichtlichen]»; e poco oltre,
richiamando ancora quelle Absichten di cui si è già parlato prima, specifica una
condizione necessaria per lo studio della storicità: «dovremmo essere capaci di di-
stoglierci del tutto, almeno temporaneamente, dalle intenzioni per volgerci alla
conoscenza in quanto tale. In particolare, occorre essere capaci di soppesare ciò
che è storico, anche se non si riferisce, direttamente o indirettamente, al nostro
benessere o al nostro disagio; e anche qualora vi si riferisse, bisogna poterlo valu-
Resta da capire se con ciò si possa replicare alla critica che lamenta un eccessi-
vo tratto di rassegnazione da parte sua, tale da fargli apparire qualsiasi impegno at-
tivo nella vita politica inutile se non esclusivamente dannoso alla sua persona;
d’altra parte, egli non si vedeva minimamente in grado di poter influenzare in ma-
niera significativa le sorti della propria patria in qualità di cittadino attivo nel senso
ordinario del termine. Sembra però ragionevole vedere nella sua dedizione
all’attività di docente e conferenziere il compimento di una vocazione che, guar-
dando all’umano in quanto tale e alla continuità storica dello spirito europeo, non
poteva non avere una ricaduta benefica per gli uditori delle sue lezioni e, più indi-
rettamente, per Basilea tutta come città idealmente (e non solo) opposta alla mo-
dernità potenzialmente barbarica rappresentata da Berlino e dallo stato prussia-
no59 e quindi, in maniera telescopica, per tutti quei “buoni europei” che da quel
modello ricavavano un’ispirazione vivificante.
57 Burckhardt, Über das Studium der Geschichte, pp. 249-250; trad. it., pp. 37, 39.
58 Essenziale in questo senso un’osservazione di Delio Cantimori, secondo cui le lezioni sullo
studio della storia offrono «un discorso per le persone colte che sanno come lo studio della storia
sia indispensabile alla loro cultura, alla loro educazione di cittadini, di uomini che devono esercitare
una attività responsabile e non sempre in tutto subordinata, entro uno Stato, una nazione», Canti-
mori, Storici e storia, p. 141.
59 Si veda, in riferimento alla Griechische Kulturgeschichte, quanto Lefons, Jacob Burc-
khardt o della civiltà come cittadinanza, p. 1368 afferma sull’impegno civile implicito nell’opera di
Burckhardt: «la Storia della civiltà greca appare un libro tutt’altro che inesistente per la scienza sto-
rica […] e non può essere considerato come un momento di ripiegamento e di estetico appagamen-
to nella “contemplazione” (come vorrebbe un’interpretazione che ha trovato in Löwith e in Kaegi i
maggiori – e fra i più autorevoli – sostenitori). Quest’opera si inserisce invece, a pieno titolo, in un
fervido dibattito che usciva dai confini di una disputa specialistica per assumere un più profondo
senso culturale, al quale – come si sa – non erano estranee implicazioni politiche di un certo rilie-
vo». Per Richard Sigurdson, “Jacob Burckhardt. The Cultural Historian as Political Thinker”, The
Review of Politics, 52 (1990), p. 436, la storica culturale di Burckhardt farebbe coincidere con natu-
ralezza i due compiti diversi, la redenzione individuale e l’impegno sociale, rappresentando una
sorta di umanesimo civico: «The aesthetic re-creation of the spirit of past ages is both personally re-
demptive – by the act of remembrance in dark times the cultural historian keeps the faith with his
57 Tra inattualità e connessione spirituale. Nota sull’apolitia di Jacob Burckhardt
spiritual heritage – and socially constructive – the cultural historian can “overcome his time in him-
self” by attaining an “Archimedean point outside of events” and thus act as a counterweight against
the destructive forces of modernity»; cfr. anche Sigurdson, Jacob Burckhardt's Social and Political
Thought, p. 28; Charles H. O’Brien, “Jacob Burckhardt: The Historian as Socratic Humanist”,
Journal of Thought, 16 (1981), pp. 51-73.
60 Salomon, Jacob Burckhardt, p. 230.
61 Burckhardt, Historische Fragmente, p. 14; trad. it., p. 34: «Ma il nostro spirito, per quanto
nella scienza naturale e nella tecnica possa affettare l’indipendenza da ogni fatto passato, trova pur
sempre la sua suprema consacrazione nella coscienza di esser connesso con lo spirito delle epoche
e delle civiltà più remote. Anzi esso impara a conoscere e valutare l’altezza della propria natura solo
mediante il confronto con ciò che esso, l’eternamente uguale, è stato in ogni tempo».
59 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 59-92
ISSN: 1825-5167
DANILO MANCA
Dipartimento di Civiltà e Forme del Sapere, Università di Pisa
danilomanca30@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This article aims to bring to light the unpolitical nature of the philosophical investigation. To
pursue this goal, I will focus on the disenchantment before modern conception of philosophy
that led Karl Löwith and Leo Strauss to diagnose the crisis of modernity. In the first section, I
will present the problem of human nature and its historicity as opening the debate on the crisis
of modernity in their correspondence. In the second section, I will compare the two contrasting
models they adopt for describing the disenchantment of the philosopher before the cave of
modernity, namely Burckhardt for Löwith and Socrates for Strauss. In the third section, I will
show that Strauss's rediscovery of a Socratian political philosophy is one with the recognition of
the unpolitical origin of philosophizing. In the fourth, focusing on Löwith's interpretation of
Valéry, I will argue that Löwith defends himself from Strauss's accuse of remaining in the
perspective of historicism, by adopting a new form of conventionalism.
KEYWORDS
Löwith, Strauss, disenchantment, modernity, Socrates, Burckhardt’s apolitia, Valéry.
1
Cfr. M. Weber, La scienza come professione, trad. it. a cura di P. Volonté (Milano: Bompiani
2008), 83-91.
60 DANILO MANCA
Molti filosofi, per lo più di origine ebraica, che a cavallo fra le due guerre si
sono formati alle scuole di Cassirer, Husserl e Heidegger, e che si sono lasciati
affascinare da Nietzsche, hanno portato l’ideale weberiano di progressiva
razionalizzazione dell’agire pratico ai suoi estremi sino a decostruirlo. In sostanza,
non si sono lasciati incantare dall’ideale del disincanto del mondo e,
diagnosticando la crisi della modernità, hanno attribuito alla filosofia il compito di
elaborare una forma di disincanto ancora più radicale.
In questo articolo, focalizzando la mia attenzione sui casi di Karl Löwith e Leo
Strauss, vorrei mostrare come il disincanto del filosofo che diagnostica la crisi
della modernità porti alla luce la natura impolitica dell’attività filosofica 2 .
Suddividerò l’articolo in quattro parti. Prendendo le mosse dalle lettere che
Löwith e Strauss si scambiano nel primo lustro degli anni Trenta, nel primo
paragrafo mostrerò come entrambi pongano alla base della crisi della modernità il
problema della natura umana e della sua storicità. Nel secondo paragrafo
confronterò i modelli alternativi proposti dai due pensatori per descrivere il
disincanto del filosofo rispetto alla caverna in cui si troverebbe la modernità:
Burckhardt per Löwith e Socrate per Strauss. Nei due paragrafi successivi
prenderò in considerazione separatamente gli esiti delle riflessioni dei due filosofi.
In particolare, nel terzo cercherò di spiegare perché la riscoperta straussiana della
politicità della filosofia socratica sia un tutt’uno con l’affermazione della natura
impolitica della filosofia. Nel quarto, mostrerò come, servendosi del pensiero
scettico di Valéry Löwith arrivi ad adottare una tesi convenzionalista sulla natura
umana per rispondere alla critica di storicismo mossagli da Strauss3.
2
Utilizzo il termine “impolitico” nella maniera più neutra possibile perché, come vedremo,
Löwith e Strauss adottano termini variegati per parlare di quell’elemento che trascende il politico
(apolitia, impolitico, transpolitico, non-politico). In generale intendo dimostrare che per entrambi la
filosofia non è caratterizzata da un’istanza anti-politica, ossia di mera contrapposizione estrinseca ai
problemi della sfera politica. Il suo ruolo è piuttosto quello di superare dialetticamente e
trascendere dall’interno la sfera degli affari politici.
3
Sul rapporto fra Löwith e Strauss rimando alle utili introduzioni alle due edizioni italiane del
carteggio: C. Altini, “Sulla soglia della filosofia. La crisi della cultura moderna in Karl Löwith e Leo
Strauss”, in L. Strauss – K. Löwith, Oltre Itaca. La filosofia come emigrazione. Carteggio (1932-
1971) [=C], trad. it. a cura di M. Rossini (Roma: Carocci 2012), 9-36; R. Esposito, “Introduzione.
Sull’orlo del precipizio”, in K. Löwith e Leo Strauss, Dialogo sulla modernità, trad. it. parziale di A.
Ferrucci (Roma: Donzelli 1994), VII-XXV. Per comprendere meglio le tortuose e affascinanti
vicende personali e intellettuali di Löwith ho attinto alle meticolose ricostruzioni di E. Donaggio,
Una sobria inquietudine. Karl Löwith e la filosofia (Milano: Feltrinelli 2004) e di O. Franceschelli,
Karl Löwith. Le sfide della modernità (Roma: Donzelli 2008). Per motivi di spazio non potrò
richiamare questi due saggi tutte le volte che meriterebbero. Sempre per motivi di spazio non mi
soffermerò neanche sul confronto di Löwith e Strauss con Schmitt, che rappresenta una sorta di
preistoria rispetto al confronto teorico che qui tenterò di dipanare. Entrambi alla fine arrivano a
individuare il limite originario del discorso di Schmitt nella mancanza di un’antropologia, ossia
quella riflessione sulla natura umana che invece come dimostrerò entrambi perseguono sin dai loro
primi scritti. A riguardo rimando a G. Fazio, “La critica di Karl Löwith al decisionismo politico di
61 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
Il carteggio fra Strauss e Löwith abbraccia l’intero arco delle loro produzioni
filosofiche. Tra aggiornamenti sulle vicissitudini della loro vita e scambi di
opinioni, si snoda un vero e proprio dialogo teoretico in cui ciascuno dei due non
lesina critiche alla prospettiva dell’altro, cogliendo spesso nel segno.
Il dibattito viene acceso da Strauss in una lettera del 30 dicembre 1932. Löwith
gli aveva inviato in anteprima il saggio su Kierkegaard e Nietzsche che sarebbe
stato di lì a poco pubblicato su “Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für
Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte”. Qui Löwith discuteva due tentativi
alternativi di umanizzare la filosofia: da una parte quello di Kierkegaard, che
valorizza per contrapposizione al pensiero storico-universale di Hegel l’interiorità
dell’esistenza del singolo individuo; dall’altra quello di Nietzsche, che mira invece
a valorizzare la vita e quindi un concetto naturale dell’uomo, contrapponendosi
polemicamente all’interpretazione cristiana dell’esistenza umana. Per Löwith in
entrambi i casi si cercherebbe di rispondere alla domanda “Che cos’è l’uomo?”.
Strauss apprezza la radicalità di questa domanda perché gli sembra sia declinata
in senso eterno. Ha quindi l’impressione che Löwith si stia servendo delle
prospettive di Kierkegaard e Nietzsche per andare alla ricerca dei caratteri
invariabili della natura umana e per interrogarsi su ciò che l’uomo ha fatto di se
stesso nella storia in virtù della sua libertà essenziale. Ma questa sua impressione
viene delusa alla fine del saggio. Secondo Löwith, con la dottrina dell’eterno
ritorno, Nietzsche avrebbe contrapposto un’etica della «innocenza dell’essere che
diviene, riconquistata attraverso l’amor fati»4 all’etica malinconica del peccatore di
Kierkegaard, un uomo malato incapace di vivere secondo natura, vittima piuttosto
dell’artificio religioso che ha costruito per consolarsi. Tuttavia, Löwith ritiene che
Nietzsche non sia riuscito a «cogliere in modo altrettanto determinato e chiaro la
tanto perseguita naturalità (Natürlichkeit) dell’uomo, quanto Kierkegaard abbia
saputo porre in luce il suo concetto esistenziale della vita umana, in relazione alla
tradizione cristiana»5. L’idea di Nietzsche secondo cui l’uomo nella sua naturalità
sarebbe volontà di potenza non riesce a «scoprire una nuova terra dell’anima
(Neuland der Seele) veramente abitabile»; si limita esclusivamente a «indicare da
lontano questa futura terraferma (künftige Festland)», individuandola là dove «nel
presente, emerge la spaesatezza (Heimatlosigkeit) dell’uomo futuro» 6 . La
trasvalutazione nietzschiana dell’interpretazione cristiana dell’esistenza «rimane
Carl Schmitt e il suo rapporto con Note sul concetto del politico di Carl Schmitt di Leo Strauss”, La
Cultura 2 (2010), 263-300.
4
K. Löwith, “Kierkegaard e Nietzsche” [d’ora in poi abbreviato in KN], trad. it. a cura di G.
Dell’Eva con introduzione di U. Curi, Il cannocchiale 1 (2008), 27.
5
Ibid., 30.
6
Ibid.
62 DANILO MANCA
impigliata nella parola come nei fatti nella sua problematicità»7 . Insistendo sul
bisogno di chiedersi cosa sia propriamente umano e cosa appartenga alla sua
universale naturalità, Löwith rileva però come umanità e naturalità siano
«universali in modo sempre storico», perciò «anche la naturalità dell’uomo ha, in
quanto umana, la sua storicità. Ciò che fu “naturale” per i greci o per Rousseau
non vale più come naturale per noi. Ciò che è naturale per l’uomo può essere
compreso solo in base a ciò che si intende per propriamente umano»8.
Strauss obietta a Löwith di aver adottato in tal modo il concetto di natura
umana solo polemicamente e reattivamente; è lo stesso approccio che Löwith
attribuisce criticamente a Nietzsche. Löwith non riuscirebbe a emanciparsi dalla
filosofia della loro epoca, condizionata dalla polemica anticristiana, per sviluppare
invece una visione concreta e positiva della natura, che ad avviso di Strauss si può
riscontrare soltanto nella filosofia greca pre-cristiana. Löwith non riuscirebbe
dunque a liberarsi dello storicismo, che induce l’uomo moderno a credere che
l’ideale dei Greci non possa in alcun modo essere il proprio9. Löwith replica a
Strauss nella lettera dell’8 gennaio 1933 ribaltando la prospettiva. Strauss
abbraccia a suo avviso una posizione storica più forte della sua perché contrasta la
verità del cristianesimo interpretando come assoluta una visione altrettanto
storicamente determinata come quella greca. Gli sembra del tutto «illusorio voler
[…] individuare una qualche posizione naturalmente “originaria” e “naturale” e
prendere i Greci come modello»10. Per rispondere a Strauss, che gli chiede cosa
significhi per lui natura, Löwith evoca qui il concetto hegeliano di seconda natura,
ossia l’idea che lo spirito nel corso della storia si sia reificato nel linguaggio e nella
volontà dell’uomo, così come nelle istituzioni della società, grazie a un processo di
autoformazione (Bildung) che lo ha condotto a sviluppare degli automatismi, ad
acquisire delle abitualità e quindi a lasciar emergere e abbracciare l’atteggiamento
che gli è proprio. È in quest’ottica che Löwith arriva a chiarire all’amico che il suo
non vuole essere un «utopico ritorno alla natura dell’uomo, ma il tentativo di
sviluppare possibilità “autentiche” a partire da ciò che per noi è diventato, di fatto,
universalmente umano – come per esempio il denaro e il lavoro! – che noi
consideriamo naturale»11. Inoltre, rifacendosi all’innocenza dell’esistenza pura che
Nietzsche cercherebbe con lo sviluppo di un’etica amorale, Löwith rincara la
dose:
«Questa innocenza non è né antica né semplicemente anticristiana, quanto
piuttosto la vera forma di quella amoralità moderna già molto diffusa, ma non
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Cfr. L. Strauss – K. Löwith, Oltre Itaca. La filosofia come emigrazione. Carteggio (1932-1971)
[=C], cit., 53-56.
10
Ibid., 58.
11
Ibid., 59.
63 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
Credo che il sottile quanto decisivo scarto di prospettiva fra Löwith e Strauss
possa essere colto al meglio introducendo il concetto husserliano di mondo della
vita, ossia la convinzione che esista un orizzonte familiare all’interno del quale
l’uomo è immerso quotidianamente senza riuscire a tematizzarlo in quanto tale
perché tende a focalizzare la sua attenzione sugli oggetti che in esso acquistano
significato e sulle persone che lo abitano13. Per entrambi gli autori, infatti, naturale
è qualsiasi condotta si presenti come familiare e spontanea. Tuttavia, Löwith
sembra propendere per una concezione formale secondo cui naturale è qualsiasi
condotta rientri nell’atteggiamento con cui normalmente si vive,
indipendentemente dai percorsi storici che l’hanno resa spontanea e familiare.
Questo è il motivo per cui considera naturali tanto le lampade a olio dei greci
quanto l’energia elettrica dei moderni; in entrambi i casi, il sistema artificiale
d’illuminazione è naturale perché entra a far parte della quotidianità di ogni
individuo, diventa perciò familiare tanto quanto di mattina è per ciascuno il sole14.
Diversamente, con le obiezioni che solleva a Löwith, Strauss sembra individuare
un preciso orizzonte di problemi che per lui rientrano nella vita naturale
dell’uomo, una vita che conserva un legame con ciò che è naturale in un senso più
ristretto, ossia come riconducibile alla physis, al cosmo 15 . Per Löwith, quindi,
l’orizzonte familiare di un individuo è storicamente determinato; il mondo della
vita si presenta come una sfera in continua trasformazione che abbraccia nuove
condotte, costruisce nuovi oggetti, crea nuovi valori. Per rientrarvi basta che una
pratica venga adottata in modo spontaneo, che un oggetto venga utilizzato
regolarmente, che un valore venga abbracciato dandolo quasi per scontato, come
se contribuisse da sempre a formare la propria visione del mondo. Invece, a
12
Ibid., 60.
13
Sulle diverse sfumature di significato della nozione husserliana di mondo della vita mi
permetto di rimandare al mio Esperienza della ragione. Hegel e Husserl in dialogo (Pisa: Edizioni
ETS 2016), cap. 1.3.
14
Si noti una certa ambiguità nel discorso di Löwith. Se prima non avesse detto che denaro e
lavoro sono diventati per noi qualcosa di naturale, si potrebbe a ragione pensare che olio e luce
elettrica per Löwith siano naturali non perché entrati a far parte della vita quotidiana dell’uomo
come “oggetti d’uso”, ma in quanto prodotti della natura intesa biologicamente. La differenza con
Strauss in questo caso si assottiglierebbe.
15
Cfr. il mio “Naturalness and Historicity: Strauss and Klein on the Quarrel between the
Ancients and the Moderns”, Philosophical Readings IX.1 (2017), 44-49.
64 DANILO MANCA
Strauss questo non sembra bastare: la storia altera l’orizzonte familiare della vita
umana, perciò è necessario risalire a quelle pratiche e a quei valori che lo
costituivano originariamente. Riassumendo quindi si potrebbe dire che per
Löwith è naturale tutto ciò che è accettato dal senso comune irriflessivamente e
senza imposizione alcuna, per Strauss ciò che è riconducibile all’ordine eterno del
cosmo. Strauss è turbato dalla mutevolezza che Löwith attribuisce al mondo della
vita, perché gli sembra ostacolare qualsiasi tentativo filosofico di portare alla luce
ciò che è umano per natura; Löwith scorge al contrario in questa mutevolezza
l’unica fonte di speranza, perché lascia aperta la possibilità che, proprio a partire
dal riconoscimento della sua storicità congenita, l’uomo possa rendere produttivo
il disincanto del mondo guadagnato dal moderno istinto razionalista.
Löwith aveva riflettuto sul modo in cui rendere produttivo il disincanto del
mondo anche quando non si ha difficoltà a riconoscere la crisi del processo di
razionalizzazione del mondo. Nel saggio del 1932 su Max Weber e Karl Marx,
alla rappresentazione marxiana della modernità come processo di autoalienazione
da superare dialetticamente attraverso la coscienza di classe del proletariato,
Löwith aveva preferito la posizione di Weber proprio perché tesa a dimostrare
come per quanto il razionalismo moderno sia un fatto irrazionale (in quanto
affonda le sue radici nello spirito protestante), che produce rapporti di esistenza
irrazionali (come la prepotenza e l’autocrazia del sistema di produzione
capitalistico), funga comunque da condizione per lo sviluppo della libera auto-
responsabilità del singolo individuo in un contesto d’assoggettamento generale:
«La questione di Weber non era quella di Marx, di trovare una via per poter
superare, insieme con la divisione del lavoro, l’umanità specifica del mondo
razionalizzato, ossia l’umanità dell’uomo-specialista; il suo problema era quello di
trovare una via che permetta all’uomo come tale, pur entro la sua umanità
inevitabilmente “parcellata”, di conservarsi la libertà di individuo interamente
responsabile di sé. E anche in questo caso Weber in sostanza accettò quell’umanità
– per dirla con Marx – estraniata da se stessa, perché appunto tale forma di
esistenza propriamente non gli lasciava o dava un massimo di “libertà di
movimento”, ma glielo imponeva»16.
La critica che in questo saggio Löwith muove a Marx non è diversa da quella
che riserva a Nietzsche nell’articolo del 1933 sopra discusso e in modo più
sistematico nel libro sull’eterno ritorno del 1935. Ogni prospettiva che cerca il
superamento dello status quo facendo leva su una visione teleologica del futuro
(che comporti la realizzazione di una società senza classi oppure il definitivo
attuarsi della volontà di potenza poco cambia) deve essere considerata utopica e,
in quanto tale, teorizzabile solo per reazione, problematicamente; in altre parole,
K. Löwith, “Marx e Weber”, trad. it. di A. Künkler-Giavotto, in Id., Marx, Weber, Schmitt
16
non è naturale perché non consente l’adozione di un ethos che sia effettivamente
praticabile nella vita quotidiana. Per questo motivo, nelle lettere a Strauss, Löwith
contrappone a queste concezioni filosofiche della vita umana la saggezza della
visione ordinaria sviluppata nella vita di ogni giorno.
Nell’importante lettera del 15 aprile 1935 Löwith dichiara di voler «approdare
un giorno – alla vecchia maniera tardo-antica (stoica-epicurea-scettica-cinica)» – a
una saggezza di vita realmente praticabile, alle cose “prossime” e non alle più
remote, cui è proprio il vagheggiare della storia, nel futuro come nel passato»17. Il
riferimento alla saggezza tardo-antica maschera, in realtà, modelli molto più vicini
nel tempo. Lo si capisce se si legge questa lettera in parallelo con la già citata
lettera dell’8 gennaio 1933, dove Löwith trova l’elemento positivo della filosofia di
Heidegger esattamente in ciò che gli sembra infastidire molti, ossia «nel suo
ritorno a fatti così “semplici” come esser-ci, prendersi cura e morire» 18 (da
depurare tuttavia del nichilismo cripto-teologico che li pervade). “Naturalmente
umane” sono quindi per Löwith quelle condotte che non oltrepassano bisogni
semplici e quotidiani: «Heidegger non ha ancora compreso che, come dice
Nietzsche, pensare l’Esserci come “innocente” e “cinico” è quasi la stessa cosa.
Invece di cinico, io direi laconico. Una “laconicità” filosofica dovrebbe prendere il
posto dell’“ironia” romantica e del pathos esistenziale» 19 . Strauss sicuramente
concorda con Löwith sul fatto che compito del filosofo capace di diagnosticare la
crisi della modernità sia di portare il disincanto del mondo ai suoi estremi
applicando la razionalizzazione a se stessa. Infatti, insiste a presentare lo
storicismo solo come l’inizio di un approccio che dovrebbe superare l’epoca in
cui è sorto per guadagnare una visione più essenziale. E concorda anche sul
bisogno di sbarazzarsi dell’ironia romantica e del pathos esistenziale; infatti in una
lettera non datata in cui ritorna a confrontarsi con il saggio di Löwith su
Kierkegaard e Nietzsche osserva che «l’ambiguità della dottrina dell’eterno ritorno
di Nietzsche non si riscontra nel tentativo di riportare l’uomo alla naturalezza della
natura, bensì nel pathos mostruoso che utilizza per procurarsi l’accesso alla verità,
che i Greci intendevano, invece, in modo quieto, senza tensioni»20.
A deludere Strauss è l’idealizzazione della saggezza tardo-antica. Nel post-
scriptum della lettera del 23 giugno 1935 Strauss sostiene che le filosofie tardo-
antiche sono troppo dogmatiche e si chiede perché Löwith non ritorni invece al
loro progenitore per niente dogmatico: Socrate. Strauss porta così alla luce il
limite dell’argomentazione di Löwith: nonostante proprio nella lettera del 15
aprile 1935 Löwith rigetti come stravaganti e in fin dei conti non filosofiche la fede
paradossale di Kierkegaard tanto quanto la dottrina dell’eterno ritorno di
17
C, 112.
18
C, 62.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid., 87.
66 DANILO MANCA
Nietzsche, con la sua idea di una saggezza delle cose prossime Löwith di fatto
completa quel processo di umanizzazione della filosofia che nel saggio del ’33
aveva individuato nella capacità di Kierkegaard e Nietzsche di ridurre il «problema
della verità a quello dell’onestà»21. La volontà di onestà, che sulla scia di Nietzsche
si presenta come l’ultima virtù ancora adottabile dall’uomo moderno, diventa la
base di un ethos filosofico che, valorizzando secondo il modello di Heidegger le
cose semplici, sembra tuttavia rimanere subordinato all’orizzonte familiare del
mondo della vita, piuttosto che metterne in discussione i presupposti, come faceva
Socrate con la sua ironia e la sua dialettica. Il rischio cui incorre la prospettiva di
Löwith è quindi che con la radicalizzazione del disincanto al filosofo alla fine non
rimanga altro che vivere come ordinariamente si vive, abbandonando il problema
della verità e della vita giusta e virtuosa che si situano all’origine dell’atteggiamento
socratico. Tra la saggezza della vita che guarda alle cose prossime e l’illusione della
vita che guarda a quelle remote (nel passato o nel futuro), Strauss sembra
continuare a credere alla possibilità che l’ideale del ritorno alle cose in sé possa
almeno orientare le nostre condotte mettendoci sulla strada della vita saggia
perché virtuosa22. D’altro canto, sempre nella lettera del 15 aprile 1935, Löwith
mette in risalto i limiti della prospettiva di Strauss, che identifica l’orizzonte
familiare dell’uomo con un originario ordine cosmico che la modernità avrebbe
alterato. In particolare, Löwith si sofferma sul passo dell’introduzione di Strauss a
Filosofia e Legge in cui, rimandando in nota all’aforisma 9 di Al di là del bene e
del male, Strauss sembra escludere che in epoca moderna sia possibile una vita
secondo natura. In realtà, Strauss in questo passo si limita a notare che nel
momento in cui, sulla base della concezione sviluppata dalla moderna scienza
naturale, s’identifica la natura con ciò che è libero da scopi e valori, allora l’ideale
antico secondo cui “una vita buona è una vita secondo natura” diventa assurdo,
perché il naturale non riguarda più l’agire umano, in cui scopi e valori sono
inevitabilmente chiamati in causa 23 . Strauss quindi non sta escludendo la
possibilità di vivere secondo natura in epoca moderna, altrimenti non avrebbe
insistito con Löwith sulla serietà di un approccio che si sforza di recuperare l’ethos
greco. Strauss sta semplicemente mettendo in risalto quanto sia assurdo concepire
tale stile di vita se si adotta l’ideale di civilizzazione che scaturisce dalla concezione
della natura sviluppata dalla scienza moderna. Löwith in ogni caso gli obietta che
21
KN, 6. Sui diversi modi di intendere il riferimento all’antichità da parte di Löwith e Strauss alla
luce della critica che entrambi muovono all’idea di progresso cfr. A. Romani, “Progress as a
Problem: Strauss and Löwith in Dialogue between Antiquity and Modernity”, Philosophical
Readings IX.1 (2017): “The Wisdom of the Ancients”, a cura di A. Romani e F. Fossa, 37-43.
22
Nel suo “Strauss and Husserl”, Idealistic Studies, 44, 2-3 (2014), 281-296, R. Chacón mostra il
debito che Strauss ha nei confronti dell’ideale husserliano di un ritorno alle cose in sé per la sua
riscoperta e difesa del diritto naturale. Cfr. anche l’articolo di Chacón ospitato in questo volume.
23
L. Strauss, Filosofia e legge. Contributi per la comprensione di Maimonide e dei suoi
predecessori [=FL], a cura di C. Altini (Firenze: Giuntina 2003), 148.
67 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
«la natura stessa di fatto eternamente eguale non si è mai regolata secondo ideali
storici e umani e, poiché esiste una natura e una realtà naturale, avrà sempre senso
voler vivere “secondo natura” – a meno che non abbiano ragione il cristianesimo,
l’idealismo tedesco e l’esistenzialismo […] quando affermano che l’uomo è
soltanto nel mondo e non anche di questo mondo»24.
Potrebbe sembrare paradossale che sia Löwith a mettere in risalto l’indifferenza
della natura rispetto agli ideali storici e umani dopo aver letto che a suo avviso la
storicità dell’agire umano è tutt’uno con la sua naturalità. Tuttavia, non mi sembra
che Löwith stia ritrattando in questa lettera il suo punto di vista. Piuttosto, come
approfondiremo, già qui emerge come a suo avviso la storicità dell’animale
“uomo” sia parte essenziale della sua natura, tanto da caratterizzarlo nel corso
delle epoche indipendentemente dai contenuti di cui l’uomo la veste, motivo per
cui una vita secondo natura rimane sempre possibile. Anzi, come abbiamo visto,
non appena il disincanto del mondo prende il sopravvento nella storia e viene
portato ai suoi estremi diventa ancora più spontaneo aderire a una vita conforme a
una natura «senza “intenzioni e riguardi”, senza “giustizia” e moralmente
indifferente»25, proprio perché tutti i valori di cui si veste la natura perdono senso,
rivelando la loro contingenza.
Löwith ricorda a Strauss che nell’aforisma 9 di Al di là del bene e del male
Nietzsche «non critica il fatto che la Stoa avesse intenzione di vivere secondo
natura, bensì che la natura non è quella che lo stoico, e da ultimo Rousseau
volevano che fosse; ovvero “morale”» 26 . Per Nietzsche, vivere secondo natura
significa vivere secondo la vita, ossia seguire spontaneamente gli impulsi vitali nella
loro innocenza, perciò non si può in alcun modo evitare di farlo. Il problema per
Nietzsche risiede nel fatto che gli stoici insistono sulla necessità di vivere secondo
natura perché anelano a qualcosa di opposto a quello che l’espressione prospetta:
il loro orgoglio vuole «prescrivere e incarnare nella natura» la loro morale, il loro
ideale è quello che essa sia «natura “conforme alla Stoa”»27. Ciò induce Nietzsche
a concludere l’aforisma sostenendo che nel momento in cui inizia a credere in se
stessa, ogni filosofia finisce per creare il mondo a propria immagine e somiglianza:
«la filosofia è questo stesso istinto tirannico, la più spirituale volontà di potenza, di
“creazione del mondo”, di una causa prima»28.
Löwith osserva che Nietzsche non si è limitato semplicemente a saggiare la sua
volontà di potenza spirituale, quindi a dar voce all’istinto tirannico che è dentro di
sé, ma si è lasciato «“ispirare” dalla “suprema necessità dell’essere”» tentando di
24
C, 112-113.
25
Ibid., 113.
26
Ibid.
27
F. Nietzsche, Al di là del bene e del male. Preludio di una filosofia dell’avvenire, trad. it. di F.
Masini, in Id., Opere, a cura di G. Colli e M. Montinari (Milano: Adelphi 1968), vol. VI, t. II, 13.
28
Ibid., 14.
68 DANILO MANCA
pubblica per valorizzare, «di fronte alla polis, agli affari e ai pettegolezzi», «la forza
e la possibilità della contemplazione»34.
Socrate «si erge nel bel mezzo della polis, scherzando con chiunque e portando
nella strada la saggezza, che in lui non era un sistema, ma un atteggiamento del
pensiero» 35 . Tuttavia, proprio questo suo rimanere immerso nella polis gli
impedirebbe di elevarsi completamente al di sopra degli affari politici.
«Rompendo l’incanto della valutazione storico-universale» 36 di Socrate,
Burckhardt mostra quindi, secondo Löwith, come l’ostinazione di Socrate a
mettere in discussione gli stili di vita dei cittadini della polis abbia generato
quell’ostilità che lo ha condotto alla morte. Perciò, malgrado Socrate rimanga
«una pietra angolare dell’intero mondo attico» perché in lui «la libera personalità è
caratterizzata fino al sublime»37, Burchkardt gli preferisce figure più tarde, quali
Diogene ed Epicuro, che invece incarnerebbero a pieno l’ideale del bios
theoretikos. Nei cinici Burckhardt scorge «il più alto esempio di libera personalità
apolitica» 38 e in Diogene in particolare, secondo Löwith, Burckhardt «ha
interpretato, non da ultimo, se stesso» 39 . Forse nell’emancipazione dei filosofi
cinici dai doveri della vita in comunità si cela una forma di egoismo che mette in
discussione qualsiasi pretesa dei filosofi di dettare una teoria sociale 40 , ma
Burckhardt in ogni caso concorda con Bruno Bauer sul fatto che «nel crollo della
polis “i filosofi respirarono […] e si sentirono togliere un gran peso dal petto»41.
Diogene si sentiva un cittadino del mondo, è stato «il vero, sereno pessimista, che
rinuncia a quella parte immensamente maggiore della vita che è minacciata dalla
miseria e dalla rovina, per accontentarsi del resto, della moderatezza, della salute e
della libertà»42. D’altronde, l’atteggiamento più divino è quello di colui che non ha
bisogno di niente. Quando si racconta che uscì con la lanterna in cerca
dell’“uomo” «certamente non pensò né all’uomo in contrasto con l’animale, né
all’uomo eticamente illuminato, ma probabilmente […] all’uomo “non-polites”»43.
In Epicuro, poi, Burckhardt «vede impersonata nel modo più nobile, quella
“caratteristica visione del mondo” […] che unisce il saper rinunciare al saper
34
Ibid., 152-153.
35
Ibid. 153 trad. it. di M. Attardo Magrini tratta da J. Burckhardt, Storia della civiltà greca,
introd. di A. Momigliano (Firenze: Sansoni 1974), vol. II, 91.
36
B, 153.
37
Ibid., 154, trad. da Burckhardt, op. cit., II, 98.
38
B, 154.
39
Ibid., 155.
40
Ibid., 154, trad. da Burckhardt, op. cit., II, 100.
41
B, 154, trad. da Burckhardt, op. cit., II, 100.
42
B, 155, trad. da Burckhardt, op. cit., II, 103-104.
43
B, 155.
70 DANILO MANCA
godere e così racchiude, in una degna totalità, la vita terrena dei migliori in epoche
di decadenza»44.
Al contrario di Hegel e Marx, che valorizzano l’uomo come animale politico,
Burckhardt «ha insistito sul fatto che l’uomo occidentale, oggi come allora [leggi:
al tempo della polis greca], in mezzo alla dimensione pubblica e all’essere
comunitario, vuole una propria e particolare esistenza»45. La scelta dell’apoliticità
permette all’uomo di valorizzare la cultura, che è secondo Burckhardt il vero
elemento libero, mobile, multiforme che si contrappone sia «al rigido e
semplificatorio potere coattivo dello stato»46, sia al dogmatismo delle religioni. La
cultura è, in altre parole, ciò che perdura nel divenire storico: l’allontanarsi degli
intellettuali dallo Stato permise all’ellenismo di trasformarsi da potenza politica a
potenza culturale, capace di influenzare radicalmente i propri soggiogatori politici.
Da cittadino della polis, che addirittura lo condanna a morte, il filosofo si
trasforma in cittadino del mondo e soprattutto in intellettuale, uomo di cultura.
Per Burckhardt l’attività storiografica è la massima espressione della cultura. A
differenza di Nietzsche, che è convinto che l’uomo debba imparare a dimenticare
per vivere meglio, Burckhardt pensa invece che l’attività storiografica debba essere
valorizzata per la sua capacità di riconoscere in mezzo a tutte le fratture e gli
sconvolgimenti del divenire dello spirito umano ciò che perdura o si ripete in
modo simile. In questa prospettiva Löwith scorge un’alternativa al recupero
nietzschiano del concetto greco di eternità, un’alternativa che non nasconde di
arrivare all’apice della modernità ma che al contempo riuscirebbe a suo avviso a
elevarsi al di sopra della propria origine. Per Burckhardt, il ripetersi di
determinate condotte nel corso della storia (soprattutto nei periodi di decadenza
politica) prova come esse non dipendano soltanto dagli avvenimenti contingenti
che le generano; anzi, permettono all’uomo di non intendere la storicità congenita
alla sua natura come l’essere vincolato a ciò che accade, ma piuttosto come
l’essere chiamato a scoprire la continuità nel divenire: «La storicità non sta dunque
già nel puro dato di fatto di ciò che di volta in volta accade in sequenza, ma
soltanto nella coscienza storica della continuità che, in quanto sapere, libera il
passato per appropriarsene, conservarlo e tramandarlo. Perciò i grandi storici del
passato fanno parte essi stessi della storia reale poiché è a loro che dobbiamo la
“continuità del ricordo spirituale” senza il quale il passato in generale non sarebbe
storia»47.
L’apolitia di Burckhardt fornisce quindi a Löwith un modello per descrivere la
natura impolitica della filosofia. Importante è notare come Löwith evidenzi che la
scelta della vita in disparte, caratterizzata da una sorta di ozio pratico che
44
Ibid., 156.
45
Ibid., 161-162.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., 192.
71 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
corrisponde però a un’intensa attività teoretica di analisi del divenire della cultura
nel corso delle epoche, abbia un «movente politico»48: «La cura della cultura è una
conseguenza della apolitia di un uomo che non può e non vuole partecipare a ciò
che avviene politicamente: la libertà della cultura è condizionata al ritirarsi dalla
vita non libera dello Stato»49. Per usare una delle più famose allegorie platoniche,
questo sembra a Löwith un modo di rimanere col corpo nella caverna ma di
saperne uscire con lo sguardo interiore e con lo stile di vita.
Nella lettera del 23 giugno 1935 in cui discute il libro dell’amico su Nietzsche,
Strauss osserva che con il concetto di volontà di potenza Nietzsche era stato
infedele alla sua intenzione di ripetere l’antichità all’apice della modernità solo
perché condizionato dal suo stile polemico nei confronti degli stessi moderni, non
perché da un punto di vista teoretico «la volontà è necessariamente volontà di
futuro» 50 . Per Strauss, lo è solo per i moderni, non per gli antichi. Perciò, a
differenza di Löwith, che sembra annoverare Nietzsche fra coloro che, come
Marx, non sono riusciti a liberarsi del pathos della modernità, Strauss sembra
comunque intravedere nel concetto di volontà di potenza un tentativo di recupero
della vita secondo natura. Nella lettera del 13 luglio 1935 Löwith risponde che
Nietzsche non era stato infedele alla sua intenzione semplicemente per il suo stile
polemico, ma perché «era – detto in modo grossolano – un iperfilologo classico
gravato di teologia, di fatale importanza per il futuro, che non ha mai compreso
perché il più saggio e moderato Burckhardt rispondesse con tanta singolare
distanza alle sue lettere, benché Nietzsche con l’irrompere della follia osservi e
dica che non lui – Nietzsche – ma Burckhardt è il grande “maestro”: in tempi di
decadenza, infatti, era in grado di ripetere ciò che un tempo fu la – antica –
moderazione»51.
Nella lettera del 17 luglio 1935 Strauss è lapidario su Burckhardt. Pur
condividendo con Löwith l’idea che sia stato «il rappresentante ideale della
moderazione antica nel XIX secolo», Strauss ritiene che «i temi del suo filosofare
siano possibili solo a causa della “smoderatezza” moderna: nessun filosofo antico
era uno storico. Questo non dipende dalla mancanza di un sesto senso, ma
proprio dal senso di quello che all’uomo compete sapere, sarebbe a dire, qual è il
suo “modo e misura”». Infine aggiunge: «No, caro Löwith, Burckhardt non va
proprio»52.
L’apprezzamento di Löwith per Burckhardt è agli occhi di Strauss una
conferma delle critiche che gli aveva mosso sin dai primi anni Trenta e che
continuerà a muovergli a lungo. Ad esempio, vi è una lettera del 18 agosto 1946 in
48
Ibid., 165.
49
Ibid.
50
C, 117.
51
Ibid., 124.
52
Ibid., 128.
72 DANILO MANCA
filosofica, ma perché gli sembra che il suo modo di fare storia della filosofia non
renda possibile la transizione dalla seconda alla prima caverna. Il punto quindi
non è tanto il bisogno o meno della riflessione storica ma lo stile di tale riflessione
e i suoi fini.
Sulla scia di Burckhardt, Löwith presenta l’attività storiografica come un esame
del proteiforme divenire della cultura umana nel corso delle epoche. Il rischio che
Strauss sembra scorgere è che l’amico aderisca così a una particolare forma di
“conspectivismo”, probabilmente la più difficile da smascherare. Con questo
termine in quegli anni Strauss identificava la convinzione che il problema su cui si
radica ogni riflessione storica fosse sempre quello della situazione in cui
l’intellettuale versa nel presente e che la soluzione al problema potesse essere
trovata attraverso una sorta di sinossi (conspectio in latino) capace di riassumere
secoli di riflessioni su un determinato problema filosofico in un’unica posizione,
attraverso un titanico sforzo d’analisi del singolo individuo. Strauss ritiene che
l’interesse per la situazione intellettuale del proprio presente non sia naturale
perché determinata da condizioni storiche: solo la modernità in crisi è, in altre
parole, storicamente caratterizzata dal dare importanza alla questione della
propria condizione presente.
Secondo Löwith, l’apolitia delineata da Burckhardt permette al filosofo di
elevarsi al di sopra del proprio presente per abbracciare un atteggiamento che
rintraccia nel divenire storico una continuità piuttosto che una prova della
contingenza delle visioni del mondo di volta in volta abbracciate. In ciò sarebbe in
linea con quanto ritiene Strauss quando afferma che in epoche passate, pur
essendoci una situazione intellettuale del presente, nessuno se ne occupava,
perché era più interessato a riflettere sull’eterno e sul temporale, nella misura in
cui era importante per l’eterno e quindi guardava a ciò che del passato si è
conservato, mentre nutriva sospetto sul presente58. Il problema è che, come lo
stesso Löwith conferma, l’apoliticità attraverso cui Burckhardt riesce a recuperare
la saggezza e la moderazione tardo-antiche trova nel suo presente un movente
politico ineludibile.
La questione può essere compresa meglio riconsiderando il riferimento di
Burckhardt al passo del Teeteto in cui per la prima volta sarebbe stata
riconosciuta l’apoliticità intrinseca a ogni condotta filosofica. Il passo in cui
Socrate descrive la natura per così dire anfibia del filosofo, che ha il corpo nella
città ma l’anima altrove, a indagare la natura degli esseri, si trova nel mezzo di una
digressione in cui Socrate illustra a Teodoro due diverse tipologie di uomini: da
una parte, quelli che sono stati educati sin da bambini alla vita nella polis, a
frequentare tribunali e adunanze pubbliche, dall’altra, invece, quelli che
conoscono l’ozio (scholé) dedicandosi a elaborare i loro discorsi. Socrate non
58
Cfr. Strauss, “Die geistige Lage der Gegenwart”, in GS2, 441-464.
74 DANILO MANCA
sottolinea soltanto l’indifferenza del filosofo nei confronti degli affari pubblici ma
anche la sua goffaggine nel modo di vivere in città che attira spesso il riso.
Piuttosto che prospettare una vita in disparte del filosofo, vissuta nella massima
felicità, Platone sembra voler mettere in risalto la vita tormentata che è chiamato a
vivere nella città. È vero che per esemplificare la condizione del filosofo in città
Socrate evoca il mito di Talete, deriso da un’ignorante servetta trace per essere
caduto nel pozzo mentre è intento a osservare le stelle. Ma lo fa solo per ribaltare
la prospettiva. Alcune righe dopo sostiene, infatti, che il filosofo viene per così
dire ripagato della sua difficile vita in città quando inizia a interrogare coloro che
non conoscono altro che la città e i suoi affari:
«Ma quando il filosofo, o amico, riesce a trar in alto qualcuno, il quale sia disposto,
per seguir lui, a uscir fuori da questioni come questa, “In che cosa ho fatto ingiuria a
te e tu a me”, e a considerare invece la giustizia in se stessa e l’ingiustizia, e la natura
dell’una e dell’altra, e in che differiscono da tutte le cose e fra loro […], quando su
tutti questi problemi debba rispondere a sua volta quel tale che dicemmo piccolo di
animo e sottile e avvezzo ai cavilli dei tribunali, ecco che allora egli rende al filosofo
il contraccambio: perché, sospeso, com’è, dall’alto, e di lassù in bilico guardando e
non essendoci avvezzo, ha le vertigini, ed è pieno di inquietudini, e non sa che dire
e balbetta, suscitando così il riso non di servette tracie né d’altro ignorante
qualunque, i quali di nulla si accorgono, ma di tutti coloro che sono stati allevati
altrimenti che come schiavi»59.
59
Platone, Teeteto 175b8-d7.
75 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
63
Ibid., 405.
64
Ibid., 406.
65
Ibid.
66
Non a caso Fink in un rapporto redatto per Husserl (“Karl Löwith e la fenomenologia [23
gennaio 1937]”, trad. it. di R. Cristin, Aut Aut 222 (1987), 103-105) notava come Löwith utilizzando
la tecnica del cavallo di Troia flettesse il metodo dell’epoché verso una forma di scetticismo che
annichilisce qualsiasi tentativo di pensiero sistematico. Cfr. Donaggio, op. cit., 53-63.
77 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
comprendere quale sia lo stile di vita più giusto da adottare, ma si vive sempre nel
sospetto che la nostra vita sia gestita e organizzata da qualcun altro, che dipenda
dalle illusorie decorazioni altrui e non sia frutto della nostra capacità di metterci in
discussione e di esplorare in modo disincantato il mondo67.
Nel 1946 la pubblicazione del volume di John Wild, Plato’s Theory of Man.
An Introduction to the Reaslistic Philosophy of Culture, offre a Strauss
un’occasione per testare sotto le spoglie di una recensione il proprio progetto di
recupero dell’atteggiamento filosofico di Socrate. Löwith ha la possibilità di
leggere in anteprima la recensione di Strauss al saggio di Wild. Involontariamente
o astutamente ne smaschera l’intento quando, mostrando disprezzo per Wild,
contesta a Strauss di aver scritto che con il suo saggio su Wild inaugura un
movimento destinato ad acquisire «influenza e peso crescenti nel corso degli
anni»68. Nella lettera di replica Strauss non può che alludere al fatto di conoscere
due o tre persone competenti che «si danno da fare per la restaurazione della
filosofia classica» 69 , i cui lavori avrebbero visto la luce nei decenni successivi,
aggiungendo che Löwith sottovaluta la sua ironia.
Ma l’aspetto più interessante dello scambio è il modo in cui Strauss replica
all’ennesima formulazione di quella critica che da più di un decennio Löwith
muoveva alla sua intenzione di riaprire la disputa fra antichi e moderni. Nella
recensione Strauss sostiene che lo storicismo ha difeso il primato dei moderni sui
classici perché con la tesi della relatività di ogni insegnamento al proprio tempo ha
trascurato la pretesa della filosofia classica di «insegnare la verità e non
semplicemente la verità della Grecia classica»70, né ha saputo cogliere l’ambiguità
della relazione di un insegnamento col proprio tempo; non è detto, infatti, che il
rapporto debba essere di dipendenza, perché «un particolare tempo può essere
stato particolarmente favorevole alla scoperta della verità»71.
Löwith continua a obiettargli che la sua decostruzione della prospettiva dei
moderni rimane comunque condizionata da una riflessione storica che trova il suo
senso d’essere e i suoi presupposti teorici solo nella modernità: «Che Wild […]
67
Sulla scoperta straussiana del risvolto politico del discorso husserliano cfr. P. Ciccarelli, Leo
Strauss tra Husserl e Heidegger. Filosofia pratica e fenomenologia (Pisa: Edizioni ETS 2018), in
particolare cap. 1.
68
Strauss, Una nuova interpretazione della filosofia politica di Platone [=NIFPP], a cura di M.
Farnesi Camellone (Macerata: Quodlibet 2016), 21. Cfr. C, 133.
69
C, 135.
70
NIFPP, 26.
71
Ibid., 26, nota 3.
78 DANILO MANCA
modernizzi Platone senza cognizione e senza gusto [come Strauss gli rimprovera
nella recensione] […] non impedisce che ogni autodistinzione dei moderni dagli
antichi Greci, o anche dagli antichi cristiani, sia appunto una distinzione moderna,
la cui “Verità” in primo luogo e in particolare consiste nello stato di cose così ben
formulato da Nietzsche: “moderno” è ciò che “non sa che pesci prendere”»72.
Strauss replica ringraziando l’amico per le sue osservazioni davanti alle quali ha
l’impressione di aver fallito di nuovo e di trovarsi così costretto a ricominciare da
capo. Riformula perciò la sua posizione affermando che a suo avviso «la
modernità non si può superare con mezzi moderni, ma solo in quanto noi siamo
ancora esseri naturali con un intelletto naturale»73. Ricorrendo di nuovo all’ironia
socratica Strauss aggiunge che «gli strumenti di pensiero dell’intelletto naturale,
tuttavia, sono andati per noi perduti» perciò «gente semplice» come lui non può
riconquistarli solo con le proprie forze ma «apprendendo dagli antichi» 74 .
Quest’osservazione è la chiave di volta dell’intera operazione filosofica di Strauss
perché gli permette di trasformare quella che agli occhi di un moderno,
incapacedi fare a meno della riflessione storica, poteva sembrare una tesi fra le
altre in una strategia di pensiero, in un metodo nel senso etimologico del termine:
una via da percorrere. In altre parole, a Löwith che gli rimproverava da sempre di
non comprendere che il loro disincanto nei confronti della prospettiva di pensiero
della modernità non poteva non essere radicato nella modernità e che quindi
qualsiasi tentativo di ritorno al premoderno doveva configurarsi come un’opzione
che la stessa modernità costruisce per se stessa, Strauss ribatte che il ritorno agli
antichi greci altro non è che una strategia per attingere la verità, per apprendere da
loro come pensare e vivere secondo natura. Detto in maniera più esplicita, Strauss
insinua che il suo obiettivo primario non sia il ritorno agli antichi greci per
contrapposizione ai moderni, ma il ritorno alla verità, alle cose in sé, attraverso il
ricorso strategico al modo di filosofare greco.
Strauss sviluppa questa sua strategia di pensiero nei decenni successivi
rispolverando il concetto classico di filosofia politica. Come ampiamente noto,
lungi dall’essere semplicemente quella disciplina filosofica che si occupa degli
affari politici, la filosofia politica è piuttosto secondo Strauss il ramo più mondano
della filosofia intesa nella sua accezione originaria di ricerca della saggezza. In altre
parole, alla stregua di Platone per Strauss la filosofia politica è «il tentativo di
sostituire l’opinione circa la natura delle cose politiche con la conoscenza di
essa» 75 . È in termini fenomenologici un atteggiamento che lascia emergere le
72
C, 134.
73
Ibid., 157.
74
Ibid.
75
Strauss, “Che cos’è la filosofia politica?”, trad. it. a cura di P.F. Taboni in Id., Che cos’è la
filosofia politica? Scritti su Hobbes e altri saggi [=FP], con un saggio di A. Momigliano (Urbino:
Argalìa 1997), 36.
79 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
implicite contraddizioni del mondo della vita sino a svelare l’ignoranza che
caratterizza chi è immerso in quest’orizzonte. A differenza della fenomenologia
husserliana la filosofia politica secondo Strauss non rende, però, enigmatico il
familiare distaccandosene con una scelta risoluta, come appare essere l’epoché;
recupera piuttosto il valore delle opinioni che caratterizzano il mondo della vita,
interrogandosi su quella porzione di verità ch’esse contengono.
Socrate fu il primo filosofo politico perché distolse l’attenzione dal cielo e lo
volse alla polis, ponendo il problema della distinzione fra nomos e physis, tra
l’autorità dei costumi consolidati, provenienti da una tradizione ancestrale, e la
ragione che si cela nelle cose stesse. Invece di partire da ciò che, proprio sulla
base della tradizione, si credeva essere il primo in sé, Socrate partiva da ciò che è
primo per noi, dai fenomeni che sono davanti ai nostri occhi ma soprattutto da
quello che di essi se ne dice, dalle opinioni che ne abbiamo, perché sapeva
benissimo che la caverna nella quale l’uomo vive non è un anfratto generato
dall’erosione delle rocce (come nella preistoria), ma la città che gli antenati hanno
costruito, con i suoi costumi, le sue tradizioni e le sue leggi:
«Socrate cercava di comprendere la natura di ciascuna cosa, partendo dalle
opinioni che di essa natura si hanno, perché ogni opinione è fondata su di una presa
di coscienza, su di una percezione di qualche cosa attraverso gli occhi della mente.
Socrate stimava con ciò che disprezzare le opinioni sulla natura delle cose sarebbe
equivalso a trascurare la porta più importante che noi abbiamo per accadere alla
realtà, a rinunziare alle vestigia di verità più importanti che siano alla nostra portata.
[…] Filosofia, dunque, è salire dalle opinioni alla conoscenza, ossia alla verità,
mediante un’ascesa che si più dire sia guidata dalle opinioni stesse. A quest’ascesa
Socrate pensava, soprattutto, quando dava alla filosofia il nome di “dialettica”»76.
Pur ritenendo che il movente della filosofia in quanto ricerca della verità sia
trans-politico 77 , il recupero del modo di procedere di Socrate svela secondo
Strauss il risvolto politico della filosofia. La filosofia nasce con la domanda sui
principi primi delle cose, si presenta come un tentativo di conoscere l’ordine
eterno del cosmo. Ma quest’indagine non è possibile se non si disocculta la natura
arbitrariamente celata dall’autorità del nomos. Finché il filosofo rimane un
osservatore del cielo può essere deriso dalla servetta trace o dai poeti come
Aristofane che hanno imparato a vivere criticamente in società, ma non appena si
trasforma in colui che interroga i concittadini sui loro costumi e quindi sul loro
modo di concepire idee come la giustizia, l’amore, la virtù, allora diventa un
soggetto pericoloso, un corruttore e un empio, perché mette in discussione il
modo ordinario di vivere, lo status quo.
76
Strauss, Diritto naturale e storia [=DNS], trad. it. di N. Pierri (Genova: Il melangolo 1990),
135.
77
Ibid., 156.
80 DANILO MANCA
Ora, se come Strauss insinua nella lettera a Löwith del 15 agosto 1946, il suo
obiettivo primario è interrogarsi sulla verità apprendendo dagli antichi, allora la
sua ermeneutica diventa il modo di essere socratici in epoca moderna. In un
primo momento, molto probabilmente influenzato anche dai rilievi di Löwith,
Strauss arriva a identificare l’attività ermeneutica che gli consente di riattivare il
proprio intelletto naturale con la stessa attività storico-filosofica e quindi con una
sorta di propedeutica alla filosofia politica socratica. In un secondo momento,
affinata la tecnica della scrittura esoterica, Strauss rende invece la propria attività
ermeneutica la nuova filosofia politica. Cerchiamo di comprendere questo
passaggio.
Nella lettera del 14 agosto 1946 Löwith aveva dichiarato di non comprendere il
passo della recensione a Wild in cui Strauss afferma che «l’insistenza sulla
differenza fondamentale tra filosofia e storia, una differenza dalla quale dipende il
successo o il fallimento della filosofia può, nella situazione attuale, essere
fuorviante o addirittura pericolosa per la filosofia»78. È alla luce di ciò che Strauss
lo invita a supporre per un momento che «a causa di un ostacolo accidentale
(l’imbarbarimento moderno) si debbano imparare di nuovo per prima cosa gli
elementi della filosofia» 79 e quindi ad apprendere dagli antichi come riattivare
l’intelletto naturale. Ma Strauss fa anche notare come questo proposito richieda
che ci si predisponga nei confronti di un testo «in modo del tutto ricettivo con
l’intenzione di capire»80. A confronto con i filosofi del loro tempo, gli storici gli
sembrano più propensi ad adottare quest’atteggiamento. Invece di vivere il
bisogno della riflessione storica come sintomo di progresso, o di rassegnarcisi
come un destino inevitabile, lo si può quindi rendere un mezzo piegandolo a
questo intento.
Nello stesso anno dello scambio di queste lettere con Löwith (1946) appare per
la prima volta il saggio Filosofia politica e storia in cui Strauss riconosce che il
superamento dello storicismo può avvenire se non gli si concede l’esclusiva
dell’utilizzo filosofico della storia. Diversamente da quanto accadeva nell’antichità,
nella modernità la storia della filosofia diventa parte integrante della filosofia
politica perché è necessario controbilanciare la tendenza alla sedimentazione del
sapere: nella modernità «si richiede uno sforzo speciale per trasformare il sapere
ereditato in sapere genuino ravvivando la sua scoperta e per distinguere tra gli
elementi genuini e quelli falsi del presunto sapere ereditato»81; per Strauss «questa
funzione veramente filosofica è compiuta dalla storia della filosofia o della
scienza» 82 . Evidentemente, tuttavia, la storia della filosofia che Strauss ritiene
78
NIFPP, 27-28. Cfr. C, 134.
79
C, 136.
80
C, 137.
81
Strauss, “Filosofia politica e storia”, in FP, 115.
82
Ibid.
81 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
83
Cfr. L. Strauss, “The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy”, in H. Meier (a cura di),
Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem and other essential texts (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 2007), 133-138.
84
GS3, 451.
85
Questa mia distinzione fra le diverse tendenze che caratterizzano le opere di Strauss non
contraddice ma direi che piuttosto s’interseca con la periodizzazione in tre fasi dell’opera di Strauss
proposta da A. Bloom in “Leo Strauss. September 20, 1899-October 18, 1973”, Political Theory,
vol. 2, n. 4 (1974), 383-385: la prima fase coinciderebbe con quella in cui Strauss scrive dei saggi
storico-filosofici nella forma canonica che orbitano intorno al problema teologico-politico in epoca
moderna; la seconda è caratterizzata dalla scoperta della scrittura esoterica e da una perversa
attenzione al dettaglio che consente a Strauss di riscoprire l’antichità come una reale alternativa alla
modernità; infine, la terza fase è caratterizzata da un totale abbandono della forma come del
contenuto della scuola moderna. Sulla funzione politica dell’ermeneutica straussiana cfr. invece S.
82 DANILO MANCA
Negli anni ’40 Löwith pubblica i due saggi che lo resero famoso: Von Hegel bis
Nietzsche (1941) e Meaning in History. The Theological Implications of the
Philosophy of History (1949), poi uscito anche in tedesco nel 1953 con il titolo
Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Come nota Habermas, i due saggi sono stati
oggetto di pesanti fraintendimenti. Si pensò che Löwith indagasse il processo di
umanizzazione della filosofia, verificatosi nel corso dell’Ottocento con la rottura di
Marx e Kierkegaard nei confronti della concezione hegeliana del mondo, per
«sottolinearne la necessità storica» 94 . Alla stessa maniera, si pensò che
rintracciando i presupposti teologici della settecentesca filosofia della storia Löwith
volesse semplicemente criticare la secolarizzazione della fede giudaico-cristiana. In
realtà, sua intenzione era piuttosto «azzerare la tradizione ebraico-cristiana nel suo
insieme» e «fondare la metacritica di tutta quella “coscienza storica” che, dopo
lunga preparazione teologica era giunta ateisticamente al potere soltanto nel XIX
secolo»95.
“Le maschere della saggezza. Leo Strauss e la commedia di Aristofane”, ibid., 5-29; Id., Saggezza
politica e poesia. Leo Strauss lettore di Aristofane (Mantova: Universitas Studiorum 2016).
92
Cfr. A. Fussi, La città nell’anima. Leo Strauss lettore di Platone e di Senofonte (Pisa: Edizioni
ETS 2011), in particolare i capp. 2.5 e 2.6.
93
Cfr. Strauss, “Replica sul Gerone di Senofonte”, in L. Strauss, A. Kojève, Sulla tirannide, a
cura di D. Del Pretto (Milano: Adelphi 2010), 214-215. A riguardo mi permetto di rimandare al
mio “Il desiderio del filosofo. Hegel tra Kojève e Strauss”, Dialettica e Filosofia (2014), 1-20.
94
J. Habermas, “Karl Löwith. La rinuncia stoica alla coscienza storica” (1963), in Id., Profili
politico-filosofici, a cura di L. Ceppa (Milano: Guerini e associati 2000), 151.
95
Ibid., 152.
84 DANILO MANCA
In sostanza, con i due saggi degli anni ’40, si diffuse di Löwith quell’immagine
che nel loro carteggio Strauss aveva criticamente delineato: quella di uno storicista
che identificava la filosofia con l’auto-interpretazione dell’uomo storicamente
determinato, quindi con la semplice illustrazione di una visione del mondo
piuttosto che con il «tentativo di sostituire le opinioni sul tutto con una conoscenza
certa del tutto»96.
A quest’immagine Habermas contrappone quella che si consolidò nei decenni
successivi: Löwith «voleva far valere la visione greca di un cosmos inteso come
totalità senza principio e senza fine» 97 ; quei due saggi erano il grimaldello
speculativo del quale Löwith si sarebbe servito per realizzare la sua «rinuncia
stoica alla coscienza storica»98: così come nella smisurata estensione dell’impero
romano il logos poteva essere afferrato tramite l’esercizio del theorein soltanto da
una coscienza privata dedita all’atarassia, nell’imperversare della seconda guerra
mondiale, solo l’apolitia appresa da Burckhardt avrebbe potuto riaprire le porte
alla conoscenza della physis.
Mentre molti avrebbero visto nel ritorno di Löwith all’esperienza della physis
una vera e propria svolta 99 , Habermas vi scorge invece una continuità con le
ricerche precedenti: a suo avviso, nei saggi degli anni Quaranta «riemergeva
chiaramente la prospettiva da lui già sviluppata negli anni Trenta con le
monografie su Nietzsche e Burckhardt» 100 , ossia si ricostruiva «il meccanismo
girevole di un grandioso cambiamento di scena: quell’inversione di rotta che
avrebbe dovuto ricondurci indietro dalla “modernità” alla “classicità”»101.
Se da una parte è assolutamente convincente l’idea che con i saggi degli anni
Quaranta Löwith avesse voluto portare la riflessione storica ai suoi estremi in
modo da rivolgerla contro se stessa, d’altra parte le lettere che negli anni Trenta
scambia con Strauss dimostrano che una, seppur minima, torsione nel suo
96
C, 144.
97
Habermas, op. cit., 153.
98
Ibid.
99
Tra questi il compagno di viaggio Gadamer (cfr. Donaggio, op. cit., 138 e nota 104), che
dedica a Löwith un ricordo in cui riconduce la riscoperta della physis sia alla sua attenzione per «le
emozioni semplici, naturali, comprensibili della nostra umanità», sia al suo scetticismo, che
identifica con l’avversione nei confronti di qualsiasi scuola e di qualsiasi dogmatismo e filosofia
speculativa. Gadamer ritiene però anche che proprio questo scetticismo lo abbia reso
paradossalmente «avvocato delle antichissime verità della metafisica occidentale» perché lo ha
portato a «confermare ciò che nessuna scepsi può eliminare, in quanto permane come verità
superiore». Cfr. H.-G. Gadamer, “Karl Löwith” in Id., Maestri e compagni nel cammino del
pensiero. Uno sguardo retrospettivo, trad. it. di G. Moretto (Queriniana: Brescia 1980), 189-195.
Sulla forma di naturalismo di Löwith cfr. O. Franceschelli, Karl Löwith. Le sfide della modernità
(Roma: Donzelli 2008), in particolare sezione II.
100
Habermas, op. cit., 151.
101
Ibid.
85 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
102
Cfr. C, 140.
103
Strauss, “Review to Löwith Karl, Von Hegel bis Nietzsche”, Social Research, vol. 8, n. 4
(1941), 513.
104
Ibid., 514.
105
Ibid.
106
Ibid.
86 DANILO MANCA
Intravede però un latente motivo anti-storicista che s’insinua nel testo grazie
all’analisi della prospettiva di Goethe.
Il 25 agosto 1952, in occasione di una conferenza a Eranos poi pubblicata col
titolo Die Dynamik der Geschichte und der Historismus, Löwith invia a Strauss
una lettera in cui rivela di aver esposto «a un pubblico molto colto la sua [leggi: di
Strauss] critica dello storicismo»107. Gli fa eco Scholem, che a Strauss scrive: «La
sua [leggi: di Löwith] presentazione è stata di certo ben degna di nota, memorabile
[historic] (secondo Löwith, non storica [historical]). Le hanno fischiato le
orecchie?»108.
Nel testo Löwith considera la possibilità che vi sia una prospettiva alternativa a
quella storicistica capace di difendere l’esistenza di qualcosa di «permanente,
eterno, ed eternamente ritornante». Löwith comincia notando che il termine
«”historia” significava originariamente per i Greci qualcosa di molto semplice:
investigazione, conoscenza, sapere; e nello stesso tempo, narrazione e riferimento
dei risultati dell’investigazione» 109 . Gli storici greci utilizzavano il termine to
pragma, che significa al contempo evento e azione, per designare i fatti storici.
Spettava loro di riferire le vicende politiche che nascevano dall’azione degli
uomini, mentre i filosofi erano intenti «a considerare ciò che è sempre (to aei on)
e non il disporsi mutevole della storia»110. Erodoto narrava indiscriminatamente
storie che riguardavano la natura e le vicende umane. Aristotele, la cui tendenza
era di occuparsi di tutto, «non ha dedicato alla storia trattazione alcuna, benché sia
vissuto in un momento pieno di grandi eventi e fosse il maestro di Alessandro
Magno»111. Nella misura in cui riguarda il verosimile, la poesia gli sembrò più
filosofica della storia, che invece tratta solo del contingente e dell’individuale.
«Anche se impostò raffronti storici fra diverse costituzioni di Stato o se si riferì ad
antiche dottrine sulla physis, non introdusse mai queste riflessioni storiche nella
sostanza delle sue convinzioni, servendosene solo come mezzo sussidiario per
impostare i problemi astorici circa l’autentica struttura della physis o il migliore
ordine della polis»112.
La situazione cambia con Descartes e Vico. Il primo estromise la storia della
filosofia dalla sua concezione scientifica della filosofia, il secondo approntò una
filosofia che è anche una storia dell’umanità. Il processo di storicizzazione del
sapere trovò poi la sua massima espressione in Hegel, che introdusse la storia
nella filosofia identificando quest’ultima con la capacità di cogliere in termini
107
C, 165
108
Ibid., 165.
109
Löwith, “Storia e storicismo” (=SS), trad. it. di P. Chiodi parziale di in Aa.Vv., Il dibattito sullo
storicismo, a cura di F. Bianco (Bologna: Il Mulino 1978), 273.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid., 284.
112
Ibid.
87 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
113
Ibid., 286.
114
Ibid., 283
115
Ibid. Cfr. E. Husserl, La filosofia come scienza rigorosa, trad. it. di C. Sinigaglia, pref. di G.
Semerari (Roma-Bari: Laterza 2010), 105.
116
SS, 283.
117
Ibid., nota 8.
118
Cfr. DNS, 97-98.
119
SS, 277.
88 DANILO MANCA
storia ma ne siamo anche sopraffatti; motivo per cui gli antichi parlavano di tyche
e ananke120.
Il tema ricorre in un importante articolo del 1957, “Natura e umanità
dell’uomo”, di cui in una lettera del 7 aprile 1960 Strauss confessa di essere
rimasto colpito121. Qui Löwith torna a osservare che nella filosofia classica, dai
presocratici fino a Lucrezio, il mondo e l’uomo venivano pensati non
nell’orizzonte temporale della storia con i suoi destini contingenti, ma nella sfera
eterna della physis. La storia delle civiltà e il succedersi delle epoche è espressione
dell’operare della physis quindi la storia è accadere naturale, nascere e perire
ricorrenti 122 . Löwith identifica la physis con la totalità di ciò che è così e non
altrimenti, con ciò che in modo costante e permanente cresce sino ad arrivare al
proprio compimento. In ciò si distingue fortemente dalla tecnica e dall’arte.
All’uomo spetta il compito di rivelare i caratteri della natura. Se gli animali
conoscono forse meglio degli uomini l’ambiente in cui vivono, non lo sanno
tuttavia riconoscere perché non possono porre in questione e discutere a distanza
come cose estranee né se stessi né il mondo circostante. Tornando a interrogarsi
sulla natura umana, rispetto alle posizioni riscontrabili nelle lettere degli anni
Trenta, qui la posizione di Löwith appare molto più vicina a quella di Strauss
perché identifica la natura umana con la capacità di interrogarsi sulla natura di
tutte le cose attraverso una presa di distanza che lo conduce a porre tutto in
questione, ad alienare quanto è più familiare, tramandato e ovvio, e in tal modo a
generare nel mondo una frattura che la sua attività di ricerca tenta di superare123.
120
Löwith, “Die Dynamik der Geschichte und der Historismus”, in Id., Sämtliche Schriften, vol.
2: Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. Zur Kritik der Geschichtsphilosophie (Stuttgart: J.B.
Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung), 324-25 [si tratta della parte non tradotta di SS].
121
C, 178.
122
Löwith, “Natura e umanità dell’uomo” (=NUU) in Id., Critica dell’esistenza storica, trad. it. di
A.L. Künkler Giavotto (Napoli: Morano 1967), 249. Non a caso Strauss contribuisce alla Festschrift
per i 70 anni di Löwith con il testo “Note su Lucrezio”, poi ristampato in Liberalismo antico e
moderno, trad. it. di S. Antonelli e C. Geraci (Milano: Giuffré 1973), 101-176. Lucrezio
rappresenta per Strauss il poeta che svolge un’importante operazione politica da una prospettiva
impolitica perché tenta di liberare l’uomo dalle sue paure mostrando la naturalità di tutti quei
fenomeni, come la morte, che spaventandolo alimentano l’istituzione degli artifici religiosi. Cfr. M.
Menon, “An Unpolitical Political Philosophy? Some Remarks on Leo Strauss’ «Notes on
Lucretius»”, Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics, New Media Theories, vol. I,
n. 2 (2015): “The Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy”, a cura di A. Aloisi e D. Manca, 7-41.
123
Cfr. in particolare NUU, 271-273: «Ogni pensare e parlare si muove tra questione e risposta.
Anche uno sguardo interrogativo e un gesto eloquente sono solo apparentemente muti, perché in
realtà sostituiscono la parola e il discorso. […] Soltanto chi pone la questione al di là del dato può
indagare qualcosa e porre questo qualcosa in questione. […] La possibilità di alienare quanto è più
familiare, tramandato e ovvio è propria dell’uomo che pone tutto in questione. Soltanto così quanto
comunemente è conosciuto giunge a essere riconosciuto. A modo loro gli animali conoscono il loro
ambiente probabilmente molto meglio e più esattamente di noi, ma non lo riconoscono perché non
89 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
possono porre in questione e discutere a distanza come cose estranee né se stessi né il mondo
circostante»
124
Cfr. Donaggio, op. cit., 139-142 e Gadamer, op. cit., 190.
125
C, 207.
126
Löwith, Paul Valéry. Tratti fondamentali del suo pensiero filosofico (=PV), trad. it. di G.
Carchia, a cura di B. Scapolo (Milano: Ananke 2012), 10.
127
Ibid.
128
Ibid.
129
Si tratta dei famosi Cahiers, che Löwith scopre grazie all’amico R. Oboussier (cui dedica il
libro) che lo introdusse alla lettura di Valéry sin dal 1929 e grazie a E. Gaède che nel 1964 scrive un
libro su Nietzsche e Valéry. Sul Valéry di Löwith si veda, oltre alla prefazione di B. Scapolo al testo,
G. Gabetta, “La scepsi verso la storia. Sul ‘Valéry’ di Löwith”, Aut Aut 222 (1987), 39-50.
90 DANILO MANCA
Valéry arriva così a cogliere lo scarto che intercorre fra l’opera umana e la
formazione naturale. La natura non costruisce ma genera, la conchiglia «emana da
un mollusco»; la scienza ha scoperto che nasce per atrofizzazione di una parte del
mollusco. Se l’incanto prodotto dalla simmetria e dalla bellezza della conchiglia ci
ha portato a umanizzare la sua formazione, il disincanto della scienza ce ne
restituisce l’origine: «La fabbricazione della conchiglia è cosa vissuta e non
fatta»132. La nostra tendenza è di attribuire al processo vivente un «andamento che
ci appartiene»: l’uomo è colui che sa quello che sa fare, ma così rischia di
imprigionare la sua conoscenza del mondo nel suo artificio.
Valorizzando questo esperimento mentale di Valéry, Löwith aderisce
sostanzialmente a una prospettiva convenzionalista. Come spiega Strauss nel
primo capitolo di Diritto naturale e storia, da Löwith richiamato nella conferenza
del 1952 a Eranos, «il convenzionalismo è una delle forme di filosofia classica»133.
Non può essere ridotto allo storicismo per il semplice fatto che parte dal
130
Valéry compose, infatti, dei dialoghi pseudo-platonici con protagonista Socrate oramai
abitante dell’aldilà, tra questi in Eupalinos è contenuto per la prima volta l’esercizio mentale della
conchiglia. Cfr. P. Valéry, “Eupalinos”, in Id., Opere scelte, a cura di M.T. Giaveri (Milano: “I
meridiani” Mondadori 2014), 433-509. Sulla ricezione di Platone da parte di Valéry mi permetto di
rimandare al mio La disputa fra ispirazione e composizione. Valéry fra Poe e Borges (Pisa: Edizioni
ETS 2018), capp. 10-11.
131
P. Valéry, “L’uomo e la conchiglia”, in PV, 166.
132
Ibid., 170.
133
DNS, 18.
91 Il disincanto del filosofo. Karl Löwith e Leo Strauss sulla natura impolitica della filosofia
presupposto che «la distinzione tra natura e convenzione è la più importante delle
distinzioni, con implicita l’idea che la natura ha una dignità incomparabilmente
più alta di ogni convenzione o decreto della società, e che la natura è la norma».
Ciò che caratterizza questa prospettiva comunque politica è il rifiuto di
riconoscere l’esistenza di un giusto naturale134. Seguendo Valéry, Löwith individua
una declinazione moderna per questa prospettiva arrivando a sostenere la
convenzionalità di ogni regime politico: l’intero edificio sociale poggia per Valéry
su un «sistema fiduciario e convenzionale», che sviluppandosi «introduce tra gli
uomini legami e ostacoli immaginari i cui effetti sono ben reali»135. Il fatto che
«l’edificio sociale di tutte le epoche riposi su finzioni» rende inevitabile che «prima
o poi le convenzioni tradizionali dell’intero sistema vengano poste in discussione»
da una «critica sociale di tutti i rapporti esistenti»; «il risultato sarà allora una nuova
barbarie della società»136, che Löwith pensa sulla scia di Valéry di poter contrastare
solo dedicandosi alla riscoperta del funzionamento e delle potenzialità della
mente umana, cioè solo rispondendo alla domanda che assillò Valéry per tutta la
sua vita: “Che cosa può un uomo?”
Piuttosto che la varietà delle nozioni di diritto esistenti, in questa formulazione
post-moderna della prospettiva convenzionalista è il divenire storico il termine di
paragone. Per Löwith «lo sguardo scettico che Valéry rivolge alla storia ha come
conseguenza un rifiuto così radicale di essa che, in confronto, la “Considerazione
inattuale” di Nietzsche Sull’utilità e il danno della storia per la vita sembra
innocua» 137 . Per Valéry la storia, che è ciò che rende tutto politica, è solo la
«schiuma delle cose» 138 , non è soltanto inutile ma anche pericolosa perché
«indottrina le nazioni e i loro capi con reminiscenze e ideologie ingannevoli»139.
Perciò se l’Europa vuole salvarsi, se «ha ancora una vitalità, deve dimenticare la
storia» e riscoprire invece le sue origini mediterranee.
In conclusione al capitolo sulla critica mossa da Valéry a storia e storiografia,
Löwith appone il testo Ispirazioni mediterranee (1933) in cui Valéry cerca di
mostrare come sia stato un ambiente, il Mediterraneo, grazie a sue «particolari
caratteristiche fisiche», grazie alle sue «divinità incontestabili: il Mare, il Cielo, il
Sole»140, a favorire la formazione dello spirito europeo: «Tutti i fattori essenziali
della civiltà europea sono i prodotti di queste circostanze […] locali», che hanno
134
Ibid., 17. Cfr. Aristotele, Etica nicomachea, 1134 b 24-27.
135
P. Valéry, “La politica del pensiero, nostro sommo bene”, cit. in PV, 133. Cfr la trad. it. di S.
Agosti in P. Valéry, La crisi del pensiero e altri «saggi quasi politici» (Bologna: Il mulino 1994), 57-
81.
136
PV, 134.
137
Ibid., 129.
138
Ibid., 128.
139
Ibid., 129.
140
P. Valéry, “Ispirazioni mediterranee”, in PV, 147. Cfr. la trad. it. di M.T. Giaveri in P. Valéry,
Opere scelte, cit., 1379-1393.
92 DANILO MANCA
141
PV, 152.
142
Spinoza è insieme a Valéry e Goethe l’altro grande pensatore che per Löwith inietta il germe
della riscoperta della physis nella modernità. L’adesione alla sua prospettiva di rottura con la
tradizione antropo-teologica della Bibbia rappresenta un momento indispensabile nel percorso di
Löwith per scoprire poi il proprio alter ego in Valéry. Ciò ancora di più prova il fatto che alla base
dell’apprezzamento per lo scetticismo impolitico di Valéry vi sia un movente di natura comunque
politica. Come nota Löwith nel suo Dio, uomo e mondo nella metafisica da Cartesio a Nietzsche
(Roma: Donzelli 2000), 158, Spinoza rappresenta il primo grande illuminista moderno che fonda la
libertà di filosofare attraverso la critica della religione elaborata nel Trattato teologico-politico. Cfr.
O. Franceschelli, op. cit., 150-163.
143
PV, 148.
144
C, 147.
145
Ibid., 146.
93 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 93-114
ISSN: 1825-5167
RODRIGO CHACÓN
Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, Estudios internacionales
Rodrigo.chacon@itam.mx
ABSTRACT
Leo Strauss has been read as the author of a paradoxically nonpolitical political philosophy. This
reading finds extensive support in Strauss’s work, notably in the claim that political life leads beyond
itself to contemplation and in the limits this imposes on politics. Yet the space of the nonpolitical in
Strauss remains elusive. The “nonpolitical” understood as the natural, Strauss suggests, is the “foun-
dation of the political”. But the meaning of “nature” in Strauss is an enigma: it may refer either to
the “natural understanding” of commonsense, or to nature “as intended by natural science,” or to
“unchangeable and knowable necessity.” As a student of Husserl, Strauss sought both to retrieve and
radically critique both the “natural understanding” and the “naturalistic” worldview of natural science.
He also cast doubt on the very existence of an unchangeable nature. The true sense of the nonpolit-
ical in Strauss, I shall argue, must rather be sought in his embrace of the trans-finite goals of philos-
ophy understood as rigorous science. Nature may be the nonpolitical foundation of the political, but
we can only ever approximate nature asymptotically. The nonpolitical remains as elusive in Strauss
as the ordinary. To approximate both we need to delve deeper into his understanding of Husserl.
KEYWORDS
Leo Strauss, Edmund Husserl, phenomenology, political philosophy, nature, unpolitical.
94 RODRIGO CHACÓN
INTRODUCTION
Leo Strauss1 has been read as the author of a paradoxically nonpolitical political
philosophy.2 This reading finds extensive support in Strauss’s work, notably in the claim
that “the highest subject of political philosophy is the philosophic life.”3
The questions of political life, regarding, for example, power, justice, and authority,
lead beyond themselves to philosophy. Pondering these questions also proves to be
superior to political engagement as an activity—at least in the ancient teaching on the
greater freedom and dignity of the contemplative life.4 Yet, no sooner do we step into
the life of contemplation, as it were, than Strauss bids us to return. The movement away
from politics is countered by a movement back to ordinary political opinions. As a
consequence, both the purely philosophic (and transpolitical) in Strauss and the purely
political remain elusive.
Strauss did not provide us with a theory of justice or a political ethics, and we look
in vain in his writings for answers to such allegedly political questions as “Who gets
what, when, and how?”5 Instead, we find an impressive range of commentaries covering
ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern thought discussing the fundamental prob-
lems of justice, happiness, and natural right, among others. We find critical engage-
ments with major political thinkers such as Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Isaiah Berlin,
and Alexandre Kojeve, as well as an intriguingly large number of writings on ‘political
philosophy’. We find penetrating accounts of the ways of life of a variety of ‘human
types’—the poet, the philosopher, the tyrant, the gentleman—and much else. But there
is hardly a teaching on politics or the political as commonly understood, for example,
as collective self-actualization or legitimate domination.
The political remains elusive in Strauss because it is overshadowed by the nonpolit-
ical. As Strauss put it in 1959, “the nonpolitical” is the “foundation of the political,”
whereby the nonpolitical was traditionally understood as “the natural,” that is, as the
1 Key to abbreviations of Strauss’s works: CM: The City and Man; GS: Gesammelte Schriften; LAM:
Liberalism Ancient and Modern; NRH: Natural Right and History; OPS: On Plato's Symposium; OT:
On Tyranny; PL: Philosophy and Law; PPH: The Political Philosophy of Hobbes; RCPR: The Rebirth
of Classical Political Rationalism; SCR: Spinoza's Critique of Religion; SPP: Studies in Platonic Political
Philosophy; WPP: What is Political Philosophy?; XS: Xenophon's Socrates.
2 Harald Bluhm, Die Ordnung der Ordnung. Das politische Philosophieren von Leo Strauss (Berlin: Aka-
demie Verlag, 2002), 22.
3 WPP, 91.
4 Ibid.
5 Harold Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (Cleveland: World, 1963 [1958]).
95 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
“condition” or the “ultimate end” of political life.6 Yet any claim to knowledge of ‘the
natural’ is immediately undermined by Strauss’s writings.7 Indeed, according to Strauss,
no political society has ever been—or will ever be—established on the basis of
knowledge of the natural.8
Strauss’s work seems to be built to be perfectly antidogmatic. Paradoxically, how-
ever, its distinctive openness rests on an intransigent defense of the truth, or what
Strauss calls “the true standards.”9 It is therefore essential for an adequate understand-
ing of his work to specify what these standards are. Here I shall focus on the nonpolit-
ical understood as the natural and as the “the foundation of the political.”10 I shall argue
that the purely nonpolitical in Strauss remains elusive because “nature” (in his work) is
a problem. ‘Nature’ may refer to the “natural understanding” of common sense, to
nature “as intended by natural science,” or to “unchangeable and knowable necessity.”11
As a student of Husserl, Strauss sought both to retrieve and radically critique the natural
understanding and the naturalistic worldview of natural science. He also cast doubt on
the very existence of an unchangeable nature. The true sense of the nonpolitical in
Strauss, I shall argue, must rather be sought in his embrace of the trans-finite goals of
philosophy understood as rigorous science.
6 OPS, 11.
7 Cf. Christopher Bruell, “The Question of Nature and the Thought of Leo Strauss,” Klēsis: Revue
Philosophique, no. 19 (2011), esp. p. 98.
8 LAM, viii (“every political society that ever has been or ever will be rests on a particular fundamental
opinion which cannot be replaced by knowledge…”). Cited in Christopher Bruell, “A Return to Classical Po-
litical Philosophy and the Understanding of the American Founding,” The Review of Politics 53, no. 1 (1991):
173–86, 176.
9 WPP, 12 (“to judge soundly one must know the true standards”).
10 OPS, 11.
11 SPP, 31; NRH, 77, 79, 81 (“natural understanding”); SPP, 35 (“natural science”); NRH, 90 (“know-
able necessity”).
12 Cf. Nathan Tarcov, “Leo Strauss’ ‘On Classical Political Philosophy’,” in Rafael Major (ed.), Leo
Strauss’s Defense of the Philosophic Life: Reading “What Is Political Philosophy” (Chicago: University of
96 RODRIGO CHACÓN
philosophers have abandonded “the teaching of the good life” as “the authentic realm
of philosphy” (Adorno), Strauss sought to keep that teaching alive.13 In line with the
tradition of political philosophy since Plato, Strauss also held on to the view that every-
day political questions concerning (for instance) just rule or legitimate government must
be framed within broader metaphysical inquiries concerning the nature of man and the
whole.14
Strauss refers to nature as a standard throughout his work. To quote a few repre-
sentative statements:
(1) “Plato goes back to the truth hidden in the natural valuations,” whereas Hobbes
denies “the existence of a…natural standard.”15
(2) “Man’s freedom is accompanied by a sacred awe, by a kind of divination that not
everything is permitted. We may call this awe-inspired fear ‘man’s natural con-
science’.”16
(3) “[A]bsolute tolerance is altogether impossible… [it] turns into ferocious hatred of
those who have stated most clearly and most forcefully that there are unchangeable
standards founded in the nature of man and the nature of things.”17
(4) “The just city is…impossible…because it is against nature.”18
(5) “[P]recisely because the female nature is inferior to the male in regard to virtue, it is
all the more in need of being subjected to order and law.”19
Granted that these statements must be read in context to specify their meaning, the
general message is clear: political philosophy must attempt to retrieve ‘nature’ or ‘nat-
ural right’ to respond to what Strauss calls “the crisis of the West.”20 One of the key
consequences of such a retrieval is a critique of utopian political projects which are
Chicago Press, 2013), 74-75. Rafael Major, “Thinking Through Strauss’s Legacy,” in ibid., 1-21, esp. p. 6.
Myles Burnyeat, “Sphinx without a Secret.” Review of Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, by Leo Strauss.
New York Review of Books, 30 May 1985, pp. 30–36.
13 For recent accounts of 20th century political philosophy, see Ronald Beiner, Political Philosophy: What
It Is and Why It Matters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Tracy B. Strong, Politics Without
Vision: Thinking Without a Banister in Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Cath-
erine H. Zuckert, Political Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Authors and Arguments (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2012)
14 Heinrich Meier, “Why Political Philosophy?,” in Leo Strauss and the Theological- Political Problem,
ed. Heinrich Meier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 96.
15 PPH, 163-4.
16 NRH, 130.
17 LAM, 63.
18 CM, 127.
19 Leo Strauss, The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975), 97, see also 104.
20 CM, 2-3.
97 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
21 For Strauss’s critique of (modern) utopianism, see Leo Strauss, “What Can We Learn from Political
Theory,” Review of Politics 69 (1), 2007: 515–29, esp. 521, cf. 522 (on “legitimate utopianism”); SCR, 6 (“hu-
man beings will never create a society which is free of contradictions”); cf. 226-229 (on Strauss’s subtle critique
of Spinoza’s “unpolitical realism” and anti-utopianism). See also OT, 210-11 (on the utopianism of “the mod-
ern solution” to the political problem versus ancient utopianism as improbable yet preserving “the very idea of
a standard”); WPP, 40; CM, 129 (utopian politics is driven by indignation or anger and the belief that evil can
be eradicated), see also CM, 6. Leora Batnitzky, Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas Philosophy and the
Politics of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ch. 6: “Against Utopia: Law and its
Limits,” 117-139, esp. 120 (“the twentieth-century depreciation of reason follows from the overblown political
and social status of philosophy in the modern period”). William A. Galston, “Leo Strauss’s Qualified Embrace
of Liberal Democracy,’ in Steven B. Smith, The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2013), 193-215, esp. 197.
22 As Strauss put it in the mid 1950s, classical political philosophy is “free from all fanaticism because it
knows that evil cannot be eradicated and therefore that one’s expectations from politics must be moderate.”
WPP, 28.
23 Bruell, “The Question of Nature and the Thought of Leo Strauss.” Richard L. Velkley (ed.), Leo Strauss
on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 3 (“What I tried to do
[in NRH] is show that natural right is an open question and not an obsolete issue”),
24 Leo Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” Social Research 13, no. 3
(September 1946), 355 (“…the natural was what may loosely be called the ideal…”)
25 WPP, 51, 27.
26 RCPR, 42-43. Cf. SPP 33. Strauss makes these statements as glosses of Heidegger, but they are
also—I would argue—largely his own views. SPP, a later text, seems more critical of Heidegger and favor-
able to Husserl. It also includes references to Heidegger’s outline of a “planetary thinking” that responds
to Ernst Jünger’s diagnoses of a nihilism that affects the whole planet. That way of thinking appears diam-
metrically opposed to Strauss’s call for a return to the “simple experiences of right and wrong” (NRH,
32) of citizens in a (preferably) “closed” society (Cf. NRH, 131-132). But Strauss clearly takes seriously
both the challenge Heidegger poses—as “the only man who has an inkling of the dimensions of the prob-
lem of a world society” (RCPR43)—and the call for a meeting of East and West. (See RCPR 43-44:
“Within the West the limitations of rationalism were always seen by the Biblical tradition. (Here lies the
justification for the Biblical elements in Heidegger’s earlier thought.)” My thanks to an anonymous re-
viewer who alerted me to the difficulties contained in the cited passages.
98 RODRIGO CHACÓN
without placing the utopian dimension front and center in our reading of Strauss, we
cannot make sense of his relentless critique of dogmatism or ideology.
Thus, there is, as I shall argue in what follows, a double movement in Strauss, which
is anti-skeptical and conservative—in one direction—and skeptical and utopian in the
opposite direction. It is this double movement that bestows it with a critical potential
which has not been adequately understood.27
Strauss holds the Aristotelian view that man is by nature a political animal.28 “Hu-
man life as such,” he writes in 1931, is “life together and thus political life.”29 This is
why, as Strauss continues, “every human action and motivation and thought is in itself
political.”30 Though Strauss may have changed his mind on the possibility of a supra-
political life devoted to contemplation,31 the quoted statement seems to reflect (by and
large) his mature views as well. It prefigures three theses that establish the political—or,
more precisely, the theological-political—as the ‘natural’ horizon of human life.
First, “all our actions” are guided by an “awareness of the good.”32 But the good—or
the common good at least—is “essentially controversial.”33 By virtue of this controversy
and the “seriousness of the question of what is right,” humanity will group into friends
and enemies.34 In this understanding the political appears as a phenomenological da-
tum. Human societies happen to be organized as “regimes” or ways of life which are
“decisively determined by [their] hierarchy,” that is, by the “type of men [who] pre-
dominate in broad daylight and with a view to compel power and obedience and re-
spect.”35 In a striking statement, Strauss underscores the conflictual element of the
27 One recent exception is Linda M.G. Zerilli, A Democratic Theory of Judgment (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2016), 83-116.
28 NRH, 129.
29 Leo Strauss, “Cohen and Maimonides,” in Kenneth H. Green (ed.), Leo Strauss on Maimonides:
The Complete Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 200.
30 Ibid.
31 I make this argument in Rodrigo Chacón, “Reading Strauss from the Start: On the Heideggerian Origins
of ‘Political Philosophy’," European Journal of Political Theory. 9.3 (2010): 287-307.
32 WPP, 10.
33 Ibid., 16.
34 Leo Strauss, “Notes” on Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political, in Heinrich Meier, Carl
Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 115.
35 OPS, 8; NRH, 136.
99 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
political as manifest in “men killing men on the largest scale in broad daylight and with
the greatest serenity.”36
This description of the phenomenon of the political is supported by a conception
of human nature as evil or bad. Thus, a second key thesis on the political is that human
life as such is in need of law, or “coercive restraint,” for its preservation and possible
perfection.37 As Strauss puts it, “[t]here is something harsh in the political, something
angry”; “the country is unthinkable without the element of compulsion—laws—and
therefore punishment.”38 Human nature seems to be inclined not only to malice but
also to domination. “[H]uman life is necessarily political,” Strauss writes paraphrasing
Socrates; “living among human beings one must either rule or be ruled by force or by
voluntary subjection, for the stronger understand how to use the weaker as slaves.”39
Yet, while the political may be manifest in domination, conflict, and war, its ultimate
end is human happiness achieved through the pursuit of excellent—and peaceful—ac-
tivity. Transcending the Schmittian identification of the political with conflict, Strauss
argues that:
Politics is the field on which human excellence can show itself in its full growth and on
whose proper cultivation every form of excellence is in a way dependent…Since the ulti-
mate end of the city is the same as that of the individual, the end of the city is peaceful
activity in acordance with the dignity of man, and not war and conquest.40
The dignity of man, according to Strauss, depends on our capacity to question and
thus to think.41 It is at this point that Strauss’s understanding of the political gains
36 OPS, 8.
37 CM, 5; WPP, 40-43; Letter to Carl Schmitt (Sept. 4, 1932), in Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss,
125.
38 OPS, 9, 59.
39 XS, 34.
40 NRH, 133-34; “Cohen and Maimonides,” 199-20 (Socrates is “after agreement and harmony…be-
cause only with agreement and harmony, with concord of the citizens, can the state truly be a state”). See
also Strauss’s letter to Schmitt criticizing Schmitt’s identification of the Right with “bellicose nationalism.”
September 4, 1932, in Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, 125, and the letter to Gerhard Krüger of
August 1932 in GS3, 399 (“the last word … can only be peace, i.e., understanding in truth. That such an
understanding on the basis of reason [Verständigung der Vernunft] is possible—firmiter credo.” My trans-
lation.) Political life (at least in a democracy) also entails heterogeneity or plurality. See Strauss’s letter to
Hasso Hoffman of January 27, 1965, cited in Robert Howse, Leo Strauss: Man of Peace (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014), 60-61 (“Schmitt’s dogmatism regarding homogeneity of the demo-
cratic people must be criticized….the heterogeneity of…interests is as crucial as a certain kind of homoge-
neity.”)
41 Strauss, “Cohen and Maimonides,” 411 (“a life that is not questioning is not a life worthy of man”).
This is a questioning concerning the right or the good life.
100 RODRIGO CHACÓN
particular depth. The political (this being the third thesis) is constitutive of the ‘world’
as such, that is, of the horizon of human experience. Following Heidegger, Strauss
holds that to be human is to be open to an intelligible (and meaningful) world of
“things” and “affairs” which command our care.42 The “world” is what is primarily given
as the element of human life; it is the “articulation of reality” which contains an inex-
haustible “wealth of meaning.”43
Now, in contrast to Heidegger, the “world” for Strauss is shaped by the phenome-
non of law understood as a “concrete binding order of life.”44 Law is more than coercive
restraint: it is “the way of life of a society.”45 Law is that which a city looks up to as
consisting of both written and unwritten laws, whereby the latter include “the divine
law” and “the gods of the city.”46 It is on this basis—of a given law as a universal phe-
nomenon—that Strauss holds restraint to be as natural as freedom, which is also the
basis of our “natural conscience.”47
Let us consider, then, what “natural” means in this context and in what sense it con-
stitutes a standard. Strauss’s clearest statements in this regard may be found in his 1935
book on Hobbes. There he refers to the “popular valuations” of “ordinary speech” as
“natural valuations.”48 Ordinary speech is fundamental insofar as
speech alone…originally reveals to man the standard by which he can order his
actions and test himself, take his bearings in life and nature, in a way completely
undistorted and, in principle, independent of the possibility of realization.49
Speech is our only access to standards.50 That there are universal standards, accord-
ing to Strauss, can be seen in the way we speak. To take perhaps the most important
example: We all say that we wish the good, and we mean the truly good, not a sem-
blance of it. Thus we imply that we lack the good that transcends us. Furthermore,
42 NRH, 79; on “political things,” see WPP, 12 (it is of the essence of political things to “raise a claim
to men’s obedience, allegiance, decision, or judgment.”)
43 NRH, 77.
44 Strauss, “Cohen and Maimonides,” 221; see also PL, 100 (“the Torah itself is a world, in which man
lives, to the understanding of which he should apply himself according to his powers…”); on the concept
“world” see also ibid, 65, 68, 91, 111.
45 NRH, 136.
46 CM, 153. See also, 240-1.
47 Cf. NRH, 130, 129 (“It is man’s natural sociality that is the basis of natural right…There is no relation
of man to man in which man is absolutely free to act as he pleases or as it suits him. And all men are somehow
aware of this fact.”)
48 HPP, 163.
49 HPP, 145.
50 HPP, 142.
101 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
when we speak about the good we contradict each other, i.e., we do not simply talk past
each other. Thus our speech presupposes a common object, whose existence we some-
how divine.51
Plato’s Socrates famously examined contradictory speech to reveal the “truth hidden
in what [people] say”52—and to radically transcend common opinions. Thus, in the Pla-
tonic dialogues the “popular ideal of courage,” according to which “the perfect man is
the tyrant,” undergoes a dialectical purification which leads to the view that “true virtue”
is “essentially wisdom,” the wisdom of the philosopher.53 It is important to underscore
just how deep this purification reaches. The Platonic discovery of standards in ordinary
speech leads to paradoxical results, including, famously, the equality of the sexes. This
standard is diametrically opposed to the “popular valuation” that links courage to man-
liness.54
In perhaps the most widespread reading of Strauss, the turn to ordinary speech is
anti-skeptical and conservative. Thus, according to Devin Stauffer, the process of dia-
lectical purification described above is meant to remain the preserve of the philosophic
few, thus leaving largely intact the “widely accepted views” of ordinary citizens.55 The
work of political philosophers as traditionally understood was to “clarify and refine,
without fundamentally altering, the pre-scientific opinions that guided ordinary political
life.”56 Thus, the task of political philosophy in this understanding is primarily to “illu-
minate the limits of politics.”57 What we may call the utopian task—namely, “to make
the principles of practical life more scientific and rational”58—remains secondary.
51 See David Lachterman, “What Is ‘The Good’ of Plato’s Republic?,” St. John’s Review, Vol. XXXIX,
nos. 1 and 2 (1989-90): 139-167, 151.
52 HPP, 143.
53 HPP, 147, 145-6.
54 HPP, 147.
55 Devin Stauffer, “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns: Leo Strauss's Critique
of Hobbes's ‘New Political Science,” The American Political Science Review, vol. 101, no. 2, 2007, 223–233,
here 230. See also Dustin Sebell, The Socratic Turn: Knowledge of Good and Evil in an Age of Science
(Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 144 (the aim of the study is to “recover— so as to
question, yes, but in due course and on its own terms—the (social) world as everyone is already, prescientifically
aware of it”). For a largely opposite reading according to which the turn to ordinary speech is ultimately skep-
tical, i.e., a way to avoid dogmatism or falling prey to “what people say,” see Pierpaolo Ciccarelli, “Ordinary
Language and Transcendence of Ideas. On the Phenomenological «Reactivation» or «Repetition» of Plato’s
Dialogues by Leo Strauss,” in A. Corrias (et. als.) (eds.), Platonism and Modernity. From Ficino to Foucault,
Brill, Leiden (forthcoming).
56 Stauffer, “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,” 231.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
102 RODRIGO CHACÓN
One can read Strauss as a conservative thinker who did more than anyone in recent
times to recover “an older form of rationalism” grounded in knowledge of what “natu-
rally belongs to moral and political life.”59 But this reading becomes problematic as
soon as it presents itself as knowledge.60 We can begin to see this in Strauss’s use of
quotations around the term ‘natural’. The “natural” (in quotation marks) does not refer
to “knowable necessity” as in the ancient conception; it is rather “the typical,” “the
world in which we live and act,” a world which is “radically prescientific or prephilo-
sophic.”61
In The Political Philosophy of Hobbes Strauss justifies his use of the term ‘natural’
by reference to Jacob Klein’s book on the Origins of Algebra.62 In the page Strauss
refers to, Klein argues that “Greek scientific arithmetic and logistic are founded on a
‘natural’ attitude to everything countable as we meet it in daily life.”63 Elsewhere in the
book, Klein specifies the meaning of ‘natural’ by reference to those cognitions “implied
in a prescientific activity moving within the realm of opinion and supported by a pre-
conceptual understanding of the world.”64
The ‘natural’ horizon Strauss and Klein appeal to may be interpreted in various
ways. Perhaps the most common interpretation is to see the natural as constituted by
experiences which are available to human beings as such.65 Among the experiences
Strauss has in mind are “simple experiences of right and wrong”; the admiration of
“human things” which are “by nature noble or admirable”—foremost among them, “the
103 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
104 RODRIGO CHACÓN
cities),75 and it also presupposes that these wholes are permanently present, or at least
retrievable from historical experience.
This begins to explain what Strauss means when he speaks of a “natural awareness”
of (for example) “permanent distinctions” between right and wrong. Awareness (e.g. of
the good) does not constitute final knowledge, and yet it is the basis of all knowledge:
what cannot be explained away; what we must either acknowledge or repress under the
cover of an ideology.76 This awareness is the element of the practical sphere of common
sense, or “the sphere governed by prudence,” which is “in principle self-sufficient or
closed.”77 The sphere of human action has its own principles, which are “the natural
ends toward which man is by nature inclined and of which he has by nature some
awareness.”78 Humans are aware, for example, that “robbing others of their land is not
just,” that a caste system is indefensible, and that “the full and unrestrained exercise of
[our] freedom is not right.”79
Strauss’s understanding of the political and the natural is full of riddles, which could
be summed up in the following tension. On one reading, his writings support the view
that there are solid—and sufficient—grounds for thinking and acting in the ‘natural’ con-
ceived as the prescientific horizon of human living together. The natural thus conceived
seems to provide a rich and inexhaustible soil for human growth, as Strauss’s meta-
phors suggest.80 By nature, humans are aware of the good, or at least restrained by a
‘natural conscience’. We are also inclined towards ‘natural ends’, which can be known
through the ‘practical science’ cultivated by a long tradition of statesmen and political
thinkers. As Strauss notes, “every form of excellence is in a way dependent” on the
proper cultivation of the political field, which excellence will be manifest in the the
105 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
regime and its laws.81 When fleshed out in sufficient detail, this effort to recover a for-
gotten or neglected tradition of political philosophy to respond to twentieth century
nihilism is powerful indeed.82
However, on another reading ‘the natural’ understanding of the city in Strauss always
points beyond itself to a trascendent horizon. We can begin to see this in the following
statement on Rousseau, which sums up Strauss’s critique of modern rationalism:
Rousseau’s thought marks a decisive step in the secular movement which seeks to guar-
antee the actualization of the ideal, or to prove the necessary coincidence of the rational
and the real, or to get rid of that which essentially transcends every possible human real-
ity.83
The last part is key, and begs this question: just what is it that transcends ‘every pos-
sible human reality’? How can we conceive (in human terms) of something that trans-
cends the human? Strauss’s quest to recover ‘natural’ standards may stand or fall on
his capacity to spell this out. Suffice it for now to restate his claim that there is a dimen-
sion of the ‘rational’ (or ‘the ideal’) which, contra Hegel and his followers, appears to
be wholly independent of “the real” and the “merely human.”84 From this standpoint,
the authority of the political—indeed, every authority, including that of the ‘natural’—is
open to question, and must be questioned if philosophy is to exist.85 Thus, the con-
servative horizon populated by natural standards sketched earlier in this essay begins
to clear into an open sky.
Yet we must be more precise. Strauss usually refers to ‘horizons’ (instead of open
skies), which denote both a sense of openness and the possibility of orientation.86 No
horizon can become the source of dogma, for there are (in Strauss’s thought) multiple
horizons—notably, the ancient Greek and the Biblical—and no horizon can be fully
present.87 But neither do we find ourselves in a void: we can take our bearings by the
81 Ibid.
82 The best example, I think, is NRH as further discussed below.
83 WPP, 51.
84 WPP, 51, 27.
85 NRH, 84, 92 (“philosophy stands or falls [by] the distinction between reason and authority.”)
86 The language of horizons is especially salient in his early work. See GS2, 375, 395, 399, 402, 405,
410, 429; GS3, 238. Cited in Pierpaolo Ciccarelli, Leo Strauss tra Husserl e Heidegger: filosofia pratica
e fenomenologia (Pisa: ETS, 2018), 38. But see also OPS, 4 (the new natural sciences “live in an open
horizon…As…Nietzsche put it, ‘We are the first men who do not possess the truth, but only seek it”).
87 Cf. RCPR, 246; Gérald Sfez, Leo Strauss et les choses politiques (Futuroscope: SCÉRÉN-CNDP, 2011),
80. On the concept of horizon in Strauss, see also James F. Ward, “Political Philosophy & History: The Links
between Strauss & Heidegger,” Polity 20, no. 2 (Winter, 1987): 273-295. For a (much) more precise definition
106 RODRIGO CHACÓN
very structure of the horizon we inhabit—and there is also a “natural horizon,” which
Strauss appeals to.88 This combination of openness and orientation is fundamental to
Strauss’s philosophic position, which is sustained by two seemingly contradictory com-
mitments. On the one hand, Strauss defends a kind of absolutism of “universal norms”
or “true standards”—somehow linked to a ‘natural horizon’—with perhaps unparalleled
force in twentieth century thought.89 On the other hand, he displays an equally radical
skepticism which refuses to defend any position (including for ‘natural right’), insofar
as any such defense entails the loss of “a most important freedom…radically to
doubt.”90
As Strauss often suggests, his philosophic position is neither dogmatic nor skeptic
but zetetic. This in-between position is harder to conceive than it may seem. As a phi-
losopher, Strauss doubts everything, including (as we saw) such commonsense distinc-
tions as between ‘justice and injustice’.91 As he puts it, “reason compels us to go beyond
the ideal of our society.”92 Yet in doing so we must be open to the “possibility” that
there may be “a rational and universal ethics or […] natural right.”93 Paradoxically per-
haps, it is those who reject the possibility of natural right that remain beholden to “the
actual” or “the given” and are therefore dogmatists.94 If we wish to be truly critical and
undogmatic, we must attempt to regard our situation from a transcendent standpoint,
sub specie aeternitatis.95
But the question remains, how? That is, how can we conceive of a transcendent
dimension which (as Strauss insists) must lie beyond every possible human reality?
Where do we find Strauss’s utopia?
of the phenomenenon “horizon,” see Saulius Geniusas, The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl's Phenome-
nology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014).
88 Leo Strauss, “On Collingwood’s Philosophy of History,” Review of Metaphysics 5: 559–86, 586. NRH,
35.
89 NRH, 15 (“universal norms”), WPP, 12 (“true standards”).
90 Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy,” 327.
91 For the importance of the freedom to doubt, see also SCR, 130. OPS, 4-5.
92 NRH, 6.
93 RCPR, 12.
94 Cf. NRH, 15. Strauss’s defense of the possibility of natural right is not only anti-dogmatic but also
anti-authoritarian. As he suggested it in the 1940s, the fundamental problem that gave rise to his quest is
that we (post-Nietzschean humans) lack “the minimum of mutual understanding required for living to-
gether,” and therefore we have “turn[ed] away from reason to authority.” But if this is the problem it will
not be solved by appealing to authority; only genuine freedom of thought—including radical doubt—can
help. Leo Strauss, “Living Issues in German Postward Philosophy,” in Meier, Leo Straus and the Theo-
logical-Political Predicament, 127.
95 Cf. Strauss, “What Can we Learn From Political Theory?,” 527.
107 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
To answer this question, we must inquire into the givenness of transcendent stand-
ards, or how they appear in human experience. Is a standard something we can see,
like Aristotle’s “good man,” who is the “measure” of “each thing”?96 Or is a standard
only discernible in speech, like Plato’s “idea” of justice? Strauss suggests that the answer
may be both, insofar as there are two approaches to “natural right,” namely “by appeal
to the ‘facts’” and “from the ‘speeches’.”97
“Facts” or phenomena seem to have a certain primacy. For example, Strauss sug-
gests that we know of human excellence from the phenomenon of admiration. As
Strauss argues, it is simply a fact of human experience that “we admire excellence
without any regard to our pleasures or to our benefits.” Strauss adduces the example
of a “strategic genius” at the head of the “army of our enemies.”98 We also distinguish
“between better and worse men” or “by rank of human beings.”99 There are human
beings who care only for their “own” (say, for family and friends), and those who care
for “man as such” or for justice—and we admire the latter, not the former.100
Thus, as Robb McDaniel has argued, for Strauss man is constituted socially as “the
animal who compares.”101 The human being “desires ‘to be’ what it admires—hence,
what it ‘is’ not.”102 This follows from the fact that we desire happiness, which consists in
its core in human excellence.103 Thus, to be human is to long for certain possibilities of
being.
But what possibilities? Or what exactly should we admire? To find this out, accord-
ing to Strauss, we must turn from ‘the facts’ to ‘the speeches.’ Following the principle
of admiration, Strauss turns to the most admired thinkers, specifically to Plato and his
“idealized” Socrates.104 Socrates “is” man as he “is” potentially: “the utopian man.”105
96 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, (1166a13: “virtue (aretê) and the good man (ho spoudaios) are the meas-
ure (metron) of each thing.”) cf. 1176a17.
97 NRH, 126.
98 NRH, 128.
99 Ibid.
100 WPP, 35; OT, 88-89. Cited in Robb A. McDaniel, “The Nature of Inequality: Uncovering the
Modern in Leo Strauss’s Idealist Ethics,” Political Theory, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jun., 1998), 317-345, 331.
101 Ibid., 328.
102 Ibid.
103 NRH, 134.
104 Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 [1966]), 3-4.
105 McDaniel, “The Nature of Inequality,” 328-9.
108 RODRIGO CHACÓN
109 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
Strauss followed Husserl in several key ways. Most importantly, Strauss adopted the
Husserlian critique of the twin spiritual powers that dominate our time—scientistic nat-
uralism (including positivism) and historicism. Both of these powers culminate in forms
of skepticism that spell the end of philosophy understood as a “rigorous science.”113
Husserl understood naturalism as a “phenomenon consequent upon the discovery of
nature” considered as “a unity of spatio-temporal being subject to exact laws.”114 Taking
nature as a unity of being, naturalism assumes that the methods of the natural sciences
are the only road to truth.115 Naturalism treats everything that is as belonging to “psy-
chophysical nature”—including all ideas and ideals, all norms concerning the true, the
good, and the beautiful, and consciousness itself. Historicism is a parallel phenomenon
“consequent upon the ‘discovery of history’.”116 It tends to regard all being as “spirit”
and as a “historical” creation.117 Just as naturalism assumes that “in the visible world”
there are “no enduring species,” historical science assumes that “whatever seems to be
enduring is but a stream of development.”118
Naturalism and historicism are fatal to the possibility of objective knowledge of
norms or ideals. The traditional answer to this crisis, as understood by Husserl, is the
philosophical quest for wisdom, or, more precisely, for a ‘worldview’. Since its begin-
nings, philosophy has provided “worldly wisdom” gained through experience in do-
mains ranging from religion, aesthetics, and ethics to politics and science.119 In modern
times, “worldview philosophy”—as foremost represented in the “great systems,” such
as Hegel’s—constitutes “relatively the most perfect answer to the riddles of life and the
world.”120 The wise or “cultivated” person draws on her “vital experiences of evaluating
and willing,” as well as on “all the particular sciences,” to form a “habitus” approximat-
ing “perfect virtue.”121 As such, the wise person has the capacity to “judge rationally”
to an anonymous reviewer for noting the fundamental difference between Husserl and Nietzche and
Heidegger.
113 Edmund Husserl, Philosophy as Rigorous Science, in Quentin Lauer (ed.), Phenomenology and the
Crisis of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965 [1910-11]).
114 Ibid., 79.
115 Dermot Moran, “Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy and the Critique of Naturalism,” Continental
Philosophy Review, 41.4 (2008): 401-425, 403.
116 Husserl, Philosophy as Rigorous Science, 79.
117 Ibid.
118 Ibid., 122-23.
119 Ibid., 131.
120 Ibid., 133.
121 Ibid., 130-31.
110 RODRIGO CHACÓN
regarding her objectives, and can also justify them in light of “intersubjective and unify-
ing validities.”122
The similarity of the paths followed by Husserl and Strauss is striking indeed. Both
regarded the modern situation as dire—Strauss spoke of it as an unprecedented “threat”
to “our humanity,”123 while Husserl considered “the spiritual need of our time” as “un-
bearable.”124 For both, modern humanity was like a “blind giant” with enormous powers
yet incapable of seeing the most elementary realities, consequently stumbling into an
“incredible barbarization.” Seeing only a “confusion of ‘facts’” unconnected to “ideas”
125
or “values,” modern humanity orients itself at best by “progress” in ameliorating the ills
of life, and yet remains incapable of giving a clear meaning or rational direction to its
striving.126
Against our self-inflicted blindness as generated by positivism and historicism both
Husserl and Strauss called for a renewal of philosophy from the ground up, that is,
from our prescientific experience of the world. Strauss sought famously to recover “nat-
ural right” by appealing to “simple experiences regarding right and wrong.”127 Even
more ambitiously, Husserl pioneered an “idealism from below,”128 which would recon-
struct the foundations of every science on the original evidence of the phenomena
themselves. Yet, despite the common starting point in prescientific experience, the di-
rection each took seems to differ precisely on the importance of the political: whereas
Strauss called for a renewal of ‘political philosophy’, Husserl championed the idea of
philosophy conceived as a—radically transpolitical—‘rigorous science’. The remainder
of this essay explores this difference to argue that it is not as sharp as it may seem. The
ultimate aim of Strauss’s “political philosophy” is a transpolitical science. This is also
where we must look for the utopian dimension of his thought.
The evidence for Strauss’s utopianism has been briefly mentioned in this essay, and
can now be expanded. It can be seen first (as suggested earlier) in his recovery of the
111 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
112 RODRIGO CHACÓN
(For Plato, famously, what truly is, is not ‘things’ or ‘people’, but ‘forms’, such that what
is truly fundamental is, say, ‘justice’ or ‘humanity’).137 According to Husserl, science
proceeds through such essential discoveries. Most importantly, there must have been
a first geometer who saw a ‘circle’ in a round thing-shape, or a smooth surface as ‘even’—
just as, to take Strauss’s claim, there must have been a “first philosopher…who discov-
ered nature.”138 Some centuries later, Aristotle arguably discovered the essence of the
city in its (essential) plurality.139 His quest for a “philosophy of human things” was taken
up by Strauss, who sought to bring to light the essence of ‘the regime’ and of such ‘ideas’
as ‘justice’, ‘man’, and ‘natural right’.
If Strauss’s project is Husserlian along these lines, then it is also—on one level at
least—essentially nonpolitical and arguably utopian. For essential insights (say, into “the
city”) transcend “any possible human reality” and thus a fortiori political reality. They
are valid independently of the “natural valuations” of prescientific experience. And they
remain essentially “to come”—always an incomplete project—insofar as the quest for a
rigorous science “has barely begun [and] it will need centuries, if not millennia, until it
‘renders possible in regard to ethics and religion a life regulated by pure rational
norms’.”140
CONCLUSION
137 Wolfgang-Rainer Mann, The Discovery of Things: Aristotle's Categories and Their Context (Princen-
ton: Princenton University Press, 2000).
138 Edmund Husserl, The Origin of Geometry, in Jacques Derrida (ed.), Edmund Husserl's Origin of
Geometry (New York: Bison Book, 1989 [1962]), 178; NRH, 82.
139 Pierre Rodrigo, Aristote: une philosophie pratique: “praxis”, politique et bonheur (Paris: Librairie
philosophique J. Vrin, 2006).
140 SPP, 36.
113 Between Conservatism and Utopia, or, Leo Strauss’s Quest for a Nonpolitical Foundation …
Husserlian quest for a strict science, which is absolutely opposed to the dogmatism
inherent in all “worldviews.” As noted earlier, to defend any position entails for Strauss
the loss of the freedom “radically to doubt.”141 Importantly, this does not mean that
every philosophic position is equally (in)defensible. According to Strauss, we can know
certain truths—for example, that there is a hierarchy of ways of life and corresponding
virtues142—but even the best-established truths have to be articulated and grounded on
evidence, which makes them ultimately revisable.143 This is why even “immutable ideas”
such as “natural right” have an “origin”—and may also be forgotten.144 We cannot claim,
pace Kojeve’s Hegel, that “the possible alternatives” or “the limits of human possibili-
ties” have been exhausted.145
One may wonder what practical difference this makes—that, say, “in 2200 in
Burma”146 a great thinker may open up completely new vistas on human possibilities.
It makes a huge difference.147 As suggested earlier, Strauss’s reference to ‘horizons’ (and
‘vistas’)148 implies orientation but also openness, plurality, and inexhaustibility. The
horizon of the city is part of a broader horizon of “the whole,” of which (in the classical
view) we must be citizens.149 The classical view of “the West,” in turn, must be ques-
tioned in light of the very principle of civilization, which requires us to be willing to
learn from any individual or society “who can teach us something worthwhile.”150 In-
deed, a Straussian utopia, it seems, would be inhabited by people willing to live the
conflict between competing horizons—not only as denoted by “Athens and Jerusalem,”
but also by non-Western thought.151
114 RODRIGO CHACÓN
The classical preference for a “closed society” embraced in part by Strauss, is thus
challenged within his own work, attesting to its profoundly dialectical character.152 One
can go further: Strauss’s thought as a whole seems to move between fundamental alter-
natives—reason and revelation, the West and the East, philosophy and politics, theory
and practice, Left and Right, relativism and absolutism, natural right and history—alter-
natives which it seeks to preserve, rather than transcend. One key reason for this is his
Husserlian ‘idealism’. Just as ‘nature’ is a permanent ‘idea’—namely, “the first things”
or the “essential character” of a group of things153—so is ‘revelation’— an “awareness of
something absolute which cannot be relativized.”154 The content of revelation or politics
is, from this standpoint, unimportant.155 What is important alone is preserving—and re-
maining aware of—the permanent problems and fundamental alternatives in which we
move, whether we know it or not. For this is what keeps the questioning and thinking
alive on which our dignity and humanity depends.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Kevin McGravey as well as two anonymous reviewers for very helpful
comments and suggestions, which I could only partially address in this paper.
115 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 115-142
ISSN: 1825-5167
PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
University of Cagliari, Italy
pierpaolo.ciccarelli@unica.it
ABSTRACT
My article is based on the hermeneutic hypothesis (formulated in § 1) that in the “Notes on
Carl Schmitt” (1932), Leo Strauss’s way of interpreting undergoes a “change” in its method.
From the historicistic “orientation” that characterizes the first two sections of the text, Strauss
moves in the third section to a phenomenological interpretation aimed at discovering the gene-
sis and moral basis of Schmitt’s “concept of the political”. This hermeneutic hypothesis allows
me to explain: (§ 2) the reason why Strauss denies what seems most obvious, namely that
Schmitt’s Bejahung (“affirmation” or “approval”) of “the political” is itself of a “political” char-
acter; (§ 3) what Strauss means, in this context, by “the moral”, which, according to him, is at
the root of Schmitt’s conceptualization of “the political”; (§ 4) what the “intention” is of
Strauss’s interpretation of Schmitt.
KEYWORDS
Strauss, Schmitt, Husserl, Phenomenology, Moral and Political Philosophy, Liberalism.
sense of his work. And yet, such a paradoxical thesis was, if not openly stated,
nevertheless somehow suggested in an interpretation of the Concept of the Politi-
cal that struck Schmitt to the point of inducing him to declare to one of his assis-
tants that he had seen in it his own “X-ray”.2 I am referring to the Anmerkungen
zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (“Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Con-
cept of the Political”), which the 33-year-old Leo Strauss published in the “Archiv
für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik” in 1932, shortly after the appearance of
the second edition of Schmitt’s treatise.
By using the image of X-rays to describe Strauss’s peculiar hermeneutic acu-
men, Schmitt incisively portrays the method that governs Strauss’s reading of his
work. Strauss’s attempt in the Anmerkungen ― a sort of prelude to his later “her-
meneutics of reticence”3 ― is nothing more than the deciphering of the deep struc-
2
This was told personally to Heinrich Meier by the jurist Günther Krauss, to whom Schmitt said
(referring to Strauss): “He saw through me and X-rayed me as nobody else has” (Heinrich Meier,
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, transl. by H. Lomax [Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2012], p. xvii). It is not certain, however, that Schmitt used the metaphor of “X-
rays”. In the German edition of Meier’s book Schmitt’s words are reported as follows: “Er hat mich
wie kein anderer durchschaut und durchleuchtet” (Heinrich Meier, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss und
"Der Begriff des Politischen": Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden, Dritte Auflage [Berlin: Springer-
Verlag, 2016], p. 158). Very likely, it was the translator of Meier’s book, Harvey Lomax, who excog-
itated such a telling metaphor, in order to express in English the idea of shining light on the “inside”
or “through” contained in the German word durchleuchten.
3
It’s true that the “hermeneutics of reticence” stricto sensu has to do with the risk of persecution
against the author, which seems evidently not to apply in the case of Schmitt’s text. The possibility
of reticent writing, however, depends on the existence in principle of a disparity between “surface”
and “depth” that is detected by Strauss in any philosophical text. For Strauss, philosophical texts
have always two layers of meaning, regardless of whether their author runs the risk of being perse-
cuted. In other words, the difference of communicative levels inherent to philosophical texts is not
due to the existence de facto of a threat against philosophy, but to the difficulty for non-
philosophers to become philosophers. In this regard, it is worth remembering Strauss’s “golden sen-
tence” (as it was called by Seth Benardete, “Leo Strauss’s The City and Man”, Political Science Re-
viewer, VIII [1978]: pp. 1-20 [1]): “The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the
surface of things, is the heart of things” (Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli [Glencoe: The Free
Press, 1958], p. 13, italics added). Stanley Rosen, “Leo Strauss and the Problem of the Modern”, in
S. B. Smith (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009), pp. 119-136 (122), considers this precept on the depth-surface ratio, formulated in
Thoughts on Machiavelli, to be “a concise expression of [Strauss’s] version of the phenomenologi-
cal method” (a separate discussion would warrant the objection which Rosen, in this regard, raises
against Straussian hermeneutics, that is, that it is not “entirely adequate to the depths” [ibid.]). Dan-
iel Doneson, “Beginning at the Beginning: On the Starting Point of Reflection”, in S. Fleischacker
(ed.), Heidegger’s Jewish Followers. Essays on Arendt, Strauss, Jonas and Levinas (Pittsburgh: Du-
quesne University Press, 2008) pp. 106-130 (109), rightly points out that the “golden sentence”
somehow depends on the following locus in Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (1927) (Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1967), p. 35; Being and Time, transl. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1962), p. 59: “What is it that phenomenology is to ‘let us see’? What is it that must be
called a ‘phenomenon’ in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the
theme whenever we exhibit explicitly? Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most
part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally
117 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
ture of sense that lies hidden beneath the “surface” of the text he is interpreting.
Strauss seeks, in other words, to uncover the “intention” that drove Schmitt to
make “the political” the object of a “concept”: the “intention” underlying the Be-
griff des Politischen. But in doing so, i.e. in inquiring about the ‘practical genesis’
of Schmitt’s theoretical reflection on “the political”, Strauss becomes aware of an
emerging contrast of sense between “concept” and “intention” ― which equates to
a difference between theory and praxis. In order to properly understand such a
disagreement between theory and praxis (and not hastily level it by placing both
terms in a relationship of irenic synthesis),4 the interpreter must point an X-ray
scanner at the text. Correct understanding requires ― resorting to another meta-
phor, not far from the one Schmitt used ― that, in observing what in the text is
submitted as a theme, one grasps, at the same time, the “horizon” or non-
thematical “background”. It is Strauss himself who suggests the metaphor of the
“horizon”. Indeed, he writes in the thirty-fifth and final paragraph of the An-
merkungen:
(35) We said [par. 14 above] that Schmitt undertakes the critique of liberalism in a
liberal world; and we meant by this that his critique of liberalism is performed [voll-
ziehe sich] in the horizon [Horizont] of liberalism; his unliberal tendency is re-
strained by the still unvanquished “systematics of liberal thought”. The critique in-
troduced by Schmitt against liberalism can therefore be completed only if one suc-
ceeds in gaining a horizon beyond liberalism. In such a horizon Hobbes performed
[vollzogen] the foundation of liberalism. A radical critique of liberalism is thus pos-
sible only on the basis of an adequate understanding of Hobbes. To show what can
and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus
shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground”. However,
these statements, like the whole of § 7 of Sein und Zeit, should not necessarily be interpreted, as
Doneson seems to do, as a critique directed against Husserl. I agree, therefore, with a shrewd re-
mark by Benjamin A. Wurgaft, Thinking in Public. Strauss, Levinas, Arendt (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pensylvania Press, 2016), pp. 263 f., according to whom Strauss’s “golden sentence” “owes a
fundamental debt to Husserl’s phenomenology”, more particularly, to Husserl’s concept of “natural
understanding of the world”, which, is explicitly dealt with in Leo Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous
Science and Political Philosophy” (1971), in Leo Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 29-37. On the difference between Strauss’s
relations with Husserl and Heidegger, see Pierpaolo Ciccarelli, Leo Strauss tra Husserl e
Heidegger. Filosofia pratica e fenomenologia (Pisa: ETS, 2018).
4
In this respect it should be noted that precisely this methodical need to avoid synthesis lies at
the basis of the critique Strauss frequently addresses to the concept of synthesis when it is evoked in
order to relieve the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, e.g. in the lecture Reason and Revela-
tion (1948): “Tertium non datur. The alternative between philosophy and revelation cannot be
evaded by any harmonization or ‘synthesis’. […] In every attempt at harmonization, in every synthe-
sis however impressive, one of the two opposed elements is sacrificed, more or less subtly, but in
any event surely, to the other […]” (Leo Strauss, “Reason and Revelation”, in H. Meier [ed.], Leo
Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], pp.
141-179 [149 f.]).
118 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
be learned from Schmitt in order to achieve that urgent task was therefore the prin-
cipal intention of our notes.5
As many scholars have often remarked, this paragraph ― and especially the ex-
pression “radical critique of liberalism” which appears within it ― is of crucial im-
portance in order to understand the intention underlying Strauss’s reading of
Schmitt. I will return to this point below (see § 4). Now, instead, I want to draw at-
tention to something that, if I am not mistaken, has gone unnoticed in the recep-
tion history of Strauss, namely, the self-interpretation contained in the first lines of
this paragraph. In fact, Strauss refers here to what he himself said above in the
fourteenth paragraph, i.e. at the end of the second of the three sections into which
the text is divided (“We said [par. 14 above] that Schmitt undertakes the critique
of liberalism in a liberal world” [my italics]), and points out how this statement has
to be understood now, at the end of the text (“we meant therewith that his critique
of liberalism is performed [vollziehe sich] in the horizon [Horizont] of liberalism”
[my italics]). Now, it seems clear to me that Strauss is here reexamining the her-
meneutic reasoning he has so far carried out on the Begriff des Politischen (and
on Schmitt’s lecture Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen
[1929]). By looking back in this way at what he himself had “said” roughly halfway
through the text, Strauss realizes that his hermeneutic reasoning had after this
point undergone what can be called ― referring to an autobiographical statement
he later made concerning the Anmerkungen ― a “change of orientation”. I am
taking this expression from a text that is well known to the scholarly readers of
Strauss, the 1962 Preface to the American edition of his first book, Spinozas Reli-
gionskritik als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft (1930), in which Strauss re-
marks that a “change of orientation” “found its first expression, not entirely by ac-
cident”, in the Anmerkungen. It was a change that concerned the “premise, sanc-
tioned by powerful prejudice”, on which the 1930 study on Spinoza “was based”,
according to which “a return to pre-modern philosophy is impossible”.6
Scholars generally suppose that this remark means that the “orientation” guid-
ing Strauss’s interpretation of Schmitt in the Anmerkungen had changed, i.e. was
an already completely different “orientation” from the one that had guided his ear-
lier interpretation of Spinoza. For my part, I think that Strauss’s statement that the
change of orientation “found its first expression [...] in” the Anmerkungen needs
to be taken more literally. That is to say, it does not mean, as is usually assumed,
5
Leo Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen” (1932), in Leo
Strauss, Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften – Briefe, Gesammelte Schriften
III, hrsg. von H. Meier (Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler, 2001), pp. 217-238 (238); “Notes on Carl Sch-
mitt, The Concept of the Political”, transl. by J. H. Lomax, in Schmitt, The Concept of the Political,
pp. 97-122 (122, transl. slightly altered).
6
Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, tr. by E.M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chica-
go Press, 1965), p. 31.
119 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
that before writing the Anmerkungen Strauss had already performed the “change”
of orientation”. On the contrary, it means that such a “change of orientation” or
shift of perspective took place in the text, during the course of its development.
More precisely, my hypothesis is the following: the change occurs at the point in-
dicated by the self-interpretation Strauss gives at the end of the text: in the transi-
tion from the fourteenth paragraph to the following, that is, from the second to the
third sections. In other words, my guiding hypothesis in the present study is that
Strauss’s late remark on the “change of orientation” in the Anmerkungen suggests
that something happened to him while he was writing the text, i.e to his way of
thinking or to what he had hitherto taken for granted, such as e.g. the methodical
“premise, sanctioned by powerful prejudice, that a return to pre-modern philoso-
phy is impossible”. It is ― let us repeat ― a methodical “change of orientation”.
This means that it is not a change in what Strauss was interested in, but rather a
change in how he was interested in it. In fact, the passage of the 1962 Preface con-
tinues as follows:
The change of orientation […] compelled me to engage in a number of studies in
the course of which I became ever more attentive to the manner in which heterodox
thinkers of earlier ages wrote their books. As a consequence of this, I now read the
Theologico-political Treatise differently than I read it when I was young. I under-
stood Spinoza too literally because I did not read him literally enough.7
7
Ibidem, italics added.
8
Nasser Behnegar, “Carl Schmitt and Strauss’s Return to Premodern Philosophy”, in M.D.
Yaffe, R.S. Ruderman (eds.), Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s (New York: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2014), pp. 115-129 (115).
120 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
Carl Schmitt, […] Ernst Jünger, Heidegger)”.9 The “change of orientation” that oc-
curs during the Anmerkungen can therefore be regarded as a kind of ‘reenacte-
ment’ of Strauss’s own ‘exit from the cave’ of nihilism, i.e. of “radical histori-
cism”.10 The “argument and action” of the Anmerkungen can be briefly illustrated
as follows. Up to a certain point in the text ― the fourteenth paragraph that, let us
repeat, concludes the second of the three sections into which the Anmerkungen
are divided ― Strauss reads Schmitt’s work as “a critique of liberalism in a liberal
world”. This means that, in the first fourteen paragraphs, Strauss’s inquiry pro-
ceeds in a ‘historicistic’ way. As a matter of fact, already at the beginning of the first
paragraph, Strauss established a relationship of historical conditionality between
the epochal crisis which the modern State was currently undergoing and Schmitt’s
criticism of it: the current Fragwürdigkeit (“questionability” or “problematicity”) of
the State, makes the Frage (“question” or “problem”) raised by Schmitt neces-
sary.11 It is therefore the historical present that gives sense to Schmitt’s thinking
more than anything: “Schmitt’s basic thesis ― as, in fact, we read in the third para-
9
Leo Strauss, “German Nihilism”, ed. by D. Janssens and D. Tanguay, Interpretation, XXVI/3
(1999): pp. 353-378 (362); but cf. also ibidem, p. 361, where Strauss situates Nietzsche at the head
of a line ultimately leading to Hitler).
10
The deeply moral motivation of such a ‘reenactement’ is insightfully grasped by the following
“hypothesis” that guides Robert Howse, Leo Strauss. Man of Peace (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2014), p. 13: “As the horrific drama of Nazism unfolded, Strauss became and never
ceased to be profoundly troubled that he had been tempted by and even subscribed to an outlook
that, at least indirectly in the case of Nietzsche himself and much more directly in the case of the
political nihilists who followed in his path, contributed to the political movement that led to the de-
struction of European Jewry. He sought, through writing as he did, to show how his youthful temp-
tation toward fascist thought was motivated by high-minded considerations, no matter how misguid-
ed, and to atone before God and the Jewish people, through providing a critique of the kind of
thought represented by German nihilism, which would be persuasive to others who might be tempt-
ed by similar motives”.
11
On Strauss’s manner of interpreting Schmitt before the “change of orientation”, i.e. in the first two
sections of the text, see Pierpaolo Ciccarelli, “Hobbes schmittiano o Schmitt hobbesiano? Sul ‘cambio di
orientamento’ nelle ‘Note a Carl Schmitt’ di Leo Strauss”, Bollettino Telematico di Filosofia Politica,
2017: pp. 1-16 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1048232). As I argued in more detail there, Strauss con-
figures a relationship of historical conditionality between “critique” and “crisis”, when, in the first para-
graph of the Anmerkungen, he establishes a close correlation between the ‘subjective’ Frage raised by
Schmitt and the ‘objective’ Fragwürdigkeit proper to what the question refers to. In this regard, see the
text at the beginning: “The treatise by Schmitt serves the question [Frage] of the ‘order of the human
things’ (81; 96), that is, the question of the state. In view of the fact that in the present age the state has
become more questionable [fragwürdig] than it has been for centuries or more (11; 22), understanding
the state requires a radical foundation […]” (Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 217; English
edition p. 99). On the Kritik-Krise ratio, see, of course, Reinhart Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Stu-
die zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1973), as well as Carlo Galli, “Le
forme della critica. Epoca, contingenza, emergenza”, Filosofia politica, 2016/3: pp. 395-418, and, more
specifically on Schmitt, Carlo Galli, Genealogia della politica. Carl Schmitt e la crisi del pensiero politico
moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1996), passim, who insightfully underlines its pivotal role in Schmitt’s
thought. It seems however that, while he was reading the Anmerkungen (cf. therein pp. 780-785), Galli
overlooked that it is precisely the Kritik-Krise ratio that is radically called into question in the third sec-
tion of the text.
121 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
12
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 218; English transl. p. 100.
13
The notion of “horizon” already occurs in the first volume of Ideas, a book Strauss had
certainly read (cf. Leo Strauss, “Das Erkenntnisproblem in der philosophischen Lehre Fr. H. Jaco-
bis”, in Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz – Frühe Schriften, Gesammelte Schriften II, hrsg. von
H. Meier, zweite, durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage [Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler, 2013] pp. 237-
292 [252]), in the context of the analysis of what Husserl calls the intentional Grunderlebnis, na-
mely, the “perception of something in space”(Dingwahrnemung). In Ideen I “horizon” means main-
ly the “margin” of the “perceptual field”, what remains in the “background” when the attention of
the consciousness is turned to a specific thing or part of it (cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer
reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einfüh-
rung in die reine Phänomenologie [1913], Hua III/1 [Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976], pp. 59 f.,
56 f., 71 f., 91-94; Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philoso-
phy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, transl. by F. Kersten [Den Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1983], pp. 54 f., 51 f., 69 f., 94-98). However, concepts such as Sinneshorizont,
Horizontintentionalität (“Horizon-Intentionality”), Horizontbewusstsein (“Horizon-consciousness”)
take on a crucial meaning above all in the so-called “genetic phenomenology” developed by Hus-
serl, e.g., in Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929), Méditations Cartésiennes (1931) and in
Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften (1934-1937), as well as in several university lecture courses.
For an accurate historical-theoretical reconstruction, cf. Fausto Fraisopi, “Genèse et transcendantali-
sation du concept d’ ‘horizon’ chez Husserl”, Phänomenologische Forschungen, 2008: pp. 43-70.
122 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
Before moving on to the next sections, however, let us return to the thesis that,
as I said at the beginning, is suggested by Strauss: namely that Schmitt, the theore-
tician par excellence of “the political”, is to be counted among the ‘unpolitical’ au-
thors. More precisely, Strauss’s thesis actually is the following: Schmitt “poses the
political”, or rather, makes it the object of a Bejahung (“affirmation” or “approval”
― literally: “says yes” to “the political”), because of a need, or a “question”, which
is not, in itself, of a political nature. It is instead a question of a “moral” nature. So,
if, on the basis of Strauss’s interpretation, it is possible to speak of an ‘unpolitical’
Schmitt, this is to be understood in the sense that his theory of “the political” has a
“moral” basis. It is a kind of apolitia whose essential feature is called by Strauss
das Moralische (“the moral”). In order to elucidate Strauss’s quite startling inter-
pretation of Schmitt, I will suggest below that the reader should attempt to accom-
plish the hermeneutic reasoning accomplished by Strauss again for him or herself.
In the limited space of an article, however, I must limit myself only to a few seg-
ments of such hermeneutical reasoning. I will therefore refrain from analyzing the
first two sections of the Anmerkungen (which I have studied elsewhere),14 and, in
accordance with the theme I have chosen, I will try to explain below only: (§ 2) the
reason why Strauss denies what seems most obvious, namely that Schmitt’s Beja-
hung (“affirmation” or “approval”) of “the political” is itself of a “political” charac-
ter; (§ 3) what Strauss means, in this context, by “the moral”, which, in his opin-
ion, is at the root of Schmitt’s conceptualization of “the political”; (§ 4) what the
“intention” is of Strauss’s interpretation of Schmitt.
Let us turn to the third section of the Anmerkungen. At the beginning of the
twenty-fourth paragraph, Strauss says the following:
[24] The political is threatened insofar as man’s dangerousness is threatened.
Therefore, the approval [Bejahung] of the political is the approval of man’s danger-
ousness. How should this approval be understood? If it is to be intended politically,
it can have “no normative meaning but only an existential meaning” (37; 49), like
everything political.15
Strauss here calls into question the interpretative thesis that Schmitt’s treatise
should be considered a “political” plaidoyer in favor of “the political”. Now, it
14
See my study cited above, footnote 11.
15
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 229; English edition p. 112, transl. slightly altered.
The numbers in brackets in the passages taken from the Anmerkungen refer, the former, to the
1932 German edition, the latter, to the 2007 English translation of Schmitt’s text cited above, foot-
note 1.
123 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
must be noted that, at the beginning of the Anmerkungen, Strauss had made such
an interpretation his own. In fact, in the second paragraph, Strauss had affirmed
that the opening statement made by Schmitt in the Begriff des Politischen (“the
concept of the State presupposes that of the political”)16 “must be understood in
accordance with Schmitt’s own general principles of understanding”.17 This means
that “the sentence ‘the political precedes the State’ can manifest the desire to ex-
press not an eternal truth but only a present truth”.18 It is therefore to be taken as
an intrinsically political statement, since “all spirit ― as is written in a page of the
lecture on the Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations where Schmitt openly
praises Benedetto Croce’s historicism ― is only spirit of the present”.19 This histor-
icist premise is at the basis of the well known thesis, advanced in the Begriff des
Politischen, according to which “all political concepts, images, and terms have a
polemical meaning, […] are focused on a specific conflict and are bound to a con-
crete situation”.20 But the same historicistic premise is also at the basis of Strauss’s
reading of Schmitt’s text during the first two sections of the Anmerkungen. Con-
sequently, in the first two sections of the Anmerkungen, Strauss depicts Schmitt as
an essentially political thinker. Up to this point in Strauss’s hermeneutic reasoning,
there is certainly no trace of an “unpolitical” Schmitt.
In the following analysis of the twenty-fourth paragraph, we shall see that
Strauss has changed his “orientation” since the early sections of the An-
merkungen: he is now preparing to radically criticize precisely the historicist prem-
ise that laid at the basis of his own interpretation of Schmitt as an essentially politi-
cal thinker. Let us see how. In the paragraphs of the third section preceding the
twenty-fourth, Strauss emphasizes the relationship that, in Schmitt’s reasoning,
closely links the “concept of the political” to the pessimistic anthropology, which is
characteristic of the Schwarzdenker in early modernity ― in particular Machiavelli
and Hobbes ― according to whom man is an intrinsically “insidious”, “dangerous”
being. It follows that Schmitt’s “position” or “approval” of “the political” is equiva-
lent to the “position” or “approval” of “man’s dangerousness”. This explains the
presence of the question we just encountered in the lines of the twenty-fourth par-
agraph concerning whether such a “saying yes to dangerousness” can be “under-
stood politically”. This question will receive a negative answer in the following
16
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 7; English edition p. 19.
17
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 217; English edition p. 99.
18
Ibid.
19
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 66; English edition p. 80: “That all historical knowledge is knowledge of
the present, that such knowledge obtains its light and intensity from the present and in the most pro-
found sense only serves the present, because all spirit is only spirit of the present, has been said by
many since Hegel, best of all by Benedetto Croce”.
20
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 18; English edition p. 30.
124 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
lines. This question will receive a negative answer in the following lines. Now, to
adequately grasp the hermeneutical reasoning that Strauss is about to carry out, it
is essential not to lose sight of its rigorously ‘immanent’ character. It is, in other
words, an exercise in phenomenological reading, aimed at gaining an Innen-
ansicht, namely, a “perspective from within” the text. Here already at work is one
of the most characteristic principles of Strauss’s hermeneutics, according to which
the author must be understood “just as he has understood himself”. This is
proved by the fact that, in answering the question of whether or not the “approval
of man’s dangerousness” is to be “understood politically,” Strauss strictly adheres
to the meaning that Schmitt himself attributes to the adjective “political”. This
meaning is obtained here from a distinction made in a passage of the fifth section
of the Begriff des Politischen: namely, between “normative meaning” and “exis-
tential meaning”. Since the reference is somewhat elliptical, it is worth reading
Schmitt’s passage in its entirety (for clarity, I have italicized the words explicitly
mentioned by Strauss):
War, the readiness of combatants to die, the physical killing of human beings who
belong on the side of the enemy ― all this has no normative meaning, but an exis-
tential meaning only, and precisely in the reality of an effective conflict situation
against an effective enemy, not in some sort of ideals, programs or normativity.
There exists no rational purpose, no norm no matter how true, no program no mat-
ter how exemplary, no social ideal no matter how beautiful, no legitimacy nor legali-
ty which could justify men in killing each other for this reason. If such a physical de-
struction of human life does not happen for an existential affirmation [aus der
seinsmäßigen Behauptung] of one’s own form of existence against an equally exis-
tential negation [gegenüber einer ebenso seinsmäßigen Verneinung] of this form,
then it cannot be justified. Just as little can war be justified by ethical and juristic
norms.21
21
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 37; English edition pp. 48 f., transl. slightly altered.
125 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
tial-ontological criterion, namely as identical with the “existence” itself of the bel-
ligerents, appears unjustifiable on the basis of an ought, or of some sort of ideal,
be it ethical, or religious, juridical, aesthetic, social (or even ‘political’, if the word
is used in a non-Schmittian meaning). In more simple terms, then, Schmitt’s re-
proach to the supporters of the primacy of morality is that they argue abstractly,
too far removed from Machiavelli’s verità effettuale della cosa. By appealing to
“ideals”, “programs”, “normativity” of all kinds, they pass over in silence the harsh
reality of political things, which are instead made of “effective conflict situations
against an effective enemy”.
Let us return to the above quoted passage from the twenty-fourth paragraph of
Strauss’s text. We can now clearly understand the distinction between “normative”
and “existential” to which Strauss refers when he states that, “if it is to be under-
stood politically”, then Schmitt’s Bejahung of man’s dangerousness “can have ‘no
normative meaning but only an existential meaning, like everything political”. In
other words, Strauss is saying that if Schmitt’s own “saying yes to the political” is to
have a political character, then, according to the ‘existential-ontological’ meaning
that Schmitt himself gives to such an expression, it must itself be seinsmäßig, that
is, equivalent to an “existential affirmation”, and not to the wish for an ought. At
this point, Strauss raises a question which he answers ― strangely enough ― by re-
ferring to a classical source. In fact, paragraph twenty-four continues as follows:
One then will have to ask: in a dangerous situation, in the “dire emergency” [im
Ernstfall], does “a fighting totality of men” approve [bejaht] the dangerousness of its
enemy? Does it wish for dangerous enemies? And one will have to answer “no!”,
along the lines of C. Fabricius’s exclamation when he heard that a Greek philoso-
pher had proclaimed pleasure as the greatest good: “If only Pyrrhus and the Sam-
nites shared this philosopher’s opinion as long as we are at war with them!”22
At first reading, the passage is rather puzzling. Indeed, one does not immedi-
ately understand why Strauss is led here to ask: “Does ‘a fighting totality of men’ in
a dangerous situation, im Ernstfall, approve the dangerousness of its enemy? Does
it wish for dangerous enemies”? Even less understandable, prima facie, is why
Strauss draws on a classical source to reply negatively to the question he has just
raised. In Plutarch’s Vitae parallae, it is narrated that the future Roman consul
Gaius Fabricius, head of a legation sent to Pyrrhus, upon being told how the phil-
osophical doctrine of Epicurus is hostile to any political and religious occupation
and dedicated only to the voluptas (Plut., Pyrrh. 20.3), burst forth in the exclama-
tion Strauss quotes literally: ω Ηρακλεις, ‘Πυρρῳ τα δογματα μελοι ταῦ τα και Σαυνιταις,
εως πολεμοῦ σι προς ημᾶ ς (Plut., Pyrrh. 20.4). Now, both Strauss’s question and his
unusual way of answering can be explained only by virtue of the phenomenologi-
cal “orientation” of Strauss’s way of reading. To become aware of this, we must
22
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 229; English edition p. 112.
126 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
first consider the question he raises, or more precisely, what the question high-
lights. By asking what “a fighting totality of men, im Ernstfall, approve[s]”, or what
it “wish[es] for”, Strauss draws attention to a basic feature of “conflict”, and hence
of “the political” itself, which the intransigent realism that Schmitt polemically op-
poses against all sorts of “ideals, programs or normativity” risks overlooking. This
is the teleological feature which, since it pertains to the very nature of human ac-
tion as such, must also therefore necessarily pertain to the “effective conflict situa-
tion against an effective enemy”. This situation, even if it does not have its “reality”
in some sort of “ideals, programs or normativity”, cannot but be oriented towards
the purpose to which the belligerents engaged in it aspire. The fact that, im
Ernstfall, “in the dire emergency”, the purpose is reduced to the pure and simple
desire to preserve life or ― according to one of Hobbes’ formulations which
Strauss considers to be extremely important ― “to avoid violent death as supreme
evil by nature”,23 does not change in any way the fact that the desired, hoped for
goal ‘transcends’ or ‘exceeds’, as it were, the immediate “reality” of a “conflict situ-
ation”. Putting it in phenomenological terms: to “a fighting totality of men” be-
longs a specific type of “intentional correlation” or “transcendence” which Strauss
is attempting here to bring out so as to be able to establish whether or not the “ap-
proval of dangerousness” can fall within it. This means that Strauss is here con-
templating the “effective conflict situation against an effective enemy” exclusively
as an essential situation or ― to put it in Husserl’s terminology ― an “eidetic state-
of-affairs” (eidetischer Sachverhalt). Strauss wants to find out whether dangerous-
ness can constitute, in principle or by nature, the purpose of “a fighting totality of
men”. By raising this question, Strauss indicates that the interpretative hypothesis,
according to which the basic motivation of Schmitt’s treatise is a “political” one,
has to be discussed on a plane that is not empirical or factual, but rigorously essen-
tial or “eidetic”.
Let us now examine the unusual argument put forward by Strauss to reject this
interpretative hypothesis. Contrary to what the mention of a classical source might
suggest, the argument is not of a rhetorical nature. The argument with which
Strauss responds to the “eidetic” question he just raised itself has an “eidetic”
character. The classical exemplum seems here to perform a function similar to
that performed by the examples in Husserl’s procedure of “eidetic variation”.24
23
See, in Leo Strauss, “Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis”, in Strauss, Hobbes’
politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften – Briefe, pp. 3-192 (pp. 21 ff.); The Political Phi-
losophy of Hobbes. Its Basis and its Genesis, transl. by Elsa M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 8 ff., the analysis of the “two most certain postulates of human nature” es-
tablished in the Epistula dedicatoria at the beginning of Hobbes’s De cive, namely: “quisque rerum
communium usum postulat sibi proprium” and “quisque mortem violentam tanquam summum
naturae malum studet evitare” (ibidem, p. 28; English edition p. 15, italics added by Strauss [but on-
ly in the German edition]).
24
Compare e.g. Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der
logischen Vernunft (1929), Hua XVII (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), § 98.
127 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
That is, it is a fictitious starting point to arrive at a grasp of the intentional outline
of the specific “reality” in its purely essential features: in this case, that reality is the
Ernstfall, the “effective conflict situation against an effective enemy” in which, ac-
cording to Schmitt, “the political” consists. It is useful to bear in mind the charac-
teristics of the figure of Fabricius in the episode narrated by Plutarch. He is an
emblematic example of a man of action and, more particularly, of a good warrior.
This explains, but only in part, why Strauss evokes him in this context. The fea-
tures he displays in Plutarch’s tale are the typical moral qualities of a soldier, such
as incorruptibility and sang froid under pressure. Indeed, on the very first day after
his arrival among his enemies he resists Pyrrhus’ attempt to bribe him with an of-
fer of money as a sign of friendship (Plut., Pyrrh. 20.2). The next day, Fabricius
remains unmoved in the face of the extraordinary weapon of war in his enemy’s
arsenal: an elephant, an animal unknown to Fabricius, which suddenly, while
trumpeting frightfully, raised its trunk and waved it over his head. He “calmly
turned and said to Pyrrhus with a smile: ‘Your gold made no impression on me
yesterday, neither does your beast today’” (Plut., Pyrrh. 20.3). But the most signif-
icant circumstance of the episode narrated in Plutarch’s work, which, not by
chance, is also the one explicitly mentioned by Strauss, is the moment in which
the upright Roman soldier is informed about Greek philosophy and, more partic-
ularly, about Epicurean doctrines. In this regard, what is of note is the striking con-
trast between Fabricius’s astonished reaction to hearing about philosophy and his
imperturbable stance in the face of a gigantic and frightening animal he had never
seen before. This implies that he is not only an emblem of the soldier’s moral
qualities, but also of a purely pre-philosophical point of view. By portraying him as
someone who is so unaware of philosophy as to be astonished just to hear about
it, Plutarch makes him an example of a “natural” or “naive” attitude, i.e. of a
stance utterly untouched by theory as such. This is precisely the reason why
Strauss here evokes this classical source. It explains, more precisely, why Strauss
emphasizes the importance of Fabricius’s exclamation so much that he even
chooses it as a suitable criterion of judgment to exclude the possibility that the
“approval of the dangerousness” can have a “political” sense. In this regard, we
must not overlook the affinity between the pre-philosophical point of view of
which Fabricius is emblematic, and the point of view that Schmitt takes by criticiz-
ing those who, speaking of political things, conceal his bitter reality, bringing it
back to “ideality”, “programs” and “normativity”. In fact, there is no doubt that,
when criticizing those who present politics as an abstract ought, Schmitt wants to
give voice to an “existential” concreteness, hence to a “naïve” point of view, i.e. to
what at the end of the lecture on The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations
he calls integres Wissen (“intact knowledge”).25
25
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 81; English edition p. 96, transl. altered. Hasso Hofmann, Legitimität ge-
128 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
At this point, it has certainly become more understandable why in the twenty-
fourth paragraph of the Anmerkungen Strauss refers to the classical exemplum
provided by Fabricius and gives it so much argumentative importance. It is ― let
us repeat it ― a phenomenological reason: Fabricius’s exclamation gives expres-
sion to a kind of political realism which, being “natural” and “naïve”, is even more
reliable, because closer to the “things themselves”, less compromised by theoreti-
cal “constructs”, than the “learned” and “shrewd” realism openly professed by
Schmitt in his polemic against political idealism. Put in more general terms, which
also allow us to grasp the overall purpose of Strauss’s return to pre-modern phi-
losophy:26 classical exempla provide us who live in late modernity (or post-
modernity) with a phenomenal basis that is suitable for serving as a criterion for
judging the alleged “naturalness” of what, from modern philosophy onwards, has
been repeatedly presented ― though each time with different names ― as “natu-
ral” (i.e., as “physical”, “effective”, “material”, “concrete”, “immediate”, “individu-
al”, “existential”, “intact”, “bodily” etc.). The reference to the classical exemplum,
and to the “naïve” or “pre-philosophical” perspective of which it is an emblem, al-
lows us to understand something else. It suggests, albeit only ex contrario, that the
ultimate sense of Schmitt’s Bejahung of “the political” is to be found precisely in
that philosophical attitude, essentially unpolitical and irreligious, which is alien to
Plutarch’s personage, i.e. to a genuine political realism. Strauss arrives at this ra-
ther unexpected conclusion in paragraphs 27 and 28. Let us examine them briefly.
because he sees in the threatened status of the political a threat to the seriousness of
human life. The approval [Bejahung] of the political is ultimately nothing other than
the approval of the moral. 27
In reading this final passage of the twenty-eighth paragraph, one detects a sort
of Socratic-Platonic ‘atmosphere’. Indeed, without expressly mentioning it, Strauss
evokes here the very famous passage in the Apology in which Socrates states that,
since “the greatest good to man is to talk every day about virtue and the other
things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others”, ὁ δὲ
ἀνεξεταστος βιος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρωπῳ, “for a human being the unexamined life is not
worth living” (Plat., Apol. 38a). It thus becomes clear, what Strauss properly
means by the expression “the moral” when, at the aforementioned end of the
twenty-seventh paragraph, he states: “The approval [Bejahung] of the political is
ultimately nothing other than the approval of the moral”. Das Moralische: with
this adjective-noun he is referring, not to a given conception of virtue or to a par-
ticular ethical code,30 but to the “philosophical-moral question”, to the ‘zetetic’ vo-
27
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 233; English edition p. 116; transl. slightly altered,
italics added.
28
Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, mit einer Rede über das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen
und Entpolitisierungen, p. 77; English edition p. 91.
29
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, pp. 234 f.; English edition p. 118.
30
That by the expression “das Moralische” Strauss does not mean a specific moral view, is con-
firmed by the fact that previously in the text he formulates, discusses and finally excludes the hy-
pothesis that the legitimizing basis of Schmitt’s “approval of the political” could be the “warlike
morals” (cf. footnote 37 below).
130 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
cation proper to the philosophical life emblematized by Socrates. That is, by “the
moral” Strauss refers to a human life lived in the name of examination ― which is
always necessarily self-examination ― of the given ethical code, i.e. of the shared
way of life. For Strauss, therefore, the Rechtsgrund (“legitimizing basis”) of “the
political” as it is conceived by Schmitt is none other than philosophy or, more
precisely, philosophy as a way of life.31 We will return shortly to the meaning of
this strange expression, Rechtsgrund, (“legitimizing basis”). Now, instead, let us
pause to reflect on the important theme that emerges in Strauss’s youthful “radi-
ography” of Schmitt’s text. It is the theme upon which Strauss himself would sub-
sequently never cease to reflect: a life, like that of those who practice philosophy
― namely of those who are dedicated to the “question on the order of human
things” ― is bound to have a “political” character in the specific conflictual sense
that Schmitt gives to this expression. Philosophical questioning is by its very nature
conflictual, antagonistic (or, to use a term current in today’s journalistic jargon,
“divisive”, “causing disagreement”). In the middle of the paragraph I am analyzing,
Strauss traces this ‘polemogenic’ character which is inherent in every philosophical
investigation, back to Platonic sources. This time, however, Strauss mentions them
expressly in brackets making the Platonic-Socratic ‘atmosphere’ permeating the
entire paragraph almost palpable:
In principle, however, it is always possible to reach agreement regarding the means
to an end that is already fixed, whereas there is always quarreling over the ends
themselves: we are always quarreling with each other and with ourselves only over
the just and the good (Plato, Euthyphro 7b-d and Phaedrus 263a).32
31
I cannot therefore entirely agree with the reading of the Anmerkungen ― albeit in many re-
spects very insightful ― by Meier, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss: The Hidden Dialogue, passim,
who, interpreting Schmitt as a political theologian, maintains that Strauss wanted to oppose to him
his own point of view as a Platonic political philosopher. As I will show below (§ 4), Strauss regards
Schmitt’s thought as an emblematic example of what he elsewhere calls the “counter-movement”
proper to modernity, which began with “Jean Jacques Rousseau’s passionate and still unforgettable
protest” (Leo Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?” [1954-1959], in Leo Strauss, What is Political
Philosophy? And Other Studies [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959], pp. 9-55 [50]). It
is a “counter-movement” which, despite its intention to return “from the world of modernity to pre-
modern ways of thinking”, actually “led, consciously or unconsciously, to a much more radical form
of modernity ― to a form of modernity which was still more alien to classical thought than the
thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been (ibid.). I therefore agree with the fol-
lowing shrewd remark by Behnegar, “Carl Schmitt and Strauss’s Return to Premodern Philosophy”,
p. 116: “When one frames the encounter between Schmitt and Strauss as that between a political
theologian and a political philosopher, the theme of the critique of modernity is apt to disappear,
and so it does in Meier’s reading”.
32
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 234; English edition pp. 117 f. Regarding the par-
agraph 28 of the Anmerkungen, it should be analyzed the important remarks in a letter dated Au-
gust 19th, 1932 in response to the “misgivings” raised by Krüger concerning Strauss’s reference to
Plato (cf. Leo Strauss, Gerhard Krüger, “Korrespondenz Leo Strauss – Gerhard Krüger” [1928-
1962], in Strauss, Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften – Briefe, pp. 377-454
[399]; Susan M. Shell [ed.], The Strauss-Krüger Correspondence. Returning to Plato through Kant,
131 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
Let us take a brief look at these Platonic references. In both places cited, Socra-
tes draws the attention of his interlocutor to something that is said to be “to all
people manifest” (παντι δῆ λον): namely that, with regard to some things, we behave
“in a concordant way” (ομονοητικῶς), while, with regard to others, “in a conflictual
way” (στασιωτικῶς: Plat., Phaedrus 263a). With regard to the latter ― i.e. to the
“controversial things” (αμφισβητησιμα) ― Socrates makes an important remark in
the cited passage of Euthyphro. Not everything that “produces διαφορα” (Plat., Eu-
thyph. 7b) ― in the specific meaning, here, of “divergence of opinion”, “dissent”
― is of the same nature. Some disagreements, for example those concerning
“number”, “size”, “weight”, do not make “enemies” (ἐχθροι) those who disagree,
nor do they lead them “to become angry with each other” (οργιζεσθαι αλληλοις:
ibid.). Actually, in such cases it is always possible to reach “quickly” (ταχυ: Plat.,
Euthyph. 7c) an agreement, by calculating, measuring or weighing what one disa-
grees about. A widely trusted practical knowledge comes to the rescue here (the
so-called λογιστικη τεχνη). It is such knowledge that, by allowing dissent to be re-
solved, prevents the danger that disagreements will lead to “enmity and ire” (εχθρα
και οργας: Plat., Euthyph. 7b). This is what Strauss calls in the passage mentioned
above “the means to an end that is already fixed”, about which “it is always possi-
ble to reach agreement”. Socrates, however, also points to another kind of “con-
troversial thing”. Strauss alludes to it, evidently, by talking, in the same passage,
about “the ends themselves” over which “we are always quarreling”. It is the dis-
sent concerning “the right and the wrong, and noble and disgraceful, and good
and bad” (το τε δικαιον και το αδικον και καλον και αισχρον και αγαθον και κακον:
Plat., Euthyph. 7d). These are the cases in which, since there is no shared and
thus politically effective knowledge that allows us to achieve an “competent judg-
ment” (ικανη κρισις: ibid.), we become each other’s enemies; that is, “we disagree
with each other and ― as Socrates adds in the passage of the Phaedrus recalled by
Strauss ― even with ourselves” (αμφισβητοῦ μεν αλληλοις τε και ημῖν αυτοῖς: Plat.,
Phaedrus 263a).
We cannot help but ask ourselves why Strauss brings up these Platonic sources
here. It doesn’t look like he wants to indicate classical texts that would have exert-
ed a more or less conscious influence on Schmitt’s texts. Nor does he seem to
want to limit himself to evoking, in what is a distinctly modern and contemporary
cultural setting, the ancient voice of a classic he loves and therefore perceives as
akin to his “own voice”.33 The rapprochement between Schmitt and Plato in these
transl. by J. Veith, A. Schmidt, and S. M. Shell [Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018], p. 33). The im-
portance of this letter is stressed, although from a different perspective than mine, by Aberto Ghib-
ellini, “Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt and the Search for the ‘Order of Human Things’”, History of Po-
litical Thought, XL/1 (2019): pp. 138-157 (153 f.).
33
David Janssens, “A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s ‘Comments’ on Carl Schmitt Revisit-
ed”, Interpretation, XXXIII/1 (2005): pp. 93-103 (98), maintains that here Strauss lets a voice re-
sound that is “unmistakably his own”.
132 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
pages of the Anmerkungen suggests something much more precise and, it must be
admitted, quite surprising. Actually, Strauss suggests an analogy between “the polit-
ical”, as Schmitt understood it, and what in the present context he calls “the mor-
al”: an analogy, more precisely, between what Schmitt elevates to the role of “cri-
terion of the political”, i.e. the “opposition” friend/enemy, and the conflictual situ-
ation described by Socrates which inevitably befalls those who, like himself, raise
such insidious questions concerning what is good or what is right. We might say,
in recalling another celebrated passage from Plato, that the skeletal frame of
Schmitt’s Begriff des Politischen as revealed by Strauss’s X-ray scan is none other
than the tragic experience of the protagonist of the myth of the cave. I am refer-
ring especially to the final moment of the story, when the prisoner freed from the
chains returns to the cave after learning the truth of the noetic world and falls vic-
tim to the deadly hostility of those still living in thrall to the doxastical illusion (cf.
Plat., Rep. 7.516a-517e). Therefore, it is in this experience, in whose narration
Plato emblematized the execution of his own master, that “the political ― as we
have read in the last lines of the twenty-eighth paragraph of Strauss’s text ― has its
own legitimizing basis [Rechtsgrund]”.34 But what does Strauss mean by the ex-
pression Rechtsgrund (“legitimizing basis”)? The term, as has been correctly ob-
served,35 is used mainly in the legal sense: actually, Rechtsgrund translates iusta
causa, a technical term in Roman private law.36 It may well be that Strauss used it
for rhetorical purposes, namely, that he considered it particularly appropriate to
draw the attention of a lawyer like Schmitt. However, it is clear that both in the
twenty-eighth and twenty-fourth paragraphs37 ― where it also occurs ―
Rechtsgrund is used in a wider, not strictly juridical sense. Just as obvious is that
Strauss’s reading of Schmitt’s text is anything but a lawyer’s reading. It is thorough-
ly philosophical, guided by a specific hermeneutical “orientation”.
34
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 235; English edition p. 118.
35
By Janssens, “A Change of Orientation: Leo Strauss’s ‘Comments’ on Carl Schmitt Revisited”,
p. 98, who seems, however, to assume that Strauss uses this term only for a rhetorical reason (“ex-
pression with particular resonance for an eminent legal scholar like Schmitt”).
36
For a discussion of the philosophical background of this legal concept, cf. Okko Behrends,
“‘Iusta Causa Traditionis’. La trasmissione della proprietà secondo il ‘ius gentium’ del diritto classi-
co, in Okko Behrends, Scritti “italiani”, ed. by C. Cascione (Napoli: Jovene, 2009), pp. 27-78.
37
See Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, pp. 229 f.; English edition pp. 112 f., transl.
slightly altered, italics added: “Thus warlike morals seem to be the ultimate legitimizing basis
[Rechtsgrund] for Schmitt’s approval [Bejahung] of the political, and the opposition between the
negation and the position of the political seems to coincide with the opposition between pacifist in-
ternationalism and bellicose nationalism”. Regarding this passage, it is important to note that here
Strauss is only making a conjecture about the sense of Schmitt’s “approval of the political”. This
conjecture will be rejected later in the text. In fact, as will become clear in the following paragraphs,
the “legitimizing basis” of Schmitt’s Bejahung of the political is not a “kriegerische Moral” as it
would still “seem” to be in this paragraph. Consequently, Schmitt’s nationalist and bellicose opin-
ions are not sufficient, as here is hypothesized, to explain why he “approves the political”.
133 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
In order to grasp the specific meaning of the term Rechtsgrund in this context,
we need to carefully discern the phenomenological character of the hermeneutic
reasoning Strauss develops in the third section of his text. As in the case referred
to above of the term Horizont used in the thirty-fifth paragraph, it is very likely
that Strauss took over the concept Rechtsgrund from Husserl. By using it, Strauss
conveys the exact aim of his interpretation of the Begriff des Politischen: to lay
open the experience that grounds or justifies the “claim” inherent in Schmitt’s
“approval of the political”. This is a phenomenological issue par excellence. In
this regard, it is sufficient to refer to the first definition of the Principle of All Prin-
ciples in § 24 of Husserl’s Ideen I: “every originary presentative intuition is a legit-
imizing source [Rechtsquelle] of cognition”.38 One may also refer to § 136 of the
same work, which describes the connection between the “position” (Setzung) of
an object in a judgment and the “originally presentative seeing” (originär gebendes
Sehen) by virtue of which a thing can appear “in person” (leibhaft).39 Here Husserl
uses the same legal expression employed by Strauss:, “the position has its original
legitimizing basis [ursprünglichen Rechtsgrund] in originary givenness”.40
Let us review the results of my reading of the Anmerkungen up to this point.
According to the phenomenological analysis accomplished by Strauss in the twen-
ty-fourth paragraph, Schmitt can be considered an ‘unpolitical’ author. More pre-
cisely: he appears ‘unpolitical’ if the antonym of the adjective ‘unpolitical’ ― that
is, ‘political’ ― is understood in the strictly “existential” and “non-normative
meaning” that Schmitt himself gives to this expression. As the classical exemplum
provided by Plutarch shows, “to say yes to the political” cannot be an “existential
affirmation” (seinsmäßige Behauptung) of one’s form of existence against a corre-
sponding “existential negation” (seinsmäßige Verneinung) of this form. Indeed, if
that were the case, the “approval of the political” would be an absurdity ― just like
the real soldier, Fabricius, who, instead of hoping for a harmless enemy, desires a
dangerous one, namely one who is capable of killing him (see above § 2). In this
way, however, the question “why does Schmitt say yes to the political?” has not yet
been answered. In the twenty-fourth paragraph Strauss reaches only a provisional
result. Actually, the answer to the question comes only in paragraphs 27 and 28:
the “legitimizing basis” (or “original experience”) that gives sense to Schmitt’s “ap-
proval of the political” is “the moral”, namely, the philosophical inquiry into jus-
38
“[J]ede originär gebende Anschauung [ist] eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis” (Husserl, Ideen
zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, p. 51; English edition p.
44, italics of Husserl).
39
Ibidem, pp. 314 ff.; English edition pp. 326 ff.
40
“[D]ie Setzung hat in der originären Gegebenheit ihren ursprünglichen Rechtsgrund” (ibidem,
p. 316; English edition p. 328, italics of Husserl). The meaning of the word Rechtsgrund is obvious-
ly linked to that of “primordial experiences [ursprüngliche Erfahrungen] in which we achieved our
first ways of determining the nature of Being” (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 22; English edition p.
44), which Heidegger’s Destruktion aims to lay bare.
134 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
41
Leo Strauss, Jacob Klein, A Giving of Accounts (1970), in K.H. Green (ed.), Jewish Philoso-
phy and the Crisis of Modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) pp. 457-466
(463).
42
Leo Strauss, “On Classical Political Philosophy” (1945), in Strauss, What is Political Philoso-
phy? And Other Studies, pp. 78-94 (92).
43
Rückbesinnung, Ursprungsmotivation and Reaktiveriung are technical terms in Husserl’s ge-
netic phenomenology (cf., respectively: Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissen-
schaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Phi-
losophie, ed. W. Biemel, Husserliana VI [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954], p. 16; The Crisis of Euro-
pean Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philos-
ophy, trans. by David Carr [Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970], p. 17; ibidem, p.
58; English edition p. 57; ibidem, p. 376; English edition p. 367).
135 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
troduced” a “critique against liberalism”. Having been “restrained by the still un-
vanquished ‘systematics of liberal thought’”, he was unable to “complete” such a
critique.44 In Strauss’s opinion, therefore, Schmitt’s critique is not critical enough.
More precisely, it is not a “radical critique of liberalism”.45
Some interpreters have identified in this statement a clear and unequivocal sign
of Strauss’s deeply anti-liberal and ultra-conservative political convictions, that is,
his intention to place himself ‘to the right’ of Schmitt.46 In other words, according
to these interpreters, in 1932 Strauss judged Schmitt’s political hostility to liberal
institutions ― which his swift adherence to Nazism shortly thereafter made com-
pletely manifest ― as being still too weak. The intention that motivated Strauss to
write the Anmerkungen may therefore have been, in their view, to encourage the
coup de grace to the already tottering institutions of the Weimarer Republik. In
short, to express it in terms of the famous, or infamous chiasm by Marx in Zur
Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie: Strauss, by calling for a “radical critique
of liberalism”, was suggesting ‘between the lines’ to Schmitt to decide to turn the
“weapons of critique” into the “critique of weapons”.47
The subject has aroused special interest, of course, because of the well-known
controversy about the alleged influence Strauss’s teaching had on “American im-
perialism”. This is too vague and generic a subject to be properly addressed here.
However, the text of the Anmerkungen presents the careful reader with a problem
of interpretation that concerns this topic. We are referring to the question of
whether Strauss intended, by the expression “radical critique of liberalism,” to en-
44
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 238; English edition p.122.
45
Ibid., italics added.
46
Among the several scholars who support this thesis, see for example Stephen Holmes, Anat-
omy of Antiliberalism (Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press, 1993); John P. McCormick,
Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism. Against Politics as Technology (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997), pp. 258 ff.; William H.F. Altman, The German Stranger. Leo Strauss and Na-
tional Socialism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011), pp. 195 ff.; Andreas Kellner, Politik im Posthis-
toire: Die politische Philosophie von Leo Strauss (Spiegelberg: beingoo Wissenschaft, 2016). Else-
where (s. Pierpaolo Ciccarelli, “Politische Philosophie versus Geschichtsphilosophie. Leo Strauss’s
Interpretation von Husserls Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft”, Jahrbuch Politisches Denken
2016, XXVI [2017]: pp. 136-155 [135-141]) I argued against the interpretation that Strauss belongs
to the so-called “conservative revolution”. An insightful historical-critical analysis of the “legend” of
the influence of Schmitt and Strauss on American conservatism may be found in Andrea Mossa, Il
nemico ritrovato. Carl Schmitt e gli Stati Uniti (Torino: Accademia University Press, 2017), pp. 228
ff.
47
Although I cannot go into detail on this point here, a careful reading of paragraphs 32-33 of
the Anmerkungen reveals that the very opposite is true. In fact, Strauss makes a point there of draw-
ing on expressions taken from military jargon such as “Begleitaktion”, “Vorbereitungsaktion”, “das
Feld freimachen” and “Entscheidungskampf” (cf. Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 237;
English edition p. 121). Far from urging Schmitt to a decision, Strauss shows that the decision to
take action, especially armed action, is precisely the conclusion that one is finally forced to draw af-
ter one has approved “the political by abstracting from the moral” (ibidem, p. 236; English edition
p. 120, transl. slightly altered), i.e. from philosophy.
136 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
What, properly speaking, is the “urgent task” Strauss outlines here? The text
leaves no doubt that it is not a practical-political task. It is rather a hermeneutic
task: to achieve an “adequate understanding” of Hobbes. Indeed, as we have just
noted, it is only “on the basis” of such an “understanding” that it becomes “possi-
ble” to “complete” the “critique of liberalism introduced by Schmitt”, namely, to
perform a “radical” critique of liberalism. In order to properly grasp what Strauss
means here by the expression “radical critique”, it is necessary to first clarify what
he means by “adequate understanding”.
According to what we have just read, for an understanding of Hobbes to be
“adequate”, it has to grasp the “horizon” within which Hobbes “performed the
foundation of liberalism”. Now, it is very important to pay attention to this defini-
tion of Hobbes as the “founder of liberalism” which already occurs in the thir-
teenth paragraph of the Anmerkungen: “Hobbes […] is the author of the ideal of
civilization. By this very fact he is the founder of liberalism”.49 That Hobbes is the
“founder of liberalism”, or the “author” of modern civilization, means that he is at
the beginning of modernity. He is its “initiator” (“author”, from Latin auctor, au-
gere). This implies that, precisely because of his role as “founder” or “initiator” of
liberalism, Hobbes is necessarily referring to “a horizon beyond liberalism”. It is
indeed clear that he would not have been able to initiate liberalism if he had been
living in an already liberal “horizon”. It is precisely this state of ‘being in be-
tween’,50 as it were, that accounts for Strauss’s interest in the English thinker. For
this reason, according to Strauss (in the 1930s), Hobbes provides the only gateway
48
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 238; English edition p. 122, transl. slightly altered.
49
Ibidem, p. 224; English edition p.107. See, however, the later retraction of this thesis in the
Vorwort to the German edition of the book on Hobbes (Strauss, “Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft
in ihrer Genesis”, pp. 9 f.).
50
From this point of view, Strauss’s Hobbes seems to play a similar methodical role as Husserl’s
Galileo in Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie.
Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (1934-37), §§ 8-11.
137 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
51
Strauss, “Die Geistige Lage der Gegenwart”, p. 454; English edition p. 247, transl. slightly al-
tered, italics of Strauss.
52
Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?”, pp. 50 f.: see the passage cited above, footnote 31.
53
“Sie bemerken selbst (48), dass es sich da immer um Rehabilitierungen handelt: man will et-
was Verlorenes wiederholen, etwas Verschüttetes ausgraben. Aber das Verlorene wird wiederge-
sucht, wird desideriert vom Gegenwärtig-Wirklichen her ― es wird also das von Hegel, allgemein
von der modernen Philosophie Negierte, so wie es in dieser Negation verstanden worden ist, bejaht:
die ursprüngliche Dimension wird gar nicht erreicht. Wenn die Philosophie des 19. Jhts. durch und
durch polemisch und also unradikal ist, so kann man in Orientierung an der Philosophie des 19.
Jhts. gar nicht zur radikalen Frage gelangen”: Leo Strauss, Karl Löwith, “Korrespondenz Leo
Strauss – Karl Löwith” (1932-1971), in Strauss, Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige
Schriften – Briefe, pp. 607-697 (613), italics of Strauss. The number in brackets refers to a page of
the first edition of Karl Löwith, “Kierkegaard und Nietzsche” (1933), now in Karl Löwith, Nietz-
sche, Sämtliche Schriften VI (Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchandlung, 1987), pp. 53-74.
138 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
The lexical proximity of this letter to the Anmerkungen is evident. The verb
bejahen and the adjectives radikal and unradikal signal that the aporia envisaged
here is the same as the one that the third section is concerned with. As a matter of
fact, these critical remarks about post-Hegelian philosophy (and ultimately about
Löwith himself) aptly summarize the theoretical core of the critique directed at
Schmitt in the Anmerkungen: they let us better understand why Strauss states that
Schmitt’s critique against liberalism is “performed within the horizon of liberal-
ism” and, to make it truly “radical”, an “adequate understanding” of Hobbes is re-
quired.
Let us restate the critique directed at Schmitt with the words used in this letter:
Schmitt says ‘yes’ (bejaht) to what the auctor of modern philosophy – Hobbes –
had said ‘no’, but he understands what he approves – i.e. the status naturalis – in
the same way in which Hobbes had understood it in his denial. This is precisely
what is meant by Strauss’s statement that Schmitt’s “critique of liberalism is per-
formed in the horizon [Horizont] of liberalism”. It means, namely, that Schmitt
succeeds in grasping the status naturalis only against the “background” provided
by Hobbes’s denial of the status naturalis. Therefore, in order to “complete” the
critique of liberalism which Schmitt has only “introduced”, it is necessary to go
back to that ‘original denial’. It is necessary to go back, more precisely, not only to
what Hobbes denied, but rather to the motive why Hobbes denied what he de-
nied.
The lack of radicality which Strauss finds in Schmitt (and, in his coeval letter to
Löwith, in the post-Hegelian philosophy) is nothing more than the lack of a philo-
sophical inquiry into the motives for what Schmitt (and post-Hegelian philosophy)
is polemically opposed to. This is the way in which Strauss’s remark in the 1932
letter on the lack of radicality undermining the polemical attitude must be under-
stood. The polemical attitude is intrinsically “non-radical” (unradikal) – and there-
fore not sufficiently philosophical – because, being unable to account for the op-
posite position of the opponent, it does not succeed in really freeing itself from it.
The remark about the “polemical attitude” contained in the letter to Löwith al-
so echoes the Anmerkungen. In fact, in the second-to-last paragraph of the An-
merkungen, Strauss writes (referring to Virgil’s words “magno ab integro saeclo-
rum nascitur ordo” partially quoted at the end of the lecture on the Age of Neu-
tralizations and Depoliticizations):
[A]n integral knowledge [integres Wissen] is never, unless by accident, polemical;
and an integral knowledge cannot be gained “from concrete political existence,”
from the situation of the age, but only by means of a backwards movement [Rück-
gang] to the origin [Ursprung], to “pure, uncorrupted nature” (80; 94).54
54
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 238; English edition p. 122, transl. slightly altered.
139 The “Concept of the Political” in Its Genesis. The Unpolitical Schmitt of Leo Strauss
55
Cf. Ibidem, p. 236; English edition p. 120, transl. slightly altered: “[Schmitt’s] approval of the
political as such proves to be a liberalism with the opposite polarity”.
56
Strauss, “Die Geistige Lage der Gegenwart”, p. 454; English edition p. 247, italics of Strauss.
140 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
so to speak, on every page of every writing of the Enlightenment. One must free
oneself from prejudices, and this freeing is accomplished by retreating to a plane, or
even point, from which one can finally progress free of prejudice once and for all.57
jective “radical” occurring in the last paragraph of the Anmerkungen has been
very likely borrowed from Husserl. To recognize this, we need only read the sec-
ond-to-last page of a famous essay by Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissen-
schaft, to which Strauss makes a point to dedicate one of his last essays.61 I am re-
ferring to the point where Husserl, after having given an “Empedoclean” defini-
tion of philosophy (“science of true beginnings, of origins, of the roots of all
things” [“Wissenschaft von den wahren Anfängen, von den Ursprüngen, von den
ριζωματα παντων”]), expresses the same need for a methodical radicality urged by
Strauss: “the science concerned with the radical must be radical itself in its proce-
dure […]” (“Die Wissenschaft vom Radikalen muß auch in ihrem Verfahren radi-
kal sein […]”).62 In the following lines, Husserl warns “never to abandon” the atti-
tude that consists in the “radical absence of prejudice” (radikale
Vorurteilslosigkeit).
However, let us turn our attention to what kind of “prejudice”, according to
Husserl, is incompatible with the “radical absence of prejudice”. The prejudice
Husserl speaks about here consists in mistaking the “things” (Sachen) that philos-
ophy is concerned with ― hence the “origins”, the ριζωματα παντων, “the radical”
― for mere “empirical facts” (empirische Tatsachen). Thus, the prejudice that is
contrary to Husserl’s radikale Vorurteilslosigkeit is not just any prejudice. It is ra-
ther a very specific and, actually, universally prevalent attitude, that is to say, “to
stand like a blind man before ideas, so many of which are actually absolutely given
in immediate vision” (“sich gegenüber den Ideen blind [zu] stellen, die doch in so
großem Umfang in unmittelbarer Anschauung absolut gegeben sind”).63 This sort
of ‘Platonism of the roots’ by Husserl ― namely, his admonishment to see the lat-
61
Cf. Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy” and Ciccarelli, Leo
Strauss tra Husserl e Heidegger. Filosofia pratica e fenomenologia, pp. 13-127.
62
Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft” (1911), in Edmund Husserl,
Aufsätze und Vorträge (1911-1921), Hua XXV (Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Kluwer, 1987), pp.
3-62 (61); “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Q. Lauer (ed.), Phenomenology and the Crisis of
Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 71-147 (146) italics added, transl. slightly altered.
Regarding the fact that Husserl prefers “the (Empedoclean) term ῥιζώματα πάντων, rather than
the traditional ἀρχή”, the following comment by Strauss’s close friend Jacob Klein should be con-
sidered, which, although it was published after the Anmerkungen, seems to have had some influ-
ence on Strauss’s ‘radical’ hermeneutic method: a “‘root’ is something out of which things grow until
they reach their perfect shape. The ἀρχή of a thing ― at least in the traditional ‘classical’ sense of
the term ― is more directly related to that perfect shape, and somehow indirectly to the actual be-
ginning of the growth. The ‘radical’ aspect of phenomenology is more important to Husserl than its
perfection. This is the attitude of a true historian. But it is obvious that the phenomenological ap-
proach to the true beginnings requires a quite special kind of history. Its name is ‘intentional histo-
ry’” (Jacob Klein, “Phenomenology and History of Science”, in M. Farber [ed.], Philosophical Es-
says in Memory of Edmund Husserl [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940] pp. 143-163
[147]).
63
Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft”, p. 61; English edition p. 146, italics added,
transl. slightly altered.
142 PIERPAOLO CICCARELLI
ter as “ideas” and to not reduce them to “empirical facts” ― left visible traces on
Strauss’s ‘radical’ hermeneutic method, and ― a topic that warrants closer study64
― on his own Platonism. And it is precisely such a ‘Platonism of the roots’ that
explains the “principal intention” guiding Strauss’s paradoxical portrayal of
Schmitt as an ‘unpolitical’ author.
And so it is clear what Strauss means by “radical critique of liberalism” in the
last paragraph of the Anmerkungen. In using this expression, Strauss is far from
suggesting turning the “weapons of critique” into the “critique of weapons”; or,
leaving metaphors aside, he has no thought of fomenting the overthrow of liberal
institutions. Rather, he is merely referring to the task of understanding the origin
of modernity unencumbered by modern prejudices. It was just this task that
Strauss was diligently awaiting when he published the Anmerkungen: to subject
Hobbes’s texts to the same phenomenological investigation to which he subjected
Schmitt’s Begriff des Politischen, in order to uncover their “moral basis” or “gene-
sis”. Significantly, the book he was writing in those years would be entitled, in
German: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis (in English: The Polit-
ical Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis).
What “can be learned from Schmitt”65 (if, of course, we read him in the way
Strauss reads him) is that “political philosophy”, unlike mere “political thought”,66
stands or falls on an “unpolitical”, “moral” Rechtsgrund, i.e., according to the
equivalence previously highlighted (compare above § 3), on the philosophic way
of life, Namely, it stands or falls on the question of justice, which is insidious be-
cause it is in itself ‘polemogenic’. So, what appeared to Strauss in 1932 as an “ur-
gent task” is ultimately the task to which he would later dedicate his entire scholar-
ly career: to “reactivate“, as it were, Platonic political philosophy, i.e. to acquire a
new awareness of political philosophy, or ― more precisely ― the same awareness
Plato had of this insidiousness of philosophy.
64
A working hypothesis in this direction might be that the ‘Platonism of the roots’ outlined by
Husserl at the end of Philosophy as Rigorous Science and then developed with genetic phenome-
nology represents for Strauss the alternative to what he calls “radical historicism” (e.g. in Strauss,
Natural Right and History, pp. 22 ff.; but cf. also, although the expression “radical historicism” does
not appear in it, Strauss, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy”, pp. 30-34).
“Radical historicism”, if my hypothesis is correct, should then be understood as “historicism of the
roots” and as a ‘counter-concept’, as it were, to Husserl’s ‘Platonism of the roots’.
65
Strauss, “Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt”, p. 238; English edition p. 122.
66
On the distinction between “political thought” (“the reflection on, or exposition of, political
ideas”, i.e. on “politically significant ‘phantasms, notions, species, or whatever it is about which the
mind can be employed in thinking’ concerning the political fundamentals”) and “political philoso-
phy” (“the conscious, coherent and relentless effort to replace opinions about the political funda-
mentals by knowledge regarding them”), cf. Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?”, pp. 12 ff. Cf.
also Leo Strauss, “What Can We Learn from Political Theory?” (1942), in J.A. Colen, Svetozar
Minkov (eds.), Toward Natural Right and History. Lectures and Essays by Leo Strauss, 1937-1946
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018), pp. 33-51 (34).
143 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 143-167
ISSN: 1825-5167
IEVA MOTUZAITE
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
ieva.motuzaite@icloud.com
ABSTRACT
This contribution presents an attempt to get to the roots of a phenomenon that the author
denotes as the ambiguity of the attribution "political". Current political science debates dealing
with the term "the political" mostly revolve around the delimitation of the political against either
the state or the society. They seem therefore not to capture two essential connotations attached
to describing something as political - two connotations which are, as the author argues,
pervading all theoretical as well as commonplace reflections. These systematic meanings or
suggestions are recognisable independently from what kind of definition of the political is being
put forward. Therefore, an inquiry dealing with, primarily, the way the attribution "political" is
being applied and not with the explicit definitions themselves is what is undertaken in this
article. The author uses the term "ambiguity" to manifest the fact that it is not instantaneously
clear which of the two meanings is implied when the word "political" is used - moreover, these
two stand in a tense relation to each other. To denominate this tension, the author suggests the
designation "polemical-normative". She illustrates her proposition by analysing a selection of
texts of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss. The inquiry leads to two main insights. First, that the
common denominator "polemical-normative" is of quite a limited explanatory value. It is so
because both parts of it carry a set of attributes within them which, on their own, describe the
way Schmitt and Strauss used the word "political" more precisely than the common
denominator itself. Nevertheless, the idea of a structural ambiguity inherent to the ways we
denote something as political does not lose its ground. Second, a fundamental connection of
theoretical nature between the two meanings comes to sight. This suggests that we, when
thinking about the political, cannot avoid the contradiction inherent to this term - a
contradiction which revokes itself partly, but never completely.
KEYWORDS
Political, polemical, normative, political philosophy, Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss.
,,Politisch“ ist eine ebenso gängige wie problematische Zuschreibung – das gilt
sowohl für das alltägliche Geschäft des privaten oder öffentlichen Politik-
144 IEVA MOTUZAITE
1 Dass die Problematik des Wortgebrauches dem Alltag wie der Theorie gemein ist, spricht
dafür, dass man in den theoretischen Begriffserläuterungen den allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch ernst
nimmt (vgl. 357 in Leo Strauss: ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, in: The Journal of Politics 19(3),
1957, S. 343-368 und 159 in Max Weber: Politik als Beruf, hg. v. Wolfgang J. Mommsen u.
Wolfgang Schluchter in Zusammenarbeit mit Birgitt Morgenbrod, Bd. 17. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr
(Paul Siebeck) 1992 [Original 1919 verfasst]). Dieser legt den Wörtern die ,,Last der
herkömmlichen Bedeutung[en]“ auf (Dolf Sternberger: ,,Das Wort ,Politik‘ und der Begriff des
Politischen“, in: Wolfgang Seibel, Monika Medick-Krakau, Herfried Münkler, Michael Th. Greven
(Hg.): Demokratische Politik – Analyse und Theorie. Politikwissenschaft in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag 1997, S. 97-105, hier 98). So plädierte
Sternberger dafür, dass sich die Begriffsbildung nicht ,,allzu weit“ von diesen herkömmlichen
Bedeutungen entfernt, dass sie sich mit ihnen ,,ins Benehmen“ setzt, ,,in ein möglichst günstiges
schiedliches Verhältnis“ (ebd., 99). Im Idealfall soll der Begriff gar ,,mit dem zugehörigen Wort
und seiner Bedeutung verschmelzen, und zwar für alle Zeit, er soll Geltung mitbringen oder
Gültigkeit gewinnen“ (ebd., 99). Andererseits darf sich die Wissenschaft mit den geläufigen
Bedeutungen der Wörter, in diesem Fall der Wörter ,,politisch“, ,,Politik“ nicht zufrieden geben:
zum einen weil sich ,,aus der Beobachtung der Erscheinungen, die ,politisch‘ heißen, [...] nicht
herleiten läßt“ (ebd., 97), ,,was es denn sei, das sie zu politischen Erscheinungen mache“ (Dolf
Sternberger: ,,Begriff des Politischen. Mit drei Glossen“, in: Ders.: Staatsfreundschaft. Frankfurt am
Main: Insel Verlag 1980, S. 295-320, hier 301f.; vgl. mit Hannah Arendt: Vita activa oder Vom
tätigen Leben. 10. Aufl. München/Zürich: Piper 2011 [engl. Orig.: The Human Condition,
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958], 19, über das Wesen des Menschen: ,,[S]elbst wenn es
einem gelingen sollte, ein peinlich genaues Verzeichnis aller menschlichen Möglichkeiten, wie sie
uns heute vorliegen, anzufertigen, so wären damit die wesentlichen Charaktere menschlicher
Existenz keineswegs erschöpft“), zum anderen, weil dem Menschen ,,die Macht und Vollmacht zur
Definition“ inhärent ist (Sternberger, ,,Das Wort ,Politik‘ und der Begriff des Politischen“, 97).
2 Amitai Etzioni: ,,What is political?“, in: Armin Nassehi, Markus Schroer (Hg.): Der Begriff
des Politischen. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 2003, S. 89-99, hier 89.
3 Um einige einschlägige Beispiele zu erwähnen: Einerseits identifizierte Sternberger das
Politische als Friedensnorm (= normativer Anspruch; siehe ,,Begriff des Politischen. Mit drei
Glossen“, 304f., auch ,,Das Wort ,Politik‘ und der Begriff des Politischen“, 103), andererseits
145 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
Wenn man davon ausgeht, dass mit dem Wort ,,politisch“ etwas bezeichnet
wird, das einen bestimmten Funktionsbereich4 oder ein institutionelles Gefüge
tangiert − sprich, ,,Organe und Verfahren der kollektiv verbindlichen
Entscheidungsfindung“5 − dann wird damit die Relevanz dieses etwas für die
Politik, sein Zusammenhang mit ihr gedacht (wie etwa: ,,ein politisches Problem“,
,,eine politische Partei“). Somit verlagert sich die Schwierigkeit, die
Wortverwendung in ihrem Sinn zu durchdringen, bloß auf den Begriff ,,Politik“6.
sprach er von Rahmenbedingungen, in denen dieser Friede verwirklicht werden könnte (= Rahmen
des Machbaren; siehe ,,Begriff des Politischen. Mit drei Glossen“, 308, vgl. mit bspw. 51f. in Carl
Schmitt: Der Begriff des Politischen. Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien. 3.
Aufl. der Ausg. von 1963. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1991). Diese Unterscheidung fällt mit einer
zusammen, die Sternberger als Unterscheidung zwischen der intentionalen und institutionellen
Bedeutung von ,,politisch“ bezeichnet hat (,,Das Wort ,Politik‘ und der Begriff des Politischen“,
105) und die in einer Synthese aufzuheben er in Aussicht stellte (ebd., 103). Webers doppeltes
Verständnis von dem Politischen äußert sich anhand seines Konzeptes der Macht. Ihre Verbindung
zur Politik scheint in dem Vortrag Politik als Beruf erstmal neutral aufgefasst zu sein: ,,[V]om
Standpunkt der soziologischen Betrachtung aus“ (157) wird Politik urteillos als ,,Streben nach
Machtanteil oder nach Beeinflussung der Machtverteilung“ definiert (ebd., 159). Webers evaluative
Zurückhaltung ist allerdings nur der erste Eindruck: Es zeigt sich, dass er sehr wohl eine normative
und nicht nur eine neutrale, deskriptive Auffassung von Macht innehatte. Denn er unterschied
zwischen Macht im Dienst einer Sache, d.h. nicht zum Zweck einer ,,rein persönliche[n]
Selbstberauschung“ (ebd., 228) und bloßer Macht, aus der heraus ein Politiker ,,ins Leere und
Sinnlose“ wirkt (ebd., 229). Die an die klassische angelehnte Auffassung des Politischen von Arendt
ist ein Plädoyer für das Politische als die einzige gemeinsame Wirklichkeit (Vita activa, 250f., siehe
auch 71-73) und als Chance zur Enthüllung der Person in ihrer Einzigartigkeit (ebd., 214, siehe
auch 217, 263, vgl. mit 73). Die Bezogenheit aller Politik, alles politischen Handelns auf die
Pluralität der menschlichen Welt (ebd., 17) und dadurch das Politische selbst sah Arendt durch
zwei moderne Tendenzen bedroht: die des Konformismus (ebd., 10) und die der Privatisierung
(ebd., 72f.). Das Verschwinden des Politischen in dem ursprünglichen, idealistischen Sinne, das in
einer untrennbaren Verbindung mit dem Ideal eines guten Lebens gedacht (ebd., 47, vgl. mit 73)
und in dem Bestreben um Vortrefflichkeit (ebd., 53, 65, 243), um Überzeitlichkeit (ebd., 32, 69,
247, 263), um Außerordentliches, das das gemeinhin Übliche durchbricht (ebd., 260f.) gelebt
wurde, bezeichnete Arendt als ,,Funktionalisierung des Politischen“ (ebd., 43). Als ein bloßer
,,Überbau sozialer Interessen“ (ebd., 43) wurde die politische Lebensweise nicht mehr als eine
ausgezeichnete, sondern als eine notwendige aufgefasst (ebd. 23f., siehe auch 250). Damit einher
ging die Reduktion des Ideals des Miteinander-Redens auf ein bloßes ,,Mittel des Überredens“
(ebd., 36).
4 Für eine funktionelle Definition davon, was politisch ist, siehe Etzioni, ,,What is political?“,
89. Vgl. 146 in Armin Nassehi: ,,Der Begriff des Politischen und die doppelte Normativität der
,soziologischen’ Moderne“, in: Armin Nassehi, Markus Schroer (Hg.): Der Begriff des Politischen.
Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 2003, S. 133-169.
5 Christian Lahusen: ,,Die Kontraktualisierung des Politischen“, in: Armin Nassehi, Markus
Schroer (Hg.): Der Begriff des Politischen. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 2003, S. 101-
116, hier 102.
6 Es ist, wie Vollrath anmerkte, ,,gewöhnlich“, dass die Verwendung der Wörter ,,politisch“,
,,das Politische“ von dem herrschenden Politikverständnis abhängt. Andererseits führte der Autor
ein dagegen sprechendes Beispiel des Auseinanderklaffens in der Verwendung von ,,dem
Politischen“ und ,,der Politik“ ein, wie man es in Deutschland Mitte des 17. Jh. beobachten konnte
146 IEVA MOTUZAITE
In der politischen Theorie begegnet man zwei Grenzziehungen, durch die das
Politische erfasst wird. Zum einen wird es in Gegensatz zum Sozialen gestellt;
dementsprechend, die Sphäre des Staates, mit der das Politische somit implizit
gleichgesetzt wird, gegenüber der Sphäre der Gesellschaft7. Es gilt, so Nassehi, ,,als
ausgemacht, die Differenzierung von Politik und Gesellschaft bzw. Politik und
anderen gesellschaftlichen Funktionsbereichen anzuerkennen“8. Diese
Differenzierung ist allerdings, wie er erkannte, eine von Grund auf heikle, eine
,,Antinomie“9, weil zugleich ,,vom Politischen in Form des Staatlichen erwartet
wird, die Gesellschaft in ihrer Gesamtheit zu repräsentieren“10. So findet sich das
Politische einerseits als ,,ausdifferenzierter Teil“ des Ganzen, als ,,ein
Funktionssystem unter anderen“, andererseits steht es nicht nur für ein Teil des
Ganzen, sondern für das Ganze, ,,zumindest für das sichtbare Ganze einer
Gesellschaft“ (Hervorhebung im Original)11.
Zum zweiten, wie es z.B. auch Schmitts Verständnis von dem Politischen
entspricht, wird das Politische von dem Staatlichen abgegrenzt12. In neueren
Debatten ist von der ,,Rückbindung einer staatszentrierten Theorie des
Politischen an die ,Gesellschaft‘ “ die Rede13. Dies steht vor dem Hintergrund des
Missverständnisses davon, in welchem Verhältnis das Politische und das Soziale
(Ernst Vollrath: ,,Politisch, das Politische“, in: Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, Gottfried Gabriel
(Hg.): Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Volltext-CD-ROM des Gesamtwerks. 2010. S.
1072-1075, hier 1074).
7 So Etzioni, der in seinem Artikel ,,What is political?“ die These in den Vordergrund rückt,
dass das Politische nicht das Soziale ist (89).
8 Nassehi, ,,Der Begriff des Politischen“, 146.
9 Ebd., 139.
10 Ebd., 137.
11 Ebd.; zur Kritik der Auffassung des Politischen als ausdifferenzierter Teil des Ganzen siehe
Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 345.
12 Siehe Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 21f. für seine Kritik an der Gleichsetzung von
dem Politischen mit dem Staatlichen. Gleichzeitig war für Schmitt das Politische von dem
Gesellschaftlichen zu trennen (siehe bspw. ebd., 45, 48; für seine Kritik an der modernen Erosion
dieser Differenzierung, die vonseiten der humanitären Ethik und der ökonomisch-technologischen
Interessen beschleunigt wird, siehe ebd., 71). Dem Politischen wird bei Schmitt somit die
Autonomie gegenüber der Gesellschaft und dem Staat eingefordert.
13 Nassehi, ,,Der Begriff des Politischen“, 137. Lahusen plädierte für die Berücksichtigung der
politischen Strukturen und Dynamiken ,,innerhalb wie auch jenseits des Staates“, da das Politische
ein ,,gesamtgesellschaftliches Faktum“ sei − auch wenn er sich der Schwierigkeiten bewusst war, die
dem Versuch anhaften, das Politische jenseits des Staates zu verorten (,,Die Kontraktualisierung des
Politischen“, 102. Auf S. 101f. desselben Werkes findet sich eine kritische Betrachtung der
gängigen Thesen über entweder den Rückzug oder die Ausweitung des Politischen). Für ein
anderes Beispiel davon, wie die Betrachtung des Politischen auch jenseits des Staates aussehen
kann, siehe Michael Th. Greven, der die These von einer neuen Art der Gesellschaft als eines ,,von
Politik erst anzustrebenden und zu realisierenden Ergebnis[ses]“ vertrat (Die politische
Gesellschaft. Kontingenz und Dezision als Probleme des Regierens und der Demokratie. Opladen:
Leske + Budrich 1999, 11).
147 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
In diesem Artikel möchte ich dem Eindruck auf den Grund gehen, dass die
Bezeichnung ,,politisch“ zusätzlich zu der in den zeitgenössischen
politikwissenschaftlichen Diskursen thematisierten doppelten Abgrenzbarkeit eine
andersartige Doppeldeutigkeit aufweist. Dass die Grenzziehungen zwischen dem
Politischen, Staatlichen und Gesellschaftlichen problemenbehaftet sind, mag ein
Indiz für diese Doppeldeutigkeit sein (wie in dem scheinbaren Paradox vom
Politischen als Teil des Ganzen, das das Ganze zu repräsentieren hat), die sie
nicht zum Ausdruck zu bringen vermögen. Vielmehr verfehlen sie sie. Eine
Doppeldeutigkeit, deren zwei Seiten in sich jeweils eher facettenreich als
homogen sind und die unabhängig davon besteht, ob der Autor explizit einen
eindeutigen Begriff des Politischen festzulegen beansprucht. Einerseits wird das
Wort ,,politisch“ dafür eingesetzt, um auf einen polemischen, kontingenten
Sachverhalt zu verweisen; andererseits wird mit ,,politisch“ ein gewisser Grad an
dem für die Menschen Wichtigen, Essenziellen bezeichnet, was in den
normativen Fragebereich des richtigen und guten Lebens und der richtigen und
guten Ordnung überführt.
Diese Doppeldeutigkeit im Denken und Sprechen16, deren Pole ich als
polemisch und als normativ denominieren möchte17 und die jenseits der
,,parteilich“, ,,unsachlich“ (,,Zu Carl Schmitts Begriffsbildung − Das Politische und der Nomos“, in:
Helmut Quaritsch (Hg.): Complexio Oppositorum. Über Carl Schmitt. Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot 1988, S. 537-556, hier 543). Diese Unterscheidung überdeckt sich nur unter der
Voraussetzung mit meiner, dass das normative Denken mit demjenigen über das Gemeinsame
gleichgesetzt wird. Da eine solche Annahme in dem von Meier vorgeschlagenen Bedeutungspaar
,,assoziativ-disjunktiv“ nicht unmittelbar widerspiegelt wird, bleibe ich dabei, die besagte
Doppeldeutigkeit als ,,polemisch-normativ“ zu artikulieren. ,,Assoziativ-disjunktiv“ gibt, an sich
genommen, keinen Aufschluss darüber, um welche Art von Assoziation es dabei geht; es bringt
nicht zum Ausdruck, dass über das Gemeinsame auf eine bestimmte Weise – eine, wie ich
behaupten möchte, normative und auf das eventuell Verbindliche ausgerichtete – gedacht wird.
149 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
18 In diesem Artikel beziehe ich mich auf die Version des Textes aus dem Jahr 1932, weil a) sie
die meist verbreitete ist (2015 ist bei Duncker & Humblot die 9. Auflage des Werkes in dieser
Fassung erschienen); b) Schmitt selbst diese Version für die Neuauflage in 1963 (mit einem
Vorwort und drei Corollarien versehen) gewählt hat. 2018 ist von Marco Walter eine synoptische
Darstellung aller drei Textfassungen herausgegeben worden – mit begleitenden Anmerkungen und
einem Kommentar (siehe Carl Schmitt: Der Begriff des Politischen. Synoptische Darstellung der
Texte, im Auftrag der Carl-Schmitt-Gesellschaft hg. v. Marco Walter. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot).
19 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 26.
20 Ebd.
21 Ebd.
22 Ebd.
150 IEVA MOTUZAITE
Urteilskraft, auch alles Denken und Handeln davon abhängt, ob man sich
innerhalb eines Gegensatzes zu positionieren vermag. Jedes Sachgebiet, sowie das
Politische, sei in sich ein polarisch-polemisches Spannungsfeld.
Das Spannungsfeld des Politischen soll nicht, so Schmitt, bloß darüber erfasst
werden, dass es im Gegensatz zu einem anderen Spannungsfeld steht. Schmitt
äußerte sich also zum zweiten über den diskursiven Kontext, vor dem er seine
Begriffsbestimmung des Politischen offenbarte23. Seine Kritik daran, dass das
Wort ,,Politik“ ,,nur negativ als Gegensatz gegen verschiedene andere Begriffe
gebraucht“ wird24, ist eindeutiges Plädoyer für die Selbstständigkeit des Politischen
als das, was letztlich alle Lebensbereiche durchdringt und den Menschen
existenziell, d.h. ganz in Anspruch nimmt.
Zum dritten richtet sich sein Begriff des Politischen gegen die seiner Sicht nach
verkürzte Identifizierung des Politischen mit dem Staatlichen (so auch sein
Vorwurf an Weber25). Dieser Begriff ist, wie man auch am letzten Punkt erkennen
konnte, eine Reaktion, eine Antwort, eine, wenn man will, Auflehnung gegen die
allgemeine und ,,offenbar“ ,,unbefriedigende“ Praxis der Begriffsverwendung26.
Das bedeutet: Schmitts Begriffsbestimmung ist selbst in ein Spannungsfeld
hineingeboren worden und es muss eine Absicht des Autors gegeben haben, die
diesen diskursiven Akt angeleitet hat.
An diesen drei Aspekten zeichnen sich in der Tat die Konturen der
Doppeldeutigkeit davon, wie Schmitt die Zuschreibung ,,politisch“ verwendete.
Zunächst möchte ich diejenigen Aussagen Schmitts zusammenfassen, die ich dem
,,polemischen Verwendungsstrang“ zuordne. Dazu gehören, eindeutig, die Bezüge
zu der Freund-Feind-Unterscheidung, wie etwa: ,,Entfällt diese Unterscheidung,
so entfällt das politische Leben überhaupt“27. Auch die Ablehnung der
generalisierenden, universellen Normen und der dadurch gerechtfertigten
Strukturen28. Wenn bei Schmitt von ,,politisch“ die Rede ist, setzt es voraus, dass
das, was so bezeichnet wird, eine Koexistenz, ein Verhältnis umfasst oder selbst in
einem Verhältnis steht. Dieses Verhältnis ist ein solches, das zu einer konkreten
Entscheidung zwingt und das einen besonders intensiven Charakter hat (die
Intensivität wird daran gemessen, wie nah sie dem ist, das Verhältnis in ein
23 Ebd.
24 Ebd., 20.
25 Ebd., 21.
26 Ebd.
27 Ebd., 52.
28 Siehe ebd., 27, 58.
151 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
Diese Falle hat Strauss in seinem Kommentar zum Werk von Schmitt, den er
April-Mai 1932 verfasst hat38, klar erkannt. Auch hat er ,,das Reinfallen“ richtig
interpretiert: Es ging dabei nicht nur um die unbewusste Verinnerlichung liberaler
Rhetorik seitens Schmitts, sondern auch darum, was die zweite Bedeutung der
Zuschreibung ,,politisch“ ausmacht. Aus dieser Bedeutung heraus ist sowohl die
Aussage Schmitts zu erklären, dass sich ,,[v]om konsequenten bürgerlichen
Liberalismus aus […] eben keine politische Theorie gewinnen“ lässt39, als auch
mehrere andere Fälle, in denen Schmitt das Wort ,,politisch“ anders als in den
schon vorgeführten Beispielen verwendete.
Für seine ,,Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen“ wählte
Strauss eine geschickte Interpretations- und Kritikstrategie, die an dem
Selbstverständnis von Schmitt ansetzte. Für unsere Überlegungen ist von
Bedeutung, dass Strauss zunächst zu akzeptieren schien, wie Schmitt ,,politisch“
verstand und einsetzte. Vorläufig übernahm er − explizit − diese Zuschreibung mit
ihren Implikationen, um Schmitt vor Augen zu führen, dass dieser, von seinem
Verständnis des Politischen ausgehend, sich bei der Deutung Hobbes’ geirrt
hatte40. Wohlgemerkt vorläufig, denn im nächsten Schritt kündigte er zwei
gegenläufige Tendenzen davon an, was ,,politisch“ bei Schmitt damit auf sich hat.
Im Vordergrund stehe bei Schmitt diejenige Bedeutung von ,,politisch“, die auf
die dem Menschen inhärente Gefährlichkeit verweist41. ,,Politisch“ stehe für eine
potenzielle existenzielle Gefahr und somit sei die Attribuierung ,,politisch“ eine
Aussage über die Existenz, nicht über die Norm42. Sich die Frage stellend, was
unter dieser Bedingung die Schmitt’sche Bejahung des Politischen zu bedeuten
hat, führt Strauss diese Bedeutung von ,,politisch“ ad absurdum, denn für ihn
37 Ebd.
38 Siehe 193 in Heinrich Meier: ,,Nachwort zur dritten Auflage“, in: Ders.: Carl Schmitt, Leo
Strauss und ,,Der Begriff des Politischen“. Zu einem Dialog unter Abwesenden. 3. Aufl.
Stuttgart/Weimar: J. B. Metzler 2013, S. 191-198 [1. Aufl. 1988].
39 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 68.
40 Strauss, ,,Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt“, 225.
41 Ebd., 228.
42 Ebd., 229.
153 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
steht fest, dass sie ,,wohl nicht das letzte […], gewiß nicht das tiefste Wort [ist], das
Schmitt zu sagen hat. [...] [Sie] verdeckt eine ganz anders auslaufende Überlegung,
die nicht im Einklang mit ihm gebracht werden kann“43. Nicht nur sind die beiden
nicht im Einklang, sondern sie führen auf Positionen zurück, die ,,keine
Vermittlung und keine Neutralität zulassen“44.
Strauss belässt es nicht bei absurdum, sondern zieht diese zweite ,,ganz anders
auslaufende Überlegung“ ins Licht, um seine Argumentation zu vervollständigen.
Die zweite Bedeutung richtet sich gegen die erste, weil sie eine normative, eine
moralische ist − also, in Anbetracht der ersten Bedeutung von ,,politisch“,
unpolitisch45. Wenn Schmitt das Politische nicht (nur) in dem ersten Sinne
bejahte, was bejahte er dann (vor allem und wahrlich)? Um dies offenzulegen, gibt
Strauss die Position Schmitts, so wie sie Dem Begriff des Politischen zu
entnehmen ist, nicht nur wieder, sondern er schreibt sie so klar auf, wie Schmitt es
selbst nicht getan hat und, Strauss zufolge, hätte tun sollen. Wenn Strauss etwa
sagt, ,,Die Position des Politischen hat zur Folge die unpolemische Beschreibung
des Politischen“46 (Hervorhebung im Original), dann widersetzt er sich damit
Schmitts nachdrücklicher Bekundung, dass ,,der polemische Charakter […] vor
allem auch den Sprachgebrauch des Wortes ,politisch‘ selbst [beherrscht, I.M.]“47.
Da sich eine solche unpolemische Beschreibung bei Schmitt explizit nicht findet,
muss mit ,,zur Folge haben“ bei Strauss eher ,,zur Folge haben müssen“ gemeint
gewesen sein.
Diese Ermahnung an Schmitt, die Herausforderung an ihn wird am Ende der
,,Anmerkungen“ noch verstärkt: Es ist wieder die Rede davon, dass Schmitt
,,Hobbes’ polemischem Begriff des Naturstandes seinen unpolemischen Begriff
des Naturstandes entgegensetzt“48. Da Strauss zuvor demonstriert hat, dass eine
Bejahung des Politischen keineswegs einen unpolemischen Begriff des Politischen
ergibt, sondern dass eine Bejahung des Politischen als solches genau so ein
polemischer Akt ist, wie eine Verneinung des Politischen, greift er dazu, was die
43 Ebd., 228.
44 Ebd., 237.
45 Ebd., 229. Zusätzlich dazu, dass Schmitt, wie schon erläutert, ein von der Moral
unabhängiges Kriterium des Politischen behauptete (Der Begriff des Politischen, 26) und sich die
Urteile darüber, wie die ,,Tatsache“ des Politischen zu bewerten ist, verbot, unterstrich er die
Unabhängigkeit der Kategorien des Freundes und Feindes von den moralischen und normativen
Konnotationen (ebd., 28) und lehnte jegliche rationalisierende und idealisierende Rechtfertigung
des Krieges ab (ebd., 49f.).
46 Strauss, ,,Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt“, 226.
47 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 31f. Dieses Prinzip, so Strauss, ist ,,selbst ganz und gar
an liberale Voraussetzungen gebunden“, deswegen vollzieht sich Schmitts Kritik des Liberalismus
,,im Horizont des Liberalismus“ − nicht über diesen Horizont hinaus (,,Die Anmerkungen zu Carl
Schmitt“, 238).
48 Ebd.
154 IEVA MOTUZAITE
Spuren von Schmitts Gesinnung, von seinem ,,letzten“ Wort trägt49. Diese Spuren
sind die Rede Schmitts von der ,,Ordnung der menschlichen Dinge“, vom
,,integren Wissen“ (das Wort ,,integer“ hat Strauss beim Zitieren in Kursivschrift
hervorgehoben, was im Original nicht der Fall gewesen ist), von der
,,unversehrten, nicht korrupten Natur“50. Diese Spuren finden sich allerdings nicht
im Text von Dem Begriff des Politischen, sondern in ,,Das Zeitalter der
Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen“ − dem Text, den Schmitt 1929 als
Vortrag gehalten hat51 und den er der 1932-Ausgabe von Dem Begriff des
Politischen hinzugefügt hat.
Indem er diese Formulierungen Schmitts hervorstellte, schälte Strauss Schmitts
,,eigentlichen“ Anspruch und ,,eigentlichen“ Gedanken aus dem im Vordergrund
stehenden existenzialistischen Dezisionismus heraus, in dem dessen Denken so
sehr verhaftet war, dass dieses ,,Eigentliche“ in einer anderen Schrift gesucht
werden musste. Vielmehr als eine Klarmachung war es vonseiten Strauss’ ein Akt
der Kritik und Herausforderung. Die Intention, die eine zweite Bedeutung von
,,politisch“ bei Schmitt ergab, brachte Strauss in einer geradezu entschleiernden
Weise auf den Punkt − als eine Behauptung über Schmitts Begriff des
Politischen, die etwa nicht zu verkennen sei: ,,Wenn daher gesagt wird, das
Politische sei ein Grundcharakter des menschlichen Lebens, m.a.W., der Mensch
höre auf, Mensch zu sein, indem er aufhört, politisch zu sein, so ist damit auch
und gerade gesagt: der Mensch hört auf, menschlich (human) zu sein, wenn er
aufhört, politisch zu sein“52.
Nun findet sich in Dem Begriff des Politischen von ,,Grundcharakter“ keine
Rede. Vielmehr spricht Schmitt von dem Politischen stets als von einer realen
Möglichkeit, die zugleich eine Voraussetzung ist53. Auch die Annahme über die
Güte oder die Böswilligkeit menschlicher Natur präsentiert er vielmehr als eine
Denkvoraussetzung, die vom politischen Denken ,,eingefordert“ wird − ,,auf den
verschiedenen Gebieten menschlichen Denkens“ sind verschiedene
anthropologische Voraussetzungen geboten54. In der Tat hat Strauss Schmitt mit
49 Ebd., 237.
50 Carl Schmitt: ,,Das Zeitaler der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen“, in: Ders.: Der
Begriff des Politischen. Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien. 3. Aufl. der Ausg.
von 1963. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1991, S. 79-95, hier 93 und 95. Die ,,Rückkehr zur
unversehrten, nicht korrupten Natur“ stand für Schmitt im Zentrum von allen ,,starken“ Reformen
des Christentums. Als Gegentendenz benannte er den ,,Komfort und Behagen des bestehenden
status quo“ (Hervorhebung im Original; ebd., 93).
51 Alain de Benoist: Carl Schmitt. Internationale Bibliographie der Primär- und
Sekundärliteratur. Graz: Ares Verlag, 2010, 38.
52 Strauss, ,,Die Anmerkungen zu Carl Schmitt“, 227f.
53 Siehe Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 29, 34f.
54 Ebd., 63. Dazu seine Begründung: ,,Weil nun die Sphäre des Politischen letzten Endes von
der realen Möglichkeit eines Feindes bestimmt wird, können politische Vorstellungen und
155 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
der These über das Politische als Grundcharakter vorgegriffen, um ihn, wie es
scheint, zu einer offenen normativen Erwägung des Politischen zu bewegen. Das
wird in seinem Brief an Schmitt vom 4. September 1932 bestätigt, den Strauss
Schmitt bat, ,,mit derselben Nachsicht zur Kenntnis [zu] nehmen […] wie die
Rezension selbst“55. Die Überlegung, ,,dass es eine primäre Tendenz der
menschlichen Natur gibt, exklusive Gruppen zu bilden“ (Hervorhebung im
Original), hat Strauss, gesteht er Schmitt ein, ,,mehr […] einem Gespräch [mit
ihm] als […] [seiner] Schrift“ entnommen56. Die Schrift selbst suggeriert, dass das
Politische eher eine Steigerung der Existenz als eine Grundlage sei, die ,,mit der
menschlichen Natur gegeben“ wäre (ebd., 133)57.
die politische Philosophie selbst, so Strauss, die die Frage ,,was ist politisch?“
aufwirft60. Dem Leser von Strauss’ ,,What is Political Philosophy?“ wird schnell
klar, dass Strauss mit ,,politisch“ auf die Ebene der Wie-Es-Sein-Sollte-Fragen
verweist: der Fragen nach dem guten Leben, nach dem guten Zusammenleben,
nach Gerechtigkeit, nach den Kriterien, mittels deren die Handlungen und
Institutionen einzuschätzen sind61. Diese normative Ebene ist die Ebene des
Gemeinsamen, des Verbindlichen, des für die polis Verbindlichen62. In dieser
Bedeutung von ,,politisch“ wird also etwas als politisch bezeichnet, was
gemeinsam, ,,common“63, ,,generally valid“64 ist. Bei dieser Verwendung von
,,politisch“ wird vorausgesetzt, dass der Mensch von Natur aus ein
Gemeinschaftswesen ist − es ist die Prämisse, die Strauss für die klassische
politische Philosophie prägend sah65.
Nicht nur gemeinsam ist das, was politisch ist, sondern auch das schon, was
sich auf die Mehrheit bezieht66. In Strauss’schen Vorträgen zu dem Problem
Sokrates’ stellt sich dieser Bedeutungsaspekt besonders deutlich heraus − vor
allem durch die Gegenüberstellung von ,,the political“, ,,political things“, ,,political
virtue“, ,,political life“ einerseits und der Philosophie andererseits67. Der Adressat
politisch (Leo Strauss: „On Classical Political Philosophy“, in: Social Research 12(1), 1945, S. 98-
117, hier 116).
60 Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 353.
61 Ebd., 343-345, 351. Diese Kriterien sind, so ist Strauss’ englischer Einleitung zu seiner
Hobbes-Schrift zu entnehmen, normativ, aber objektiv − in dem Sinne, dass sie nicht ideologisch
oder mythisch, auch nicht historisch gebunden sind (Leo Strauss: The Political Philosophy of
Hobbes. Its Basis and Its Genesis, übers. v. Elsa M. Sinclair. 4. Aufl. Chicago/London: The
University of Chicago Press 1963 [1. Aufl. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936], xv). Siehe auch 140 in
Leo Strauss: Naturrecht und Geschichte, übers. v. Horst Boog. Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp
Taschenbuch Verlag 1977 [1. Ausg. Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler Verlag 1956]: nur eine politische
Gesellschaft hat die Chance, eine gute Gesellschaft zu sein; sowie 81 in Leo Strauss: ,,The Three
Waves of Modernity“, in: Ders.: An Introduction to Political Philosophy. Ten Essays by Leo
Strauss, hg. u. m. einer Einl. versehen v. Hilail Gildin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1989,
S. 81-98: die politische Philosophie setzt voraus, dass der Mensch darüber Wissen erlangen kann,
was gut und gerecht ist.
62 Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 351.
63 Leo Strauss: ,,On Natural Law“, in: Ders.: Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, hg. u. m.
einer Einl. versehen v. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press 1983,
S. 137-146, hier 139.
64 Leo Strauss: ,,The Living Issues of German Postwar Philosophy“, in: Heinrich Meier: Leo
Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, übers. v. Marcus Brainard. Cambridge University
Press 2008, S. 115-139, hier 131.
65 Strauss, Naturrecht und Geschichte, 174f.
66 Leo Strauss: ,,Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization“, in:
Modern Judaism 1(1), 1981, S. 17-45, hier 42.
67 Leo Strauss: ,,The Problem of Socrates: Five Lectures“, in: Ders.: The Rebirth of Classical
Political Rationalism. An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss, hg. u. m. einer Einl. versehen
157 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
Der zweite Strang der Bedeutung vom Wort ,,politisch“, den Strauss bei
Schmitt identifiziert hat und den er für der Gleichsetzung von ,,politisch“ und
bloß ,,polemisch“ gegensätzlich hielt, findet sich in Dem Begriff des Politischen
v. Thomas L. Pangle. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press 1989, S. 103-183, hier
passim.
68 Ebd., 126, siehe auch 63f. in: Leo Strauss: ,,The Law of Reason in the ,Kuzari‘ “, in:
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 13, 1943, S. 47-96: worum es bei dem
Unvermögen der Philosophie ,,to charm“ geht, ist dass die öffentliche Kommunikation eine
gefährliche Rückwirkung haben kann – gefährlich für beide Seiten.
69 Strauss, ,,The Problem of Socrates“, 139.
70 Ebd., 162.
71 Ebd., 132.
72 Ebd., 163.
73 Ebd., 132f.
74 Ebd., 126, siehe auch Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 368.
158 IEVA MOTUZAITE
75 Siehe Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, bspw. 39, 43f., vgl. auch 20 und 62.
76 Ebd., 43, 20.
77 Siehe ebd., 49-51, 66f.
78 Siehe ebd., 27, 50.
79 Siehe ebd., 30, 36-39, 76.
80 Ebd., 60.
81 Ebd., 68f.
159 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
individuellen Freiheit spricht und von einer liberalen Politik schlechthin, die es
nicht gibt82. Es gibt, scheint Schmitt sagen zu wollen, eine wahre Politik − eine
politisch-maßgebende Politik − und eine ,,Scheinpolitik“, deren ,,politischer“
Charakter nur auf einer Polemik beruht83.
82 Ebd., 69.
83 Ebd.
84 Leo Strauss: ,,Preface“, in: Ders.: Liberalism ancient and modern. New York: Basic Books
1995, S. vii-xi [1. Aufl. 1968], hier x.
85 Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 368.
86 Ebd., 344f.
87 Strauss, ,,The Problem of Socrates“, 126.
88 In diesem Sinne, so Strauss, war Sokrates ,,eminently political“ (ebd., 134, siehe auch
Strauss, ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 362). Dass der klassischen Philosophie vor Sokrates und
zu seinen Lebzeiten an politischem Charakter im Sinne von Selbsteinsicht gemangelt hat, ist der
Vorwurf Aristophanes’ gewesen (Strauss, ,,The Problem of Socrates“, 125f.).
89 Ebd., 147, vgl. auch 131f.
90 Siehe ebd., 163.
160 IEVA MOTUZAITE
ist91. Doch bedeutet diese Aussage nicht zugleich eine Art Zusammengehörigkeit
des philosophischen und des politischen Lebens? Gerade das suggeriert Strauss’
Verwendung von ,,politisch“, die in einigen Fällen mit beidem: dem Gemeinsam-
Verbindlichen (dem Guten und Richtigen für die Gemeinschaft) und Partikular-
Praktischen − konnotiert zu sein scheint.
Bevor man sich diese Fälle anschaut, möchte ich die Aufmerksamkeit zunächst
darauf lenken, dass die Erwägung des Verhältnisses von ,,politisch“ und
,,philosophisch“ nicht der einzige Vergleich ist, mit dem Strauss den Charakter
dieses Politischen abgesteckt hat. So wie sich politische Philosophie durch
Spannung zur Politik auszeichnet, zeichnet sich Politik durch Distanz zu dem
,,Unpolitischen“ aus. Denn das Politische zu denken setzt voraus, das Politische
als sui generis anzuerkennen92, d.h. zwischen dem Natürlichen und dem
Politischen zu unterscheiden93. Politische Wissenschaft stellt Strauss daher dem
,,social engineering“ entgegen94 − weil sie, und das korrespondiert damit, dass eine
politische Erkenntnis eine Selbsteinsicht ist, bei der Perspektive eines Beteiligten
und nicht eines unparteilichen Beobachters ansetzt95: um in einem dialektischen
Verfahren letztlich auch die erste Frage zu klären − die Frage, was ,,politisch“
überhaupt bedeutet96.
Eine Abgrenzung der politischen Philosophie und des Politischen gegen die
positivistische Politikwissenschaft, die sich das Gebot der Unparteilichkeit stelle
und keine Antwort auf die Frage, was das Politische als sui generis auszeichnet, zu
haben scheine, erfolgt im Strauss’schen Epilog zu dem Sammelband Liberalism
ancient and modern durch die Einführung der Bedeutung von ,,politisch“, die die
Gemeinschaft als Ganzes tangiert. Strauss bezweifelt, ,,whether the new political
science has brought to light anything of political importance“97. Wenn man sich
klar gemacht hat, dass für Strauss die Philosophie nur als politische Philosophie
begründbar und aufrechterhaltbar war, kann man den Gedanken, dass ,,politisch“
nur doppeldeutig und nie eindeutig gedacht werden kann, nicht zurückweisen.
Gehören die zwei Bedeutungen von ,,politisch“ − politisch als gemeinsam-
verbindlich und als partikular-praktisch − bei Strauss von Grund auf zusammen?
91 Ebd., 161.
92 Ebd., 143.
93 Leo Strauss: ,,On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy“, in: Ders.: What is Political
Philosophy? And Other Studies. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press 1997, S. 170-
196 [1. Aufl. The Free Press, 1959], hier 175f.
94 Leo Strauss: ,,An Epilogue“, in: Ders.: Liberalism ancient and modern. New York: Basic
Books 1995, S. 203-223 [1. Aufl. 1968], hier 213.
95 ,,There are things which can only be seen what they are, if they are seen seen with an
unarmed eye; or, more precisely, if they are seen in the perspective of the citizen“ (Strauss, ,,What
is Political Philosophy?“, 353, vgl. 356).
96 Ebd., 353.
97 Strauss, ,,An Epilogue“, 208.
161 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
Ist die Doppeldeutigkeit, mit anderen Worten, in der Tat zwei Seiten von Einem
und nicht zwei Bedeutungen jeweils für sich?
Eine so klare Antwort, wie man sie sich nur wünschen würde, findet sich in
Strauss’ viertem Vortrag zu Sokrates: ,,The dualism of being a part while being
open to the whole, and therefore in a sense being the whole itself, is man“98. Die
Doppeldeutigkeit von ,,politisch“ gehört zur Essenz davon, was der Mensch ist
und sie ist ein Selbstwiderspruch, der gleichzeitig sich selbst eher aufhebt − aber
nie vollständig −, als negiert.
Auch bei Schmitt begegnet man Aussagen, in denen ,,politisch“ zugleich als
,,polemisch“ und als ,,maßgebend“ zu verstehen ist. Die Koexistenz zweier
Bedeutungen ist in einer solch hohen Dichte vorhanden, dass es einer
Auseinanderlegung dieser Aussagen bedarf, um jeder Erwähnung von ,,politisch“
ihre richtige Bedeutung zuzuordnen. Wie etwa in dem Satz: ,,Den politischen [1]
Gegnern einer klaren politischen [2] Theorie wird es deshalb nicht schwer, die
klare Erkenntnis und Beschreibung politischer [3] Phänomene und Wahrheiten
[…] vor allem − denn darauf kommt es politisch [4] an − als bekämpfenswerte
Teufelei hors-la-loi zu erklären“99. Während im ersten und vierten Fall die
polemische Konnotation im Vordergrund steht, wird im zweiten und dritten Fall
das Politische implizit bejaht und somit auf seine Bedeutung als ,,maßgebend“
verwiesen.
Wenn ,,politisch“ in dieser Art von Aussagen Schmitts zwei Bedeutungen
aufweist, die bloß nebeneinander stehen, erweisen sich diese Bedeutungen in
einem folgenden Fall als untrennbar. In seiner Kritik von der Ausspielung der
naturrechtlichen Prinzipien gegen das positive Recht beruft sich Schmitt
folgenderweise auf Hobbes: ,,Klarer als alle Anderen hat Hobbes diese einfachen
Konsequenzen politischen Denkens mit großer Unbeirrtheit gezogen und immer
wieder betont, daß die Souveränität des Rechts nur die Souveränität der
98 Strauss, ,,The Problem of Socrates“, 164, siehe auch ,,What is Political Philosophy?“, 368.
99 Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 65. Andere einschlägige Beispiele für diese
verschachtelte Doppeldeutigkeit wären in demselben Werk z.B.: ,,Die schlimmste Verwirrung
entsteht dann, wenn Begriffe wie Recht und Frieden in solcher Weise benutzt werden, um klares
politisches Denken zu verhindern, die eigenen politischen Bestrebungen zu legitimieren“ (ebd.);
oder: ,,Denn die Negation des Politischen […] führt wohl zu einer politischen Praxis des Mißtrauens
gegen alle denkbaren politischen Mächte und Staatsformen, niemals aber zu einer eigenen positiven
Theorie von Staat und Politik“ (ebd., 69).
162 IEVA MOTUZAITE
Menschen bedeutet“100. Was besagt es über dieses ,,politische Denken“, dass die
Souveränität nur als Souveränität der Menschen über Menschen denkbar ist?
Zum einen, dass der politische Wille wortwörtlich maß-gebend ist − er nimmt das
Recht in Anspruch, nicht umgekehrt. Zum anderen, dass Politik nicht anders als
polemisch, in einer Polemik existiert, weil der Souverän ein Subjekt und nicht ein
objektives Prinzip ist. Das Maß-geben ist also immer ein Akt, der eventuell
durchgesetzt werden muss, der gegebenenfalls Auflehnung erfährt, und das
konstituiert das Politische. Noch deutlicher wird diese Einsicht über die
Zusammengehörigkeit beider Bedeutungen von ,,politisch“, wenn man den
Kommentar Strauss’ über Schmitts Verständnis des Politischen in Betracht zieht,
dass das ,,politisch-sein […] [für Schmitt, I.M.] ausgerichtet-sein auf den ,Ernstfall‘
“ heißt101. Auf den ,,Ernstfall“ ausgerichtet zu sein bedeutet, dass sich der Mensch
in einem Status befindet, der zugleich ,,fundamental“ und ,,extrem“ ist102. Das
heißt: der Mensch ist nicht zufällig, nicht kontingent, sondern von Grund auf auf
den ,,Ernstfall“ ausgerichtet. Der ,,Ernstfall“ ist zugleich der äußerste Punkt der
Polemik und der maßgebende Punkt.
Es zeigt sich also, dass die Doppeldeutigkeit der Verwendung von ,,politisch“
bei Schmitt und bei Strauss eine besondere Doppeldeutigkeit ist: eine
Doppeldeutigkeit, die eine theoretische Verbindung von diesen jeweils zwei
Bedeutungen darstellt. Die Doppeldeutigkeit bei Strauss (gemeinsam-verbindlich
einerseits, partikular-praktisch andererseits) ist weit davon entfernt, mit derjenigen
bei Schmitt (maßgebend einerseits, polemisch andererseits) identisch zu sein.
Auch würde es ihr, im Gegensatz zu meiner Erwartung, nicht gerecht, sie als
normativ-polemische Doppeldeutigkeit, die ich als die allgemeinste mögliche
Benennung der Doppeldeutigkeit vorgeschlagen habe, zu bezeichnen, weil a) der
partikular-praktische Aspekt von ,,politisch“ bei Strauss den polemischen
Charakter − als Negation, Ausschluss der Gegenposition − entbehrt und b) es im
Fall vom Politischen zutreffender ist, bei Strauss von ,,gemeinsam-verbindlich“ als
von ,,normativ“ zu sprechen, da das Gemeinsam-Verbindliche nicht in allen
Fällen das für das Individuum Normative bedeutet103.
Dass Strauss und Schmitt eine jeweils eigene Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen
aufwiesen, die in der Tat nur mit Vorbehalt mit einem gemeinsamen Nenner
,,normativ-polemisch“ zu kennzeichnen ist, scheint mir sich in einem engen
Zusammenhang damit zu befinden, dass sich ihre Positionen bezüglich des
Verhältnisses von dem Normativen mit dem Polemischen unterschieden. Dieses
163 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
kann man einerseits als eines des gegenseitigen Ausschlusses und andererseits als
eines des inhärenten Zusammengehörens auffassen.
Aus dem zweiten Ansatz – dem das inhärente Zusammengehören
behauptenden – geht etwa hervor, dass eine politische Frage deswegen politisch ist
(und, andererseits, ist das Politische das, was auf diese Frage zurückführt), weil
sich die Antworten auf sie in einem radikalen Zusammenstoß befinden (und sich
dabei potenziell Freund-Feind-Gruppierungen ergeben, die dem Menschen eine
Entweder-Oder-Positionierung abverlangen). Aus ihm geht auch und vor allem
hervor, dass eine politische Frage eben nicht anders als durch Positionierung in
einem polemischen Verhältnis, auf einem polemischen Spannungsfeld zu
beantworten ist.
Der erste Ansatz, der auf der Annahme des Sich-Ausschließens beruht,
behauptet das Gegenteil: dass ,,politisch“ weder auf ,,polemisch“ zu reduzieren
noch aus dem Polemischen zu gewinnen ist. Diese so gemeinte Zuschreibung
verfehle vielmehr das Gewicht des Politischen als etwas Normatives. Wenn sich
eine politische Erkenntnis nur normativ gewinnen lässt, kann sie sich nicht auf
ihre Durchsetzungskraft in einem oppositionellen Verhältnis, auf ihre
geschichtliche Wirkmächtigkeit berufen. Weder muss sie eine Gegenthese haben,
noch muss sie Spaltungskraft entfalten104.
Ob sich meine These von einer solchen gegensätzlichen Grundpositionierung
von einer erschöpfenden Analyse der Überlieferungen Schmitts und Strauss’
bekräftigen ließe, bleibt an dieser Stelle ein Fragezeichen sowie eine Anregung für
eine weiterführende Untersuchung.
Wenn man es bei der Schlussfolgerung belässt, dass die Doppeldeutigkeit der
Verwendung von ,,politisch“ eine untrennbare theoretische Verbindung hinter
sich birgt und wir daher über das Politische nicht anders als über einen
Widerspruch denken können, der sich selbst teilweise aber nicht vollständig
aufhebt, dann stellt sich die Frage dessen Ursprunges. Zum Abschluss möchte ich
104 Was einer solchen Annahme des Sich-Ausschließens in Texten Strauss’ meiner Meinung
nach am nächsten kommt, ist seinem Brief an Gerhard Krüger zu entnehmen: ,,[I]m Gegensatz zu
der Verständigung um jeden Preis“, schrieb Strauss 1932, ,,ist der Streit wahrer; das letzte Wort
kann aber nur der Friede, d.h. die Verständigung in der Wahrheit, sein. Dass diese Verständigung
der Vernunft möglich sei – firmiter credo“ (Leo Strauss: ,,Korrespondenz Leo Strauss − Gerhard
Krüger“, in: Ders.: Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft und zugehörige Schriften - Briefe, hg. v.
Heinrich Meier u. Wiebke Meier. 2. durchges. Aufl. Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler 2008,
S. 377-454 [1. Aufl. 2001], hier 399).
164 IEVA MOTUZAITE
daher den Blick auf die klassischen Anfänge des Denkens über die Politik
schweifen lassen, um zu verdeutlichen, dass die besagte Doppeldeutigkeit kein
modernes Phänomen, sondern in ihrem Ursprung auf die aristotelische Lehre
zurückzuverfolgen ist − auf, genauer, die Gegenüberstellung der philosophischen
und der politischen Lebensweise, die, wie Elm behauptet, erst bei Stoa zu einer
Ausbalancierung zwischen Praxis und Theorie als gleichwertige Formen des
Lebens führte105.
Zwar kann man darauf verweisen, dass schon die Schiffsmetapher bei Platon
ein doppeltes Bild der Politik einführt, auf dessen einer Seite Politik in der Figur
des Steuermanns verkörpert wird, auf der anderen Seite – in derjenigen von den
Seeleuten, die von der Steuermannskunst nichts verstehen, den Steuermann als
,,unbrauchbaren Himmelsgucker“ denunzieren und ihn abzusetzen versuchen,
während sie um die Macht ringen106. Dennoch würde ich das Schiffsgleichnis nicht
als Entzweiung von der Politikvorstellung interpretieren, weil Platon eine
eindeutige Auffassung davon hatte, was wahrlich als Politik, als wahre Staatskunst107
zu bezeichnen ist. Wenn man die Worte Platons berücksichtigt, die seine
Schiffsmetapher begleiten − dass eine solche Situation auf dem Schiff ,,den
Städten gleicht, wie sie den wahren Philosophen gegenüber gesinnt sind“ und dass
,,die Anständigsten in der Philosophie in den Augen der Menge unbrauchbar
seien“108 −, liegt das platonische Verständnis von Politik als philosophischem
Wissen und von dem Politiker, der ein Philosoph ist und der seinen Blick auf das
wohlgeordnete Göttliche richtet und nach diesem Vorbild die Stadt und ,,die
Charaktere der Menschen“ formt, um sie ,,gottgefällig“ zu machen, nahe109.
Philosophisches Wissen war für Platon der Garant einer guten Politik und somit
der Glückseligkeit110, sodass in einer wohl − d.h. naturgemäß und gerecht111 −
eingerichteten Stadt jeder Stand der Gemeinschaft seinen Anteil ,,am Glücke“
hatte112 und es keine Spannung zwischen philosophischem Wissen (Besonnenheit)
und Handeln sowie zwischen Besonnenheit und Gerechtigkeit gab113.
105 Ralf Elm (2002): ,,Praxis, praktikê, prattein“, in: Christoph Horn, Christoph Rapp (Hg.):
Wörterbuch der antiken Philosophie. München: C. H. Beck 2002, S. 366-368, hier 368.
106 Plat., Rep., 487e - 490a.
107 Der Formulierung ,,wahre Staatskunst“ begegnet man bei Platon bspw. in Gorg., 521d -
522a; Polit., 308d - e.
108 Plat., Rep., 488d - 489b.
109 Ebd., 500a - 501e. Für eine aufschlussreiche Überlegung über das Verhältnis des
Politischen mit dem Göttlichen in Bezug auf die Person Sokrates’ vgl. Plat., Apol., 31d - 32a mit
Gorg., 521d - 522a.
110 Vgl. Plat., Charm., 171d - 172a, Gorg., 507c.
111 Plat., Rep., 432e - 433c.
112 Ebd., 421c.
113 Ebd., 432a - 433c; zum Thema Einheit von Politik und Philosophie bei Platon siehe auch
792 in: Volker Sellin: ,,Politik“, in: Otto, Brunner Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (Hg.):
165 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
nicht etwa des Wissens verortete122. Handeln ist wiederum die zentrale Kategorie
der Politik, weil dieses und nicht die Erkenntnis deren Ziel ist123, so wie es nach
Aristoteles nicht reicht, ,,über die Tugend Bescheid zu wissen, sondern man muß
versuchen, sie anzueignen und auszuüben“124.
Nicht nur bestand für Aristoteles Politik im Handeln, sie bedeutete Handeln
mit dem Ziel, das die Ziele aller ,,übrigen praktischen Wissenschaften“125 umfasst
und das also auf das Beste für den Menschen, auf ,,das oberste aller praktischen
Güter“126 ausgerichtet ist (so bezeichnete Aristoteles die politische Wissenschaft als
die wichtigste und leitendste127). Was das Beste für den Menschen ist, unterliegt
keiner Notwendigkeit und ist demnach nicht beweisbar und kein Gegenstand der
Wissenschaft in dem strengen Sinne − die politische Wissenschaft ist daher
Klugheit und nicht Weisheit; sie ist vernünftiges Überlegen und Handeln, das nie
vollkommen und immer auch anders sein kann128. Die politische Wissenschaft
mag also die Wissenschaft von dem Besten für den Menschen sein, der Mensch
ist jedoch ,,nicht das Beste, was es im Kosmos gibt“129. Die Unterscheidung
zwischen (philosophischer) Weisheit und (politischer) Klugheit entspricht der
Unterscheidung zwischen dem, was allgemeine, universelle Gültigkeit für den
gesamten Kosmos hat und dem, was partikular, kontingent ist, was vom Fall zum
Fall variiert (= unbeständig ist130) und menschengebunden bleibt − es gebe, so
Aristoteles, ,,nicht nur eine Wissenschaft von dem Guten, das für alle Lebewesen
gilt, sondern für jedes gibt es eine andere“131.
Die Philosophen, dagegen, suchen nicht das menschliche Gute132. Auch leben
sie das Leben, dessen Glückseligkeit eher eine göttliche als eine menschliche ist −
und ,,ein solches Leben ist höher als es dem Menschen als Menschen
zukommt“133. Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, die bei Aristoteles ihre
Wurzeln zu haben scheint, führt also auf die Spannung zwischen dem Leben der
Philosophie und dem der Praxis zurück134. Ihren klarsten Ausdruck findet diese
122 Aristot., Pol. 1325b; auch in der Nikomachischen Ethik deutet sich die Parallele zwischen
dem Politischen und dem Göttlichen an, siehe 1094b.
123 Ebd., 1095a; für die Bedeutung des Handelns und der Lebenspraxis für den Herrscher
siehe jeweils Aristot., Pol. 1235b und Eth. Nic. 1095b; siehe auch Arendt, Vita activa, 18.
124 Aristot., Eth. Nic. 1179b; siehe dazu Sellin, ,,Politik“, 794.
125 Aristot., Eth. Nic. 1094b.
126 Ebd., 1095a.
127 Ebd., 1094b.
128 Ebd., 1140b, siehe dazu Arendt, Vita Activa, 13.
129 Aristot., Eth. Nic., 1141a - b.
130 Ebd., 1094b.
131 Ebd., 1141a - b.
132 Ebd., 1141b.
133 Ebd., 1177a - b.
134 Zu der Unterscheidung von drei Lebensformen siehe ebd., 1096a; vgl. die schon zitierten
Aussagen über ,,das oberste aller praktischen Güter“ und die Politik als alle anderen praktischen
167 Die Doppeldeutigkeit des Politischen, am Beispiel von Carl Schmitt und Leo Strauss
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ich möchte mich für die vielfältige Unterstützung bedanken, die ich bei der
Ausarbeitung dieses Artikels vonseiten Freunde und Bekannter erhalten habe:
Dr. Benjamin Höhne und Sophie Hartisch danke ich für ihre sprachbezogenen
Anmerkungen zum Abstract, Prof. Christoph Jamme für die umfassende Sichtung
des ersten Entwurfs, den Teilnehmern und Teilnehmerinnen des von Hannes
Kerber organisierten Forschungskolloquiums an der Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München für ihre wertvollen inhaltlichen Anregungen und Hinweise.
Wissenschaften umfassend, jeweils ebd., 1095a und 1094b, mit der Stelle in ebd., 1177b. Aus der
Letzteren geht hervor, dass alleine die Philosophie ein Ziel in sich selbst hat und in diesem Sinne
vollkommen autarkisch ist.
135 Aristot., Pol., 1325a.
136 Ebd.; von einer vergleichbaren Vagheit ist die Überlegung zu der gleichen Frage auch in der
Nikomachischen Ethik zu finden, siehe 1178a.
137 Ebd., 1095b.
169 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 169-200
ISSN: 1825-5167
ANTOINE PAGEAU-ST-HILAIRE
University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought
apsthilaire@uchicago.edu
ABSTRACT
This paper aims at showing how Gadamer understood the impossibility of any properly unpolitical
stance for philosophy by examining the relation of philosophy and politics in his interpretation of
Plato’s Republic. I argue that Gadamer’s rejection of the possibility of the ἄπολις (as presented by
Aristotle) was prompted by the thoughts of his friend and interlocutor Leo Strauss on the question
of the relation of the theoretical life and political life in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy. I then turn
to Gadamer’s reading of the Republic and focus on three aspects of his interpretation: philosophical
education in the context of utopian thinking, the Forms and the Idea of the Good, and philosophical
knowledge. Tied together, these three elements convene a picture of philosophy that is by no means
above or against politics, but rather exists in a harmonious and mutually influencing relation with the
political community. I finally suggest that the interpretive conditions of this harmony are not without
consequence on how we conceive of philosophy itself, its nature and its task.
KEYWORDS
Philosophy, politics, hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Plato, Aristotle.
«There is no city in the world in which the ideal city is not present in some ultimate
sense» (Hans-Georg Gadamer, in Fortin, 1989, p. 10)
1 For instance, Gadamer preferred Aristotelian practical wisdom against political or international or-
ders prescriptively inspired by modern technical science, and did not argued for any more specific polit-
ical change or status quo (GW 2, 155-173). He also insisted on the idea that solidarity (in the sense of
Ancient Greek φιλία) is the basis of political praxis, but one wonders to what extent the identification of
a condition politics is politically normative, and to what extent something like solidarity can be prescribed
at all (GW 4, 218-228, cf. GW 6, 6). Similarly, Gadamer sided with the Aristotelian “phronetic” approach
to moral philosophy against prescriptive or imperative ethics – see e.g. “Aristoteles und die imperativische
Ethik” in GW 7, 381-395. All references to the complete works of Gadamer are from the Gesammelte
Werke (GW, followed by volume and page numbers). Unless otherwise stated, English translations are
mine.
2 Specifically, Gadamer’s first impulse was his reading of Heidegger’s Natorp-Bericht, which he first
read as a wonderful rediscovery of Aristotle’s Ethics through the prism of Heidegger’s hermeneutics of
facticity (before discerning, later, a completely different intent in Heidegger’s early work on Aristotle). For
Gadamer’s testimony of this influence, see his “Heideggers ‘theologische’ Jugendschrift” (1989), and on
the irony of this “misreading”, see Taminiaux’s (2004) excellent piece. On hermeneutics as practical phi-
losophy, see especially “Hermeneutik als theoretische und praktische Aufgabe” (GW 2, 301-318). This
latter theme, however, is literally everywhere throughout Gadamer’s works. For a good study of this
theme, see Foster (1991). I doubt that this label of praktische Philosophie instead of politische Philoso-
phie is just a matter of German linguistic customs, for Gadamer does use the word “politische Philoso-
phie” at times, and notably ascribes the label to the work of his friend Leo Strauss (see e.g. GW 2, 414;
GW 10, 250).
3 Gadamer often use the words “politisch” and “praktisch” or “politisch” and “gesellschaftlich” or
“praktisch”, “sozial” and “politisch” as nearly synonymous (e.g. GW 1,15n2, 32, 38, GW 2, 23, 39, 146,
156, 163, 184, 252, 269, 314, 316, 423, 455, 459, 468, 477, 499; GW 4, 50, 261; GW 6, 270; GW 7,
102; GW 10, 7, 30, 50, 54, 96-97, 235-236, 257, 319-320, 390, 427), elsewhere he equates the realm of
Sprache with that of all Lebenspraxis (GW 10, 316). I have not found in his work an attempt to define
the “political”, to isolate the word or use it in any systematic way.
4 See Grondin (2011, p. 182-183, 200, 209).
171 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
“apolitical” turn to Greek philosophy in the 1930s5 nevertheless forced him to work to
a considerable extent on the relationship between philosophy, poetry and politics –
especially in Plato but also with regards to Aristotle. According to Grondin, Gadamer’s
essays on Greek philosophy under National Socialism testify to his political prudence:
pieces such as “Plato und die Dichter” (1934) and “Platos Staat der Erziehung” (1942)
subtly indicate through rigorous scholarship a critique of the regime in which he was
living.6
Carrying this idea much further, Robert Sullivan has argued that, far from staying
apolitical at that time, Gadamer’s early work is best characterized as “political herme-
neutics.” By this, he means not only that Gadamer was reacting to his political context,
but that he was in fact trying to recover in his own hermeneutics an ancient culture of
rhetoric, one that implies that the structure of understanding is deeply tied to the polit-
ical world. Sullivan also thinks that Gadamer’s political hermeneutics makes a case for
“dialectical politics,” which he relates to the “Aristotelian polis.”7 Against the view that
Gadamer’s philosophy is essentially apolitical but also diverging from this association
of hermeneutics to classical political models like the Greek polis, Catherine Zuckert
has argued that it was indeed profoundly in tune with a liberal conception of history
and freedom.8 Ronald Beiner, on the other hand, thinks that Gadamer’s philosophy
could only with great difficulty be called political, for its modesty and emphasis on the
importance of prudence and awareness of human limits is somewhat beneath the rad-
icality that is needed for political philosophy as he understands it.9 More recently, Dar-
ren Walhof has tried to show that an actual contribution to “democratic theory” is em-
bedded in Gadamer’s work.10 Such competing views on the extent to which Gadamer’s
5 According to Gadamer’s own autobiographical comments (Fortin 1984, p. 2): “Strauss sent me his
books. The one on Hobbes I found to be of particular interest since it was related to my own research on
the political thought of the Sophists. That happened to be one of my great concerns at the time, although
I was forced to abandon it when it became too dangerous to discuss political matters in Germany. One
could not talk about the Sophists without alluding to Carl Schmitt, one of the leading theorists of the Nazi
party. So I turned to more neutral subjects, such as Aristotle’s physics.” (my emphasis)
6 Grondin (2011, p. 209-210). Cf. Gadamer’s Selbstdarstellung in GW 2, 489.
7 Sullivan (1989, p. 169 ff.)
8 Zuckert (1996, p. 102-103): “Gadamer is fundamentally a liberal.”
9 Beiner (2014, p. 122-134). It seems to be that Beiner’s presentation of the issue is on the right track
for it avoids any reductive answer (for in Gadamer’s case, one-sided answers are often reductive) and
rather affirms that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is neither political (properly speaking), nor apolitical. I be-
lieve that the view I am defending in this paper is in general agreement with Beiner’s.
10 Walhof (2016) was preceded in some sense by Warnke (2002), who attempted to interpret Gada-
damer’s hermeneutics in the direction of political pluralism and democratic deliberation. It should be
noted, though, that Warnke’s attempt is an elaboration from Gadamer’s writings, not an elucidation of
Gadamer’s own political thought – on this point see P. St-Hilaire (2016, p. 17n1-19).
172 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
These comments immediately bring two passages from the corpus aristotelicum to
mind. The first one is at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics (X 7 1177b ff.), where
Aristotle argues that a purely theoretical life is only accessible to gods, but that this
should not be a reason to only think human things (ἀνθρωπινα ὄντα φρονεῖν, X 7
1177b32) and, that we should rather try to immortalize ourselves (ἀθανατιζειν,
1177b33). The second one is at the beginning of the Politics, where he writes that man
is by nature a political animal, and that one that is apolitical by nature and not merely
by chance is either inferior or superior to the human (ὁ ἄπολις διὰ φυσιν καὶ οὐ διὰ
τυχην ἤτοι φαῦλος ἐστιν, ἢ κρειττων ἢ ἄνθρωπος, I 2 1253a3-4). Gadamer’s
thought here is that human beings cannot live a solely or purely theoretical life, and
therefore cannot be apolitical or unpolitical. He further explains our political condition
as one in which we must take both the practical and the theoretical into account. In
other words, our access to the theoretical is bounded or limited, such that philosophy
cannot become unpolitical.
11 He does, however, confess that Thomas Mann’s Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen made a great
impression on him (GW 2, 480).
12 Gadamer in Fortin (1984, p. 12-13)
173 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
In this essay, I attempt to explain this boundedness in order to shed light on the way
in which Gadamer understood the impossibility of the unpolitical. In order to do so, I
go back to the origin of his reflections on this theme. As I will argue, Gadamer’s rejec-
tion of Aristotle’s ἄπολις was prompted by the thoughts on the question of θεωρια
and πρᾶξις in Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy elaborated by his friend Leo
Strauss, who conceived of the unpolitical as a defining feature of the genuine theoretical
life, the life of the philosopher. In the first section, I show that Gadamer’s strategy of
reconciling the theoretical and the practical is a response to Strauss’s understanding of
that relation. I argue that the question of the possibility or the impossibility of the un-
political life is inseparable from the question of the relationship between Plato and
Aristotle on the issue of the theoretical and the practical lives. Since both Strauss and
Gadamer agree that there is more harmony than disagreement between the two philos-
ophers, I propose to turn to Gadamer’s interpretation of Plato’s Republic in order to
clarify Gadamer’s position against the unpolitical stance. The next three sections are
devoted to an analysis of his interpretation, which, it will become clear, shows decisive
signs of his broader view concerning the Platonic-Aristotelian unity.
13 Gadamer (1997, p. 219): “When I published Plato im Dialog as the seventh volume of my works,
the thought of Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein was especially vivid for me. For I believe that in my recent
work I give a new validation of the dominating presence of Socrates within the Greek philosophical tradi-
tion. As can be gleaned from our well-known letters, this was also the primary concern of Leo Strauss.”
Rosen’s essay is an attempt both to criticize and appropriate Gadamer’s concept of “fusion of horizons”
(Horizontverschmelzung). Rosen (1997) makes no mention of Strauss but underscores the importance
of physis (versus history) as being the adequate ontological grounding of interpretation, which could have
prompted Gadamer’s comment on Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein. It is precisely this dominating presence
of Socrates, or of the sokratische Frage regarding the Good that unites, according to Gadamer, Platonic
and Aristotelian philosophy (see especially GW 7, 373-380).
174 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
however, to see why Gadamer would have put so much emphasis on Strauss in this
context.
The last of these mentions of Strauss is found in an essay of 1990 that was first
published in the seventh volume of the collected works, and most likely written for the
publication of the volume.14 In this essay entitled “Die sokratische Frage und Aristo-
teles”, Gadamer attempts to provide an answer to a question that, he says, he was par-
ticularly confronted with upon reading Strauss’s work (GW 7, 374): “What is at stake
is the presence of the Socratic question in Aristotle. I have often asked myself about
that, particularly with regards to Leo Strauss’s work and I attempt here an answer.”15
While the second mention of Strauss is not relevant to this question16, the first one is
very important, since it occurs in a book entitled Die Idee des Guten zwischen Plato
und Aristoteles, which precisely examines the relation between Plato and Aristotle on
the Socratic question or problem of the Good. There, in a decisive step in his interpre-
tation of Plato’s Republic, Gadamer poses a series of important questions on the rela-
tion between the theoretical life – which in its most radical form implies a legitimation
of the refuge in the private life (eine indirekte Legitimation für den Rückzug ins Pri-
vate)17 – and the political life (GW 7, 166): “Should, through this work [the Republic],
which certainly represents an explicit affront to and rejection of Athens, the irreconcil-
ability of philosophy and politics be brought to an expression? Did Plato want to char-
acterize the tension between theoretical and political existence as insoluble? […] Does
Plato want nothing more than to show that the conflict between theōria and politics as
insoluble?” In a footnote to the last of these pressing questions, Gadamer adds: “Such
is the approach of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom.”18
14 Not only is it the only essay of this volume that was not at all published before, but it is the latest
essay we find in it (see GW 7, 443-445).
15 “Es geht um die Gegenwart der sokratischen Frage in Aristoteles. Danach habe ich mich insbeson-
dere im Blick auf die Arbeiten von Leo Strauss oft gefragt und versuche hier eine Antwort.”
16 In “Mathematik und Dialektik bei Plato” (1982), Gadamer mentions Strauss among other thinkers
(Paul Friedländer, Kurt Hildebrandt and Jacob Klein), who, like himself, have recognized “die dorische
Harmonie von λόγος and ἔργον im platonischen Dialogwerk als einen wesentlichen Schlüssel für das
Verständnis des Dialoggeschehens zu gebrauchen und damit auch den Problemgehalt des platonischen
Denkens in neuem Lich zu sehen” (GW 7, 295).
17 See also, a few lines above: “Die Entscheidung für ein apolitisches, theoretisches Leben erscheint
Plato duchaus als gerechtfertigt” (my emphasis).
18 “Soll durch diese Schrift [die Politeia], die gewiß eine äußerste Herausforderung und Absage an
Athen darstellte, die Unvereinbarkeit von Philosophie und Politik überhaupt zur Aussage gelangen?
Wollte Plato die Spannung von theoretische und politischer Existenz als unauflösbar bezeichnen? […]
Will Plato nun nichts weiter, als den Konflikt von >Theoria< und Politik als unlösbar hinstellen? […] So
die Auffassung von Leo Strauss und Allan Bloom.”
175 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
Gadamer’s enterprise in Die Idee des Guten could thus be understood as an attempt
to answer a problem that is in fact an intertwining of two questions posed by Strauss
and that can be formulated in this way: how did Plato and Aristotle understand the
proper articulation of the theoretical and the political? This question is twofold insofar
as it raises both the issues of the relationship between θεωρια and politics from the
point of view of the philosopher, and of the unity or disunity of Platonic and Aristote-
lian philosophy concerning this problem. Already in Strauss’s review essay of John
Wild’s Plato’s Theory of Man entitled “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political
Philosophy”, we find that this is indeed how he thought of the problem: “It would seem
that in order to prove a basic agreement between Plato and Aristotle the most important
thing to do would be to show that both admitted either the supremacy of theory or that
of practice or morality”.19 Strauss’s own position on this question is less straightforward,
but his discussion of Wild’s answer is nonetheless informative:
Wild, however, believes that there cannot be an unqualified supremacy of either: ‘the
practical is the richer and more inclusive order’ (25). This is neither the Platonic nor the
Aristotelian view. If it is assumed that according to Plato wisdom is essentially practical
(phronesis), or the idea of the good (“the highest object of learning”) is essentially practical
(30), it is necessary to say that according to Plato the practical order is the highest order.
As concerns Aristotle, he leaves not the slightest doubt that theory, to him is absolutely
superior in dignity to practice, or that he regards the practical or moral order (25 ff.) as
very far from including the theoretical order.20
Strauss makes clear that the refusal of an unqualified hierarchy of θεωρια and
πρᾶξις is foreign to both Platonic and Aristotelian thinking. He also seems to agree
with Wild about the primacy of the theoretical in Aristotle, whereas he says that the
alleged Platonic primacy of the practical rests on two assumptions, which, as such, are
not proven. Later in the essay, Strauss asserts that Plato deems the philosopher’s de-
scent into the cave (which is the question of the “natural harmony between philosophy
and politics” “stated in Platonic terms”) to be legitimate only in the context of a perfect
society, but, he adds, “the end of the seventh book of the Republic leaves hardly any
doubt as to Plato’s denial of that possibility.”21 In short, according to Strauss, there is a
Platonic-Aristotelian harmony or unity to be found in their common view that the the-
oretical life is superior to the practical life.22
It is on this basis and on this basis only that we can understand the sense in which
Strauss’s figure of the Platonic-Aristotelian philosopher lives an unpolitical life. Already
in Philosophie und Gesetz (1935), he emphasized that Aristotle’s version of the theo-
retical life is one that is freed from politics, in contradistinction to what Plato apparently
argues for in the Republic23. Yet, Plato’s philosopher, according to Strauss, is also un-
political in an important sense. The Platonic philosopher transcends the city insofar as
his very activity consists of attempting to replace the opinions by knowledge: philosophy
is leaving the cave, that is, escaping the city. To be sure, Strauss recognizes that the
political situation of the philosopher is necessary to trigger the philosophical inquiry,
and even to sustain the philosopher’s constant need to reassert the legitimacy of his way
of life, which is part of the philosophic striving for self-knowledge: he thinks that true
philosophy is political philosophy.24 Nevertheless, the fact that the philosophic activity
consists of replacing opinions by knowledge, and therefore to cast doubt on the truth
of the opinions that constitute the very cement of the political life, entails for Strauss an
essential antagonism between the philosopher and the πολις.25 Thence, according to
Strauss, philosophy as Plato and Aristotle conceived of it, is in its most the decisive
respects both beyond and against the political community: it is unpolitical. This para-
doxical unpolitical character of political philosophy is grounded on the essential differ-
ence between the practical and the theoretical, the alleged superiority of the latter, and
the characterization of philosophy as a radically theoretical endeavor, which he sees at
work both in Plato and in Aristotle.
The City and Man (Strauss 1964, p. 65): “Certain it is that the Republic supplies the most magnificent
cure ever devised for any form of political ambition” (my emphasis). Gadamer also stresses in Wahrheit
und Methode the impossibility of any dogmatic use of Plato’s writings (GW 1, 374): “Wir sehen in Platos
Dialogen […] wie Plato die Schwäche der Logoi, und insbesondere die der geschriebenen, durch seine
eigene Dialogdichtung zu überwinden sucht. Die literarische Form des Dialogs stellt Sprache und Begriff
in die ursprüngliche Bewegung des Gesprächs zurück. Das Wort wird dadurch gegen allen dogmatischen
Mißbrauch geschützt.”
23 GS 2, 122: “Der grundsätzliche Unterschied zwischen Platon und Aristoteles zeigt sich allein in der
Art, wie sie sich zu der Theorie als der höchsten Vollkommenheit des Menschen verhalten. Aristoteles
gibt sie völlig frei; vielmehr: er beläßt sie in ihrer natürlichen Freiheit. Platon hingegen gestattet den Phi-
losophen nicht, »was ihnen jetzt gestattet wird«, nämlich das Leben im Philosophieren als Verharren im
Anschauen der Wahrheit. Er »zwingt« sie, für die anderen zu sorgen und sie zu bewachen, damit der
Staat in Wirklichkeit Staat, wahrhafter Staat sei (Rep. 519 D–520 C).”
24 On these dimensions of the political character of philosophy in Strauss and in Strauss-inspired
thought, see Heinrich Meier’s chapter entitled “Warum Politische Philosophie?” in Meier (2013, p. 13-
37). One must also add that philosophy is political for Strauss in that it needs to adopt a political mode
(especially a politically apt rhetoric) in order to find new potential philosophers in the political community
– on this point see “On Classical Political Philosophy” in Strauss (1959, esp. p. 93-94.)
25 Cf. e.g. Strauss (1959, p. 11-12; 1964, p. 125.)
177 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
In a footnote added in a later edition of this essay for the second volume of the
Gesammelte Werke (1986), Gadamer writes: “In my last big work on Plato, ‘Die Idee
des Guten zwischen Plato und Aristoteles’, […] I have tried to resolve this alleged op-
position (diesen vermeintlichen Gegensatz) – [a book] with which Leo Strauss would
presumably have been quite satisfied (womit L. Strauss vermutlich recht zufrieden
gewesen wäre).”27
Hence, in 1965, Gadamer was unsatisfied with the intensity of Strauss’s unifying
reading of Plato and Aristotle, whereas with the publication of Die Idee des Guten, he
tried to overcome what was now for him nothing but an alleged or supposed opposition
(vermeitlichen Gegensatz) between the two philosophers. It should now have been
made clear that the impulse of Gadamer’s re-reading28 of Plato’s Republic was very
much the Straussian question of the harmony or disharmony between the political life
and the philosophical or theoretical life as understood by Plato and Aristotle. Working
anew on those issues, Gadamer came closer to Strauss’s position than he was in 1965,
but his remaining reluctance vis-à-vis Strauss’s reading was responsible for the decisive
orientation of his own interpretation. In fact, he attempted to read Plato’s political phi-
losophy in order to disprove any kind of unilateral superiority or primacy of the theo-
retical life and to show that θεωρια and politics can be bridged within “Platonic-Aris-
totelian Philosophy”.29 In the light of this harmony, Gadamer neither thinks that Pla-
tonic philosophy truly transcends the city (for it is not an entirely theoretical endeavor),
nor does he see the Platonic philosopher as being necessarily in an antagonistic relation
with the city. Gadamer’s interpretation of the Republic undermines the conditions of
the unpolitical character of philosophy as Strauss understands it.
In what follows, I discuss Gadamer’s interpretation with respect to three important
issues: 1) the meaning of the utopian character of the καλλιπολις, especially of the rule
of philosopher-kings (section II); 2) the “theory” of Forms and the Idea of the Good
(section III); 3) the nature of philosophical knowledge (section IV).30 Given that Gad-
amer treats those themes through the prism of a Platonic-Aristotelian harmony, some
insights or concepts that are properly Aristotelian play a determining role in his inter-
pretation. This is explicit in his use of Aristotle’s critique of the Forms through the
“unwritten doctrine” of the One and indefinite Dyad in order to make sense of Plato’s
metaphysics. It can also be observed in his inclination to see Aristotelian φρονησις as
the wisdom of the Platonic philosopher. The general spirit of this method is best cap-
tured in Gadamer’s following insight: “After all, it could be that the Aristotelian critique
[of Plato] – like many a critique – is right indeed in what it says, but not as to who against
whom it says it. (Es könnte immerhin sein, daß die aristotelische Kritik – wie so manche
Kritik – zwar recht hat in dem, was sie sagt, aber nicht gegen den, gegen den sie es sagt,
GW 2, 424). Reading thus Plato with Aristotle rather than one against the other, Gad-
amer develops an understanding of philosophy that precludes any properly unpolitical
possibility. But it might also entail a radical transformation of the meaning and tasks of
the philosophic activity in general.
29 For a helpful case-study of the reciprocity of theory and practice in Gadamer’s interpretation of
Aristotle, see Brogan (2002).
30 I therefore leave aside the theme of philosophy and poetry, which, it should be said, is very impor-
tant in Gadamer’s interpretation of the Republic.
179 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
The charge against the radical political propositions Plato apparently makes in the
Republic is perhaps the most common of all critiques of Plato’s political philosophy.
After the Second World War, worried defenders of the liberal democratic order such
as Karl Popper blamed classical political philosophy – and chiefly Plato – for being the
source of modern totalitarian regimes.31 Needless to say, such reading requires that we
take Plato’s Socrates at his words when he proposes – and gets his interlocutors to agree
with – extreme constitutional principles such as the communism of property and of
children and women among the guardians, and the government of philosopher-kings
(see esp. Rep. III. 416d ff.; V.475c ff.; V.473c ff.). But the critique of such propositions
is by no means an innovation that we owe to modern liberal thinking, for we find al-
ready in Aristotle’s Politics a very sharp critique of the apparent program of Plato’s
Republic.32 It is interesting to note, however, that the Aristotelian critique runs even
deeper than the modern condemnation of “Platonic politics”: Socrates’s measures are
not only undesirable or problematic; they are impossible (ἀδυνατον, Pol. II.2.
1261a14).33 This impossibility is fundamental, for it concerns the nature (φυσις) of the
city itself: if these propositions were to be somehow possibly actualized, the polis would
be destroyed (ἀναιρησει, 1216a18-22), that is, it would not be a polis anymore. Such
emphasis on the impossibility of the καλλιπολις has, it seems, always been for Gada-
mer nothing but a very sound observation. Although Aristotle’s critique apparently
treats the radicalism of the Republic as a serious political view on Plato’s part, Gadamer
treats this criticism as if it was already implied in Plato’s dialogue. On this decisive fea-
ture of Gadamer’s approach – unlike others –, however, no perceptible Aristotelian
influence can be proven. But since Gadamer’s interpretation of the meaning of the
ideal city is very much in tune with Aristotelian politics, I shall nonetheless bring to our
attention some significant parallels between the two.34
Not only is Gadamer eager to recognize the unrealistic character of the ideal city,
but he also takes it as a quasi-evidence: “that this ideal city cannot be actualized is cer-
tainly clear (daß diese ideale Stadt nicht verwirklicht werden kann, ist allerdings klar)”.
(GW 7, 166) Gadamer even holds the communism of women and children and the
rule of philosophers as propositions that prove (zeigen) the impossibility of the
καλλιπολις, and he further qualifies this impossibility (Unmöglichkeit) as an absurdity
(Absurdität). But he asks whether we should simply read this utopia of the state nega-
tively (diese Staatsutopie nur negativ lesen).
As we learn from a subsequent text from Gadamer on Plato’s political philosophy,
he deems essential to read the Republic under the literary genre of utopia (Gattung der
Utopie, GW 7, 275 ff.). But whereas we moderns tend to see in utopias some ideals
whose realization we deeply wish for and perhaps even work for, he makes clear that
this is not the original meaning of the style, which assumes from the outset that the
possibility or the eventual actualization of what is proposed is not the issue.35 Hence
the reader should change his apprehensions (or, as Wahrheit und Methode would put
it, the Vor-Struktur of its understanding) when facing a text crafted according to the
utopian genre: “the reader must not only, as in a naïve approach, merely take into
account those utopian contents and develop an approval or disapproval regarding
them. What is important is rather to learn to think in such forms of rational plays.”36
Gadamer’s own approach to Plato’s utopian genre aims at avoiding two potential pitfalls
when dealing with utopias. On the one hand, one must not think that a utopia is an
ideal that one must try to accomplish; on the other hand, one must not yield to the
temptation of conceiving the truth of utopia merely as the opposite of the utopian con-
tents, that is – to read it only negatively. Gadamer’s rejection of such negative reading
is crucial, for it anticipates and precludes the view according to which philosophy can-
not do anything for the city, a view that could easily develop into an unpolitical account
of the philosophers’s task. Gadamer does not think that Plato’s philosopher can be
purely and simply identified with the political ruler, but he does not think that the uto-
pian genre is just meant to gesture towards the unpolitical.
But what kind of Vernunftspielen stand in between naïve and negative readings of a
utopia like the Republic? In Die Idee des Guten, Gadamer opposes negativ lesen to
dialektisch lesen (GW 7, 167). He explains that the task of the latter is “certainly not as
35 Following the Greek etymology, a utopia means precisely the negation (οὐ) of the place (τόπος) in
which it could be realized – a utopia is a “no-place”.
36 In “Platos Denken in Utopien”, GW 7, 288: “der Leser nicht, wie das im naiven Zugang geschieht,
gegenüber den utopischen Inhalten dieser Schriften bloße Zustimmung oder Abwehr registrieren und
entwickeln darf. Es kommt vielmehr darauf an, in solchen Formen von Vernunftspielen denken zu ler-
nen.”
181 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
simple as reading the opposite as the true meaning,” but rather consists in “relating the
utopian claims case by case to their opposites in order to find, in between, what is really
meant.”37 We must therefore understand that if the realization of the ideal city hangs
upon the government of philosopher-kings – and thereby with a fusion of the political
and the philosophical, a dialectical reading of this proposition should not lead us to the
mere opposite, that is, to the thesis of a radical incompatibility between philosophy and
politics (as Strauss would have it, according to Gadamer). The true meaning of utopia
should be sought somewhere in between the identity and the separation of philosophy
and politics. Gadamer indeed thinks that the opposition (Gegensatz) between theoret-
ical knowledge and political action is “to be transcended in the end (um am Ende
überschritten zu werden).” (GW 7, 171) In Die Idee des Guten, the path of this over-
coming is the interpretation of the Idea of the Good in relation to the cave, the world
of the city (a feature of his interpretation to which we turn in the next section). Yet, we
find in Gadamer’s earlier reading of the Republic and of the problem of the impossi-
bility of the καλλιπολις some reflections that help us make the transition between the
structure of the ideal society and the realm of the Forms.
In fact, Gadamer asserts in his 1942 piece entitled “Plato’s State of Education” that
the concern in the Republic is “not even with the right laws for the state but solely with
the right education for it (es nicht einmal um die rechten Gesetze geht, sondern allein
um die rechte Erziehung zum Staat)”.38 (GW 5, 249; DD 73) We observe that in this
interpretive essay, the relation between political power and philosophy is not bridged
through the rule of philosopher-kings, but through education: “Here again, Plato tries
no other way to power than that of philosophical education (Plato versucht keinen an-
deren Weg zur Macht auch hier als den über die philosophische Erziehung, GW 5,
251).” In Gadamer’s view, this is not supposed to mean, as one would have it from a
literal reading of the Republic, that only those trained in philosophy should rule the
city, but rather that one should try to provide a philosophical education to those who
are likely to rule. Gadamer supports this idea by referring to the well-known autobio-
graphical passage of the Seventh Letter (325b ff.) where Plato says that philosophers
should rule or that rulers should begin to philosophize genuinely (ὄντως
φιλοσοφήσῃ, 326b). That such proposition need not be tied to an actual city like the
one we find in speech in the Republic is made evident for Gadamer by the deed that
37 GW 7, 167: “freilich nicht einfach: das Gegenteil als die wahre Meinung herauslesen […] diese
utopischen Forderungen von Fall zu Fall auf ihr Gegenteil beziehen, um mitteninne das wirklich >Ge-
meinte< zu finden”. This should importantly nuance Smith’s (1986, p. xii) claim to the effect that to read
something dialectically means to read it «as the contrary of what is meant.”
38 Smith’s translation. See also “Platos Denken in Utopien” (GW 7, 284, 286, 288-289) for later,
persistent emphasis on the “Staat der Erziehung”.
182 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
the dialogue consists in: it is as writer (als Schriftsteller) that Plato acts politically by
calling people to philosophy and insisting on the importance of the philosophical edu-
cation of the leaders responsible for the sate (mit dem Ruf zur Philosophie und mit der
Forderung der philosophischen Erziehung der staatstragenden Führer). (GW 5, 250)
At the end of his essay, the philosopher reasserts the education that the Republic, as a
dialogue, is, but also seems to extend the number of students of such an education to
citizens in general. There, Gadamer writes that the requirement of rulers educated
through philosophy can only mean one thing (das aber heißt: es gibt hier überhaupt
nur eines): “the grounding of a state in words is just the educational cultivation that in
each state makes the state possible: the just disposition of its citizens towards the state
(Gründung eines Staates in Worten ist nur der erziehende Aufbau des in jedem Staat
den Staat Ermöglichenden: der rechten Staatsgesinnung seiner Bürger).”39 (GW 5,
262)
The significance of this shift – from the need to educate rulers through philosophy
to the need to educate all the citizens through philosophy – transforms, it seems to me,
the face of the καλλιπολις.40 According to Gadamer’s understanding of the Republic,
Plato’s intention is not so much an aristocratic society in which an elite is properly
educated for the sake of ruling the majority, but a city in which all citizens are philo-
sophically educated, presumably because all citizens may, somehow, be called to rule.
What type of regime Gadamer has in mind is difficult to tell, but it clearly involves a
greater political participation than what we actually observe in the Republic.41 We must
recall here that Gadamer thinks that we should not take Socrates at his word: read
dialectically, the καλλιπολις becomes a city in which there is a mixture of philosophy
and politics and this seems possible in a state where education plays an important role
in the life of its citizens. In so far, philosophy plays a politically decisive role and can by
no means be understood as an unpolitical activity.
Although Gadamer does not explicitly acknowledge an Aristotelian inspiration on
these specific points – at least as far as I know – some parallels with Aristotle are striking
enough to be paid attention to. In his Politics, not only does Aristotle deny the
39 In “Plato und die Dichter”, the Republic is also interpreted as aiming at education, that is, to an
“Erziehung des staatlichen Menschen”, an “Erziehung zum Staat” (GW 5 197).
40 This inclusivity or at least the claim to be inclusive is a feature of Gadamer’s reading of the Republic
that has been rightly underlined by Fuyarchuk (2010, p. 188-190). In fact, Gadamer even includes Ceph-
alus’ understanding of justice as hinting towards the association of justice with knowledge (GW 7, 253;
DD 78), making a place for him in the καλλίπολις whereas he is in fact the only character that Plato
makes disappear from the dramatic setting.
41 Sullivan (1989, 169) explains Gadamer’s view in terms of an “Aristotelian image” of the polis,
though he does not refer to a specific regime. Recently, Walhof (2016) has argued that Gadamer’s posi-
tion is more specifically a democratic one.
183 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
possibility of Plato’s ideal city, but advocates for a mixed regime (τῆς συνθεσεως καὶ
μιξεως, μεμεῖχθαι or ταῖς εὖ κεκραμεναις πολιτειαις), the so-called polity (ἡ
καλουμενη πολιτεια), in which there is a larger political participation than in aristoc-
racies such as the καλλιπολις (Pol. IV.9.1294a31-35, 1294b14 ff.; V.8.1307b30).42 Ac-
cordingly, Aristotelian politics emphasize above all (μαλιστα) the importance of edu-
cation for any proper legislation (Pol. VIII.1337a12). Aristotle argues that such educa-
tion, albeit relative to each regime,43 should sustain affection (φιλια) for the established
regime, great capacity for the works or rule (δυναμιν μεγιστην τῶν ἔργων τῆς ἀρχῆς)
as well as virtue and justice (ἀρετὴν καὶ δικαιοσυνην, Pol. V.9.1309a34-36). This ap-
pears quite close to what Gadamer means by der rechten Staatsgesinnung of the citi-
zens. As for the extension of such an education to the general body of citizens, Aristotle
appears again quite relevant to the Gadamerian approach: “Since there is a single end
for the city as a whole, it is evident that education must necessarily be one and the same
for all (φανερὸν ὅτι καὶ τὴν παιδειαν μιαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι
παντων), and that the superintendence (ἐπιμελεια) of it should be common and not
on a private basis (κοινὴν καὶ μὴ κατ᾽ ἰδιαν)” (Pol. VIII.1.1337a21-24).44 The remain-
ing question therefore concerns the nature of such a common education to virtuous
citizenship. Specifically, what should be determined is whether philosophy plays a role
in Aristotle’s political reflections on education. This question is a very difficult one and
cannot be settled here.45 At any rate, if we read the Republic straightforwardly, it is
42 Given that in the mixed regime, there are elections (like in an oligarchy), but these are not based
on assessment (like in a democracy) – see Pol. IV.9.1294b11-13. The fact that, in a mixed regime, no
office is selected by lot makes it more likely for education to influence the selection of the leaders.
43 This does not mean that education should serve to flatter the inner tendencies of each regime: “But
to be educated relative to the regime is not to do the things that oligarchs or those who want democracy
enjoy, but rather the things by which the former will be able to run an oligarchy and the latter to have a
regime that is run democratically (ἔστι δὲ τὸ πεπαιδεῦσθαι πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν οὐ τοῦτο, τὸ ποιεῖν
οἷς χαίρουσιν οἱ ὀλιγαρχοῦντες ἢ οἱ δημοκρατίαν βουλόμενοι, ἀλλ᾽ οἷς δυνήσονται οἱ μὲν
ὀλιγαρχεῖν οἱ δὲ δημοκρατεῖσθαι).” (Pol. V.9.1310a219-22)
44 How we should understand this oneness and sameness is not immediately clear. As I understand
it, Aristotle simply indicates that education should be homogenous enough among the citizens so as to
foster a true sense of community and avoid great disparities among the political body. To achieve this, a
greater accessibility than what we see in the education of the guardians in the Republic, and a certain
leveling of the content of education seems necessary.
45 Aristotle raises the problem subtly by saying that it is unclear whether (δῆλον οὐδὲν πότερον) one
should be trained in “extraordinary [or superfluous] things (τὰ περιττά)” (Pol. VIII.2.1337a40-42). He
also claims that it is “not unfree to share in some of the liberal sciences up to a certain point (ἔστι δὲ καὶ
τῶν ἐλευθερίων ἐπιστημῶν μέχρι μὲν τινὸς ἐνίων μετέχειν οὐκ ἀνελεύθερον, 1337b15-16; my em-
phasis)” without indicating what would be the proper limits (or what would be too much precision
[ἀκρίβεια]). When stating that a well-educated citizen should be able to “be occupied in correct fashion
184 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
difficult to argue that Plato promotes a philosophical education for everyone, for the
path of dialectic may not be accessible to the citizens who do not have a philosophical
nature. Gadamer may be aware of this difficulty, since, at the end of “Platos Staat der
Erziehung,” he explicitly brackets the issue of the philosophical education to dialectic
(GW 5, 262). By putting this crucial issue in parentheses, our philosopher does not
mean to avoid it simply. As he recognizes that a treatment of the properly philosophical
education would “lead [us] beyond the Idea of Justice and towards the Idea of the
Good and hence beyond each individual Idea”, he says: “it [the philosophical educa-
tion to dialectic] is not the doctrine of Ideas, but rather presupposes it.”46
Gadamer’s interpretation of the καλλιπολις as a utopia conveys the image of a state
of education that is much less aristocratic than the explicit model and that resembles
that developed by Aristotle in his Politics. By loosening the elitism that one finds in
Plato’s ideal regime understood à la lettre, Gadamer enables an indirect rule of philos-
ophy through civic education and thereby confers to philosophy an eminently political
role. Moreover, by asserting that the philosophical education in this mixed form of
political community presupposes the doctrine of the Ideas, Gadamer directs our sight
towards his own interpretation of the Platonic theory of Forms, an interpretation that,
in this case, explicitly acknowledges a debt to Aristotle’s critique of Plato. Since Gada-
mer’s approach to the Republic is coherent, its account of dialectic and the Ideas is
compatible with his views on the education that takes place in a utopian educational
state.
but also to be capable of being at leisure in noble fashion (μὴ μόνον ἀσχολεῖν ὀρθῶς ἀλλὰ καὶ
σχολάζειν δύνασθαι καλῶς, VIII.3.1337b32),” he does not point towards philosophy as much as to-
wards noble music. In the Republic, those who will be guardians go through an important process of
poetic education that aims at instilling in their soul a longing for the καλόν (395c ff.), only the rulers have
a philosophical education and the craftsmen, we gather, are excluded from both of these. In Aristotle’s
polity, there are no citizen is excluded from the common education: it is a much less elitist model.
46 GW 5, 262: “Sie führt über die Idee der Gerechtigkeit hinaus zur Idee des Guten und so über jede
einzelne Idee hinaus. Sie is nicht Ideenlehre, sondern setz diese voraus”.
185 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
Ideas is not Plato’s view and that it is precisely the arithmetic structure of the Ideas that
helps us overcome the χωρισμος problem. This will lead Gadamer to conclude that
Plato’s understanding of the Good is in the end closer than one might think to Aristo-
tle’s view.
Gadamer emphatically states: “Plato war kein Platoniker der zwei Welten
lehrte”(GW 7, 331). He sees much evidence of this throughout the corpus platonicum,
starting with the fact that the Parmenides anticipates most of the arguments we find in
Aristotle’s discussion of the problem of the χωρισμος (e.g. GW 7, 344). Plato did not
mean to separate the Ideas from the world but to think through their relation with the
world, a relation that he coined with the puzzling term of “participation” (μεθεξις).
Μεθεξις was always for Gadamer the fundamental path to understanding Plato’s on-
tology, and, in fact, his whole philosophy. Discussing Aristotle’s problematic identifica-
tion of μεθεξις and μιμησις, Gadamer clarifies a little further the meaning of the for-
mer:
When the stars bring the numbers to representation through their paths, we call this
representation “mimesis” and take it be an approximation of the actual being [Annäher-
ung an das eigentlich Seiende]. In contrast to this, “methexis” is a wholly formal relation-
ship of participation, based on mutuality [Gegenseitigkeit]. “Mimesis” always points in the
direction of that which one approaches, or towards which one is oriented, when one rep-
resents something. “Methexis”, however, as the Greek μετα already signifies, implies that
one thing is there together with something else [daß es mit dem anderen zusammen da
ist]. Participation, μεταλαμβανειν, completes itself only in genuine being-together and
belonging together [Zusammensein und Zusammengehören], μετεχειν.47 (GW 7, 246;
PP, 262)
The reciprocity implied in μεθεξις precludes in fact any two-world χωρισμος. Gad-
amer goes as far as saying that “the chorismos is on the contrary a doctrine of Aristotle
and not of Plato.”48 (GW 7, 281) Here is not the proper place to discuss Gadamer’s
understanding of Aristotle’s unmoved mover as a being that is actually separated from
the physical world and thus as the exemplary foundation of onto-theology. Suffice it to
say that Aristotle’s critique of an ontological separation in Plato is, on a Gadamerian
view, seriously misguided. Aristotle’s χωρισμος “goes beyond Plato’s mathematizing
47 Translation by Findling and Gabova. In his commentary on the Sophist, “Dialektik ist nicht So-
phistik – Theätet lernt das im >Sophistes”, Gadamer translates μέθεξις as Mitdasein and explains: “>Teil-
habe< und >Teilnahme< bedeutet hier nicht ein Haben ode rein Nehmen, sodern ein Sein” (GW 7,
362).
48 See also GW 7, 380: “Es ist also nicht Plato, sondern Aristoteles der Urheber der Zweiwelten-
lehre”.
186 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
interpretation of the transcendence of the Good.”49 (GW 7, 216) The key point, here,
is precisely the mathematical orientation of Plato.50 Of course, Aristotle knew that Pla-
tonic ontology is to be understood according to the model of mathematics, to which he
preferred the model of natural beings.51 But by critiquing a Platonic mathematizing of
the world, Aristotle in fact provides us with great insights on the Ideas. Paradoxically, it
is in light of these insights that Gadamer provides an interpretation that resists the
χωρισμος accusation: Aristotle’s critique of the mathematical orientation of Plato’s on-
tology gives us weapons against his critique of the separation of the Ideas.
An important part of Aristotle’s critique of Plato’s mathematical model is the critique
of the ideal numbers (εἰδητικοὶ ἀριθμοι) that one finds in Book A, M and N of his
Metaphysics. According to this theory of eidetic numbers, all numbers – and eventually
all Forms – proceed from the encounter between two eidetic numbers: the One and
the indefinite Dyad. Instead of defending Plato against that theory by stipulating that
such theory has no textual basis in the corpus, Gadamer reads Plato’s ontology in the
light of it. By doing so, he is following rather closely the work of his old friend Jacob
Klein on Greek mathematics.52 In Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra, Klein projects the theory of the ideal numbers as found in Aristotle’s Meta-
physics M6-8 on Plato’s Sophist. According to Klein, eidetic numbers do not have per
se a mathematical aim in Platonic philosophy:
For Plato, however, it is precisely this unmathematical use of the arithmos structure
which is essential. For the arithmoi eidetikoi are intended to make intelligible not only
the inner articulation of the realm of ideas but every possible articulation, every possible
division and conjunction – in short, all counting.53
Klein argues that the “primal character of being” is “the effect of the ‘twofold in
general,’ the ‘indeterminate dyad’ (ἀοριστας δυας)”: “through the dyad, being is orig-
inally ‘alienated’ from itself’.”54 This original self-alienation of being can be seen in the
Sophist in the fact that “being” (ὄν) is both rest (στασις) and change (κινησις), both
same to itself (ταυτον) and other than itself (θατερον). Among these μεγιστα γενη
introduced by the Eleatic Stranger, Klein says, “‘the other’ is the ‘ultimate source’ of all
articulation whatsoever.”55 This is so because “‘otherness turns out to be the ontological
aspect of ‘non-being,’ which can never be separated from ‘being’.”56 Gadamer, it seems,
does not think otherwise. At the end of an essay entitled “Mathematik und Dialektik
bei Plato,” he writes: “Discerning is differentiating. And further: differentiating is never
merely knowing the one. It is also, necessarily, knowing the other that it is not. Being
is also non-being.”57 (GW 7, 311) And, commenting directly on the five γενη in his
essay on the Sophist, he stresses that sameness (Selbigkeit) and differentness (Verschie-
denheit) are always there together with every being (mit jedem Seienden mit da sind).
(GW 7, 361) The theory of ideal numbers therefore reveals for Gadamer, as it does
for Klein, the twofoldness of being – being is both one and many, same and different.58
But, according to Gadamer, this arithmetic structure of the being echoes more di-
rectly another ontological pairing that one finds in the Philebus – the limit (περας) and
the unlimited (ἄπειρον): “It is not only the Aristotelian report in Metaphysics A 6 on
the two principles of the One and the indefinite Two from which all numbers, just like
all being generally, is derived. The doctrine of the peras and the apeiron, that the Phile-
bus brings, says the same.”59 In fact, as Klein’s study shows60 and as Aristotle testifies
multiple times (e.g. Met. I1.1035a30; I6.1056b23-24; N1.1088a5), a number is, in
Greek thinking, a definite or limited plurality. Plurality is not the same as definite plu-
rality; to say that there are horses in the field is not the same as saying that there are ten
horses in the field61. The plurality is definite insofar as it is filtered through a unit: we
can only say that there are ten horses in the field because we have the unit “horse” and
apply it to a plurality of horses. Forms or Ideas have the structure of number insofar as
they, too, delimit a plurality. Περας and ἄπειρον constitute, together, the “mixture” of
being. Just as there is no περας without ἄπειρον, and just as there cannot be any
ἄπειρον that is intelligible without a certain περας, Ideas cannot be separated from the
actual beings that they delimit. Gadamer calls this the “self-evidence of the participation
of the particular to the general [die Selbstverständlichkeit der Teilhabe des Einzelnen
am Allgemeinen].” (GW 7, 192) It is interesting to note at this point that, thus pre-
sented, the Platonic Forms do not seem to differ much from Aristotle’s εἰδη, and the
mixture of περας and ἄπειρον from Aristotelian hylomorphism.62 Following the path
of μεθεξις, we are, it seems, radically downplaying the transcendence of the Ideas.63
This downplaying becomes even more evident when we follow Gadamer a step fur-
ther and turn to the Idea of the Good. For, as we know, the Good is said by Plato’s
Socrates to be “beyond being (ἐπεκεινα τῆς οὐσιας, Rep. VI 509b)”. The way Gada-
mer reads this heavy transcendence of the Good is decisive for his whole interpretation
of Plato’s metaphysics. According to him, the ἐπεκεινα should be understood as a
withdrawal or a flight: “‘It itself’, αὐτὸ τὸ ἀγαθον, withdraws itself (entzieht sich).”
(GW 7, 198). One might want to pause here and ask what does it mean for the Good
to withdraw itself. Gadamer’s answer to this question is to be found most explicitly in
Wahrheit und Methode: the Good is absolutely ungraspable (schlechthin ungreifbar,
GW 1, 284). The other question that immediately comes to mind is: where does the
Good escape? And this is the crucial point. Gadamer thinks that we must read the
ἐπεκεινα of the Good in the Republic as the mythical counterpart64 of the flight of the
Good in the Beautiful that is described in the Philebus: “I hope to have made credible
that this is the mythical form in which Plato essentially expresses what he makes explicit
in the Philebus when he says that the Good ‘appears’ in the Beautiful (das Gute im
Schönen >erscheint<) […] That is the meaning of the statement that the Good takes
refuge in the Beautiful (daß das Gute in dem Schönen seine Zuflucht nehme)”. (GW
7, 198) Unlike the completely ungraspable Good, the Beautiful is the one among all of
Plato’s Ideas that must always, by its most shining and disclosing (ἐκφανεστατον) es-
sence, appear to our senses, as Gadamer recalls from the Phaedrus (250d; GW 7 194).
Connecting the ἐπεκεινα of the Good to its flight in the Beautiful is the interpretive
move that allows Gadamer to transform the alleged transcendence of the Good into
immanent appearance.65 But what does it mean to say that the Good appears through
the Beautiful? In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer explains himself as follows:
Plato defines the Beautiful through measure, adequateness and proportionality; Aristo-
tle states as the moments (eidê) of the Beautiful order (taxis), good proportionality (sum-
metria) and definition (hôrismenon), and finds these given in an exemplary manner in
mathematics […] Conformity to measure, symmetry is the decisive condition of all
beauty.66 (GW 1, 482-483)
Gadamer’s implicit references here are Plato’s Philebus (64e5) and Aristotle’s Met-
aphysics (M3.1078a31-b5).67 Let us note that the reference to Aristotle here is some-
what problematic. In this passage, Aristotle is in fact critiquing the Platonists for con-
flating the ἀγαθον and the καλον and suggests that whereas the καλον can be found
both in in immovable things (ἀκινητοις) and actions (πραξει), the good only exists in
actions. Therefore, Gadamer is once again interpreting an Aristotelian critique of Plato
as part of Plato’s own thinking. The appearing of the Good through the Beautiful is
recognizable through order, proportion and symmetry. In the Philebus, this appearing
takes the form of the good life, which is itself the proper mixture of pleasure and
thought, respectively determined ontologically by the ἄπειρον and the περας. Gada-
mer takes this one step further by claiming that the proper ordering of this mixture
reflects the good statesman’s art of measuring as it is presented in Plato’s Statesman.68
These criteria of the Statesman are very much immanent: the measure, the fitting, the
right moment or occasion and what is required (τὸ μετριον καὶ τὸ πρεπον καὶ τὸ
καιρον καὶ τὸ δεον, 284e5). This connection adds something decisive to Gadamer’s
interpretation of the Good: temporality. In fact, if the Good orders the proper mixture
of limitedness and unlimitedness according to the καιρος, this means that the Good is
relative to temporally determined circumstances: the proper ordering is a timely, tran-
sient good ordering and not a good ordering simpliciter. Needless to say, this strongly
65 I think it is right to say with Failla (2009, p. 82) that there is a primacy (Vorzug) of the Beautiful
over the Good in Gadamer’s interpretation.
66 “Plato bestimmt das Schöne durch Maß, Angemessenheit und Proportioniertheit, Aristoteles nen-
net als die Momente (eidê) des Schönen Ordnung (taxis), Wohlproportioniertheit (symmetria) und Be-
stimmtheit (hôrismenon) und findet dieselben in der Mathematik in exemplaricher Weise gegeben […]
Maßangemessenheit, Symmetrie ist die entscheidende Bedingung alles Schönheit.”
67 This line of the Philebus is explicitly quoted, however, in Die Idee des Guten (GW 7, 193) to
underline the importance of measure (μετριότης) and symmetry (συμμετρία) in the appearing of the
Beautiful.
68 GW 7, 197: “In etwas anderer Perspektive scheint sich mir diese der aristotelischen Kritik so ent-
schieden zuvorkommende Lehre auch im >Politikos< zu spiegeln.”
190 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
echoes Aristotelian ethics and its insistence on the kairological and relative character of
the human good.69
By reading the Platonic problem of the Good through Aristotle’s critiques and in-
sights – concerning the χωρισμος, the doctrine of ideal numbers and the relation be-
tween the good and the beautiful – Gadamer performs an interpretation that seriously
downplays the transcendence of the Ideas, or rather, that transforms this transcendence
into the immanence that he sees as the Platonic insight into human finitude.70 With
Gadamer’s understanding of Plato’s ontology in the direction of immanent criteria for
human action, we begin to see in what sense a philosophical education could be rele-
vant to citizenship and the political community as a whole. The inquiry into being di-
rects us not outside the cave, but rather inside, that is, to politically relevant categories.
The characteristics of the being whose understanding is the task of philosophy corre-
spond to immanent criteria that ground the philosopher’s activity in concrete practical
circumstances and make it possible to actually grasp the Ideas while accomplishing the
political task of educating the citizens. Such transfiguration of Plato’s ontological reflec-
tions leads us towards an understanding of philosophical wisdom that is in tune with
the political task of philosophy. We may now turn to this last step of Gadamer’s inter-
pretation of Plato’s Republic.
According to Aristotle, the kind of wisdom that the philosopher seeks, σοφια, is the
knowledge of the highest or most divine things (τὰ περιττα, τὰ θαυμαστα, τὰ
δαιμονια), which are by nature the most difficult to know (τὰ χαλεπα, ΝΕ VI 7
1141b4-5). Most importantly, σοφια is knowledge of the universal (τὸ καθολου), of
what is always true (cf. ΝΕ VI 6 1140b30; VI 7 1141a19 and VI 7 1141b14-15). Such
objects of knowledge are foreign to the moral and political realm: the good is not
69 Gadamer in fact claims radically: “Man findet hier geradezu die Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen
Ethik.” (GW 7, 197)
70 See GW 1, 489: “Der >Vorschein< des Schönen scheint der menschlich-endlichen Erfarhrung
vorbehalten.” Gadamer could have interpreted in this direction the fact that the flight of the Good in the
Beautiful in the Philebus is what happens for us (ἥμιν, 64e4). He could have argued, for instance, that
the “us” does not refer only to the interlocutors in the specific discussion of the dialogue (as does Thomas
A. Szlezák, cited in Gonzalez [2017, p. 624n23]), but rather to “us, human beings”. I think that by eclips-
ing this implicit distinction in Plato as what is for us and what is in itself, Gadamer transforms the Platonic
recognition of human finitude into the temporality and historicity of being (cf. Renaud [1999, p. 71]), as
it will appear more clearly in section IV of this paper.
191 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
universal, for good actions are good according to specific contexts and times (NE I 6
1096a11-29). The mutability of moral and political affairs is the reason why Aristotle
thinks that the good is not the object of σοφια and why he therefore sharply contrasts
theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom or prudence (φρονησις): “nobody deliber-
ates about things that cannot be otherwise” (NE VI 5 1140a33).71 Plato did not develop
conceptual distinctions such as Aristotle’s with regards to wisdom: it is well known that
his use of φρονησις is much broader and includes instances of both practical and the-
oretical knowledge. He did, however, conceptualize the Idea of the Good, a principle
that is said to be unchangeable and eternal, and that is, in this respect at least, to be
grasped by the kind of wisdom that Aristotle would call σοφια rather than deliberated
about through what Aristotle calls φρονησις. Admittedly, Aristotle’s new insights on
φρονησις are a response to the Platonic problem of the Good: the same type of wis-
dom cannot grasp both the changing beings that one encounters within practical life
and an eternal and immutable being. Yet, according to Gadamer’s interpretation of this
problem, Plato’s Idea of the Good is deeply related to the kind of rationality that Aris-
totelian φρονησις just is. Of course, he is eager to see this type of practical rationality
at work in Plato’s φρονησις, and especially in the Socratic art of dialogue and dialec-
tic.72 It is, at any rate, hardly deniable that there is a practical moment or aspect involved
in the Platonic knowledge of the Good; but there is also a deeply theoretical moment,
an aspect of this wisdom that must transcend the temporality and situatedness of action
71 Gadamer insists on the idea that wisdom in its full sense should encompass both types of knowledge
– see GW 10, 240: “Und wenn Aristoteles um der Klarheit der Begriffe willen beides, Sophia und
Phronesis, als Tugenden der Theorie und der Praxis voneinander geschieden hat, so werden wir der
verborgenen Einheit beider erst recht nachdenken dürfen, die der Genius der griechischen Sprache für
uns verwahrt hat. Die»Weisheit« zeigt sich im theoretischen wie im praktischen Bereich und besteht am
Ende in der Einheit von Theorie und Praxis. Das Wort >Sophia< sagt das.” Yet, throughout his work,
Gadamer repeats relentlessly that only philosophy, and not σοφία or Weisheit, is accessible to us.
72 For instance, in the introduction to his translation of the Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics
(ANE, 12, 15), Gadamer argues that since φρόνησις allows an understanding of the other (Verstehen
des Anderen), it is a fundamental hermeneutic virtue (hermeneutische Grundtugend) such that Aristotle
has pursued further the intention of the socratic dialogue and Platonic dialectic (hat in Wahrheit die
Intention des sokratischen Dialogs und der platonischen Dialektik weitegeführt). Fruchon (1994) has also
spoken of a “socratisme de la phronêsis” in Gadamer’s Platonism. Cf. Renaud (2019, p. 352): “Gadamer
will seek in his first major publication (1931), and especially after 1960, to fuse Aristotle’s phronêsis and
Platonic dialectic.” Conversely, Gadamer – although he emphasizes most of the time the importance of
the Aristotelian difference between practical and theoretical knowledge (e.g. GW 7, 217-218) – tries at
times to minimize the extent to which σοφία is only theoretical and φρόνησις only practical. See on the
latter point GW 6, 240: “Die begriffliche Unterscheidung von >Sophia< als nur theoretischer und
>Phronesis< als nur praktischer Tugend ist künstlich und wird von Aristoteles nur um der begrifflichen
Klärung willen getroffen.”
192 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
if it is to grasp what is ἐπεκεινα τῆς οὐσιας73 – and this latter moment or aspect is just
what Gadamer is eager to deny. Therefore, in interpreting the wisdom that grasps the
Idea of the Good through the Beautiful as φρονησις, he is not simply playing on the
ambiguity of Platonic φρονησις: he is transforming the Platonic philosopher into an
Aristotelian φρονιμος. This interpretation is the peak of Gadamer’s thought, as the
title of his eponymous book announces, that the Idea of the Good lies “between Plato
and Aristotle”.
Plato’s discovery of the Ideas owes to his famous second-sailing, his turn to the
λογοι. As early as his Habilitationschrift, Gadamer translates the turn to the λογοι as
a turn to language, to Sprache (e.g. GW 5, 52).74 It is therefore not a coincidence that
we also find a discussion of the withdrawal of the Good in the Beautiful in the last
section of Wahrheit und Methode devoted to language and truth. As this constitutes
admittedly the culmination of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, we find there the ultimate ar-
ticulation of truth and being as well as an insight on the type of knowledge that can
grasp such truth. In this last section of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer famously
asserts that all “being that can be understood is language (Sein, das verstanden werden
kann, ist Sprache).” (GW 1, 478) This is so because every understandable being must
bear some meaning, and there is no meaning that does not come to be in language.
Gadamer calls this phenomenon the “speculative structure” of language, where the
word “speculative” should not be understood as highly theoretical or as pointing to-
wards something transcendent, but must rather be understood according to its Latin
origin, speculum: language reflects, mirrors what is meant. In his commentary on
Plato’s texts on the Ideenlehre, Gadamer defines the Idea with the very same terms
that he uses in Wahrheit und Methode to speak of Sprache: “the ideality of the mean-
ing of the word” (die Idealität der Bedeutung im Worte/des Wortes, cf. GW 1, 421;
PTI, 82). But interpreting the transcendence of the Idea as the ideality of the meaning
of words in language is precisely downplaying transcendence, diluting it into imma-
nence. For Gadamer does not think that every word is ontologically tied to a fixed
73 Gadamer himself acknowledges that, grasped theoretically, as opposed to practically, the good is
an immutable being, – GW 7, 217-28: “das, was so in theoretischer Hinsicht als ‘gut’ begegnet und die
Unverändlichkeit des Seins meint, etwas anderes ist als das Tunliche, auf das die praktische Vernünf-
tigkeit des Menschen ausgerichtet ist” (my emphasis).
74 See also Renaud (1999, p. 145). This translation continues in Wahrheit und Methode (GW 1,
119). In the later translation we find in Plato. Texte zur Ideenlehre (1978), the turn to the λόγοι becomes
a turn to Rede. I agree with Renaud (2019, p. 360) that this translation does not represent a break but
rather a continuity with the turn to Sprache and Sprachlichkeit.
193 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
meaning that it always reflects.75 The speculative work of language is a much more
complex and circumstantially structured phenomenon. Rather, what happens is that
when we express ourselves, we intend a certain meaning by using specific words that
are likely to disclose this meaning considering the whole context and situatedness of
this expression.
The experience of truth in language therefore requires that we chose the right words
to bring our meaning into light. These words must be measured and proportionate to
the thing or the experience that they are meant to describe, but they therefore must be
measured and proportionate to the circumstances in which they are used. Now, let us
recall the Gadamerian affinity between language, λογος and Idea. By putting words on
a multiform and equivocal experience, language, just as the Ideas and numbers, limits
some unlimitedness. But since the Idea of the Good has to take refuge in the appearing
of the Beautiful, it only appears to us as the fitting, the opportune, as what is propor-
tionate to the moment and place in which it shines forth. Similarly, words are not always
the right words: the expression of meaning through this unification of experience in
language is always transient and must therefore always be resumed over and over
again.76 This is why the kairological aspect of the Good hinted at in Gadamer’s inter-
pretation of its withdrawal in the Beautiful is given in Wahrheit und Methode the rad-
ical meaning of an event (Geschehen).77 If what gives truth to any being is the Good
(Rep. 508e2-3) and if the Good only appears to us in the shining-forth of the Beautiful
that one finds in λογοι, in Sprache, then truth itself has the character of an event
(Ereignischarakter, GW 1, 488).78 If being and truth are so strongly determined by the
75 Such a conclusion could arise from a literal reading of Plato’s Cratylus. Gadamer rather thinks that
Socrates is ironic in the Cratylus, so ironic in fact that he dissociates language and ontology (GW 1, 411).
76 Following Risser’s (2002, p. 228-229) analysis: “The task of hermeneutics is to find the right word.
[…] The right word as the event of truth that appears from within human speaking is accordingly the very
coming to language to help language. This seemingly awkward expression makes perfect sense when we
realize that language, as logos, is that multiplicity that follows the order of being that is one and two. And
when the right word appears, it is also a word for its time, as we now from the attempt to speak against
the silence of death where no word is able to find its time. When the right word does appear, i.e. removes
itself from silence or its solidity, becoming in effect in a living world, we also know that it is not the last
word, at least not for the living-with-one-another. In our incarnate living-with-one-another there is always
the future of the word.” See also Boutet (2014, p. 480) on the right word.
77 See Risser (2002, p. 229) and Boutet (2014, p. 481-482). That this Geschehen and Ereignis must
be understood in terms of Zeitlichkeit and Geschichtlichkeit is confirmed in Gadamer’s essay entitled
“Was ist Wahrheit?” (GW 2, 56).
78 Smith (1991, p. 33, 41) is right to underline the event-character of Gadamer’s conception of lan-
guage but by opposing this conception to Plato’s theory of the Ideas, he neglects to see how immanentist
Gadamer’s interpretation of the Ideas is. One should also avoid Smith’s opposition between a dialogical
194 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
temporal situation in which they are disclosed, they are not transcendent and there
cannot be any theoretical knowledge of them, at least not in the Aristotelian sense
sketched above. But, given this very situatedness, neither can there be any technical
knowledge them. This is why Gadamer emphasizes practical reason, and indeed Aris-
totle’s φρονησις, as the model of rationality that befits philosophical hermeneutics
(GW 1, 317-329). That philosophy must become hermeneutics means that philoso-
phizing must be limited in its scope and ambitions by the resources of φρονησις. What
it discloses is never a universal truth but truths that are temporally, historically situated,
that are attuned to the finitude of human existence (GW 1, 489). And, as we see in a
passage already quoted above, the political boundedness that we find ourselves in is
due to the fact that we are finite beings: “We are mortals and not gods. […] The char-
acterization of the practical life as the second best life in the Aristotelian scheme means
only that the theoretical life would be fine if we were gods; but we are not.”79
This transformation of Platonic philosophy into Aristotelian φρονησις in Gada-
mer’s hermeneutics has a significant impact on his understanding of the Republic. If
the Good is downplayed to the criteria of measure, proportions, and appropriateness
to circumstances, the philosopher who attempts to seek it is in fact no one else than the
φρονιμος. And, of course, the φρονιμος is the one who navigates the political world
best (e.g. ANE, 10; GW 10, 239). In the context of the Republic, this means that the
καλλιπολις is not a city governed by the few wise ones, but by prudent citizens.
Whether any citizen can truly become prudent in the full sense is not a question that
Gadamer raises. But, in all likelihood, the route to prudence in its Aristotelian meaning
is more accessible than the theoretical ascent to the immutable and eternal.80 Not only
does this explain how philosophical education can be spread out more broadly
throughout the political community; it also supports the view that philosophical educa-
tion accomplishes a political function.81 According to Gadamer’s reading of the Re-
public, even the person who dedicates his existence to the pursuit of the highest wisdom
– knowledge of the Forms – cannot escape his political situation in any significant sense,
for this wisdom turns out to be nothing else than φρονησις: the philosopher cannot
live an unpolitical life.
and a metaphysical Platonism, an irrelevant and inoperative opposition when it comes to Gadamer’s
reading of Plato.
79 Gadamer in Fortin (1984, p. 12-13); my emphasis.
80 Gadamer never doubts that φρόνησις is accessible to human beings (not to each one of us, to be
sure), but he repeatedly casts doubt on our capacity to be σοφοί.
81 Fuyarchuk (2010, p. 153) claims that in Gadamer’s interpretation of the Republic, “justice is real-
ized when the citizens become philosophers.” This is true if we add this important qualification: philoso-
phy, on Gadamer’s account, has more to do with φρόνησις than σοφία (in Aristotle’s sense).
195 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
5. CONCLUSIONS
Despite the fact that Gadmerian hermeneutics may not represent a full-blown polit-
ical philosophy, Gadamer’s reading of Plato’s Republic shows the he does not conceive
of philosophy as an unpolitical activity or way of life. Extremely unorthodox, sometimes
strange but yet staggeringly brilliant in its own way, his understanding of the Good as a
Platonic-Aristotelian problem leads him instead to a harmonious articulation of philos-
ophy and politics. Theoretical philosophizing cannot be properly understood as unpo-
litical because it is both limited and informed by the political world of human facticity.
There is no unpolitical existence and if one would act as if there was, he would blind
himself to the situatedness of all possible understanding:
We remain embedded in the social structures and the normative perspectives in which
we were reared and must recognize that we are part of a development that always proceeds
on the basis of some preshaped view. Ours is a fundamentally and inescapably herme-
neutical situation with which we have to come to terms via a mediation of the practical
problems of politics and society with the theoretical life.82
Conversely, the political is shaped by philosophy insofar as it deals with the contin-
gent and temporal dimensions of truth that structure the human good. The philoso-
pher therefore can (and ought to) play a fundamental political role through civic edu-
cation. Whereas his friend and interlocutor Leo Strauss argued that the Platonic-Aris-
totelian philosopher transcends his city by the very act of philosophizing, and becomes
from that moment a stranger to his political community, Gadamer thought that such
unpolitical stance for philosophy was absolutely impossible. Whereas the former
thought that the rule of philosopher-kings is essentially impossible and that philosophy
and politics “tend away from one another in opposite directions”,83 the latter believed
that what Plato truly aims at is an indirect influence of philosophy on politics through
the education of prudent citizens. In light of this “minimalist Platonism”, we are in a
better position to understand why Gadamer thought that the ideal city is always some-
how present in every existing city.84
82 Gadamer in Fortin (1984, p. 13). In Vernunft in Zeitalter der Wissenchaft, Gadamer speaks of a
primacy (Vorrang) of both θεωρία and πρᾶξις in Aristotle (VZW, 108). Despite this Gadamerian har-
monious view of the relation of the theoretical and the practical, it must be recalled that what grounds this
harmony is a transformation of theoretical knowledge into practical knowledge (as shown especially in
section IV). I must therefore agree with Renaud (2019, p. 351) when he writes that “the unity and reci-
procity of practice and theory implied in this conception ultimately means the primacy of the practical”.
83 Strauss (1964, p. 125).
84 I borrow this expression from Beiner (2014); Gadamer’s phrase is quoted as an epigraph to this
essay.
196 ANTOINE PAGEAU - ST - HILAIRE
85 In this sense, Beiner (2014, p. 132) legitimately asks: “Is there something “post-philosophical”
about Gadamer’s philosophy?”
86 Gonzalez (2012, p. 190-191) is right to say that there is no explicit distinction between explanation
and understanding in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. One could say that there is rather an absorption of Erklä-
ren into the historicity of Verstehen. There remains, in other words, an implicit primacy of understanding
over explanation, a primacy that indicates that both tasks are understood differently. When Gonzalez
(2006, p. 438) asserts the existence of a difference between hermeneutic understanding and proof, he is
just getting at the distinction I wish to bring to attention. Paul Ricoeur (1986) deemed the disparity between
expliquer and comprendre as an alternative ruineuse that – even though it originated in Dilthey more
than in any other thinker – remained to be overcome even after Gadamer.
87 Renaud (2019, p. 369) also thinks that Gadamer’s inquiry is transcendental in the Kantian sense,
for it raises the question of the conditions of possibility of understanding.
197 Philosophy and Politics in Gadamer’s Interpretation of Plato’s Republic
truth-events owes a lot to his project of articulating harmoniously philosophy and poli-
tics. But if this transformation is the price that philosophy has to pay, maybe we should
think twice before embracing the project of lowering our most theoretical endeavors to
the limited realm of the political. By doing so, Gadamer was certainly attempting to
attune philosophy to human finitude. Yet Plato and Aristotle knew how to acknowledge
our finitude without reducing philosophy to practical rationality. And Gadamer’s own
highly theoretical work still testifies to the worth of a philosophizing that does not limit
itself to prudential judgment.88
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Work on this paper was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada. I would like to thank Robert Stone and the anonymous reviewers
of Etica & Politica/ Ethics & Politics for their careful reading and helpful comments.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NATHAN PINKOSKI
University of Toronto, St Michael's College
nathan.pinkoski@utoronto.ca
ABSTRACT
This essay compares how Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss interpret the allegory of the cave in Plato's
Republic. Such a comparison helps resolve two ambiguities in the scholarship on Arendt and Strauss.
First, Arendt is ambiguous about the origins of the tradition of political philosophy that, she argues,
distorts the authentic experience of philosophy and politics. I contend that a theme typically associ-
ated with Strauss, esotericism, appears in Arendt and helps resolve this ambiguity. In an esoteric
reading of Plato's allegory of the cave, Arendt argues that Plato constructs the allegory of the cave to
teach a lesson that would make the political situation of the philosopher less precarious. This initiates
the formidable tradition of political philosophy. The tradition's prejudice in favour of the vita con-
templativa over the vita activa originates with Plato's politics. Arendt exposes Plato's esotericism in
order to retrieve a purer understanding of philosophy and politics from Platonism's distortions. Sec-
ond, Strauss is ambiguous toward metaphysics. Strauss expresses this ambiguity in his interpretation
of the allegory of the cave, as well as in his treatment of Plato's doctrine of the ideas. Yet a tendency
in Strauss scholarship, as well as in Straussian studies of Plato, is to conclude that Strauss aims for a
non-metaphysical recovery of Platonic philosophy, where the priority is to resolve the precarious
political situation of the philosopher vis-à-vis the city. This interpretation holds that for Strauss, the
allegory of the cave and the doctrine of ideas are primarily about political themes. I argue that Ar-
endt's interpretation diverges from Strauss precisely on the emphasis of political themes. It is Arendt,
not Strauss, who emphasises political themes. It is Arendt, not Strauss, who primarily interprets the
doctrine of the ideas as Plato's solution to the precarious political situation of the philosopher vis-à-
vis the city. Showing where Arendt and Strauss diverge on these points deepens our understanding
of Strauss. Strauss's interpretation stresses the presuppositions behind the form of questioning that
the doctrine of ideas takes. Strauss cannot be characterised as a simply non-metaphysical thinker
concerned with the precarious political situation of the philosopher, because his own interpretation
of Plato's doctrine of the ideas and the allegory of the cave ultimately raise the question of what nature
is.
KEYWORDS
Political philosophy, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Plato, metaphysics, unpolitical.
202 NATHAN PINKOSKI
As recent scholarship makes clear, the abiding preoccupation in the thought of Han-
nah Arendt is the relationship between the philosopher and the city.1 This theme in
Arendt’s work makes possible more direct comparisons between her thought and that
of Leo Strauss, who was similarly preoccupied with the theme of the relationship be-
tween the philosopher and the city. Likewise, recent scholarship on Strauss has em-
phasized the need to distinguish Strauss’s “elementary premises” from the impressive
edifice of “Straussianism”, the body of knowledge inherited from Strauss, but which
develops themes that risk covering or concealing Strauss’s positions. To recover
Strauss’s “elementary premises” requires an understanding of the intellectual context
that gives rise to his project, as well as a comparison with other thinkers who also share
his intellectual context.2 This in turn raises the possibility of more direct comparisons
between his thought and that of Hannah Arendt.3
While the older tendency in scholarship has been to argue that Strauss and Arendt
are radically opposed to each other, newer scholarship has challenged the “all too fa-
miliar opposition” by outlining the intellectual context Strauss and Arendt share.4 Since
both Strauss and Arendt base their projects on unusual readings of seminal texts in the
history of philosophy, scholarship now requires a direct comparison of how they inter-
pret the same text. This comparison will sharpen our understanding of their projects.
1 See especially Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, edited by Jerome Kohn (New York:
Schocken Books, 2005); N.B. The Human Condition, 2nd Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998), 12. See also Richard Bernstein, “Arendt on Thinking,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah
Arendt, edited by Dana Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 280; Frederick Dolan,
“Arendt on Philosophy and Politics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt, Edited by Dana
Villa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Note that Arendt is wary of the term “philosopher”,
because she holds that the term is compromised by the tradition of the vita contemplativa. She prefers to
speak about the thinker or the activity of thinking. Strauss, for his part, embraces the term “philosopher.”
In what follows, to maintain consistency, I shall use the term “philosopher” in the broadest conventional
sense, to describe someone engaged in the activity of thinking.
2 Rodrigo Chacón, “Reading Strauss from the Start: On the Heideggerian Origins of Political Philos-
ophy,” European Journal of Political Thought 9: 3 (2010), esp. 287-88.
3 Earlier comparisons (which generally note the paucity of direct comparisons), include Ronald
Beiner, “Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss: The Uncommenced Dialogue,” Political Theory 18:2 (1990);
Horst Mewes, “Modern Individualism: Reflections on Oakeshott, Arendt, and Strauss,” Political Science
Reviewer 21 (1992); Dana Villa, “The Philosopher vs. The Citizen: Arendt, Strauss, and Socrates,” Polit-
ical Theory 26: 2 (1998).
4 See Liisi Keedus, The Crisis of German Historicism: The Early Political Thought of Hannah Ar-
endt and Leo Strauss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 135. C.f. Villa, “The Philosopher
vs. The Citizen,” esp. 147-48; and the veiled reference to Arendt in Nathan Tarcov and Thomas Pangle,
“Epilogue,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. by Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, 3rd Ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), 928.
203 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
In this essay, I compare how Arendt and Strauss interpret the allegory of the cave in
Plato’s Republic, in order to clarify the distinct “phenomenologies” of philosophic ac-
tivity each offer.5 Specifically, I aim to clarify two ambiguities in the scholarly literature
surrounding their “phenomenologies”. First, while Arendt recounts the tradition’s prej-
udice in favour of the vita contemplativa over the vita activa, she appears to be ambig-
uous concerning the reasons behind this prejudice.6 The resolution to this ambiguity,
I contend, comes through understanding that a theme traditionally associated with
Strauss, esotericism, plays a role in Arendt’s thought. In an esoteric reading of Plato’s
allegory of the cave, Arendt argues that Plato constructs the tradition for concealed
political reasons, to make the political situation of the philosopher less precarious. Ar-
endt concludes that the reasons behind the tradition’s prejudice originate with Plato.
Exposing Plato’s esotericism is part of Arendt’s purification of philosophy.
Second, Strauss’s recovery of philosophy is often interpreted as “non-metaphysi-
cal.”7 Yet by understanding how the interpretations of Arendt and Strauss diverge, no-
tably in their treatment of Plato’s doctrine of the ideas, we sharpen our understanding
of Strauss’s own views. Strauss, I contend, cannot be characterized as a simply ‘non-
metaphysical’ thinker concerned with the precarious political situation of the philoso-
pher, because his own interpretation of the allegory of the cave points in a different
direction. Strauss’s own purification of philosophy requires grasping the presupposi-
tions behind the form of questioning that the doctrine of ideas takes. This enables his
discovery of nature.
In section I, I describe the similar concerns that impel Arendt and Strauss to recon-
sider the history of political thought, and the interpretative approaches for which they
advocate in reading Plato. In sections II and III, I describe, respectively, the interpre-
tation Arendt and Strauss give of Plato’s allegory of the cave. In section IV I contrast
Arendt’s reading of the cave with Strauss, discussing the role esotericism and the prob-
lem of persecution play in each account. In section V I turn to Strauss’s account of the
ideas. I show the significance of his departure from Arendt, who argues that Plato pre-
sents the ideas as he does for political reasons.
5 For a brief statement on phenomenology in Arendt and Strauss respectively, see Steve Buckler,
Hannah Arendt and Political Theory: Challenging the Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2011), 6 and Rodrigo Chacón, “Strauss and Husserl,” Idealistic Studies 44: 2/3 (2014), 281, 290-91. In
focusing on the allegory of the cave, I build upon the study of Harald Bluhm, “Variationen des Höh-
lengleichnisses. Kritik und Restitution politischer Philosophie bei Hannah Arendt und Leo Strauss,"
Deutsches Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 47:6 (1999).
6 Keedus, 174.
7 Catherine Zuckert, Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida (London:
University of Chicago Press, 1996). 116; See also Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 2nd Ed. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).
204 NATHAN PINKOSKI
As Arendt and Strauss mix interpretative and philosophic concerns in their ap-
proaches to reading texts, it is necessary to provide a brief statement on some of the
philosophic concerns they share, which bear on how they interpret Plato.
First, both are interested in the problem of the relationship between theory and
practice, as raised through the subversion of the traditional priority of theoretical life
over practical life that Martin Heidegger initiates.8 Both accept the need to undertake
this subversion; both take the additional step of elevating the importance of Socrates
and Plato vis-à-vis the traditional account, to address the original meaning of key con-
cepts.9 For Arendt, the task is to challenge the hierarchy of the theoretical life over
practical life that the tradition has held since Socrates and Plato.10 Strauss’s interest is
in stressing that the presupposition held by the tradition of philosophy, that theoretical
life is the highest, is itself a problem for Socrates and Plato.11 Yet while both are grateful
to Heidegger for initiating this subversion, they depart from him to confirm the distinc-
tion between the theoretical and the practical life. 12 Both wish to avoid repeating
Heidegger’s dissolution of the distinctiveness of theoretical life as a highest kind of
practical life. In various ways, they think, Heidegger’s project simply intensifies the rule
of theory over practice. In a way more radical than Heidegger, then, both aim to liberate
philosophy and politics from the claim that theory should rule over practice. This bears
on the reading of Plato; both challenge the traditional concept of the philosopher
ruler.13
8 The two most important book-length studies on how Heidegger influences Arendt and Strauss are,
respectively, Dana Villa, Arendt and Heidegger: The Fate of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995); and Richard Velkley, Strauss, Heidegger, and the Premises of Philosophy on Original For-
getting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
9 Bluhm, 925. On their shared interest in Socrates, see Villa, “The Philosopher vs. The Citizen.”
10 Arendt, The Human Condition, 16-17.
11 Chacón, “Reading Strauss from the Start,” 292.
12 E.g. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 151. See
also David O’Connor, “Leo Strauss’s Aristotle and Martin Heidegger’s Politics,” in Aristotle and Modern
Politics: The Persistence of Political Philosophy, edited by Aristide Tessitore (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2002). In The Human Condition, 16-17, Arendt challenges the hierarchy between
theoretical and practical life, but affirms the “validity of the experience underlying the distinction.” See
also Keedus, 174.
13 O’Connor, esp. 165-68; Jacques Taminiaux, The Thracian Maid and the Professional Thinker,
translated and edited by Michael Gendre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), esp. 20-
21.
205 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
The second concern of each is “the tradition,” specifically the tradition of political
philosophy. Both agree that understanding the origins of the tradition would help grasp
better basic philosophical problems; to understand these origins requires demands a
substantive interpretive strategy.14 Yet each understands this tradition in distinct ways,
which leads each to adopt different interpretive approaches. For Strauss, discussion of
tradition qua tradition draws attention to the fact that traditions essentially obscure gen-
uine phenomena.15 Strauss’s target is primarily the tradition of modern political philos-
ophy, which obscures its own status as a tradition and obscures the concepts of pre-
modern philosophy. The central issue Strauss raises is that the modern tradition alters
the understanding of theory and practice, dissolving their distinction.16
It is necessary to raise awareness of the traditional character of modern philosophy,
and then recover pre-modern or classical philosophy. This recovery requires the cor-
rect mixture of history (interpretation of texts or attention to their literary character)
and philosophy (the critique of texts or the quest for truth). In can be summarised in
three steps.17
Strauss’s first step is to affirm his own ignorance. So Strauss precedes his study of
Plato’s Republic with this exhortation: “Let us abandon every pretense to know. Let us
admit that the Platonic dialogue is an enigma-something perplexing and to be won-
dered at.”18 Second, maintaining philosophical concern with the claim to truth, Strauss
resolves to remain open to changing his views and rejecting inherited modern preju-
dices. 19 In interpreting Plato, Strauss stresses the need to distinguish Plato from the
14 Bluhm, 926.
15 Strauss, Natural Right and History, 31. See also The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 73; The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978), 9; What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1988), 57; Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 12.
16 Strauss writes to Eric Voegelin: ‘the root of all modern darkness from the 17th century on is the
obscuring of the difference between theory and praxis.’ Letter to Eric Voegelin, March 14, 1950, in Faith
and Political Philosophy: the Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964 (Uni-
versity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 66.
17 Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, 76-77; The City and Man, 52; “On Collingwood’s Philoso-
phy of History,” The Review of Metaphysics 5: 4 (1952), 583-84. In the presentation of Strauss below, I
am indebted to Nathan Tarcov, “Philosophy & History: Tradition and Interpretation in the Work of Leo
Strauss,” Polity 16: 1 (1983)
, 20-27. See also Arthur Melzer, Philosophy between the Lines: The Lost
History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 342; Danilo Manca, “Natural-
ness and Historicity: Strauss and Klein on the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,” Philo-
sophical Readings 9:1 (2017), 44-45.
18 Strauss, The City and Man, 55.
19 An early example of this in Strauss’s writings would be in his 1935 Hobbes' Politische Wissenschaft
in ihrer Genesis. See Pierpaolo Cicarelli, “Ordinary language and transcendence of ideas:
On the
206 NATHAN PINKOSKI
thinking. Arendt holds that the defining event for Plato is the trial and death of Socrates;
it is what Arendt calls the “turning point” for the history of political thought.36 It creates
political thought as a tradition. “Far from comprehending and conceptualizing all the
political experiences of Western mankind,” Arendt writes, the tradition “grew out of a
specific historical constellation: the trial of Socrates and the conflict between the phi-
losopher and the polis.”37 Scandalized by the trial and death of Socrates, Plato writes
his dialogues as a response to this event. Arendt’s genealogy requires us to read Plato’s
dialogues in light of this event. But the presupposition of this reading strategy is that in
his dialogues, Plato adopts a form of rhetoric in which he partly reveals and partly con-
ceals his true beliefs or teachings. In other words, Arendt’s reading strategy presup-
poses Plato’s esotericism.
Although Arendt does not describe it as such, it is appropriate to call her interpre-
tation “esoteric” for several reasons. First, while Arendt neither cited Strauss’s work nor
discussed it directly in her published writings, she was familiar with it. In the classroom
she included Strauss’s work on her course reading lists, and in private writings, she
explicitly praised Strauss for his “esoteric” readings of Plato. Hence she was familiar
with esotericism and expressed no inherent hostility to it.38 Second, the theme of eso-
tericism is not exclusively the purview of Strauss: it is a question for the history of phi-
losophy. It can be discussed independently of Strauss’s own formulations.39 Third,
some recent Arendt scholarship has already begun this discussion, calling her reading
of Plato “esoteric.” This opens the door for her reading to be explored further in these
terms. 40 Nevertheless we must bear in mind that esotericism plays a much more intri-
cate role in Strauss’s thought than it does in Arendt, and that—as we shall see—their
specific analyses of Plato’s esotericism differs.41
Although Arendt never outlines her reading of Plato in a single text, it is clear that
from the early 1950s onwards, she had decided that a distinctive interpretation of Plato,
notably his allegory of the cave, would play a key role in her philosophic project. Inter-
preting Plato is a critical task for understanding the origins of the tradition and what it
Responding to the trial and death of Socrates, Arendt argues that Plato came to the
conclusion that the irresponsible actions of the city had killed the finest example of
philosophy the world had yet seen. So from the point of view of philosophy, philosophy
has a negative interest in politics: politics, wrongly practiced or badly managed, threat-
ens the life of the philosopher and makes it impossible for him to pursue philosophy.44
From the point of view of the city, however, the philosopher is a “good-for-nothing,”
someone who does not act in the best interests of the city and makes others unfit for
political life.45 These two opposing views represent the conflict between the philoso-
pher and the polis. The conflict between the philosopher and polis, and the subsequent
danger to the philosopher, leads Plato to conclude that politics must change to keep
42 See Schwartz, 95-96. The key texts that I shall rely on for understanding Arendt’s allegory of the
cave are “Socrates” in The Promise of Politics (originally published as “Philosophy and Politics” in Social
Research 57:1 (1990)); The Human Condition; and “Tradition and the Modern Age” and “What is Au-
thority?” in Between Past and Future.
43 Bluhm, 918, 925.
44 Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 82.
45 Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 9-10.
210 NATHAN PINKOSKI
philosophy safe.46 But Plato also wants to make philosophy useful for politics, so that
it has the resources to guide politics toward good management—thereby securing the
position of the philosopher.47 Plato’s intention in creating the allegory of the cave is
wholly political—he wants to inaugurate a change in both thinking and action in order
to solve the conflict between the philosopher and the polis. Yet Arendt’s Plato conceals
this political intention, practicing esotericism.
Plato presents the allegory of the cave as the biography of the philosopher, under-
stood through the three “turnings” that philosopher undergoes.48 First, in the cave itself,
the philosopher frees himself from the chains that oblige the cave-dwellers to look at
the screen where the images appear. Turning, he sees the artificial fire, which illumi-
nates the things in the cave. He sees the models being pushed back and forth that
project the image onto the screen, and thereby sees the things in the cave as they really
are: projections of models. But more decisive is the second turning. Here, the philos-
opher seeks the causes of things, such as where the fire comes from. He turns and finds
an exit from the cave, which leads him to the clear sky and an atmosphere without
other people. In this place, seeing in the full light, he becomes a philosopher. In a
notable detail for Arendt, he recognises the sun as the source of light, which Plato alle-
gorises as the idea of the good, the idea that illuminates all other ideas.49 Third, the
philosopher turns back into the cave, to attempt to convince the cave-dwellers that what
they see is not real. But the disorientation the philosopher experiences when he returns
to the cave entails that his thoughts do not make sense to the cave-dwellers; it contra-
dicts their thoughts. This puts the philosopher in danger.
The allegory of the cave appears to portray how politics looks from the viewpoint of
philosophy. But its deeper purpose, its esoteric purpose, is to change philosophy and
politics. For Arendt, the depiction of the cave and the cave-dwellers captures Plato’s
response to the trial and death of Socrates. Socrates relied on the primacy of persuasion
and doxa. For Plato, Socrates’s failure to persuade his judges casts doubt on the validity
of persuasion, the specifically political form of speech, hitherto the highest art in the
Greek world. It also cast doubt on doxa, opinion. Socrates submitted his own doxa to
the doxa of the Athenians, to persuade them, but the majority were not persuaded and
condemned him. For such an injustice to happen by means of doxa showed that doxa
was a grossly unreliable standard for politics. Plato then yearned for an absolute stand-
ard beyond doxa that could serve as a reliable standard for politics. Plato’s metaphysical
affairs.55 But Arendt’s Plato also claims that the philosopher’s concern for the eternal
ideas does not make him, as the polis thinks, “good-for-nothing.”56 Instead, the concern
with the eternal actually makes the philosopher fit to play a political role. As Plato
teaches through the doctrine of ideas, philosophy is in fact useful for politics.
Arendt does not think that the origin of the doctrine of ideas is primarily political,
nor that the ideas were primarily a concept of standards and measures. However, she
argues that it is Plato who deploys the ideas for political purposes, turning them into a
concept of measurement.57 For the Greeks, Arendt holds, the ideal is the kalon k’aga-
thon (the beautiful and the good). Based on this ideal, Plato, in the Symposium and
the Phaedrus, makes the idea of the beautiful supreme. There and in the first books of
the Republic, the philosopher is defined as the lover of beauty. In the context of the
allegory, where what is most real is that which illuminates, the beautiful should have the
best claim to be the most important of the ideas, since it simply shines forth. But oddly,
this is the one place in Plato’s corpus where the idea of the good appears.
Arendt pounces on this textual insertion to insist that it is the place where Plato
shows his full political intention, and distorts authentic philosophical experience, in
order to make philosophy political.58 Decoupling the good from the beautiful, Plato
transforms the ideas into standards for politics and elevates the idea of the good over
the idea of the beautiful and all others. The notion of agathos (good) carries the weight
of being useful, beneficial, or “good-for” something. In elevating the idea of the good
in the cave allegory, Plato challenges the city in two ways: first, that the philosopher’s
concern with eternal things, far from making him “good-for-nothing”, makes him good
for something; and second, that the eternal things are not merely beautiful, but are also
useful or valuable.59
In this way, the idea of the good is ready to be applied to politics. Plato sets up the
dichotomy between the world of human affairs and the world of ideas as a relationship
where the former ultimately depends on the latter. Those who inhabit the world of
human affairs, the cave dwellers, are in darkness. They require the standards the phi-
losopher has discovered in the world outside.60 They require the philosopher ruler. He
is the only one who knows the highest, most useful idea for political life: the idea of the
55 Ibid., 31-32.
56 Ibid., 10.
57 Ibid., 8. The Human Condition, 226n.
58 Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 11; “What is Authority,” Between Past and Future, 112; Schwartz,
99-101.
59 Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 9-10.
60 Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 31, 56.
213 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
good.61 The idea of the good provides the philosopher ruler the necessary standard for
ruling human affairs with objective certainty.62
Arendt’s interpretation, which emphasises how Plato uses the allegory to politicise
philosophy, connects with her more famous account in The Human Condition about
how the tradition of political thought distorts the vita activa. This distortion stems from
the standard of measurement Platonic philosophy applies to politics, which establishes
the ruler-ruled relationship as constitutive of politics. In that conception of rule, fore-
told by the allegory of the cave’s omission of deed and speech, as well as the absence
of persuasion, there is no place for action.63
The ruler, in the Platonic model, is the one who knows what is, grasping the idea of
what something is. Applied to political rule, the philosopher ruler knows the idea (ei-
dos) of what is-to-be in politics, the idea of the good, then organizes the means and
executes them to bring about the idea. This is the same structure of action as poiesis:
one perceives the image or shape (eidos) of the product-to-be, then organizes the
means the realize it.64 Just as the craftsman applies his standards and rules to make the
product, so the philosopher ruler applies his ideas. The model of poiesis provides the
objective certainty that Plato seeks. The city is the statue, while the philosopher ruler is
the sculptor.65 The best political actor is the man who acts like the craftsman. If certain,
clearly indicated standards must result from politics, men can only live together lawfully
and politically when some rule and some obey.66 Plato’s conception of the philosopher
ruler is one who dominates others. Arendt thinks the philosopher ruler, as a form of
one-man rule, is technically a tyranny.67
For Arendt, Plato’s allegory of the cave flips the story of the philosopher Thales,
mocked by the peasant girl for looking ridiculous, on its head. For Plato, it is not phi-
losophy but politics that deserves mockery.68 To flip the story, he transforms the expe-
rience of philosophy and politics, and inaugurates the formidable tradition of political
thought.
Philosophically speaking, Platonism constructs a series of metaphysical teachings
based especially around the two-worlds fallacy: between the suprasensory and sensory
worlds. Arendt’s goal is not to attack this and other fallacies per se. It is rather to observe
how that these fallacies emerge from authentic experiences of thinking. Politically
speaking, Plato’s “city in speech,” the commonwealth ruled by philosophers, was never
taken seriously by the tradition. The prospect of the philosopher ruling tyrannically was
thereby never a live concern for politics. 69 Plato’s intention in presenting the allegory
of the cave and the city in speech is for the sake of preserving the safety and flourishing
of the philosophical way of life.70
For this reason, one must be wary of claiming that Arendt sees continuity between
the intention of Plato’s Republic, the concept of the philosopher ruler, and the history
of tyranny into modernity.71 But the continuity comes through promulgating the teach-
ing that the philosopher should not treat the political world seriously. This teaches pre-
pares the way for further theoretical transformations of the political world, where it
becomes conceived of as the realm of mere necessity, the lowest level of human activ-
ity.72
Through a combination of historical comparisons to the Greek view and textual
analysis, Arendt exposes Plato’s esotericism. In exposing this esoteric transformation
of philosophy and politics, the conclusion that Arendt draws is that Plato misconstrues
the relationship between the philosopher and the polis. He introduces an idea of how
the vita contemplativa should relate to the vita activa and political life as a right of the
philosopher to return and rule politics. Worked out in the tradition, the realisation of
philosophy eventually abolishes authentic philosophy and abolishes authentic politics.73
In Arendt’s reading of Plato, he is fully exposed; her reading does not admit of fur-
ther Platonic vestments that need to be stripped away. Strauss’s reading of Plato, how-
ever, never claims to understand him completely. Strauss, unlike Arendt, presents a
persistently enigmatic Plato. Strauss invites other scholars to follow him in order to
explore Plato’s philosophic depths, inspiring a thriving tradition of Platonic studies. Yet
as noted above, it is necessary to treat this Straussian tradition with caution, as some of
its seminal Platonic studies risk obscuring Strauss’s “elementary premises”.74
Since a full account of the “elementary premises” involved in Strauss’s study of Plato
is impossible here, my intention in this section is merely to identify some of the most
important themes Strauss draws attention to from his interpretation of the allegory of
the cave in Plato’s Republic. 75
Grasping these themes, I argue, leads us away from the emphases of several “Strauss-
ian” interpretations. These interpretations either prioritise Plato’s account of the rela-
tionship between “the philosopher and the political community”76; or Plato concealing
his true intentions beneath a series of metaphysical teachings promulgated for political
purposes, which carries over into Strauss’s own practice.77 To that end I shall rely pri-
marily on Strauss’s essay “On Plato’s Republic,” in The City and Man.
To recover and assess Plato’s philosophic themes, Strauss dispenses with received
tradition of primarily Christian Platonism to make a question of the dialogue itself. In
answering the question of what the Platonic dialogue is, Strauss settles on the interpre-
tive principle of “logographic necessity”: nothing is accidental in the Platonic dialogue,
and a full consideration of its philosophic themes—which coincides with a full consid-
eration of Plato’s intention—requires attending to the speech and deeds of its charac-
ters.78
Strauss’s direct interpretation of the allegory is relatively brief. It comes in the final
act of the essay, where Strauss observes that the question of how the good city is possible
74 Seminal “Straussian” studies of the Republic include Allan Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” in The
Republic of Plato, 2nd Ed., translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991); Leon Harold Craig,
The War Lover: A Study of Plato’s Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996); Laurence
Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic: A Study of Plato's Protagoras, Charmides, and Republic
(London: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Republic: A Study (Yale: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2005); Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009).
75 For an account of Strauss’s reading of Plato as a whole, see Michael Zuckert and Catherine Zuckert,
Leo Strauss and the Problem of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 117-
143. For the origins of Strauss’s reading of Plato, see Daniel Tanguay, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biog-
raphy, translated by Christopher Nadon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
76 See Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” esp. 307.
77 See Lampert, “How Philosophy Became Socratic,” esp. 329-336. For the reading that Strauss
promulgates metaphysical teachings, which he himself does not espouse, for political purposes (or “polit-
ical esotericism”), see Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, esp. 110; Lawrence Lampert, Leo Strauss and
Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). Lampert revises this argument considerably in
The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), yet esotericism
still plays a prominent role in his assessment of Strauss’s “enduring importance.”
78 Strauss, The City and Man, 59-60.
216 NATHAN PINKOSKI
in Republic V leads to Socrates introducing philosophy. The change that would trans-
form actual cities into good cities is the coincidence of political power and philosophy:
either philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers.
Socrates’s proposal raises two interpretive questions. The first is whether the tension
between philosophy and the city can really be overcome through a philosopher ruler,
as Socrates claims.79 This becomes a question because the rule of the philosophers is
introduced as “a means” for the realisation of justice in the city—the just city is possible
only if philosophers rule. Philosophy is not introduced as the end of man. 80 Hence for
Strauss, the dialogue has a notable omission. The Republic’s discussion of justice has
for Strauss abstracted from eros, especially philosophic eros: “the longing for immor-
tality through participation by knowledge in the things which are unchangeable in every
respect.”81 In the context of the Republic, the eros of the philosopher is the quest for
the knowledge of the idea of the good. The dialogue’s abstraction from eros raises the
question of how eros could be in tension with justice, or how philosophy could be in
tension with the city.
The claim that political power and philosophy can coincide seems “incredible,” be-
cause the city and the philosopher are both antagonistic to one another. This is the one
place in the essay where Strauss refers to the fate of the historical Socrates to strengthen
the argument of the dramatic Socrates.82 Strauss’s specific formulation of the problem
is whether “the cities become willing to be ruled by philosophers and the philosophers
become willing to rule the cities.”83 To bring about this change of will requires the right
kind of persuasion. In this context, Strauss notes, Socrates declares that he and Thra-
symachus have become friends. 84
The second interpretive question is that of Thrasymachus. The art of Thra-
symachus, the art of rhetoric, is a possible solution to the tension between the philoso-
pher and the city. Thrasymachus plays a significant role in Strauss’s interpretation of
the Republic, becoming its central figure. Thrasymachus stands alone in the central
place amongst the Republic’s interlocutors, between the father-son pair of Cephalus
and Polemarchus, and the pair of brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus. Elevating Thra-
symachus’s importance so that his art also points at other dialogues, Strauss makes
Thrasymachus the bearer of a political rhetoric distinctive from Socrates’s erotic rhet-
oric. With this move, Strauss draws Thrasymachus and Socrates closer together, so that
the shared interests of each in rhetoric draws them to become allies of the other.85
As an ally of philosophy, Thrasymachus’s political rhetoric supplies the right kind
of persuasion necessary and sufficient to bring about the possibility of philosopher rule;
that Socrates has at this stage in the dialogue tamed Thrasymachus shows that Socrates
can at least succeed in persuading him or other holders of his art.
Nevertheless, the multitude must be persuaded. Socrates argues that the multitude
of non-philosophers appears more persuadable about the worth of philosophy and
more good-natured than it was initially thought.86 However, it is not clear that the phi-
losopher can learn the art of Thrasymachus. For the many to be persuaded of the value
of philosophy, they must be addressed by a Thrasymachus who has listened to Socra-
tes, rather than by Socrates directly. Without a Thrasymachus, the just city would not
exist.87
The hardest task is not to persuade the multitude that the philosopher should rule.
Rather, it is to persuade the philosopher that he should rule the multitude. Non-phi-
losophers must compel the philosopher to rule. The philosophers are unwilling to rule
because of their eros for knowledge. This desire requires going beyond opinions to-
ward knowledge. However, political life cannot satisfy this desire, so the philosophers
are unwilling to rule. But as Strauss writes:
Given the prejudice against the philosophers, this compulsion will not be forthcoming if
the philosophers do not in the first place persuade the non-philosophers to rule over
them, and this persuasion will not be forthcoming, given the philosophers’ unwillingness
to rule. We arrive then at the conclusion that the just city is not possible because of the
philosophers’ unwillingness to rule.88
It is in this context, when we learn that the just city is impossible, where the cave
allegory is presented. If the philosophers are just, it is precisely because of their con-
tempt for the things the non-philosophers contest.
85 Strauss, The City and Man, 73-74, 124, 134. Commentary on Strauss has observed and developed
this. See Seth Benardete, "Leo Strauss's The City and Man," Political Science Reviewer 8:1 (1978), 9;
Laurence Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, 149; and The Enduring Importance of Leo Strauss, 64n,
129n. See 142n for the placement of Strauss’s own paragraphs on Thrasymachus.
86 As Strauss sees it, at 497d8-498d4, Socrates concedes that philosophy as it is presently practiced is
the opposite of what it should be. At 499d8-500a8, he says the multitude can change their opinion. At
501c4-502a4 he says that the multitude will be persuaded to accept philosophers as rulers. The City and
Man, 124.
87 Strauss, The City and Man, 123-24.
88 Strauss, The City and Man, 124.
218 NATHAN PINKOSKI
Strauss identifies the cave with the city. The best of the cave-dwellers, the good non-
citizens, are passionately attached to their opinions, “and therefore passionately op-
posed to philosophy”. 89 They are thus not ready to consider that their opinions may
be false. Despite Socrates’s aspiration that they are open to persuasion, in reality they
are not. It is therefore “natural” that “philosophy and the city tend away from one an-
other in opposite directions.”90 The allegory of the cave confirms that the tension be-
tween philosophy and the city cannot be overcome. The coincidence of philosophy
and political power that the philosopher ruler demands to realise the just city is, in the
last analysis, against nature. The just city is therefore impossible because it is against
nature. 91 Foreshadowed in the dialogue’s setting and in its dramatis personae, which
includes victims of the Thirty Tyrants, the idea of the just city cannot be actualised.92
If the first philosophical theme raised in the allegory of the cave is the impossibility
of the just city, the second is the limitation of the rhetorical art. Strauss puts the philos-
opher is a position where he lacks the power to compel the multitude, but could per-
suade some who have the art of rhetoric, like Thrasymachus, who could then in turn
persuade the multitude. But rhetoric lacks this omnipotence to persuade, because na-
ture of the many is to be attached to their own opinions.93
The third theme that flows from the allegory of the cave is the duality of justice. In
Strauss’s account, the philosopher in the city is just in two senses. In the first sense, the
philosopher, with his natural desire, his eros, for knowledge, is the only one who can
be just as the city is just: self-sufficient and free, and undertaking the most pleasant work
regardless of the consequences. Only in the philosopher do justice and happiness co-
incide. But in the second sense, the philosopher serves his fellow citizens and the city,
and obeys the law. Yet he compels himself to do so. The philosopher serves the city
not out of his desire to seek the truth, but under compulsion.94
The allegory of the cave discloses these two senses of justice. By the fact that the
ascent of philosopher is a compelled ascent, the allegory highlights the sense of justice
that is merely necessary, that is choiceworthy not for its own sake but for its conse-
quences. This is the justice that the citizens have. That the philosophy is just in this
sense too is important. Strauss emphasises that the philosopher is patriotic—he refers
to the Apology, where Socrates says he favours his fellow citizens over non-citizens.95
Again, though for different reasons, the lesson is that the philosopher must take politics
seriously. However, the abstraction from eros, characteristic of the Republic—and tell-
ingly omitted in the cave allegory—hints at the sense of justice that is attractive or choice-
worthy for its own sake irrespective of the consequences. The philosopher’s concern
for the city can never compromise or replace his quest for knowledge.96
The two senses of justice have political implications that push in different directions,
as the Republic’s presentation of democracy indicates. On the one hand, from the per-
spective of philosophy, it provokes a defence of democracy as the only actual regime
in which philosophy in possible. On the other hand, from the perspective of the citizen,
it provokes a critique of democracy as a regime that does not induce the citizens, the
non-philosophers, to be as good as they can. Both are exaggerations: in fact the Athe-
nian democracy killed Socrates and engaged in violent riots, and the democratic man
portrayed is excessively intemperate. As Strauss understands it, these exaggerations
again serve to emphasise the natural disharmony between the philosophy and the city.97
Yet here there is an important clue toward the fourth theme that the allegory of the
cave suggests, though Strauss is very circumspect about it in his concluding remarks. In
the bifurcated treatment of democracy, the root of the disharmony between the philos-
ophy and the city stems from the two senses of justice at work in the same person, the
philosopher.
In the Republic, justice is presented as providing the right order to the philosopher’s
soul, but this takes place without discussing the nature of the soul. The allegory of the
cave, and the Republic as a whole, having abstracted from eros and therefore having
abstracted from the nature of the soul, ultimately point toward back toward the nature
of the soul.98 The two senses of justice at work in the same soul suggest that the funda-
mental duality to which Strauss wishes to draw attention, deeper than the dualism be-
tween the philosopher and the city, lies in the human soul.
95 Strauss, The City and Man, 128; Strauss cites Apology 30a3-4.
96 Strauss, The City and Man, 128.
97 Strauss, The City and Man, 131-33.
98 Strauss, The City and Man, 138.
220 NATHAN PINKOSKI
Bearing Strauss’s interpretation in mind, it is possible to clarify two themes that ap-
pear in Arendt: first, her account of the conflict between the philosopher and the city;
and second, the character of her esoteric reading of Plato. Both Arendt and Strauss use
their interpretation of Plato to draw attention to the antagonism between the philoso-
pher and the city, raised as a concern about the threat politics poses to philosophy. Yet
for Arendt, this tension is much more blunt.
Strauss’s reading of Plato complicates that tension by arguing that the philosopher
can in fact tame those in the city who possess the art of rhetoric, such as Thrasymachus.
The tension between philosophers and political rhetors can be assuaged; philosophy
can make a friend of rhetoric. However, the tension between the philosopher and the
multitude in the city cannot. The multitude contains good citizens who are passionately
attached to their opinions, and so are hostile to philosophy. It is this passionate attach-
ment to their opinions that makes the philosopher’s political situation precarious, in-
viting persecution.
In his commentary on medieval political philosophy, Strauss argues that to make
the situation of the philosopher vis-à-vis the many less precarious, it is necessary to
practice a politic philosophy that keeps the philosopher safe. But this is a lesson he
draws primarily from Jewish and Islamic philosophers, not from Plato’s Republic.99
In Plato’s case, Strauss stresses different lessons. His interpretation of the cave and
the Republic do not make the persecution of the philosopher at the hands of the city
the dialogue’s central theme. Strauss only makes one direct reference to Socrates’s fate
in order to interpret the action of the dialogue.100 Rather, Strauss’s Plato teaches that
the art of rhetoric is limited. Persuasion cannot succeed completely. Yet even if it could,
the nature of the philosopher is such that his attention remains on what is choiceworthy
or just for its own sake, the quest for knowledge. The gulf between the philosopher and
the citizen rests on their divergent senses of justice and their basis in nature. Plato’s
project is to disclose that the natural divide is more important than the political divide.
The origins of the philosophic tradition lie not in the political divide between the phi-
losopher and the city, but in the nature of the human soul.101
99 Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 8,
13, 18-20.
100 Note, then, the difference between Strauss’s interpretation of the cave and the “Straussian” inter-
pretation of Allan Bloom, “Interpretive Essay,” 307-311.
101 C.f. Rosen, Plato’s Republic, 269-72. Against what he claims to be Strauss’s view, Rosen argues
that the allegory of the cave is not about the city, about the divide in the human soul. In this respect his
221 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
Like Strauss, Arendt subscribes to a sociology in which the philosophers are essen-
tially a natural minority, at risk of persecution from the majority. 102 As Arendt orients
her interpretation of Plato in terms of his response to the trial and death of Socrates,
she portrays the conflict between the philosopher and the polis in a much more direct
manner, without Strauss’s qualifications. The polis is an existential threat to those rare
characters such as Socrates. This risk of persecution is the motivation for Plato’s pro-
ject: he wants to make the world safe for philosophy.103 Thus for Arendt, Plato’s project
is almost exclusively based on the precarious political situation of the philosopher.
Plato advances his most important philosophical innovation, the idea of the good, as a
set of teachings aimed at making this political situation less precarious. Plato’s project
succeeds, and becomes Platonism. Platonism opens up the gap between the philoso-
pher and the city in such a way that philosophically, the two-worlds metaphysical fallacy
defines the gap, and politically, the superiority of philosophy over politics defines the
gap. Hence for Arendt, the origins of the tradition are political. They lie in the political
division between the philosopher and the city, and Plato’s reasons for striving to protect
philosophy from this divide.
To reveal the origins of the tradition, both Arendt and Strauss subscribe to an
esoteric interpretation of Plato. Both agree that Plato adopts a form of rhetoric that
conceals his true meaning.
For Strauss, Plato’s decision to write in dialogue form conceals his philosophic
teaching, making the dialogue an enigma. Plato’s form of writing is an example of what
others, commenting on Strauss’s esotericism, have termed “classical” or “ancient” eso-
tericism.104 This is a combination of three kinds of esotericism. First, there is “protective
esotericism”. Because the political communities are based on passionate attachment to
opinion, the philosopher should act so as not to upset these opinions, even if he disa-
grees. Second, the philosopher must practice “defensive esotericism”, protecting him-
self from persecution. Third, the philosopher must practice “pedagogical esotericism”,
a circuitous approach to education that moves the student along gradually.105 While all
three play a role in Strauss’s interpretation of Plato, it is the last that is most important.
When this pedagogical esotericism is downplayed, Plato’s circuitous education is
interpretation is closer to Strauss’s than it appears. C.f. Craig, 283-84, who interprets the cave as an alle-
gory of the human soul and the human intellectual condition.
102 Villa, “The Philosopher vs. The Citizen,” 166; c.f. Melzer 138-39.
103 Arendt, “What is Authority,” BPF, 104.
104 See Michael Frazer, “Esotericism Ancient and Modern: Strauss Contra Straussianism on the Art
of Political-Philosophical Writing,” Political Theory 34: 1 (2006) and Melzer, 90-91.
105 Melzer, 90-91.
222 NATHAN PINKOSKI
mistaken for a set of systematic doctrines. In short, Plato is mistaken for Platonism, a
tradition that obscures its foundations.
In the case of Arendt’s Plato, his primary intention is to practice one form of esoter-
icism, defensive esotericism. He seeks to make politics less dangerous to philosophy
through the strategy of denigrating politics. Yet for Arendt, it is this strategy that raises
the problem of Platonism. Through an elaborate allegory, Plato promulgates a new
teaching about philosophy and politics, while hiding that it is in fact a new teaching.
With this teaching, he seeks—especially through the idea of the good—to shape not just
how philosophers understand themselves, but also how those in the political realm
understand themselves. Plato practices a kind of “political esotericism”, because he
aims to “subvert and transform traditional society, but in a gradual and orderly way.”106
This political esotericism constitutes the tradition that denigrates the activities of politics
and philosophy, eventually dissolving both.
Strauss’s treatment of the origins of the modern tradition identifies the Enlighten-
ment’s rhetorical strategy of political esotericism, which advances a veiled political pro-
gramme. Like Strauss, Arendt aims to expose this rhetoric; but unlike Strauss, she at-
tributes this political esotericism to Plato. In exposing Plato’s esotericism, Arendt’s aim
is to draw attention to the fact that the Platonic allegory distorts the authentic experi-
ences of thinking and action. Seeking to escape Platonism, she searches for the authen-
tic experience that lies behind the allegory.107
In Arendt’s interpretation, Plato did not invent the ideas. Yet Plato presents them
in a particular way for political purposes. Prioritising the idea of the good in a way that
departs from the Homeric Greek inheritance, Plato presents the ideas with the objec-
tive of transforming philosophy and politics. The ultimate soundness of their content
is not the issue; it is not clear in Arendt’s interpretation if Plato affirms their philosophic
content (the ideas do more to obscure genuine phenomena). In any case, in interpret-
ing the ideas Arendt’s chief aim is to expose Plato’s concealed political intention. This
account of Arendt parallels some “Straussian” interpretations, where the philosophic
content of the ideas, whether they really disclose the nature of things, is ultimately set
aside.108 However, when Strauss discusses the doctrine of the ideas, he does so in a very
different way than Arendt. Unlike Arendt, he initiates a long discussion that refers to
the philosophic content of the ideas, and their ability to disclose the nature of things.
Strauss’s reading of Plato is that the dialogue is “political in more than one sense.”109
To grasp the multiple senses implied requires understanding why the philosopher ruler
fails on the dialogue’s own terms. As Arendt sees it, the idea of the philosopher ruler
gives priority given to the ruler-ruled relationship, and Plato omits giving any account
of persuasion either in the city or by the philosopher. But Strauss sees persuasion as
precisely the problem with which the dialogue wrestles, as only through persuasion is
the coincidence of political power and philosophy possible. Yet recall that persuasion
ultimately fails because there is something distinctive about the citizens of the cave that
make them resistant to philosophic persuasion. This failure, and the persistence of the
tension between the philosopher and the city, raises the need for the philosopher to
understand politics and take it seriously in terms of its own distinctiveness. The dia-
logue points to the question “what is political?” (in the ‘what is’ language of the ideas)
to challenge a homogeneous account of nature with a heterogeneous account. 110
This turn towards the ‘what is politics?’ question stems from Socrates’s own speech
and deeds in the dialogue. Strauss, drawing from Xenophon, notes two sides to Socra-
tes’s art of conversation. When someone contradicted Socrates, he went back to the
assumption behind the dispute, raising the question “what is…?” This first side parallels
the ideas. The second side takes place when Socrates talks and others listen. Here, he
proceeds through accepted opinions to produce agreement through persuasion.
Strauss sees the second side as Socrates’s “safe speech”. It is the first side that exposes
the authentic phenomena of philosophy.111
In his presentation of philosophy, the elevation of the ‘what is” question leads
Strauss towards a dramatically different presentation of the ideas than Arendt. To ask,
‘what is something,’ what is the idea (eidos) of a thing, is to ask what the “essence” of
the thing is. This essence is grasped “noetically” rather than sensibly: “The ideas are
‘visible’ only to the eye of the mind.” He then contends that Socrates uses “the idea of
108 See Thomas Pangle, “Introduction,” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1983), 2-5. Pangle maintains a studied ambiguity as to the extent the doctrine of ideas
discloses the nature of things.
109 Strauss, The City and Man, 106.
110 Strauss, The City and Man, 17-19, 21.
111 Strauss, The City and Man, 53. This shows how Plato in fact makes doxa the basis for the ideas—
he is not hostile to them as Arendt’s reading of the cave suggests. See Cicarelli, 6-7. Unlike Strauss, Arendt
sets aside the first side and focuses on the second side to retrieve the authentic phenomena of politics.
She thinks this speaking and persuading from doxai is the authentic phenomena of philosophy and poli-
tics that the two-world metaphysics obscures.
224 NATHAN PINKOSKI
the good” and “the good” synonymously; their noetic character is identical. Thus the
key issue is to understand them, not to implement a political ideal.112
Strauss then challenges the traditional, “Platonist” interpretation of the ideas (eidê)
as self-subsisting forms dwelling outside the realm of human beings: “It is utterly in-
credible’ and ‘appears to be fantastic… no one has ever succeeded in giving a satisfac-
tory or clear account of this doctrine of ideas.” In voicing his criticism of the ideas,
Strauss adopts Aristotle’s critique of the ideas his own critique. Having dispensed with
the Platonism of the ideas, however, the noetic intelligibility of the ideas still persists.
This suggests that their noetic character makes the ideas indispensable to the philo-
sophic study of nature—that their noetic character is necessary for correctly understand-
ing the nature of things.113
The ideas suggest a correct understanding of nature in at least two senses. First, they
uphold that the essential differences between things are noetic, not sensible. The es-
sential differences between the things are not due to the material elements out of which
they are formed—such as fire, air, water, and earth.114 Second, nature is essentially het-
erogeneous, which is to say that there is an essential difference between each kind of
being. The whole comes to light as the heterogeneity of essentially different parts. It is
noetic heterogeneity, in that each being presents itself through the idea commonly held
about it. Having adopted Aristotle’s critique of the ideas, Strauss imitates Aristotle in
the sense that the mind or nous grasps these essences (and not their material elements),
but cannot grasp the whole directly.115 That is what the first side of Socrates’s art of
conversation signifies: Strauss’s Socrates identifies the study of nature with what the
essence of each being is.116
The ideas are, lastly, the way philosophic activity can give distinctive attention to the
seriousness of politics. The Republic concludes that politics is distinct; Strauss’s last
112 Strauss, Natural Right and History, 123; The City and Man, 119. See also Cicarelli, 14-15.
113 Strauss, The City and Man, 119-120. See Zuckert, Postmodern Platos, 154. C.f. Strauss, The City
and Man, 93. In the footnote Strauss cites Aristotle, Metaphysics 991b6-7 (a critique of Plato) but curi-
ously also 1070a18-20 (where Aristotle accepts that a qualified account of the ideas in terms of natural
things is correct). Lampert’s interpretation of the cave stresses that the introduction of the ideas prepares
a quest that must fail—but that is a different emphasis from Strauss. See How Philosophy Became Socratic,
365-66,
114 Strauss, The City and Man, 19.
115 C.f. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1070a18-20. See also Gregory B. Smith, “The Post-Modern Leo
Strauss?” History of European Ideas 19:1 (1994), 193. For Strauss’s description of this issue, see NRH,
30-31; see also Richard Kenington, ‘Strauss’s Natural Right and History,’ Review of Metaphysics 35:1
(1981), 67; Velkley, 122. I would argue that Strauss’s imitation of Aristotle allows him to address the
problem he outlines in Natural Right and History, 30-31. Through Aristotle, he is able to say that the
whole is intelligible, yet direct knowledge of it is unavailable.
116 Strauss, Natural Right and History, 122.
225 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
word in his essay is that the Republic reveals the nature of the city or the nature of
politics.117 The Republic teaches that to know nature, it is necessary to know the dis-
tinctiveness of the nature of politics. The Republic hints at “The Socratic Turn” and a
presentation of political philosophy that defines it in two ways. First, political philoso-
phy is the study of politics as a branch of philosophy, so that philosophy is in a sense
prior to politics; second, political philosophy begins from political phenomena, so that
politics is in a sense prior to philosophy. These two mutually supporting definitions,
with their complementary beginnings, establish the way in which political philosophy is
“first philosophy.”118
Arendt’s quarrel with the tradition of political philosophy is with its prejudice to-
wards politics. This prejudice is pithily expressed by Pascal, who remarks that when
Plato and Aristotle write about politics, “it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asy-
lum; if they presented the appearance of speaking of great matters, it was because they
knew that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they were kings and emper-
ors.”119 Seeking the origins of this prejudice and therefore the origins of the tradition,
Arendt concludes that the primary reason for this prejudice is Plato’s desire to make
the precarious position of the philosopher more secure. Through an esoteric interpre-
tation of Plato (implied in Pascal’s own remarks) Arendt exposes Plato’s political inten-
tion, his transformation of philosophy and politics.
Arendt aims to challenge this. Philosophy, as Plato conceived it, was too political.
Platonic philosophy hides the authentic phenomena of philosophy and instrumental-
ises philosophy for political purposes. The notable omission in the allegory of the
cave’s account of philosophy that motivates Arendt’s phenomenological retrieval is the
experience of wonder.120 Arendt thus reinforces the is a gap between authentic philos-
ophy, or thinking, and politics. She elevates the pre-traditional understanding of both
the activities of thinking and politics, while preserving the particular purity of each. Nei-
ther dominates the other, and neither is reducible to the other.121
Analysing Arendt’s interpretation of Plato makes clear that for Arendt, Plato’s dis-
tortion of philosophy is just as important as his distortion of politics. This suggests that
the traditional theme of Arendt studies, the distortion of politics and her subsequent
elevation of the vita activa, needs revision.122 The task for future scholarship must be to
address how the distortion of philosophy in the origins of the tradition is a fundamental
problem for her, and reconstruct her solution to it.123
One theme in “Straussian” interpretations is that authentic philosophy should regard
the study of politics as unserious, except to ensure that philosophy is safe from political
persecution. Strauss’s fascination with political philosophy is ultimately about a prudent
or politic philosophy.124 This reading is partially true. Strauss’s own interpretation of
Pascal’s remarks is that Pascal is right, in a sense; the study of political things, political
philosophy, seems unserious at first. Philosophy must be compelled to be concerned
with political things. 125 But the philosopher discovers that political things defy a pre-
sumption that nature is homogeneous. This problem motivates the philosopher’s eros
for knowledge, the desire to know “what is…” to develop the eros to know what politics
is.
Through analysing Strauss’s reading of Plato’s cave, it becomes clear why Strauss
cannot be interested solely in a politic philosophy.126 The issue of making philosophy
safe from politics is not Strauss’s interpretive emphasis. Strauss speaks of the tension
between philosophy and the city, yet this tension is derivative. The ultimate source of
this tension is in the dual understanding of justice at work in the human soul. At its
most profound level, political philosophy is understood by reference to this duality in
the human soul. The Republic reveals that the nature of the soul is the question for
121 C.f. George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (Totowa, NY: Rowman & Allan-
held, 1984), 6-7. See Hannah Arendt, “On Hannah Arendt,” in Hannah Arendt: The Recovery of the
Public World, edited by Melvyn A. Hill (New York: St Martin’s Press 1979), 304.
122 C.f. Jürgen Habermas, “Hannah Arendt: On the Concept of Power,” Philosophical-Political Pro-
files (MIT Press, 1985), 171. C.f. Kateb, 188-89; Villa, Arendt and Heidegger, 42.
123 In this respect, see Robert Burch, ‘Recalling Arendt on Thinking.’ In Action and Appearance:
Ethics and the Politics of Writing in Hannah Arendt, edited by Anna Yeatman et al. (USA: Continuum
Press, 2011).
124 E.g. Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics, 109, 111.
125 Strauss, The City and Man, 18. Strauss implies that Pascal’s real mistake is to make the desire to
know impossible to satisfy by invoking the doctrine of original sin.
126 Also absent in Strauss’s Plato is an account of how the pious life is the most serious alternative to
the philosophic life. This absence challenges the interpretation of Strauss for which Heinrich Meier ad-
vocates. See Velkley, 161.
227 The Allegory of the Cave and the Problem of Platonism in Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss
political philosophy. Platonic political philosophy for Strauss is not, as it is for Arendt,
primarily about the political situation of the philosopher.127
Analysing Strauss’s interpretation of Plato’s cave challenges the view that Strauss re-
covers a simply non-metaphysical Platonic philosophy. The clue for this revisionary
conclusion about Strauss lies in the doctrine of ideas. Unlike Arendt, Strauss does not
argue that the doctrine of ideas serves a concealed political project. The reading of the
cave exposes the authentic phenomenon of philosophy as posing the ‘what is’ ques-
tions, with an emphasis on the question, ‘what is politics?’ This question raises the issue
of how the nature of politics is distinct from the nature of other things. Plato’s Repub-
lic—and the other dialogues—teaches us that the sophists and other pre-Socratics are
wrong about the nature of the whole or the cosmos. It is heterogeneous, not homoge-
nous. Elevating the question of ‘what is’ presupposes noetic heterogeneity. The ideas
are a way of acknowledging noetic heterogeneity as the basis of genuine philosophy.
The restoration of what Strauss calls, in a letter to Eric Voegelin, “the Platonic-Aristo-
telian level of questioning” in this sense establishes what philosophy is, with political
philosophy at its core. The defence of noetic heterogeneity draws Strauss close to Ar-
istotle’s classical metaphysics, insofar as Strauss grants that it is the way of asking the
questions identified in Aristotle’s metaphysics that enables us to identify certain funda-
mental problems as problems.128
Now, Strauss’s proximity to classical metaphysics must be qualified, as he also draws
from the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl. While Strauss
holds that the task of philosophy is to clarify these noetic experiences, at the same time,
he moves in the direction of non-foundationalism by imposing severe limitations on
what can be intelligible.129
Knowledge of the whole remains elusive. There is no noetic understanding that can
grasp the whole directly. To pursue knowledge of the ideas is to pursue knowledge of
the part of the whole, not the whole itself. As the whole is essentially heterogeneous,
knowledge of the whole can only be pursued through the knowledge of the parts. This
leaves knowledge of the whole unavailable. This, in turn, means that we only have par-
tial knowledge of the parts.130
127 James Stoner, “Aristotelian Metaphysics and Modern Science: Leo Strauss on What Nature Is,”
in Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers, ed. by Geoffrey Vaughan (Washington, D.C., The Catholic
University of America Press, 2018), 281.
128 Strauss’s letter to Eric Voegelin is cited in Chacón, “Strauss and Husserl,” 287. See also Stoner,
288-89.
129 See Chacón, “Strauss and Husserl,” esp. 289.
130 Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, 39.
228 NATHAN PINKOSKI
If Aristotle’s metaphysics intends the quest for the whole, Strauss seeks to recover
that. But if Aristotelian metaphysics assumes that the whole is intelligible and that it has
knowledge of that whole, Strauss rejects a return to that tradition.131 Strauss’s ambigu-
ous opening to Aristotle’s metaphysics is no doubt why Arendt (whose critique of met-
aphysics closes off this ambiguity in her own thought) judges that Strauss’s reading of
Plato is “Aristotelian.”132
DANIEL CONWAY
Texas A&M University (USA)
conway@tamu.edu
ABSTRACT
The clash between the political and the unpolitical drives the narrative of Hannah Arendt’s influential
report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Determined to make visible the justice that was (and was not)
done in Jerusalem, Arendt concludes her Epilogue to Eichmann in Jerusalem by providing her read-
ers with an alternative formulation of the verdict handed down by the judges. The point of this exer-
cise is twofold: to reveal the political “ground” of (and motivation for) the trial and the verdict it
produced; and to alert her readers to the unpolitical (or extra-political) expression of justice that
remains to be realized. According to Arendt, the provisional character of the justice that was done in
Jerusalem may yet inspire her best readers to develop a more fully civilized practice of jurisprudence.
KEYWORDS
Arendt; Eichmann; justice; politics; mens rea; crimes against humanity
INTRODUCTION
1 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994, p. 3).
230 DANIEL CONWAY
widespread perception of a political spectacle, the latter ensured that Justice would be
served, albeit imperfectly, in Jerusalem.
Speaking on behalf of Justice itself, much as she will close her Epilogue by speaking
for the aforementioned judges, Arendt reminds her readers of the limited (and well-
defined) remit of the court of law:
Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all other
questions of seemingly greater import…be left in abeyance. Justice insists on the im-
portance of Adolf Eichmann…On trial are his deeds, not the sufferings of the Jews, not
the German people or mankind, not even anti-Semitism and racism. (EJ, 5)
As this passage confirms, Arendt understands (and presents) the House of Justice as
the contested site of a struggle between the “demands” of Justice and the prerogatives
of politics, broadly construed. Whereas the political aspirations of the Prime Minister
shaped the Eichmann trial as a nation-burnishing, made-for-television spectacle, the
comparatively modest “demands” of Justice mandated a far more restricted focus and
a far more disciplined approach.
According to Arendt, the trial of Adolf Eichmann was animated by the familiar strug-
gle between politics and its other. In this case, moreover, the “other” in question was
none other than Justice itself, which, as we know, is widely acknowledged as a/the pri-
mary aim (and crowning virtue) of politics. Indeed, what makes the Eichmann trial so
enduringly fascinating is that the House of Justice became the site of a clash between
two competing formulations (or ideals) of justice: the expansive political justice desired
by the Prime Minister and the more limited jurisprudential Justice expected of the
court of law.
Although Arendt does not account for her decision to speak for Justice, the context
of her advocacy suggests that she was concerned to channel (and amplify) a voice that
otherwise might have been drowned out by the cacophony in Jerusalem. As it turns
out, or so she alleges, the contest waged in the House of Justice was not of the zero-
sum variety. As Arendt tells the story, both parties achieved in some measure the ob-
jectives they set, respectively, for themselves. Owing to the restraint of the presiding
judges, whom she portrays as ever mindful of the “demands” of Justice, “the trial never
became a play” (EJ, 9). At the same time, however, she concedes that “the show Ben-
Gurion had had in mind to begin with did take place, or, rather, the lessons he thought
should be taught” (EJ, 9).
Arendt thus presents the House of Justice as crowded and conflicted, but not nec-
essarily compromised. The Prime Minister’s political didacticism may have captured
the attention of the world, thereby eclipsing the quiet, steadfast work of the judges, but
it did not obviate the administration of Justice. As Arendt observes, “Justice, though
perhaps an ‘abstraction’ for those of Mr. Ben-Gurion’s turn of mind, proves to be a
231 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
much sterner master than the Prime Minister with all his power” (EJ, 5). Indeed, not-
withstanding the myriad distractions associated with the political spectacle it was obliged
to stage, the House of Justice remained true to its defining purpose throughout the trial.
Thus, the problem Arendt wishes to address in her Epilogue is not the failure of the
Eichmann trial to serve Justice, but its failure to make known the manner in which (and
the extent to which) Justice was served. Or, as formulated in the maxim she borrows
from Yosal Rogat, “justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done” (EJ,
277).2 In addressing this problem, moreover, Arendt intends to accomplish two related
(and equally controversial) aims: First, she wishes to validate the work of the judges and
confirm their adherence to the aforementioned “demands” of Justice. Second, she
wishes to alert her readers to the imperfect, provisional character of the justice that was
done in Jerusalem, precisely so that her readers will be moved to accept the responsi-
bility to aspire to a more thoroughly “civilized” practice of jurisprudence. Her oft-criti-
cized attention to the flawed prosecution of Eichmann, especially with respect to its
failure to acknowledge the alleged “banality” of his motivations, is intended to prompt
her readers to take seriously the “new type of criminal” he was claimed by her to ex-
emplify.
Hannah Arendt’s chief aim in Eichmann in Jerusalem was not to deliver a definitive
reckoning of the life and times of Adolf Eichmann, but to initiate an investigation of
the “new type of criminal” he exemplified (EJ, 276). Toward this end, she delivered a
“report” devoted, as her subtitle suggests, to the newly emergent “phenomenon” of the
banality of evil, which, she believed, would account for the role of this “new type of
criminal” in committing (and furthering) crimes against humanity. In doing so, she ap-
parently wished to stage nothing short of a historical intervention, which would alert
her readers to the appearance on the modern scene of a new, deadly, and as-yet-unrec-
ognized manifestation of evil.3
2 Yosal Rogat, The Eichmann Trial and the Rule of Law (Santa Barbara, CA: Center for the Study
of Democratic Institutions, 1961, p. 34).
3 Here I follow Susan Neiman, “Theodicy in Jerusalem,” in Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, ed. Steven
E. Aschheim: 65-90 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, pp. 76-80). See also Daniel
Conway, “Banality, Again,” in The Trial That Never Ends: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in
Retrospect, eds. Richard J. Golsan and Sarah M. Misemer: 67-91 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2017, pp. 66-69).
232 DANIEL CONWAY
In composing her report, however, Arendt did herself few favors. Unable to hide
her disdain for Eichmann, and unwilling to exercise the customary degree of reporto-
rial self-effacement, she occasionally comes off as haughty and aloof. Critical of the
larger political context of the trial, and unimpressed (if not disgusted) by the “show-
manship” of the prosecutor, she allowed personal animosities to cloud her judgment
and harden her prose. Her attempts at irony, sarcasm, understatement, and other rhe-
torical sophistications occasionally fall flat, leading some readers to attribute to her be-
liefs and positions she actually meant to discredit. Most egregiously, in the opinion of
many readers, she displayed a callous lack of sympathetic identification with those Jews
whom the Nazis had placed in an impossible position of encumbered leadership.4
What is not often noted, however, is that Arendt also committed the cardinal sin of
reportage: She buried her lede. Rather than galvanize her readers and focus interna-
tional attention on the “new type of criminal” exemplified by Eichmann, she failed to
clarify the relationship between her reporting (as advertised by the title of the book)
and her cri de coeur (as announced in the subtitle of the book). In particular, we might
note, she failed to specify the nature of the connection between her (eminently contest-
able) remarks about Eichmann and her supposed elucidation of the emergent “phe-
nomenon” of the banality of evil.
If Eichmann is meant to be the poster boy for the “banality of evil,” or so rings a
familiar refrain, then Arendt’s account of evil is deeply (and perhaps irreparably)
flawed.5 According to David Cesarini, for example, “[Arendt’s] depiction of Eichmann
was self-serving, prejudiced and ultimately wrong.”6 In a similar vein, Bettina Stangneth
goes so far as to depict Arendt as the victim of a clever ruse, perpetrated by a master
manipulator:
4 See, for example, Hannah Arendt, “The Eichmann Controversy: A Letter to Gershom Scholem,”
in The Jewish Writings, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Random House/Schocken Books, 2007, pp. 465-
71). For valuable context and commentary, see also Richard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish
Question (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, pp. 160-68); Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought: An
Alternative History of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 300-04); and Peter
Baehr, “Banality and Cleverness: Eichmann in Jerusalem Revisited,” in Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah
Arendt on Ethics and Politics, eds. Roger Berkowitz, Jeffrey Katz, and Thomas Keenan: 139-44 (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2010, pp. 139-42).
5 See, for example, Deborah E. Lipstadt, The Eichmann Trial (New York: Schocken Books, 2011,
pp. 169-70).
6 David Cesarini, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a “Desk Mur-
derer” (Rayleigh, Essex: Da Capo Press, 2006, p. 15).
233 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
[Arendt] fell into his trap: Eichmann-in-Jerusalem was little more than a mask. She didn’t
recognize it, although she was acutely aware that she had not understood the phenomenon
as well as she had hoped.7
If Arendt was wrong about Eichmann, however, we should not be terribly surprised.
She quickly lost interest in him and his testimony, and she did so precisely because she
realized that he was not the traditional, motive-bearing criminal whom she and others
had expected to encounter in Jerusalem.8 Early on, in fact, she recognized Eichmann’s
penchant for evasion, prevarication, and self-serving reinterpretation as symptomatic of
his failure to form the kind of robust intentions that are typically understood to confirm
the presence of malevolence or criminal intent. As a direct and fairly immediate con-
sequence of beholding Eichmann “in the flesh,” Arendt formulated (and named) the
problem that would occupy her, off and on, for the rest of her life and the remainder
of her career—namely, the problem of the emergence of a type of criminal in whom
one would only ever discover banal motives.9 Although she understood Eichmann to
be representative of this “new type of criminal,” moreover, she evidently did not feel
bound by the particulars of his case in her efforts to define this type more generally.
Eichmann’s performance in Jerusalem had sparked in her an interest that quickly led
her, for better or worse, to leave him behind.
Here we might note that the title of Arendt’s book is noticeably devoid of any men-
tion of its supposed and most obvious context: Yes, Eichmann was in Jerusalem, and
that is where Arendt encountered him, locked away in a glass box fashioned for his
protection. But there is no titular reference to the trial itself, which was the event or
occurrence that precipitated this encounter. It is as if Arendt meant to acknowledge
that the trial of Adolf Eichmann was or became of secondary interest, which, I offer,
was precisely how she came to see it. She may have arrived in Jerusalem fully prepared
to report more narrowly on the trial, but she left Jerusalem fascinated by the “new type
of criminal” that her encounter with Eichmann had prompted her to contemplate. To
be sure, the resulting document suffers from the limitations and flaws associated with
this unexpected turn of events, and it may be said that Arendt failed at times to balance
adequately the competing demands of trial reportage and speculative criminology. (She
was, after all, a novice reporter.) Still, our sympathetic attention to the ambitious (and,
7 Bettina Stangneth, Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer, trans.
Ruth Martin (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2014, p. xxiii).
8 See Judith Butler, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2012, pp. 170-71).
9 Here I follow Neiman, “Theodicy in Jerusalem,” pp. 73-81. See also Shoshana Felman, The
Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2002, pp. 107-10).
234 DANIEL CONWAY
yes, conflicting) aims of this book may allow us to shed clarifying light on its central
philosophical claims.
The subtitle of Arendt’s book confirms that it was not intended to deliver a report
per se on the moral or psychological condition of Adolf Eichmann, though it occasion-
ally and of necessity touches on these themes. Nor was it meant to deliver an exhaustive
accounting of Eichmann’s investments in anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology, though it
ventures by necessity into this territory as well. Instead, the book is meant to report on
the emergence of a type of criminal whose share in the evil he originates may and,
according to Arendt, must be judged to be banal. This “new type of criminal,” she goes
on to suggest, presents a new set of problems for modern jurisprudence, ethics, psy-
chology, and politics, as well as the institutions, statutes, laws, and practices they have
enjoined:
[T]his new type of criminal, who is in fact hostis generis humani, commits his crimes
under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he
is doing wrong. (EJ, 276)
Having already de-centered the trial itself (in her title), she endeavors with her sub-
title to push aside Eichmann himself, precisely so that she may steer the “phenome-
non” he represents into sharper relief.
Here we may press even further: Arendt does not recommend Eichmann as an ideal
token of the type on which she is determined to report, which is why she moves so
regularly (and effortlessly) from his case to the more general profile she is determined
to construct.10 Simply put, Eichmann was token zero, the man of banal motives whose
altogether unremarkable appearance in Jerusalem triggered Arendt’s decision to con-
duct an investigation of the type itself. Any such investigation must take Eichmann into
account, but it need not (and should not) remain exclusively focused on him.
My aim in pursuing this interpretation is not to excuse the limitations of Arendt’s
understanding of Eichmann, or the flaws that mar her evaluation of the conduct of his
trial, but to situate these limitations and flaws in the broader context of the actual aims
of her book. The focal point of her report was not Adolf Eichmann, who very well may
have duped her,11 but the banality of evil he supposedly exemplified. In an obvious
attempt to divert attention from the person of Adolf Eichmann, she explains in her
Preface that she spoke “of the banality of evil on the strictly factual level, pointing to a
10 See, for example, Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” in Responsibility and
Judgment, ed. Jerome Kohn: 159-89 (New York: Random House/Schocken Books, 2003, p. 159). See
also Dana R. Villa, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: Conscience, Normality, and the ‘Rule of Narrative’,” in The
Trial That Never Ends, eds. Golsan and Misemer: 43-66, pp. 43-45.
11 As is claimed, for example, by Stangneth, Eichman Before Jerusalem, pp. xxii-xxiv.
235 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial” (EJ, 287). To reiterate: not a
person, much less a person named Eichmann, but a “phenomenon,” heretofore unre-
marked and unclassified, but possessed nonetheless of a lethal criminality. Hence my
interest in re-centering the discussion of what Arendt meant to accomplish in her “re-
port”: even if she was mistaken about Eichmann, as several important scholars have
insisted, her identification of a “new type of criminal” nevertheless warrants our atten-
tion and compels our thoughtful consideration.
12 Arendt’s objections to the Prime Minister and the lead prosecutor should not be understood to
convey her opposition to their aims, which she considered worthy in their own right, but to the (illegiti-
mate) use of the House of Justice to pursue these aims. She thus acknowledges, for example, “that for
Israel, the only unprecedented feature of the trial was that, for the first time (since the year 70, when
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans), Jews were able to sit in judgment on crimes committed against
their own people” (EJ, 271).
13 Here I follow Villa, “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” pp. 60-62. See also Felman, The Juridical Uncon-
scious, pp. 120-23.
236 DANIEL CONWAY
individual who did not mean to commit the crimes with which he has been charged.14
According to Arendt, the statutes and precedents available to these judges did not allow
them to assign guilt to a perpetrator in whom criminal intent cannot be found.15 As a
result, the judges were obliged to improvise, developing what Kant called a “reflective
judgment,” for which she apparently means to applaud them.16
This is not to say, of course, that they succeeded thereby in “understanding the crim-
inal whom they had come to judge,” for they did not. (Nor were they helped or ex-
pected to do so by the prosecution.) But they did the next best thing, delivering a verdict
to which Arendt could lend her provisional assent, a verdict she could reformulate in
good faith for her readers. In part, that is, she admires the judges because their mag-
nanimous restraint secured for her the political space in which she might disclose her-
self in excess of her role as trial reporter.17
The judges’ hands may have been tied, but Arendt’s were not. Having resigned her
reportorial objectivity in her Epilogue, she was free to say what needed to be said and,
in the process of doing so, to essay an alternative formulation of the verdict. The verdict
she pronounced is an alternative, moreover, not in the sense that it recommends a
different outcome or sentence, but in the sense that it delivers a different, more “dar-
ing” justification of the verdict and sentence handed down by the judges. Eichmann is
guilty, as we have seen, but not (only) for the reasons stated publicly by the presiding
judges. As we shall see, the actual verdict drew on the authority vested in two canons of
justice, one that the judges were free to invoke, and another that Arendt was resolved
to disclose. If the House of Justice was in fact the contested site of a struggle between
politics and its other, as Arendt maintains, it stands to reason that she would feel com-
pelled to reveal the other canon of justice on which the verdict relied.
In order to appreciate Arendt’s motivation for undertaking this complex maneuver,
let us review the final paragraph of the Epilogue, wherein she concludes her alternative
formation of the verdict rendered in Jerusalem:
14 By way of clarification, Arendt explains, “these modern, state-employed mass murderers must be
prosecuted because they violated the order of mankind, and not because they killed millions of people”
(EJ, 272).
15 Here I follow Felman, The Juridical Unconscious, pp. 137-40.
16 My appreciation of Arendt’s efforts to complete and publicize the “reflective judgment” initiated
by the presiding judges is indebted to Matthew Wester, Judgment and Its Limits: Eichmann, Modernity,
and the Development of Hannah Arendt’s Theory of Political Judgment (College Station, TX: Texas
A&M University Dissertation, 2018, Chapters 6-7.) See also Leora Bilsky, “Truth and Judgment in Ar-
endt’s Writing,” in The Trial That Never Ends, Golsan and Misemer, eds.: 161-90, pp. 169-73.
17 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958, pp. 175-
81).
237 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
And just as you supported and carried out a policy of not wanting to share the earth with
the Jewish people and the people of a number of other nations—as though you and your
superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world—
we find that no one, that is, no member of the human race, can be expected to want to
share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, you must hang. (EJ, 279)
This last point invites further scrutiny. First of all, the “we” in question assents to a
stringently simplified explanation of the verdict and sentence. In particular, it reduces
the justification for the sentence to a single “reason,” thereby de-cluttering a protracted
legal process overwrought with multiple purposes, detours, digressions, expansions,
pretexts, and so on. Second, the “we” for which Arendt speaks here has juxtaposed an
illegitimate assertion of “right” (on the part of Eichmann and his superiors) with an
apparently legitimate assertion of right—though not identified as such—on behalf of the
collective membership of the “human race.” In doing so, moreover, the “we” in ques-
tion claims to channel the will of each “member of the human race,” including, pre-
sumably, Eichmann’s closest family members. Third, it is this apparently legitimate
assertion of right that authorizes the presiding “we” to translate the stipulated “expecta-
tion” into the determination that “[Eichmann] must hang” (EJ, 279).
If Arendt’s reformulated verdict faithfully expresses what the judges meant and
wished to communicate to the world at large, it is difficult to see that (and how) Justice
(or justice) prevailed in Jerusalem. As several scholars have noted, 18 this revised verdict
appears to rest on a practice of jurisprudence that modern, civilized nations would view
as both inadequate and inimical to the development of widely-recognized courts of
international law.19 What, then, is Arendt’s point in making known the nature and the
limitations of the justice done in Jerusalem?
Immediately prior to concluding her alternative version of the verdict, Arendt intro-
duces a consideration that she has been careful thus far to resist—namely, the consider-
ation of politics:
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was nothing more than misfortune that
made you a willing instrument in the organization of mass murder; there still remains the
fact that you have carried out, and therefore actively supported, a policy of mass murder.
For politics is not like the nursery; in politics obedience and support are the same. (EJ,
279, emphasis added)
18 See, for example, Butler, Parting Ways, pp. 157-59; and Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb, “Beyond
Tragedy: Arendt, Rogat, and the Judges in Jerusalem” (College Literature 38.1 [Winter 2011], pp. 45-
56).
19 Rogat, The Eichmann Trial, pp. 41-42.
238 DANIEL CONWAY
Arendt’s invocation of politics in this final paragraph is both abrupt and decisive.
Careful thus far to police a space in which Justice might assert its “demands” with min-
imal interference, she now grants politics its due, even acknowledging its (presumed)
status as the final arbiter in this matter. The stipulated authority of politics receives (and
apparently needs) no explanation, and its priority in this matter is simply asserted.
While other voices may challenge this damning characterization of Eichmann, includ-
ing the voice of Hannah Arendt, the voice of politics rings firm, clear, unanimous, and
final. Unlike the voice of Justice, the voice of politics brooks no dissent.
It bears noting here that Arendt’s invocation of politics in her alternative verdict ef-
fectively tables many of the issues that she herself has raised throughout her consider-
ation of the “type” exemplified by Eichmann. Her discussion of his (potentially exten-
uating) circumstances had not yet reached a natural or satisfying conclusion, and her
own concerns, centered on the alleged “banality” of the evil he perpetrated, had not
been thoroughly adjudicated. If anything, in fact, Arendt’s deference to the intervening
authority of politics appears to be meant to enforce closure, to settle a question that
otherwise might have proven intractable, and to quash a potentially disruptive line of
inquiry.
We also should take note of the precise context of Arendt’s deference, on behalf of
the “we” for which she speaks, to politics. Just as this “we” has begun to consider some
of the potentially extenuating circumstances cited by Arendt herself, e.g., “that [he] had
never hated the Jews, and still that [he] could not have acted otherwise” (EJ, 278), the
clarifying authority of politics is invoked. Hard luck, misfortune, superior orders, and
the like may elicit our sympathies, but they are not exculpatory. That Eichmann “ac-
tively supported…a policy of mass murder,” which Arendt herself has given us reason
to reconsider, is here declared a “fact,” which the presiding “we” infers (or derives)
from the undisputed “fact” that he “carried out” this policy (EJ, 279). (That these two
“facts” are equally or in the same sense factual would seem to require further elabora-
tion.)
As we are assured, moreover, “politics is not like the nursery” (EJ, 279). Thus, even
if it is determined that Eichmann acted like a child, or displayed childlike naïveté, he
nevertheless must be treated and tried as a fully responsible, blameworthy adult. Here
one might object, however, that the seemingly decisive comparison of politics to the
nursery, though rhetorically effective, is philosophically suspect: Is there really no mid-
dle ground or gray area to be explored here? Are we reasonably certain that Eichmann
did in fact make himself a “willing instrument in the organization of service of a policy
of mass murder”? What, then, was the point of the Epilogue prior to Arendt’s elabo-
239 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
ration of the revised verdict, or of her concluding Postscript? Whence her dissatisfac-
tions with the conduct and progress of the trial? Are we to conclude that Arendt herself
belongs in “the nursery”?
Furthermore, the sheer bluntness of this assertion, as if Arendt and other critics of
the trial might be dangerously confused about the nature of Eichmann’s crimes, fur-
thermore suggests that it is meant to head off any consideration of extenuating circum-
stances. Rather than make the case that he was in fact a “willing instrument,” which
presumably would suffice (or nearly so) to establish mens rea, this ad hoc appeal to
politics infers his “active support” for “a policy of mass murder” from the “obedience”
he indisputably displayed (EJ, 279). (As far as politics is concerned, apparently, the
establishment of actus reus is sufficient to determine criminality.) It is for his inferred
support of this policy, finally, that Eichmann must hang. Ever practical in its orienta-
tion, politics has pronounced the final word on the subject.
But is this Arendt’s final word on the matter? Susannah Gottlieb and Judith Butler
have both raised the question of who is speaking in the final paragraphs of the Epi-
logue.20 The answer, each suggests, is that Arendt is speaking, though in a voice that is
not entirely or resolutely her own. Although she pronounces the alternative verdict,
that is, she does so on behalf of a “we” to which she belongs only provisionally (or
rhetorically), a “we” that yields without complaint to the intrusive voice of politics. In
presuming to speak for the judges, Arendt in fact positions herself to deliver a provi-
sional (or partial) endorsement of the verdict she pronounces on their behalf.
Building on the illuminating rhetorical analyses delivered, respectively, by Gottlieb
and Butler, I wish to account for Arendt’s decision to withhold her full, unambiguous
assent from the alternative verdict she elaborates in her Epilogue. Despite her sympathy
for the judges and her recognition of the constraints under which they labored, she
does not categorically endorse the verdict she pronounces on their behalf. While she
understandably prefers the candor of the alternative version she has produced, the ver-
dict itself does not command her full, unqualified support. In particular, I offer, she
does not endorse as final the subordination of justice to politics in the alternative verdict
she delivers.
What, then, is Arendt’s own position? Why does she go out of her way to speak on
behalf of a “we” from which she withholds her full assent?
20 See Butler, Parting Ways, pp. 157-59; and Gottlieb, “Beyond Tragedy,” pp. 50-56.
240 DANIEL CONWAY
Politics, I wish to suggest, plays a dual role in the final paragraphs of Arendt’s Epi-
logue. On the one hand, as we have seen, politics intervenes and settles the question,
confirming the guilt of Eichmann on the strength of an inference from his oft-remarked
“obedience” to his “support” for the Nazi policy of mass murder. On the other hand,
the injection of politics into the alternative verdict allows Arendt to signal, and also to
enact, her dissatisfactions with the verdict even as she delivers the candor the judges
could not provide. Her rhetorical exercise at the conclusion of the Epilogue thus allows
her to perform a (productively) divided office, which faithfully reflects the crowded
conditions in the House of Justice: She lends her voice both to politics, as we have
seen, and to Justice. That these two voices are in this case discordant, though their
discord may yet be resolved, is the upshot of the rhetorical exercise that comprises her
efforts to deliver an alternative formulation of the verdict.21
Here we may go further: Arendt withholds her assent from the voice of politics, even
as she channels its definitive judgment, because she does not acknowledge the legiti-
macy of the form or manifestation of politics for which she speaks. As we know, Arendt
regarded politics as the domain of the public realm in which individuals are invited to
disclose themselves—thereby becoming “who” and not merely “what” they are—on the
strength of their actions and speeches, in excess of the limited (and merely productive)
social role(s) to which they ordinarily are confined.22 The (degenerate) form of politics
we encounter in Arendt’s revised verdict in fact bespeaks a distinctly modern reduction
of politics to the crude (if expedient) accumulation and exercise of power, a reduction
that reflects the “eclipse” of the “common public world” in which self-disclosure is
alone possible.23
To say that these two voices are discordant is not to suggest that the claims of politics
and Justice are entirely disjoint. Further complicating Arendt’s rhetorical exercise in
her Epilogue is her apparent acknowledgment that the voice of politics credibly trades
on the authority vested in a venerable (if pre-modern) canon of justice. Rather than
oppose politics to the pursuit of justice, that is, Arendt seeks in her reformulation of
the verdict to “make visible” the archaic canon of justice from which the verdict and
sentence derived their legitimacy. This is why she concludes her reformulation of the
verdict by invoking the lex talionis, according to which vengeance (or restorative retri-
bution) may be understood to deliver a just outcome. In other words, justice was done
241 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
in Jerusalem, even though the Eichmann trial failed to live up to the widely acknowl-
edged standards of modern, “civilized” jurisprudence.
Here we recall that Arendt introduces her reformulation of the verdict by rehearsing
the distinction, drawn by Yosal Rogat, between “civilized” and “barbaric” canons of
justice.24 As she notes, this distinction rests on the former canon’s attention to, and the
latter’s neglect of, mens rea as an element of criminality (EJ, 277). 25 By way of contrast,
Rogat explains, the “barbaric” canon of justice authorizes retribution, or restorative jus-
tice, on the basis of actus reus alone. Although Arendt does not explicitly endorse
Rogat’s distinction, she aligns the “we” for which she speaks with his characterization
of this “barbaric” canon:
We refuse, and consider as barbaric, the propositions “that a great crime offends nature,
so that the very earth cries out for vengeance; that evil violates a natural harmony which
only retribution can restore; that a wronged collectivity owes a duty to the moral order to
punish the criminal…” (EJ, p. 277)
Conceding that an archaic canon of justice provided the compelling “ground” for
bringing Eichmann to justice and assigning the death penalty,26 Arendt explains that
[Eichmann] had to be eliminated…[b]ecause he had been implicated and had played a
central role in an enterprise whose open purpose was to eliminate forever certain “races”
from the surface of the earth. (EJ, 277)
As this passage confirms, Arendt understands Eichmann’s guilt to have been deter-
mined independent of any extended consideration of his criminal intent, or of his men-
tal and emotional states more generally. The “purpose” of the “enterprise” in which
“he had been implicated” was sufficiently “open”—and sufficiently heinous—that guilt
could be assigned in good conscience to him and, presumably, to any and all others
who “played a central role” in the execution of this “enterprise.” In this limited respect,
in other words, the verdict in the Eichmann trial appears to have been derived from an
24 Arendt’s borrowed (or provisional) distinction between “civilized” and “barbaric” approaches to
jurisprudence fully emerges in her Epilogue (EJ, pp. 276-77). For his part, Rogat prefers to distinguish
between, e.g., “modern patterns of thought,” and “older” or “archaic” “way[s] of looking at the world”
(Rogat, The Eichmann Trial, p. 20). According to Rogat, moreover, “the greatest irony of the trial [may
be] that its two antagonistic forces—Israel and Nazis—have both asserted the older view of membership
and identity” (Rogat, The Eichmann Trial, p. 21).
25 I am indebted here to Gottlieb, “Beyond Tragedy,” p. 50; and Butler, Parting Ways, pp. 158-
59.
26 Here I note, again following Gottlieb (“Beyond Tragedy,” pp 49-52) and Butler (Parting Ways, p.
158), that Arendt apparently means to offer only an account, and not an endorsement, of the “ground”
in question. She is as yet concerned simply to explain what happened in Jerusalem and why what hap-
pened there was not necessarily reflected in the verdict the judges delivered.
242 DANIEL CONWAY
archaic (or pre-modern) canon of justice. Indeed, the doubled reference in the ex-
tracted passage to a proposed “elimination” is suggestive of an application of the lex
talionis: justice demands swift, uncompromising retribution against an avowed scourge
of the Jewish people.
We are now in a position to understand why Arendt’s reformulated verdict dis-
penses in such short order with the kinds of concerns, including those raised by Arendt
herself, that pertain to the question of Eichmann’s state of mind. As determined by the
voice of politics, we know, such concerns belong more properly in the “nursery,”
where, presumably, one might be inclined toward caution before inferring the “fact” of
“support” from the “fact” of “obedience.” Untroubled by questions of mens rea,27 the
voice of politics confidently asserts the justice of the verdict and the sentence. Una-
shamed of its endorsement of (restorative) vengeance, the voice of politics decrees that
Eichmann should receive the same kind of treatment, e.g., exclusion from a world he
refused to share with others, that he and his superiors had arranged for the victims of
their campaign of mass extermination.
In choosing to speak for a “we” to which she does not lend her unconditional assent,
Arendt reminds her readers that appeals to justice need not be—and in this case should
not be—assumed to be univocal. Arendt’s revised formulation of the verdict thus pro-
duces what we might call the tremor of Justice, which audibly signals our understanding
that the justice done in Jerusalem, though adequate to the occasion, was not consistent
with the highest, most fully civilized aspirations of modern jurisprudence. In choosing
to speak for this “we,” Arendt lent credence both to the justice that was done in Jeru-
salem and to the Justice that was deferred in Jerusalem. As such, her efforts to elicit the
tremor of Justice faithfully reflect her earlier characterization of the House of Justice as
a contested site, wherein the pursuit of justice was seen to clash with the “demands” of
Justice.
That justice was done in Jerusalem, which the voice of politics confidently asserts,
does not necessarily oblige us to be satisfied with the outcome and aftermath of the
Eichmann trial. We may determine, for example, that the justice done in Jerusalem
was only provisionally or conditionally satisfying, especially if we agree with Arendt that
the type of criminal exemplified by Eichmann was neither acknowledged nor ad-
dressed. We also may decide, as we shall see, that the justice done in Jerusalem im-
poses upon us the responsibility to aspire to a more thoroughly civilized administration
of justice.
27 As Rogat allows, “there is a strong impulse to say simply that Eichmann is guilty in every sense of
the word, and be done with it” (See Rogat, The Eichmann Trial, p. 33). See also Gottlieb, “Beyond
Tragedy,” pp. 50-52.
243 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
Although justice is often (and traditionally) regarded as the crowning virtue and ideal
aim of politics, Arendt’s final paragraphs remind her readers that politics aspires to
other ends as well, including the finality and expediency to which her reformulation of
the verdict attests. In delivering these other ends, moreover, politics may be expected
to comport itself in accordance with principles that we may tend to associate with a
simpler, pre-modern canon of justice. In that event, and Arendt’s reformulated verdict
is exemplary in this regard, politics proceeds by suspending its allegiance to the modern
(or “civilized”) canon of justice, along with its orienting concern to establish mens rea
as an element of the crime.
The decisive intervention of politics thus creates, and burdens us with, what might
be called a justice deficit. In making visible and audible the justice of what was done in
Jerusalem, Arendt effectively discloses to her readers that they have incurred a debt, of
which she is perhaps uniquely aware, which corresponds to the deferral of modern (or
“civilized”) justice in the name of politics. Indeed, her recognition of this debt, and her
apparent willingness to take the steps needed to discharge it, help us to understand why
she would speak for, and thus provisionally join, a “we” to which she does not neces-
sarily wish to belong. The debt incurred in Jerusalem belongs to all of us, whether we
agree with the judges or not. Engaging in a bit of prophetic speculation, she thus avers
that
If genocide is the actual possibility of the future, then no people on earth—least of all, of
course, the Jewish people, in Israel or elsewhere—can feel reasonably sure of its continued
existence without the help and protection of international law. (EJ, 273)
Those who detect the tremor of Justice in this alternative formulation of the verdict
are not only implicated in an imperfect administration of justice, but also burdened
with a corresponding debt to future generations. So long as Justice remains invisible
and voiceless, which is the situation Arendt means to address and disrupt, we may pro-
ceed as we wish, pretending to be satisfied with the justice delivered in Jerusalem. Hav-
ing heard the voice of politics, however, and having acknowledged its indifference in
this instance to the claims of modern (or “civilized”) justice, we are no longer free to
conduct business as usual. We now know ourselves to be indebted, even if involuntarily
so, and we now know ourselves to be responsible for addressing (and possibly elimi-
nating) the justice deficit that Arendt has disclosed to us. In other words, the “we” for
which Arendt speaks in her alternative verdict has morphed into a “we” that includes
herself and all others who are knowingly dissatisfied with the justice of “what was done
in Jerusalem.”
244 DANIEL CONWAY
The disclosure of this debt, I offer, is a primary aim—and, in any event, a signal
accomplishment—of Arendt’s Epilogue and its reformulation of the verdict. In showing
her readers that justice was done in Jerusalem, she also shows them/us that the justice
done in Jerusalem was provisional in nature. In channeling the voice of politics, while
refusing to claim it as fully her own, she thus discloses what politics is neither able nor
expected in this instance to articulate. Adeptly mobilizing (and multi-tasking across) the
related tropes of the visible and the audible, Arendt acquaints her readers with their
newly revealed obligation to address the justice deficit incurred in Jerusalem. Indeed,
the disclosure of this debt authorizes the pivot toward the future that Arendt’s Epilogue
(and Postscript) are apparently meant to accomplish. Politics may have had the last
word in Jerusalem, but Arendt has arranged for modern (or “civilized”) justice to have
the next word, if there is to be one. 28
For Arendt, the justice deficit incurred in Jerusalem is regrettable, but hardly unex-
pected. Her confidence in the supposedly permanent reforms inscribed in the “civi-
lized” practice of jurisprudence was tempered by her bracingly realistic assessment of
the modest reach of human progress. As Seyla Benhabib has documented, Arendt was
persistently ambivalent about the signature aspirations (and pretentions) of European
modernity.29 Whatever the merit of the goals and ideals of the project of Enlighten-
ment, Arendt cautioned, they remained aspirational—and, so, unrealized—to a degree
that its most bullish champions were unwilling to acknowledge. She knew from per-
sonal experience that even in those cases in which progress was palpable, the peaks of
civilization remained fragile, contested, and vulnerable to processes and agents bent on
leveling them. Rather than simply pledge her undivided allegiance to the goals and
ideals of European modernity, Arendt was more centrally concerned to reckon its ac-
tual successes and failures to live up to its preferred image of itself.
As we have seen, the prosecution and outcome of the Eichmann trial may be un-
derstood to confirm the wisdom of Arendt’s ambivalence. Despite an avowed and pub-
lic commitment to the principles of “civilized” jurisprudence, the trial of Adolf Eich-
mann failed to confront the actual criminal whom it was meant to judge (EJ, 298). And
although the trial yielded an outcome that may be affirmed as just, the relevant canon
of justice was one with which proponents of “civilized” jurisprudence may and should
be dissatisfied. Indeed, the irony here is that Arendt’s modest expectations for the Eich-
mann trial shielded her from the disappointments expressed by other close observers
of the legal proceedings. Rogat, for example, sounds fairly despondent as he urges
245 The Voice of Politics and the Tremor of Justice: Arendt, Eichmann, and the Future of Evil
other (unnamed) nations to “become capable of making the decision Israel failed to
make.”30
Although she agrees with Rogat that Israel missed (or declined) an opportunity to
further “the development and extension of international law,”31 Arendt does not regard
this opportunity as permanently lost or foreclosed. By making known the extent and
the limits of the justice done in Jerusalem, she apparently intends to galvanize an audi-
ence that will appreciate this opportunity as both ongoing and ripe. Indeed, the general
thrust of her Epilogue and Postscript is to alert her readers to the pressing need for
laws and institutions that will allow modern, civilized societies to hold “thoughtless”
criminals responsible for their crimes.32 The option elected in Jerusalem—namely, to
revert to “barbaric” propositions of justice—was tolerable to her, but only as an emer-
gency measure.33 In the case of Adolf Eichmann, she apparently believes, justice was
done. In the matter of the “new type of criminal” he exemplified, however, justice was
deferred.
A more permanent solution to the problems posed by the emergence of this “new
type of criminal” will require modern scholars and practitioners of philosophy, politics,
and jurisprudence to mount a concerted effort to update their principles, norms, prac-
tices, and statutes, precisely so that criminals may be held responsible even if they are
deemed to lack the requisite criminal intent.34 Having documented the capacity of to-
talitarian regimes to hijack the conscience and override the traditional commands of
morality, Arendt was in a unique position to realize that more criminals like Eichmann,
thoughtless and lethal, were likely to appear in the dark and darker times that lay
ahead.35
CONCLUSION
246 DANIEL CONWAY
If we are ever to emerge from the shadow of destruction and the paralysis of fear, it will
be through an extension of the rule of law. We shall have to enlarge our sense of com-
munity by creating a higher law and higher institutions to interpret it, institutions which
must enjoy respect apart from whether this or that decision is pleasing to us. That will be
a test of maturity for all peoples. 36
Very much in the spirit of the sentiment expressed by Freund, I offer, Arendt chal-
lenges her readers to undertake the recommended “extension of the rule of law.” Hav-
ing reached back to our “barbaric” past to dispense with Eichmann, she believes, we
are now obliged to take steps to ensure that similar reversions will not be necessary in
the future. Having helped ourselves in Jerusalem to an archaic canon of justice, we now
must turn to the task of creating a new, improved, and more fully modernized canon
of justice. (Until we do so, she warns, judges will either be tempted or expected to play
a legislative role that exceeds the proper bounds of their judicial expertise (EJ, 274).)
Like Freund, moreover, Arendt apparently hoped that this pivot toward the future
would bear fruit in the form of a more robust network of institutions devoted to the
expansion and administration of international law (EJ, 267-71).37
36 Cited in Rogat, The Eichmann Trial, p. 43. In 1972, Arendt and Freund participated in a Rocke-
feller Foundation panel discussion devoted to the topic of “Values in Contemporary Society.” See Han-
nah Arendt, Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953-75, ed. Jerome Kohn (New
York: Schocken Books, 2018, pp. 438-442).
37 Earlier versions of this essay were presented to the Congress of the European Association of Jewish
Studies (2018) and the World Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and
Social Philosophy (2019). I am grateful to members of both societies for their helpful comments. I also
am indebted to two anonymous reviewers for the journal.
247
Monographica II
FABIO CIARAMELLI
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’
fabio.ciaramelli@unina.it
PIERO MARINO
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università degli studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’
piero.marino@unina.it
ABSTRACT
Over the last decade, the juridical-philosophical notion of vulnerability has met with considerable
success, both in terms of theoretical reflection and of concrete legal application. Much of this
success is due to its critical-hermeneutical use, aimed not only at identifying and protecting indi-
viduals or groups particularly exposed and vulnerable, but also and above all, at adapting and
directing the legislation concerning the protection of fundamental human rights.
In this sense, the legal use of the notion of vulnerability is an integral part of the process of
constitutionalization of the human person that characterizes the European legal systems since the
second post-war period and which assumes, as its main purpose, the application of the protective
mask of the law to the concrete individuals.
KEYWORDS
Criticism, Hermeneutics, Constitution, Human Person, Modernity.
In the last decade the notion of vulnerability has been tackled from multiple and
different perspectives and it has become increasingly relevant not only in the legal-
philosophical debate, but also in the field of economics and political theory1; a con-
crete proof of such relevance is its impact on the regulatory production of European
and international institutions2.
1
B. Pastore, 2018, p. 7; K. Brown, K. Ecclestone, N. Emmel, 2017 and O. Giolo, B. Pastore,
2018.
2
Y. Al Tamini, 2015; E. Diciotti, 2018, pp. 19-30; M. G. Bernardini, 2018; R. Chenal, 2018, pp.
39-52; M. Virgilio, 2018.
250 FABIO CIARAMELLI & PIERO MARINO
251 Normativity and Vulnerability: Starting from Legal Practices. Guest Editors’ Preface
juridical action is particularly vulnerable, being intent on the construction and for-
mulation of institutions and norms which are intrinsically exposed to alteration and
to precariousness. With this, the semantics of the term is also enriched with a met-
aphorical meaning.
This brief survey on the juridical and conceptual notion of vulnerability may be
of some use in assessing its concrete effects at the applicative and regulatory level.
In order to fully grasp its meaning, a preliminary remark is necessary.
The example of societies that have developed a legal dimension, regardless of
their degree of cultural complexity, shows that, in general, law arises mainly from
the need to regulate social reality and individual behaviour10. Due to the great trans-
formations of the modern world, the aim of this normative has acquired a particu-
larly innovative aspect: indeed, as a consequence of the process of secularization,
the law has assumed on itself an unprecedented role of mediation to guarantee the
ethical-moral legitimacy to the political institutions aimed at the achievement of so-
cial integration11; a role that, in pre-modern societies, was substantially played by
religion, through the impressive complex of philosophical constructions with a met-
aphysical and cosmological character12.
The modern legal state has played this unprecedented regulatory function13,
building around the human person a sort of protective mask, aimed at protecting
his fundamental rights14. And it is precisely from the second post-war period that
the process of constitutionalization of the person became visible15; by such a pro-
cess, the place from which an articulated corpus of individual rights derives is no
longer from the legal system itself, understood as either a rigid and objectively au-
tonomous structure, neither from the juridical subject in an abstract and general
sense, but rather from the human person, considered in its concrete and individual
dimension. The law is thus called to guarantee each individual’s project of full au-
tonomy and realization, starting from the necessities and needs of each different
individuality16.
The conceptual couple normativity-vulnerability is particularly useful in explain-
ing this function: in a legal system that appears to be less and less rigid and hierar-
chical, and increasingly differentiated and branched, the hermeneutical use of the
notion of vulnerability seems indeed capable of favouring the application of a pro-
tective mask to the different legal entities, by performing the difficult task of adapting
and modulating its forms according to the needs and requirements of the different
10
S. Cotta, 1997, pp. 51-67.
11
J. Habermas, 2013, pp. 36-52, p. 98 ff.
12
Ibid, pp. 32-5.
13
L. Ferrajoli, 2015, pp. 3-39.
14
J. Habermas, 2013, pp. 130-1.
15
S. Rodotà, 2012, pp. 148-54.
16
Ibid., pp. 140-99, 250-69, 295-7; L. Ferrajoli, 2015, pp. 123-47.
252 FABIO CIARAMELLI & PIERO MARINO
personal individualities. At the same time its critical use could play the role of un-
masking the limits of an exercise of the law which, by a surreptitious political use,
could become invasive and cumbersome and therefore turn into a producer of vul-
nerability.
It is, as one can easily see, a use of the notion of vulnerability that must take its
starting point from the concrete practices of law, i.e. it must be able to hold together
the different aspects of the theoretical formulation and of the concrete application
on a strictly regulatory line. The close contiguity of the theoretical reflection and of
the practical application can be fully understood by referring to the metaphorical
meaning of vulnerability as it moves from a subjective characteristic to an objective
element of law, as it stated above.
Moving the level of discourse from the subjects of right to the law itself is not a
simple rhetorical exercise or a vague theoretical reflection; it can, on the contrary,
be very useful precisely to guarantee, in terms of concrete application, the full real-
ization of that process of constitutionalization of the person which we mentioned
earlier.
The concrete practices of law, in fact, if called to recognize the intrinsic vulnera-
bility and alterability of the juridical order, are more induced to a perspective of
openness towards the individuation and, above all, the alteration of the principles
of the right itself; we are thus well aware that the legal form that we are called to use
to protect and guarantee the free and autonomous development of the human per-
son must lose any rigidity and immutability, in order to adhere more and more
easily to the forms of the latter.
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255 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 255-277
ISSN: 1825-5167
VULNERABILITÀ, CONCETTO DI
DIRITTO E APPROCCIO CLINICO-
LEGALE
ALDO SCHIAVELLO
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università di Palermo
aldo.schiavello@unipa.it
ABSTRACT
Does a clinical legal approach tell us something interesting about the nature and the concept of
law? Is it possible to re-think the relationship between law and morals starting from the legal
clinics experience? Is the juxtaposition between doctors and jurists convincing? These are the
main questions that will be addressed here. They are questions concerning legal epistemology
and legal philosophy in the strict sense that seems not to be so interesting for clinical jurists.
Indeed, clinical jurists above all emphasize the importance of legal clinics from the viewpoint of
education and social justice, but neglect the contribution that a clinical legal method can offer
with respect to the knowledge of law. Nevertheless, dealing with this latter question could be
useful to strengthen contemporary legal clinical movement.
KEYWORDS
Legal clinic; law and morals; law and force; claim to correctness; power; human rights.
1. PREMESSA
è il tratto distintivo dello stato moderno, la crisi della sovranità lo è dello stato con-
temporaneo (Ferrajoli 1997). Se lo stato liberale ottocentesco – lo stato di diritto –
riconosce come unici o principali limiti alla sovranità statale le “procedure” che
l’autorità legittima deve rispettare per creare diritto valido, lo stato costituzionale
aggiunge, ai limiti procedurali, anche limiti “sostanziali”, di “contenuto”, che impe-
discono che il potere costituito possa fare o decidere tutto ciò che vuole. La crisi
della sovranità implica anche una nuova ripartizione del potere normativo tra gli
organi dello stato. Si può anche dire che l’età dei diritti segni il passaggio da una
concezione del rule of law ad un’altra.
La prima concezione pone l’accento su alcune caratteristiche, prevalentemente
formali che, ove presenti, consentono di limitare il potere arbitrario dei governanti.
In questa accezione, il rule of law sarebbe, al tempo stesso, un modo di organizzare
il potere e una garanzia per coloro che a questo potere sono soggetti. Un celebre
compendio di questo modello è proposto da Friedrich von Hayek quando difende
l’ideale della sovranità della legge: «messe da parte le questioni tecniche, ciò significa
che il governo in tutte le sue azioni è vincolato da norme stabilite e annunciate in
anticipo: norme che rendono possibile stabilire con ragionevole certezza in che
modo l’autorità userà i suoi poteri coercitivi in determinate circostanze, e che ren-
dono possibile agli individui programmare i propri affari sulla base di tale cono-
scenza» (Hayek 2007, 123).
La seconda concezione del rule of law è collegata – almeno originariamente – al
common law e alla cultura giuridica inglese e, più in particolare, ad autori quali
Edward Coke prima e, dopo, Albert Dicey. In base a questo modello, il diritto
positivo non si esaurisce nel diritto prodotto dal potere sovrano ma è l’esito
dell’equilibrio tra i due elementi della coppia, risalente alla tradizione medievale,
gubernaculum/jurisdictio. Il gubernaculum, che è espressione del potere sovrano,
trova un limite insuperabile nella prassi giuridica di riferimento, che è retta da prin-
cipi i quali, a loro volta, esprimono una vera e propria “ragione giuridica” i cui sa-
cerdoti sono in primo luogo i giudici e, in seconda battuta, i giuristi. Questo modello
di rule of law presuppone a) l’esistenza di valori e principi espressi dalla prassi giu-
ridica ed immodificabili (o, almeno, non modificabili al modo della legislazione) e
b) una cooperazione tra istituzioni, in particolare tra parlamento e corti (Palombella
2012). È questo il modello di rule of law incarnato dal costituzionalismo contem-
poraneo.
Il primo modello – “illuminista” – di rule of law tutela la libertà e l’autonomia in
quanto permette agli individui di conoscere ex ante quali saranno le conseguenze
delle loro azioni. Inoltre, un diritto con queste caratteristiche tratta coloro che sono
soggetti al diritto da esseri umani adulti, nel senso che si propone di incidere sul
loro comportamento in modo aperto e non surrettizio, lasciando agli individui stessi
257 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
più inclusive e, di conseguenza, più protettive nei confronti della vulnerabilità delle
persone (Ciaramelli 2018; Preterossi 2018).
In questo saggio intendo analizzare la relazione tra diritto e vulnerabilità negli
stati costituzionali dal particolare angolo visuale rappresentato dall’approccio cli-
nico-legale che si sta diffondendo in Italia da poco più di una decina di anni (Ro-
mano 2016). Come nota Maria Giulia Bernardini (2017, 437), infatti, «interrogarsi
sui limiti e sulle potenzialità del metodo [clinico-legale] consente di innovare alcuni
dibattiti ‘classici’ per la filosofia del diritto, le cui questioni fondamentali vengono
riconfigurate, re-interpretate o riproposte ‘alla luce’, appunto, dell’esperienza cli-
nica».
L’idea è quella di abbozzare delle risposte ad una serie di domande. Innanzi-
tutto, un approccio clinico-legale è in grado di dirci qualcosa di interessante sulla
natura e sul concetto di diritto, in particolare negli stati costituzionali contempora-
nei?
È una domanda di epistemologia giuridica su cui i giuristi clinici tendono a sor-
volare. Questi ultimi enfatizzano soprattutto l’importanza delle cliniche legali da un
punto di vista didattico e di giustizia sociale, mentre trascurano l’apporto del me-
todo clinico-legale in relazione alla conoscenza del diritto.
Il “compito ontologico” è uno tra i compiti principali attribuiti alla filosofia del
diritto: affrontare tale compito a partire da una riflessione sulle cliniche legali può
forse contribuire ad arricchire di elementi nuovi la risposta alla domanda “che cosa
è il diritto?”.
Il solo fatto che l’approccio-clinico legale abbia attecchito inizialmente negli Stati
Uniti nei primi decenni del secolo scorso, per poi essere recepito in altri paesi tra il
1960 e il 1970 e solo da una decina d’anni – come si è detto – in Italia ed in altri
paesi europei come Francia, Spagna e Germania, ci può aiutare a capire le diffe-
renze tra i modi di concepire il diritto in questi paesi. Si tratta di differenze che
sarebbe riduttivo e semplicistico ricondurre alla distinzione tra civil law e common
law. È interessante chiedersi quali siano le ragioni che hanno favorito, da una decina
di anni, la nascita di molte cliniche legali, con caratteristiche specifiche, in Italia. È
soltanto espressione di un movimento clinico globale (Bloch 2008) o, peggio, di
una moda passeggera? Ovvero, come credo, è indice di un modo diverso di conce-
pire il diritto e di un mutamento di ideologia giuridica?
Perché dunque si stanno diffondendo proprio ora le cliniche legali in Italia?
Una risposta secca a questa domanda si risolverebbe in una banalizzazione della
questione. Credo tuttavia che i fattori principali della diffusione delle cliniche legali
vadano ricercati nella globalizzazione del diritto, che rende l’approccio formalista
di matrice kelseniana, a lungo prediletto dai giuristi italiani, non più (e, per la verità,
da tempo) adeguato come chiave di lettura della realtà. Il “salvagente della forma”,
su cui si è retta a lungo l’ideologia dell’autonomia del diritto dalla politica, non è
più a disposizione. In secondo luogo, a partire dagli anni ’90 del secolo scorso, la
259 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
politica italiana vive un periodo di grande debolezza che ha prodotto, tra le altre
cose, la cessione di potere politico dal Parlamento (nell’immaginario comune pieno
di politici corrotti, incapaci e immorali) alla magistratura (dalla quale ci si aspetta, o
ci si aspettava prima degli ultimi scandali, la risoluzione di tutti i problemi).
Perché molte cliniche legali italiane si occupano di migrazione?2
Anche in questo caso la risposta non è semplice. In questi anni caratterizzati dalla
crisi economica, il fenomeno migratorio ha rappresentato il capro espiatorio ideale
su cui riversare tutti i mali che affliggono la società italiana. Inoltre, l’odio nei con-
fronti dei migranti è stato fomentato anche al fine di favorire una “guerra tra poveri”
in grado di sollevare una cortina di fumo che nasconda le responsabilità dei gover-
nanti nella cattiva gestione della cosa pubblica. Questa strategia è stata utilizzata, con
accenti diversi, sia dalla destra che dalla sinistra. Nel recente passato è stato proprio
un governo di centro-sinistra ad avere stretto accordi con la Libia volti ad impedire
ai migranti di raggiungere il territorio italiano. I mezzi violenti e lesivi della dignità e
dei diritti umani utilizzati in Libia per perseguire l’obiettivo di bloccare i migranti
erano ben noti, ma sono stati esplicitamente considerati un costo da pagare. Questa
impostazione calpesta la cultura dei diritti e, più in generale, l’aspirazione del diritto
alla giustizia.
Il fatto che molte cliniche legali si occupino di migrazione può essere considerato
una ribellione contro questa palese ingiustizia che segna una crisi profonda della
cultura dei diritti. E questo ci impone di porci un’altra domanda ancora.
L’aspirazione alla giustizia sociale è dunque un aspetto costitutivo del diritto? La
risposta a questa domanda dipende dalla concezione del diritto che teniamo sullo
sfondo. Questo è il punto su cui, tradizionalmente, si sono divisi il giusnaturalismo
e il positivismo giuridico. A prescindere dalle questioni teoriche, è indubbio che
dopo la seconda guerra mondiale il diritto abbia subito una trasformazione impor-
tante a seguito della nascita dell’Onu, della promulgazione della Dichiarazione dei
diritti dell’uomo e dell’introduzione in molti stati di bill of rights. La positivizzazione
dei diritti umani implica l’incorporazione di valori morali da parte del diritto, e ciò
rende la dialettica tra diritto e morale diversa e più interessante rispetto al passato.
Le valutazioni morali sul diritto non sono più soltanto “esterne” rispetto al diritto,
ma “interne”. I confini tra il diritto esistente e il diritto ideale divengono sfumati.
Sono proprio queste caratteristiche del diritto contemporaneo a spiegare perché
Ronald Dworkin (2010, 38-39) nel suo penultimo libro, La giustizia in toga, affermi
che le osservazioni più interessanti sul diritto, in anni recenti, sono state proposte
da filosofi politici e filosofi morali piuttosto che da giuristi in senso stretto. Il giurista
oggi non ha alibi: non può più barricarsi nelle aule giudiziarie o universitarie e deve
2
Sintomatico di questa attenzione al fenomeno dell’immigrazione come banco di prova del diritto
contemporaneo è ad esempio l’interessante focus sulla detenzione amministrativa dei migranti sul n.
2/2017 dei Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica. Lì si segnala in particolare Rigo 2017, che
introduce il focus e che affronta alcuni temi discussi anche qui al par. 5.
260 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
Tuttavia, ai fini del presente saggio è possibile mettere tra parentesi tali questioni,
ed altre analoghe che potrebbero essere sollevate, senza particolari contraccolpi per
l’impianto argomentativo generale.
Proporre una definizione del diritto o delimitare l’ambito del giuridico non è
semplice. Herbert Hart (1992, 3) muove proprio da una riflessione sulla difficoltà
di definire il diritto per elaborare la sua versione del positivismo giuridico:
Poche questioni riguardanti la società umana sono state poste tanto insistentemente
e sono state risolte da pensatori seri in modi tanto diversi, strani e perfino paradossali
come la questione “Che cos’è il diritto?”. Anche se limitiamo la nostra attenzione alla
teoria giuridica degli ultimi centocinquant’anni e lasciamo da parte la riflessione clas-
sica e medievale sulla “natura del diritto”, ci troviamo di fronte a una situazione che
non ha eguali in nessuna altra materia studiata in modo sistematico come disciplina
accademica a sé. Non esiste un’ampia letteratura dedicata alla risoluzione del pro-
blema “Che cos’è la chimica?” oppure “Che cos’è la medicina?”, come quella rivolta
alla soluzione della questione “Che cos’è il diritto?”
Il disaccordo, anche radicale, sulla definizione del diritto ci dice molto sulla na-
tura di quest’ultimo e rappresenta un indizio a favore di una scienza giuridica inter-
pretativa3.
C’è tuttavia una caratteristica non controversa del diritto che non va sottovalutata.
Tutte le concezioni del diritto che si dividono, anche radicalmente, sulla definizione
di diritto, attribuiscono al diritto (e, in generale, ai sistemi normativi) la funzione di
influire sul comportamento umano. Per usare una felice espressione introdotta da
Joseph Raz (1975 e 1990) e divenuta di uso comune, il diritto, così come la morale,
fornisce ragioni per agire. Se si assume che il diritto svolga questa funzione, allora
bisogna chiedersi che cosa questo comporti per il giusfilosofo e il giurista. Una con-
seguenza non particolarmente controversa, almeno a partire da Hart, è che lo stu-
dioso del diritto non possa prescindere, nel ricostruire il diritto o un aspetto parti-
colare di esso, dal punto di vista del partecipante, dal punto di vista, cioè, di chi
considera il diritto una giustificazione delle proprie azioni.
Più controverso, invece, è stabilire quale grado di compromissione sia richiesto
allo studioso del diritto che debba render conto della prospettiva del partecipante.
Alcuni studiosi ritengono che sia possibile, nonché opportuno, registrare come un
mero dato la necessaria esistenza di “partecipanti” alla pratica giuridica, evitando
3
Per una articolata difesa di una scienza giuridica interpretativa mi permetto di rinviare a Schia-
vello 2014.
262 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
con cura di farsi attrarre nell’orbita di chi considera il diritto una ragione per
l’azione.
Non è affatto scontato che lo studioso del diritto possa adottare una prospettiva
“distaccata” di questo tipo. Contro questa possibilità si può rilevare che la prospet-
tiva del partecipante è complessa ed articolata e, in conseguenza di ciò, che qualsiasi
ricostruzione di tale prospettiva implichi che lo studioso compia delle scelte e delle
valutazioni che lo trasformano in un partecipante, sia pur virtuale o ausiliario.
La domanda interessante non è tuttavia se sia possibile una scienza giuridica che
mantenga le distanze dalla pratica giuridica ma se una scienza giuridica siffatta vada
incoraggiata qualora fosse possibile.
Ritengo che la risposta a tale domanda non possa che essere negativa, per le
ragioni pragmatiche ben difese, tra gli altri, da Manuel Atienza (2012): una scienza
giuridica attenta a mantenere la propria virginea purezza (il più delle volte soltanto
presunta) e che si ritragga dal contribuire alla funzione del diritto di offrire ragioni
per l’azione, si condanna alla irrilevanza pratica. Per dirla con Mario Jori (2010, 15-
16), «il diritto come meccanismo normativo esiste nella misura in cui riesce a diri-
gere o controllare i comportamenti e la teoria del diritto contribuisce a questo com-
pito». Per usare una metafora evocativa, ideata sempre da Jori (1997, 26), si può
sostenere che «fare giurisprudenza non è come osservare un blocco di marmo, ma
è come cantare in coro (…), perché il coro ci sia occorre che tutti o quasi i coristi
cantino appunto in coro».
La prospettiva che la scienza giuridica deve adottare è dunque al tempo stesso
conoscitiva e normativa: è conoscitiva perché non può prescindere dalla pratica giu-
ridica esistente; è normativa perché offrendo ricostruzioni e giustificazioni di tale
pratica contribuisce a modellarla.
Un approccio clinico-legale può essere considerato, innanzitutto, un indizio, da
salutare favorevolmente, di una scienza giuridica che ha rinunciato ad adottare un
punto di vista “archimedeo” e distaccato rispetto al suo oggetto. In altri termini, per
usare ancora la metafora proposta da Ciaramelli e Marino, l’approccio clinico-legale
esprime una concezione epistemologica secondo la quale non è possibile descrivere
la maschera del diritto senza contribuire a modellarla. Marzia Barbera considera
l’approccio clinico-legale una pratica riflessiva, capace «[…] di riconoscere il proprio
rapporto epistemico con la realtà, il proprio modo di conoscere e interpretare i fatti,
gli schemi di riferimento, le assunzioni tacite utilizzate nella selezione e nell’attribu-
zione di significato alle cose e agli eventi. Alla base di tale pratica vi è l’assunto co-
struttivista che queste forme mentali ed emotive non si limitano a rappresentare lo
stato delle cose ma le rendono in qualche modo conformi a se stesse» (Barbera
2018, XIX).
In secondo luogo, l’approccio-clinico legale aiuta a problematizzare la distin-
zione, spesso data per scontata, tra ragioni giuridiche e ragioni morali. Benché,
come si è detto, i modelli di clinica legale siano molteplici (cfr. Di Chiara, Sciurba
263 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
2017, 180-181), quello più diffuso affronta casi giuridici concreti che, prima di es-
sere “risolti”, debbono essere “costruiti” a partire dalla narrazione offerta dai prota-
gonisti dei casi. E le narrazioni mettono insieme fatti, nonché sentimenti e desideri
dei protagonisti che il giurista deve sforzarsi di rendere in termini giuridici. Tuttavia,
la traduzione di una esperienza di vita in un caso giuridico non consiste nel trasfor-
mare una cosa in un’altra radicalmente diversa ma nel trovare ragioni giuridiche che
rendano giustizia (e l’espressione non potrebbe essere più appropriata) alle ragioni
morali in senso lato che stanno dietro le storie narrate dagli utenti delle cliniche4. E
questo è tanto più vero quanto più la morale è incorporata nel diritto come negli
stati costituzionali contemporanei.
Infine, l’approccio clinico-legale aiuta a distinguere diverse figure di partecipante
alla prassi giuridica e a problematizzare la dialettica tra punto di vista interno e punto
di vista esterno. Il caso paradigmatico di partecipante è individuato nella figura del
funzionario e del giudice in particolare. Per Hart è possibile che si dia il caso di un
sistema giuridico che sia accettato soltanto dai funzionari e subito da tutti gli altri i
quali adeguano il proprio comportamento a quanto richiesto dal diritto solo per
paura della sanzione. Tuttavia, questa idea di Hart è molto discutibile, sia per ra-
gioni concettuali e di tenuta della sua concezione del diritto sia perché offre una
immagine del diritto dalla prospettiva della classe dominante e trascura la prospet-
tiva degli svantaggiati.
A prescindere dall’opportunità di considerare o meno l’aspirazione alla giustizia
sociale come un elemento costitutivo di un approccio clinico-legale, tema di cui ci
occuperemo in seguito, è indubbio che molte cliniche difendano i diritti dei deboli,
dei “vulnerabili”, e in questo modo contribuiscono a ricostruire una prospettiva sul
diritto negletta e però interessante, anche da un punto di vista prettamente episte-
mologico, al fine di comprendere come il diritto incida effettivamente sul compor-
tamento di coloro che sono ad esso soggetti.
C’è di più. Per le concezioni giusfilosofiche tradizionali le prospettive rilevanti
sono quelle del partecipante e quella del bad man, quest’ultimo interessato soltanto
a schivare le sanzioni associate dal diritto ai comportamenti devianti. Tuttavia questa
netta contrapposizione non coglie la complessità della realtà che, invece, può essere
restituita dall’esperienza clinico-legale. Come si è detto, di solito le cliniche legali si
occupano di soggetti deboli e questo favorisce una osservazione del diritto “dal mar-
gine”, dalla prospettiva cioè di chi non tanto si pone contra-legem – il classico bad
man caro agli imperativisti e ai giusrealisti americani – ma di chi si trova, di fatto,
extra-legem, vale a dire ignorato dal diritto e, a sua volta, incurante di quest’ultimo.
Rispetto a questa situazione, l’idea di un diritto che incida sui comportamenti umani
4
Emilio Santoro (2019, 239), seguendo le considerazioni di Mark Tushnet (1984), osserva oppor-
tunamente che: «il doversi confrontare con un’esperienza giuridica ancora da strutturare insegna agli
studenti che il diritto ha a che fare con le persone, con le loro emozioni e con quelle che esse susci-
tano, prima ancora che con i casi e con i tecnicismi».
264 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
Due sono i modi di intendere l’approccio clinico-legale. Secondo una prima pro-
spettiva, le cliniche legali sono ontologicamente e concettualmente collegate all’aspi-
razione alla giustizia sociale e alla difesa dei deboli, a partire da una impostazione
giusfilosofica di matrice giusrealista e critica (Marella & Rigo 2015). Secondo un’al-
tra impostazione, invece, ciò che caratterizza necessariamente l’approccio clinico-
legale è l’aspetto didattico e professionalizzante (Ferrari 2016; Perelman, 2016), il
famigerato learning by doing, l’odiosa contrapposizione tra il “saper fare”, che è
utile, e il “sapere”, che non serve a nulla. Su questo fa leva il parallelismo, su cui
tornerò in seguito, tra gli studenti di medicina, che ben presto si cimentano con
pazienti in carne e ossa, e studenti di diritto, che non vedono un vero caso nem-
meno col binocolo5. Secondo questo modello, una clinica legale che difendesse gli
istituti di credito dalle pretese dei piccoli risparmiatori sarebbe preziosa per la for-
mazione di abili avvocati di affari. Così come una clinica che tutelasse gli stati dalle
5
Invero, la metafora della clinica, dell’ambulatorio legale, si presta anche ad una lettura meno
superficiale rispetto a quella proposta nel testo. Cfr. Marella & Rigo, 2015, 543-546.
265 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
richieste di asilo dei migranti svolgerebbe un ruolo cruciale nella formazione di giu-
risti che volessero lavorare come avvocati nell’ambito del diritto internazionale.
L’eventuale attenzione alla giustizia sociale, in questo caso, sarebbe meramente con-
tingente e, sovente, non proprio disinteressata: un modo per ripulirsi la coscienza,
ottenere fondi, farsi pubblicità. È sufficiente guardare qualche episodio di Suits per
sapere che i grandi studi americani usano le pratiche pro bono essenzialmente per
ragioni di immagine.
Forzando i termini della contrapposizione, da un lato c’è il modello di Jerome
Frank (1933) e, dall’altro, quello di Francesco Carnelutti (1935)6.
Anche se è indubbio che vi siano esperienze clinico-legali che sono interessate
soltanto a fornire una preparazione giuridica orientata alla pratica, il fatto che la
maggior parte di esse abbia a cuore la giustizia sociale potrebbe essere un indizio di
un certo tipo di legame concettuale tra diritto e morale.
L’aspirazione alla giustizia sociale è un aspetto costitutivo del diritto? La risposta
a questa domanda dipende dalla concezione del diritto che teniamo sullo sfondo.
Questo è il punto su cui, tradizionalmente, si sono divisi il giusnaturalismo e il po-
sitivismo giuridico. La prima tradizione di pensiero sostiene che vi sia una conces-
sione necessaria fra diritto e morale. La versione più estrema di questa tesi è
espressa dal noto brocardo romano lex iniusta non est lex. Vi sono anche versioni
più moderate, come quella sostenuta da Gustav Radbruch in Germania dopo la
seconda guerra mondiale, secondo cui solo il diritto gravemente ingiusto, come
quello nazista o quello prodotto da altri sistemi giuridici “malvagi”, non può essere
considerato diritto.
Il positivismo giuridico, di contro, separa il diritto dalla morale. Questo non si-
gnifica che non possano esservi occasionali sovrapposizioni tra diritto e morale ma,
appunto, si tratta di sovrapposizioni occasionali. In linea di principio, il diritto è
espressione della volontà di chi detiene il monopolio dell’uso legittimo della forza
e la sua identificazione è una questione di fatto. Per usare le parole di Raz (2005,
287), «tutto il diritto è prodotto da qualche fonte». Questa posizione prende le
mosse dalla distinzione di Jeremy Bentham tra giurisprudenza espositoria e giuri-
sprudenza censoria, in base alla quale è possibile ed opportuno distinguere tra ciò
che il diritto è e ciò che il diritto dovrebbe essere alla luce di determinati principi
morali. Confondere le due questioni è l’errore compiuto dal giusnaturalismo. Un
approfondimento a parte meriterebbero le osservazioni di Hart (2002, 225-232) sul
contenuto minino del diritto naturale; a partire dall’individuazione di alcune ovvie
verità, la prima delle quali è, significativamente, la vulnerabilità umana7, Hart am-
6
Riprendo la suggestione di questa contrapposizione da Santoro (2019).
7
Le altre sono: l’eguaglianza approssimativa, l’altruismo limitato, le risorse limitate e, infine, la
comprensione e la forza di volontà limitate.
266 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
mette l’esistenza di una connessione necessaria, sia pur minimale, tra diritto e mo-
rale. Che ciò sia compatibile – come egli ritiene – con una prospettiva giuspositivi-
stica è tutto da dimostrare.
Per molte ragioni, alcune delle quali esplicitate nei paragrafi precedenti, a partire
dalla fine della seconda guerra mondiale, l’interesse per questa contrapposizione è
andata scemando; addirittura, c’è chi sostiene che entrambe le posizioni siano sba-
gliate e si debba andare alla ricerca di concezioni del diritto che siano alternative sia
al giusnaturalismo sia al giuspositivismo.
Prima di affrontare alcune questioni filosofico-giuridiche, va ribadito che è in-
dubbio che dopo la seconda guerra mondiale il diritto abbia subito una trasforma-
zione importante a seguito della nascita dell’Onu, della promulgazione della Di-
chiarazione dei diritti dell’uomo e all’introduzione in molti stati di carte dei diritti.
Come nota, tra gli altri, Richard Rorty (1994), il diffondersi della cultura dei diritti
è la caratteristica principale del mondo del post-olocausto. La positivizzazione dei
diritti umani implica l’incorporazione di valori morali da parte del diritto, e ciò
rende la dialettica tra diritto e morale diversa e più interessante rispetto al passato8.
Le valutazioni morali sul diritto non sono più, come (potevano apparire) ai tempi
di Bentham, “esterne” rispetto al diritto, ma “interne”. I confini tra il diritto esistente
e il diritto ideale divengono sfumati. Affinché una norma esista non è sufficiente
che essa superi il pedigree formale previsto per la sua formazione, ma è necessario
che sia compatibile con i principi costituzionali. E si potrebbe continuare. Tutto
questo consente di affermare che il diritto contemporaneo non è più un sistema
chiuso ma è un sotto-sistema di un sistema sociale più complesso di cui fa parte
anche il sistema delle norme morali.
Andando al cuore della questione filosofico-giuridica, vi sono buoni argomenti a
sostegno della tesi che al diritto sia connaturata un’aspirazione alla correttezza mo-
rale. Robert Alexy (1989), ad esempio, difende la tesi di un legame di tipo concet-
tuale tra diritto e giustizia anche attraverso il noto argomento della “pretesa di cor-
rettezza”.
Secondo questo argomento una disposizione normativa che esplicitasse la pro-
pria ingiustizia sarebbe afflitta da un vizio concettuale. La disposizione in questione
non sarebbe, in senso proprio, contraddittoria; essa apparirebbe però bizzarra ed
incongrua, così come bizzarri e incongrui sono asserti come ‘piove, ma non ci
credo’, ‘prometto di venire all’appuntamento, ma non ho alcuna intenzione di man-
tenere questa mia promessa’ e così via. Può certamente darsi che stia piovendo e
qualcuno non creda che stia piovendo ovvero che qualcuno prometta qualcosa
avendo l’intenzione di non mantenere la promessa. Non c’è nulla di strano e di
8
Dal mio punto di vista, le caratteristiche del diritto contemporaneo hanno semplicemente enfa-
tizzato e accentuato la complessità che sempre caratterizza la dialettica tra diritto e morale. Aggiungo
che sostenere questo non implica necessariamente abiurare al positivismo giuridico. Questa tuttavia
non è la sede ove affrontare tali questioni. Cfr. eventualmente Schiavello (2004).
267 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
incongruo nelle credenze false e nelle promesse insincere. Il vizio di questi asserti
è che la seconda parte “disfa” o “annulla” l’atto linguistico prodotto con l’enuncia-
zione della prima parte. Quindi, asserire che sta piovendo e al tempo stesso dichia-
rare esplicitamente di non credere che stia piovendo annulla l’atto di asserire, così
come promettere qualcosa e al tempo stesso dichiarare di non avere intenzione di
ottemperare alla promessa annulla l’atto di promettere. In modo analogo, una di-
sposizione normativa che si auto-denunci come ingiusta non sembra una “vera”
disposizione normativa e, in definitiva, non sembra che possa essere considerata
come diritto valido.
Alexy usa questo argomento per criticare la tesi giuspositivistica della separazione
tra diritto e morale. La forza di tale argomento tuttavia non va esagerata. Esso è
infatti meramente formale, vale a dire relativo alla forma delle norme giuridiche e
non al loro contenuto, e ciò ne indebolisce considerevolmente la portata. Esso non
è in grado di impedire, ad esempio, che un sistema giuridico nel suo complesso, o
una o più norme appartenenti a quel sistema, siano profondamente ingiusti. Come
già Hart aveva osservato a proposito del giusnaturalismo “proceduralista” di Lon
Fuller, se la connessione necessaria tra diritto e morale è intesa in questo modo
evanescente, il giuspositivismo non ha alcun problema ad accettarla. Affermare che
il diritto non possa esplicitare la propria ingiustizia non garantisce in alcun modo
che il diritto sia giusto e neanche che esso non sia intollerabilmente ingiusto. Euge-
nio Bulygin (2007, 58) è, sul punto, molto chiaro: «anche ammettendo che qualun-
que sistema giuridico e qualunque norma giuridica avanzino sempre la pretesa di
essere moralmente corretti o giusti, questo fatto, di per sé solo, non sarebbe in alcun
modo idoneo a garantire la correttezza morale del diritto».
Sarebbe tuttavia un errore – per tutti, anche per i giuspositivisti – liquidare con
sufficienza l’argomento di Alexy9. Se è vero che il diritto non può non aspirare ad
essere giusto, allora anche la pratica giuridica non può trascurare questa caratteri-
stica del diritto. Ciò significa, tra le altre cose, che ogni interpretazione del diritto
non può non prendere in considerazione l’aspirazione del diritto alla giustizia; di
conseguenza, bisogna almeno concedere che non c’è soluzione di continuità tra
argomentazione giuridica e argomentazione morale né, come si è già detto, tra ra-
gioni giuridiche e ragioni morali. Questo è vero a maggior ragione per il diritto con-
temporaneo che è caratterizzato da un elevato grado di indeterminatezza linguistica
e dalla presenza massiccia e strategica di principi giuridici che altro non sono che
concretizzazioni normative di valori morali.
9
È indicativo che un autore giuspositivista come Neil MacCormick evidenzi a sua volta l’impor-
tanza di questo argomento, anche al fine di puntualizzare che essere giuspositivista non implica che
si neghi un rapporto di questo genere tra diritto e morale. Cfr. MacCormick 1990, 177.
268 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
La pretesa di correttezza del diritto fornisce un qualche sostegno alla tesi di chi
collega l’approccio clinico-legale al perseguimento della giustizia sociale; ciò, peral-
tro, non soltanto per ragioni etico-politiche, ma anche per ragioni didattiche e for-
mative. La qualità di un giurista non dipende esclusivamente dalla sua perizia tec-
nica, dalla conoscenza delle norme e dei precedenti ma anche dalla capacità di pro-
porre una soluzione interpretativa che sia moralmente accettabile, se non la mi-
gliore possibile. Ciò presuppone un “addestramento” ad avere sempre un punto di
vista morale sul diritto e a provare empatia nei confronti delle persone che chie-
dono un parere legale.
Il paradosso dunque è che anche coloro che riducono l’approccio clinico-legale
ad un metodo efficace di insegnamento del diritto, non dovrebbero sottovalutare il
fatto che occuparsi di casi moralmente coinvolgenti, che richiedono un’attenzione
per la giustizia sociale, contribuisce a formare giuristi migliori.
4. MEDICI E GIURISTI
di giurisprudenza i cui docenti non abbiano mai frequentato le aule dei tribunali
non possa “produrre” giuristi di vaglia, sia in ambito teorico che pratico. Inoltre,
mentre è difficile immaginare che un buon manuale di pediatria possa essere scritto
da un medico che non abbia mai visitato un bambino in tutta la sua vita, è al con-
trario del tutto plausibile che un buon manuale di diritto penale, ad esempio, venga
scritto da un professore di diritto che non si sia mai “sporcato le mani” con la pratica
(gli esempi non mancano).
Le ragioni di queste differenze sono varie e almeno un paio di esse sono così
importanti da meritare qui un approfondimento.
Innanzitutto, il modo in cui medici e giuristi “operano sull’uomo”, per usare
l’espressione di Carnelutti, è qualitativamente diverso. L’intervento dei medici è
diretto, sulla carne e sulle ossa delle persone, per usare l’espressione di Frank. L’in-
tervento dei giuristi è invece mediato dal linguaggio. Pur senza arrivare alle esaspe-
razioni della filosofia analitica del diritto, che ha imperversato nel dibattito giusfilo-
sofico nella seconda metà del secolo scorso e che riduceva il diritto al linguaggio e
la scienza del diritto a un meta-linguaggio, è indubbio che nel diritto il ruolo del
linguaggio è preponderante. Che cosa fanno, dopotutto, i giuristi? Interpretano di-
sposizioni normative. Non a caso Ronald Dworkin ha definito il diritto una pratica
sociale argomentativa. Ciò rende la distinzione tra teoria e prassi in ambito giuridico
molto più labile ed aleatoria di quanto non sia in ambito medico. Anche la distin-
zione tra interpretazione in astratto (che è quella che farebbero i professori di diritto
nei loro libri) e interpretazione in concreto (che coincide con l’applicazione del
diritto da parte di avvocati e giudici ai casi concreti), data spesso per scontata, non
va enfatizzata. L’interpretazione in astratto, infatti, non può non confrontarsi con
ipotetiche situazioni concrete con cui una certa disposizione, o un insieme di dispo-
sizioni, si troverà ad interagire. Nel diritto, in altri termini, si può dire che l’interpre-
tazione è sempre in concreto e ciò contribuisce ad assottigliare la distanza tra teoria
e prassi.
Inoltre, pur senza sottovalutare l’importanza della medicina preventiva, il legame
tra medicina e patologia è inscindibile. I medici curano (o tentano di curare) le
malattie che affliggono gli esseri umani. Nel caso del diritto, invece, il ruolo del
giurista non è circoscritto alla fase patologica. Il diritto vive nei tribunali, certo, ma
anche nelle strade, nelle piazze e ovunque gli esseri umani interagiscano fra loro.
Come sostengono alcuni autori, tra cui Hart e Raz, anche una comunità di angeli
avrebbe bisogno del diritto, se non altro per coordinare le azioni; ciò consente di
affermare che non c’è un legame concettuale tra diritto e sanzione e che la “vita del
diritto” è più ampia rispetto a quanto certe concezioni del diritto siano disposte ad
ammettere. Da questo punto di vista, anche una prospettiva giusrealista non è
esente da critiche: nella misura in cui essa fa coincidere il diritto con le decisioni dei
giudici, mette una croce sopra una ampia parte della prassi giuridica e contribuisce
a distorcere l’immagine del diritto.
270 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
11
Per un esempio interessante di approccio clinico che va in questa direzione, cfr. Bartoli & Ce-
lano 2019.
271 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
sia essenzialmente meccanica. Una impostazione di questo tipo è accolta dal giusra-
zionalismo del XVIII secolo – si pensi al “sillogismo perfetto” di Cesare Beccaria
– e non è più in auge.
A partire dalla seconda metà del XX secolo, le diverse teorie del diritto tendono
ad enfatizzare la discrezionalità dell’interprete nell’attribuire un significato alle
norme e nel ricostruire i fatti12. Si annoverano versioni diverse, più o meno radicali,
di anti-formalismo. Anche la “teoria mista” di Hart non è molto diversa da una
versione moderata di anti-formalismo.
Questo modo di ricostruire la vita del diritto – fatte salve le profonde differenze
circa la discrezionalità attribuita all’interprete – trascura alcune dinamiche molto
importanti e, alla fine dei conti, rischia non soltanto di offrire una descrizione edul-
corata del diritto ma di distorcere l’effettivo funzionamento della pratica giuridica.
Esistono altri punti di vista sul diritto, peraltro sovente esplicitati da prospettive
giusrealiste e critiche, che hanno una importanza innegabile. Si tratta di quegli ap-
procci che adottano la pratica del sospetto come appropriato metodo filosofico: le
cose potrebbero stare diversamente da come appaiono. Una prospettiva di questo
genere è espressa ad esempio da Franz Kafka nel racconto La questione delle leggi.
Kafka immagina un popolo governato da un gruppo di nobili attraverso leggi note
soltanto al ristretto manipolo dei nobili che detengono il potere. Ad un certo punto,
in questo racconto si adombra la possibilità che le leggi non siano soltanto scono-
sciute al popolo ma addirittura che esse non esistano o, se esistono, coincidono con
le decisioni arbitrarie della nobiltà (“legge è ciò che fa la nobiltà”)13.
L’obiettivo di approcci di questo genere è appunto quello di adombrare il so-
spetto che la realtà sia diversa da come appare. L’archetipo di un approccio di que-
sto genere è Trasimaco che afferma che “la giustizia è […] l’utile del più forte…”. Il
merito della tesi di Trasimaco è quello di mostrare la differenza tra un’apparenza e
la realtà. L’apparenza è che ogni proposta di giustizia è universale e, dunque, vale
per tutti coloro che ricadono nel suo ambito di applicazione; la realtà è che la giu-
stizia riguarda soltanto i più forti e la tutela del loro utile. Tuttavia, l’aspetto più
interessante della tesi di Trasimaco non è la “realtà”, vera o presunta, che essa ci
comunica, ma l’aver avanzato il sospetto che quel che appare non corrisponde ne-
cessariamente a ciò che è14.
Per limitarsi ad alcuni esempi illustri, l’idea di Karl Marx che il diritto sia una
sovrastruttura può essere letta in questo modo; così come in questo modo si può
interpretare l’ipotesi di Foucault che la concezione illuministica della pena tuteli
12
Per una analisi dei nessi tra discrezionalità interpretativa in ambito giuridico e vulnerabilità, cfr.
Abignente 2018.
13
Kafka 1979: 403-405. La possibilità adombrata da Kafka può essere ricondotta al giusrealismo
radicale. Cfr. Poggi 2008: 57-65.
14
Cfr. Platone 1998: 338d-339a, 63. Riprendo questa interpretazione delle tesi del Trasimaco di
Platone da Iacono 2003.
272 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
solo apparentemente valori come la libertà e la dignità, mentre in realtà sia un ap-
parato concettuale in grado rendere le pene più efficaci nel contrastare i comporta-
menti devianti di quanto non fossero i crudeli supplizi del diritto premoderno; an-
cora, la lettura psicoanalitica della pratica giuridica come equivalente funzionale
della figura paterna, proposta da Frank, può essere a buon diritto ascritta alla filo-
sofia del sospetto; infine, lo stesso vale per l’ipotesi di Anders Vilhelm Lundstedt
che il diritto funzioni come una macchina in grado di produrre riflessi pavloviani in
coloro che sono ad esso soggetti.
Gli approcci di questo genere sostengono che la pratica giuridica è diversa da
come appare e da come coloro che vi partecipano ritengono che essa sia. L’attitu-
dine al sospetto è importante e va incoraggiata al fine di mantenere un atteggiamento
critico e vigile nei confronti del diritto e del potere.
Il diritto spesso agisce dietro le spalle degli individui e attraverso metodi non
sempre pubblici o pubblicizzabili. La prassi amministrativa, in particolare, ha un
ruolo cruciale e, al tempo stesso, trascurato nel reale funzionamento del diritto.
Un approccio clinico-legale può contribuire a far emergere quanto della vita del
diritto si tende a nascondere come la polvere sotto il tappeto. Questa, dal mio punto
di vista di filosofo del diritto, è l’esperienza più significativa della Clinica legale per
i diritti umani di Palermo (CLEDU).
Molti casi concreti affrontati dalla CLEDU sono, rispetto a questo tema, emble-
matici. Qui mi limito a ricostruirne un paio (Alaimo et aliae 2018; Di Chiara &
Sciurba 2017).
Il primo caso riguarda alcune famiglie di origine Rom che vivevano, da irregolari,
nel fatiscente “campo nomadi di Palermo”. La condizione di irregolarità era ovvia-
mente la causa principale del degrado in cui vivevano. Tali famiglie avevano fatto
istanza per ottenere l’autorizzazione a rimanere sul territorio italiano sulla base di
una norma dell’allora vigente testo unico sull’immigrazione che favoriva il ricon-
giungimento familiare al fine di tutelare i minori. Il tribunale dei minori di Palermo
si era espresso favorevolmente rispetto al rilascio di un permesso di soggiorno sulla
base di questa disciplina. Tenendo sullo sfondo il modello semplificato di diritto
abbozzato in precedenza, la questione avrebbe dovuto chiudersi qui. Esiste una
norma che prevede il rilascio del permesso di soggiorno per consentire il ricongiun-
gimento familiare e, in questo modo, favorire lo sviluppo psicofisico dei minori. Le
famiglie di origine Rom avevano figli minori e, dunque, dovevano essere autorizzate
a permanere sul territorio italiano.
Il “lato oscuro” del diritto ha complicato le cose. La questura di Palermo, infatti,
si è rifiutata di rilasciare il permesso di soggiorno in assenza del passaporto o di altro
documento equipollente. È bene precisare che la maggior parte delle famiglie Rom
proveniva dalla ex-Jugoslavia e ciò rendeva difficile ottenere il passaporto. È anche
273 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
interessante sottolineare che il tribunale dei minori non era a conoscenza del com-
portamento della questura e riteneva che l’irregolarità delle famiglie in questione
fosse stata definitivamente sanata attraverso il proprio provvedimento.
La CLEDU ha seguito due diverse strategie. Rispetto alle famiglie effettivamente
provenienti dalla ex-Jugoslavia e prive di documento di riconoscimento si è fatta
istanza di apolidia e, su queste basi, la questura ha rilasciato il permesso di sog-
giorno. Negli altri casi si è preferito seguire un’altra strada – più eticamente corretta
– nonostante il suggerimento della questura di fare istanza di apolidia anche in as-
senza dei presupposti. Rispetto a questa seconda fattispecie, la CLEDU ha richiesto
formalmente alla questura il rilascio del permesso di soggiorno sostenendo che, alla
luce del provvedimento del tribunale dei minorenni, si trattasse di un atto dovuto,
anche alla luce del fatto che tutti i componenti dei nuclei familiari erano stati già
adeguatamente identificati dai servizi sociali e dal tribunale stesso. La questura, a
questo punto, ha risposto formalmente di non potere procedere al rilascio in as-
senza dei passaporti. Sulla base di questo diniego, la CLEDU ha presentato un ri-
corso al tribunale dei minorenni che ha dichiarato illegittima la prassi della questura
ed ha intimato che venissero rilasciati i permessi di soggiorno.
Il secondo caso è collegato al cosiddetto approccio hotspot alla questione migra-
toria. Tale approccio rappresenta un caso paradigmatico di un uso distorto del di-
ritto nell’età dei diritti. Il Rapporto di Amnesty sugli immigrati relativo agli anni
2015-2016, denuncia in modo circostanziato numerosi casi di violazioni dei diritti
dei migranti da parte delle forze dell’ordine all’interno degli hotspot, dove si iden-
tificano i migranti al momento del loro primo ingresso nel territorio europeo. La
questione rilevante è che la normativa europea sugli hotspot a fatica può essere ri-
tenuta compatibile con la cultura dei diritti. L’“approccio hotspot” prevede come
suo scopo primario l’identificazione dei migranti tramite l’acquisizione delle im-
pronte digitali nel paese di primo ingresso. Ciò al fine di garantire, in caso di attra-
versamento dei confini, il rinvio dei migranti nei paesi in cui vengono identificati
per la prima volta. Il Consiglio dell’UE individua una serie di pratiche per “costrin-
gere” i migranti a…cooperare (un bell’esempio di ossimoro!). Tra queste, è previsto,
in casi estremi, anche l’uso della forza, in misura del “minimo necessario” e nel
rispetto della dignità e dell’integrità fisica dei migranti. Ora, nonostante questi ca-
veat, quasi delle formule di stile, è evidente che l’assenza di norme che disciplinino
in modo dettagliato i limiti all’uso della forza negli hotspot, apra le porte all’arbitrio
e sia potenzialmente criminogena e contraria alla cultura dei diritti, assimilando il
migrante ad un potenziale nemico. È significativo che, come sottolinea uno studio
recente, il termine hotspot sia utilizzato, in tempi di guerra, per indicare le zone in
cui sono attivi i combattimenti, nonché, in tempi di pace, le zone di guerriglia ur-
bana (Neocleous & Kastrinou 2016).
Nello specifico, la CLEDU si è trovata a fronteggiare alcuni effetti perversi
dell’approccio hotspot sul finire del 2015 quando, a seguito di un importante sbarco
274 ALDO SCHIAVELLO
al porto di Palermo, circa duecento migranti sono stati trasferiti all’hotspot di Tra-
pani. Lì, la maggior parte di loro ricevette quasi subito un decreto di respingimento
differito. Questo provvedimento incarna perfettamente l’approccio hotspot. La
prassi degli hotspot era infatti quella di separare subito e grossolanamente i migranti
in clear need of protection, individuati in base alle percentuali di riconoscimento
della protezione internazionale rispetto alla loro nazionalità, e tutti gli altri, ai quali,
senza una attenta valutazione delle situazioni personali veniva consegnato un de-
creto di respingimento differito. Va detto che nel 2016 questa prassi è stata limitata
grazie ad una circolare del Ministero dell’interno che precisava che non esisteva
alcuna lista di paesi terzi sicuri e, dunque, che l’accesso all’asilo non potesse essere
impedito sulla mera base della nazionalità.
La CLEDU si è occupata della difesa legale di alcuni tra coloro che avevano
ricevuto il decreto di respingimento. La strategia è stata quella di chiedere al Tribu-
nale la sospensione dei provvedimenti al fine di rimettere la questione alla Corte
costituzionale per violazione dell’art. 13, commi 2 e 3 cost. (riserva di legge e di
giurisdizione). Il Tribunale di Palermo ha effettivamente sospeso alcuni provvedi-
menti e ha trasmesso gli atti alla Corte Costituzionale.
Questi casi consentono di avanzare alcune considerazioni generali.
Innanzitutto, molte decisioni che vengono prese in ambito giuridico sono arbi-
trarie, sono l’esito di prassi amministrative non motivate, e dunque non possono
essere sfidate attraverso gli strumenti tipici dell’argomentazione giuridica. Bisogna
andare alla ricerca di strategie di aggiramento e di pressione piuttosto che di buoni
argomenti.
In secondo luogo, le autorità amministrative, che raramente sono oggetto di ri-
flessione giusfilosofica, adottano prassi diverse tra loro e questo è profondamente
lesivo dell’eguaglianza formale degli individui. Inoltre, ciò mostra anche che nell’ap-
plicazione del diritto la casualità gioca un ruolo più pervasivo di quanto saremmo
disposti ad ammettere.
In ultimo luogo, questi casi aiutano a comprendere che esistono molti modi –
diretti e indiretti – per affrontare le controversie ed anche che molte controversie
potrebbero essere evitate attraverso il coordinamento delle attività dei diversi attori.
Le cliniche legali possono svolgere un ruolo cruciale nell’illuminare il lato oscuro
del diritto e questo è importante non soltanto per ragioni di giustizia sociale ma
anche per migliorare la nostra conoscenza del diritto e del modo in cui esso incide
sui nostri comportamenti e, in particolare, su quello delle persone più vulnerabili e
indifese.
275 Vulnerabilità, concetto di diritto e approccio clinico-legale
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ISSN: 1825-5167
CECILIA BLENGINO
Università degli studi di Torino
ceciliapiera.blengino@unito.it
ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the issue of vulnerability within the perspective of legal clinics. Both the
theoretical background adopted by legal clinics and the pursuit of access to justice as the primary
objective of their activities are explored assuming as a case study the experience of a clinic in-
volved in supporting victims of the trafficking of human beings.
Describing the approach taken by the legal clinic in approaching such a particularly vulnerable
group offers the opportunity to deepen the potential of this method to explore the practical di-
mension of the law.
KEYWORDS
Clinical legal education; law in action; access to justice; vulnerability; victim of human trafficking.
1
B. Pastore, Vulnerabilità, in L. Barbari, F. De Vanna (a cura di), Il “diritto al viaggio”. Abbece-
dario delle migrazioni, Giappichelli, Torino, 2018, p. 323. Nella piena consapevolezza di accostare
un concetto che costituisce oggetto di una riflessione ampia e interdisciplinare, le considerazioni espo-
ste nel presente contributo trovano, tra gli altri, un importante riferimento nelle declinazioni attraverso
cui il concetto viene esplorato in T. Casadei, Diritti umani e soggetti vulnerabili. Violazioni, trasfor-
mazioni, aporie, Giappichelli, Torino, 2012; O. Giolo e B. Pastore (a cura di), Vulnerabilità. Analisi
multidisciplinare di un concetto, Carocci, Roma, 2018 e in M.G. Bernardini, B. Casalini, O. Giolo,
L. Re (a cura di), Vulnerabilità: etica, politica, diritto, If Press, Roma, 2018.
280 CECILIA BLENGINO
2
B. Pastore, Vulnerabilità, cit. p. 323. Sottolinea il ruolo assunto dal diritto stesso nell’attribuire
carattere di oggettività a situazioni che sono in realtà soggettive F. Ciaramelli, La vulnerabilità: da
caratteristica dei soggetti a carattere del diritto, in O. Giolo e B. Pastore (a cura di), Vulnerabilità.
Analisi multidisciplinare di un concetto, cit., pp. 171-182.
3
Il ricorso a tale espressione richiama le argomentazioni e le riflessioni avanzate negli anni ’70 dal
c.d. Movimento per l’Accesso alla Giustizia, per le quali si rimanda a M. Cappelletti, “Accesso alla
giustizia: conclusione di un progetto internazionale di ricerca giuridico-sociologica”, in Foro Italiano,
54, 1979, p. 54-60; M. Cappelletti, Access to Justice and the Welfare State, vol. 4, Firenze, Lemon-
nier, 1981 e M. Cappelletti, Dimensioni della giustizia nelle società contemporanee, Il Mulino, Bo-
logna,1994. Per una ampia digressione in merito alle fonti che concorrono oggi a ricondurre il diritto
all’accesso alla giustizia nel novero dei diritti fondamentali si rimanda a A. Gascon Cuenca, The Crisis
of the Welfare State and the Worsening of Access to Justice:The Role of the University and of the
Clinical Legal Movement in Spain and Italy, in C. Blengino , A. Gascon Cuenca (ed.), Epistemic
Communities at the Boundaries of Law: Clinics as a paradigm in the Revoloution of Luegal Education
in the European Mediterranean Context, Ledizioni, Milano, 2019, p. 47 e ss. Con riferimento all’or-
dinamento giuridico italiano, la riconducibilità dell’accesso alla giustizia tra i diritti inviolabili
dell’uomo garantiti dall’art. 2 della Costituzione viene sottolineata da Maestroni, riferendosi alla sen-
tenza Corte Cost., n. 18/1982 (A. Maestroni, Accesso alla giustizia, solidarietà e sussidarietà nelle
cliniche legali, Giappichelli, Torino, 2018, p. 95).
4
Cfr. M. Cappelletti, Dimensioni della giustizia nelle società contemporanee, Il Mulino, Bologna,
1994.
5
Con tale espressione Cappelletti si riveriva agli “ostacoli giuridici, economici, politico-sociologici,
culturali, psicologici, che rendono difficile o impossibile a molti l’uso del ‘sistema giuridico’ e conse-
guentemente l’effettività della loro ‘libertà’ (M. Cappelletti, “Accesso alla giustizia: conclusione di un
progetto internazionale di ricerca giuridico-sociologica”, in Foro Italiano, vol. 102, 1979, p. 54).
6
Ivi, pp. 54-55.
7
Così G. Garth - M. Cappelletti, “Access to Justice: the Newest Wave in the Worldwide Move-
ment to Make Rights Effective”, in Buffalo Law Review, 27, 1978, p. 222 e ss.
281 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
Le cliniche legali figurano certamente oggi tra gli strumenti che, ponendosi in
continuità con i relativi presupposti teorici, tentano di rispondere agli obiettivi deli-
neati dal movimento per l’accesso alla giustizia11.
Così J. Garcia Anon, Access to Justice and the impact of the European Legal Clinics in Case
8
Space. Some Insights from the Italian Experience, WP CSDLE Massimo D’Antona, INT. 141/2017;
A. Maestroni, P. Brambilla e M. Carrer (a cura di), Teorie e pratiche nelle cliniche legali, Giappi-
chelli, Torino, 2018.
12
Su tali aspetti la letteratura è vasta. Circoscrivendo le riflessioni che riguardano in particolare gli
aspetti innovativi introdotti da tale metodo nei percorsi di formazione del giurista nei contesti carat-
terizzati dal civil law, si può fare riferimento, tra gli altri a C. Amato, Experiential learning from the
continental viewpoint: if the cap fits..., in R. Grimes (ed.), Re-thinking Legal Education under the
Civil and Common Law. A Road Map for Constructive Change, Routledge, London, 2018, pp. 13–
27; a M. Barbera, The Emergence of an Italian Clinical Legal Education Movement , cit; a M. G.
Bernardini, “Le cliniche legali e l’identità del giurista: spunti per un inquadramento teorico”, in Di-
ritto e Questioni Pubbliche, 17, 2, 2017, pp. 437-459; a C. Blengino, Fondamenti teorici di una pra-
tica: approccio bottom up, prospettiva interdisciplinare e impegno civile nella clinica legale con dete-
nuti e vittime di tratta, in A. Maestroni, P. Brambilla e M. Carrer (a cura di), Teorie e pratiche nelle
cliniche legali, cit. pp. 233–260.
13
La prospettiva attraverso la quale il presente contributo guarda alle cliniche legali suggerisce di
non soffermarsi, in questa sede, sulla ricerca di definizioni teoriche. Assumendo un approccio empi-
rico al fenomeno, vengono considerati come costitutivi della clinica legale gli elementi considerati tali
all’interno dei contesti che oggi promuovono la diffusione di tale metodo. Cfr. al proposito, le decla-
ratorie proposte dalla European Network for Clinical Legal Education (www.encle.org) e da GAJE
Global Alliance for Justice in Education, www.gaje.org).
14
Dalla rilevazione di C. Bartoli risultavano essere quattordici le cliniche legali attive in Italia nel
2015 (C. Bartoli, “The Italian Legal Clinics Movement: Data and Prospects”, cit.). A distanza di soli
quattro anni, tale numero non fotografa la diffusione attuale della metodologia clinica nelle nostre
università. Testimonia un processo tuttora in crescita la costituzione, nell’aprile del 2019, dell’Asso-
ciazione della Rete Italiana delle Cliniche Legali, i cui sviluppi sono in parte descritti nel volume A.
Maestroni, P. Brambilla e M. Carrer, Teorie e pratiche nelle cliniche legali, cit.
15
Si soffermano sugli elementi di tale innovatività, ad esempio, C. Amato, Experiential learning
from the continental viewpoint, cit.; M. Barbera, The Emergence of an Italian Clinical Legal Educa-
tion Movement, cit.; F. Di Donato – F. Scamardella (a cura di), Il metodo clinico legale, Logon Di-
donai, Napoli, 2016; C. Blengino, Fondamenti teorici di una pratica, cit. e, più recentemente, C.
Blengino – A. Gascon- Cuenca (ed.), Epistemic Communities at the Boundaries of Law, cit.
16
Sul punto si soffermano J. García-Añón, Transformation in Legal Teaching and Learning:
Clinical Legal Education as a Transformative Component, in J. García-Añón (ed.), Transformaciones
en la Docencia y Enseñanza del Derecho. Actas del V Congreso Nacional de Docencia en Ciencias
Jurídicas, Unitat d’Innovació Educativa – University of Valencia, 2013 e R. Grimes (ed.), Re-thinking
Legal Education under the Civil and Common Law, cit. Per una riflessione che valorizza le
283 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
potenzialità delle cliniche legali nell’ambito dello sviluppo della c.d. didattica per competenze si ve-
dano V. Marzocco, S. Zullo e T. Casadei, La didattica del diritto, Pacini Giuridica, Pisa, 2019.
17
Intendendo con tale espressione “l’insieme delle attività con le quali le università entrano in
interazione diretta con la società in particolare nella dimensione di produzione di beni pubblici e/o
beni collettivi locali” (Manuale valutazione ANVUR, 2015).
18
M. Barbera, Il movimento delle cliniche legali e le sue ragioni, in A. Maestroni, P. Brambilla e
M. Carrer, Teorie e pratiche nelle cliniche legali, cit., p. XXVI.
19
Con tale espressione Renato Treves riconduceva ad un comune filone di pensiero l’ampio e
variegato filone di ricerche e studi elaborati da autori provenienti da contesti molto diversi in Europa
e negli Stati Uniti (R. Treves, Sociologia del diritto. Origini, ricerche, problemi, Einaudi, Torino,
1987, p. 103 e ss.).
20
Come è noto, le cliniche legali trovano origine nei progetti di riforma dei programmi di insegna-
mento del diritto elaborati nell’ambito del realismo giuridico americano (J.N. Frank, “Why Not a
Clinical Lawyer-School?”, 1933, Faculty Scholarship Series, Paper 4109, in http://digitalcom-
mons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/4109).
21
Per un approfondimento circa gli sviluppi assunti dalla prospettiva realista nei Critical Legal Stu-
dies cfr., tra gli altri, D. Kennedy, The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies, in W. Brown, J.
Hallen (ed.), Left Legalism/Left Critique, Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 176-226 e, specificamente
per una concezione critica dell’educazione giuridica entro tale prospettiva, D. Kennedy, Legal Edu-
cation and the Reproduction of Hierarchy A Polemic Against the System, New York University Press,
New York, 2004.
22
Consolidato è il riferimento da parte del movimento delle cliniche legali alla distinzione tra il
‘diritto nei libri’ (law in the books) e il ‘diritto in azione’ (law in action) operata da R. Pound, “Law in
the books and law in action”, in American Law Review, XLIV, 1910, p. 12 e ss. La contestualizzazione
dell’esperienza formativa in ambiti reali è ritenuta l’unico strumento in grado di consentire agli stu-
denti di addentrarsi nell’intreccio di norme, procedure e prassi per maturare – per citare letteralmente
Jerome Frank – “a vivid sense of the existence of breaks, gaps, and problems” ( J.N. Frank, “Why Not
a Clinical Lawyer-School?”, cit., p. 920).
23
Tale ruolo viene esplicitamente attribuito alle cliniche da coloro che si riconoscono nell’oriz-
zonte teorico del c.d. New Legal Realism. Sul punto si veda, ad esempio, K. Kruse, “Getting Real
About Legal Realism, New Legal Realism and Clinical Legal Education”, in New York Law School
Law Review, 56, 2011/12, p. 314 e ss. Per la descrizione di alcune esperienze fondate entro tale
approccio teorico si rimanda a C. Blengino, Fondamenti teorici di una pratica, cit.
284 CECILIA BLENGINO
formalismo e del dogmatismo giuridico, con la sua assurda pretesa di una ‘purezza’
che nulla ha a che vedere con la realtà”, il diritto concepito dalle cliniche legali è un
diritto il cui significato si rivela nel momento in cui l’ordine dei principi astratti ed
oggettivi viene sostituito da una realtà che si presenta confusa, soggettiva, indefinita
e contraddittoria32.
Si tratta di una prospettiva anti formalista che non rinnega l’aspetto normativo
del diritto ma lo vede “come uno degli elementi, e nemmeno il più importante,
dato che preminenti sono le persone (con tutte le loro peculiarità culturali, econo-
miche, sociali), le istituzioni, i processi, attraverso i quali il diritto vive, si forma,
evolve e si impone. Inoltre il diritto è visto non già come sistema separato, auto-
nomo, autosufficiente, ‘autopoietico’, ma come parte integrante di un più com-
plesso ordinamento sociale, onde esso non può essere artificialmente isolato
dall’economia, dalla morale, dalla politica”33.
Si tratta di un diritto che, riscoperto nella sua dimensione pratica, manifesta esso
stesso il carattere della vulnerabilità34. Il diritto, infatti, vivendo “la vita delle istitu-
zioni giuridiche, lungi dal risultare imperturbabile, si dimostra per essenza vulnera-
bile, e proprio per questa ragione non si riduce alla produzione ed esecuzione di
norme generali e astratte, ma è tenuto concretamente in vita dalla elaborazione di
procedure di controllo e di legittimazione dell’intervento dei suoi operatori”35.
L’approccio realista al diritto assunto dal movimento clinico legale viene definito
come un realismo “temperato”36 che prende le distanze dalle derive nichiliste del
realismo nordamericano per assumere un atteggiamento di sostanziale fiducia nel
diritto in azione37.
In effetti, il realismo che contraddistingue il movimento clinico legale è un “rea-
lismo normativo” che “si pone, e pone al dibattito giuridico, un problema di […]
‘accesso alla giustizia’ a partire dall’attenzione ai diritti fondamentali, che segnano il
confine di ciò che non è nella disponibilità di variabili maggioranze politiche”38.
32
J. Perelman, “Penser la pratique, théoriser le droit en action”, cit., p. 133 e ss.
33
M. Cappelletti, Dimensioni della giustizia nelle società contemporanee, Il Mulino, Bologna,
1994, p. 77.
34
Così F. Ciaramelli, La vulnerabilità: da caratteristica dei soggetti a carattere del diritto, cit.
35
Ivi.
36
M. Barbera, Il movimento delle cliniche legali e le sue ragioni, cit., p. XXIII.
37
In sintonia con le considerazioni di M. Barbera per quanto attiene alla fiducia nel diritto che
caratterizza le cliniche legali si indirizzano anche le riflessioni di M. G. Bernardini, “Le cliniche legali
e l’identità del giurista”, cit.
38
M. Barbera, Il movimento delle cliniche legali e le sue ragioni, cit., p. XXV. Assumendo come
orizzonte normativo ideale le carte costituzionali e le carte dei diritti umani, la posizione assunta dalle
286 CECILIA BLENGINO
cliniche legali è vicina a L. Ferrajoli, Iura Paria. I fondamenti della democrazia costituzionale, Edito-
riale Scientifica, Napoli, 2015.
39
Descrivono gli sviluppi e l’ampiezza di tale movimento i contributi raccolti da F. Bloch (ed.),
The global clinical movement. Educating lawyers to social justice, Oxford University Press, 2011. La
dimensione globale assunta dal movimento clinico si esprime attraverso l’organizzazione delle attività
proposte dalla Global Alliance for Justice in Education (www.gaje.org). Per approfondimenti sulla
rete GAJE si rimanda a E. Santow, G. Mukundi Wachira, The Global Alliance for Justice Education,
in F. F. Bloch (ed), The global clinical movement., cit., pp. 371-382. Sul versante europeo, invece, il
movimento delle cliniche legali fa riferimento alla European Network for Clinical Legal Education
(www.encle.org).
40
La proposta di osservare la dimensione trasnazionale assunta oggi dal metodo clinico legale e la
tendenza a dare vita a reti locali come segnali del progressivo configurarsi di una comunità epistemica
clinica viene avanzata da C. Blengino e A. Gascon Cuenca, Epistemic Communities, cit.
41
Il punto, sottolineato tra i molti da F. Bloch - R. M. Menon, The Global Clinical Movement, in
Bloch F. (ed.), The Global Clinical Movement., cit., pp. 267-278 viene declinato sul versante della
metodologia didattica per esempio da J. Gidding, Promoting justice through legal education, Justice
Press, Melbourne, 2013 e da J. García-Añón,Transformation in Legal Teaching and Learning: Clini-
cal Legal Education as a Transformative Component, cit. In Italia, sottolineano la dimensione di
azione sociale delle cliniche in particolare L. Cruciani, “And Justice for All”. Accesso alla giustizia e
‘law clinics’ come beni comuni”, in Rivista Critica di Diritto Privato, 2, 2012, pp. 307-340; E. Rigo e
M.R. Marella,“Cliniche legali, Commons e giustizia sociale”, cit., ed i numerosi contributi raccolti da
A. Maestroni, P. Brambilla e M. Carrer, Teorie e pratiche nelle cliniche legali, cit.
42
Così V. Tomeo, Il diritto come struttura del conflitto, Un’analisi sociologica, Rubbettino, Soveria
Mannelli, 2013, p. 38.
43
M. Barbera, Il movimento delle cliniche legali e le sue ragioni, cit.
44
Ivi, p. XXIV.
45
C. Blengino, Fondamenti teorici di una pratica, cit., p. 234.
46
In altra sede propongo di descrivere la cooperazione che si realizza entro la clinica legale tra
docenti, studenti, professionisti e soggetti provenienti dal privato sociale entro il concetto, mutuato
287 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
ricerca della “giusta soluzione”47 a casi concreti, grazie ai quali il diritto può pren-
dere vita su impulso della domanda di giustizia proveniente dai soggetti con cui la
clinica interagisce48.
Molte sono le povertà giuridiche49 a cui le cliniche legali tentando di fornire ri-
sposta50. Vari e differenziati sono, a loro volta, gli strumenti e le strategie individuati
per adeguare gli interventi alle necessità ed alle caratteristiche dei destinatari.
L’azione delle cliniche non si esaurisce infatti nell’offerta di servizi riconducibili all’
assistenza legale51 ma comprende un variegato spettro di proposte e soluzioni volte
a promuovere la conoscenza, la consapevolezza e l’effettività dei diritti o a portare
all’attenzione un problema attraverso lo strumento del contenzioso strategico52 o,
infine, a promuovere l’accesso ai diritti attraverso interventi interdisciplinari53.
dalle scienze pedagogiche, della “comunità di pratica” (cfr. C. Blengino, Clinical Legal Education and
Reflective Practice: the Epistemology of Practice on the Boundaries of Law, in C. Blengino, A. Ga-
scon Cuenca, Epistemic Communities., cit, pp. 21-42.
47
M. Barbera, Il movimento delle cliniche legali e le sue ragioni, cit., p. XXIV.
48
Ivi.
49
M. Cappelletti, “Accesso alla giustizia: conclusione di un progetto internazionale di ricerca giu-
ridico-sociologica”, cit., p. 54.
50
Gli ambiti operativi scelti dalle cliniche legali in Italia sono molteplici e si indirizzano verso
problemi di elevata rilevanza sociale e attualità. Un posto di primo piano è certamente occupato oggi
dalle cliniche legali che offrono supporto giuridico e assistenza legale a migranti e richiedenti asilo.
Per una rassegna delle principali esperienze attualmente attive in Italia, cfr. A. Maestroni, P. Bram-
bille e M. Carrer, Teorie e pratiche, cit.
51
Tale è il modello tradizionale c.d. di legal aid clinic teorizzato da J. Frank, “Why Not a Clinical
Lawyer-School?”, cit.
52
Il riferimento è qui alla diffusione, tanto all’estero quanto in Italia, delle esperienze che adottano
i modelli delle c. d. street law clinics e delle strategic litigation clinics. Sul punto, tra i molti, cfr. nuo-
vamente F. Bloch, The Global Clinical Movement, cit.
53
E’ questo, ad esempio, il caso del progetto Spaziviolenti (https://spazivio-
lenti.wordpress.com/chi-siamo/), che ha coinvolto un gruppo interdisciplinare composto da studenti
di giurisprudenza e di architettura nella realizzazione di una nuova area idonea a consentire i colloqui
tra i detenuti e le famiglie nella Casa Circondariale di Torino. Per una descrizione del progetto, dei
suoi fondamenti teorici e dei risultati si rimanda a C. Blengino, “Interdisciplinarity and Clinical Legal
Education: how synergies can improve access to rights in prison”, in International Journal of Clinical
Legal Education, 25, 1, 2018, pp. 210-239.
288 CECILIA BLENGINO
Uno degli ambiti di intervento entro cui la clinica legale, fornendo supporto giu-
ridico a persone vulnerabili, può rispondere contemporaneamente ad obiettivi for-
mativi e sociali è rappresentato dalla tutela delle vittime di tratta.
Si è avuto modo in altre circostanze di riflettere sui significati pedagogici assunti
dall’esperienza della clinica legale per le vittime di tratta a cui ci si sta riferendo nella
presente riflessione. In tali occasioni sono state sottolineate le potenzialità espresse
dal metodo della pratica riflessiva nel consentire agli studenti di scoprire le dinami-
che sottese al concreto riconoscimento dei diritti umani54. Addentrandosi nei per-
corsi dai quali dipende l’implementazione dei diritti delle vittime della tratta, la cli-
nica legale risulta per i futuri operatori del diritto significativa anche per accostare
e, in qualche misura, prendere in carico la vulnerabilità di tali soggetti.
Molteplici sono le prospettive e gli approcci disciplinari con cui la vulnerabilità
delle vittime di tratta può essere presa in considerazione55. Rimanendo sul piano
del diritto positivo, la vittima di tratta è riconosciuta come persona vulnerabile da
un complesso articolato di norme di vario livello. Sul piano formale, tali norme
risultano fortemente orientate alla protezione della vittima di tratta. Sul piano pe-
nale, per esempio, il reato di tratta di persone si configura come l’ “approfittamento
di una situazione di vulnerabilità, di inferiorità fisica, psichica o di necessità”56 ri-
spetto al quale il consenso della vittima ad essere reclutata, introdotta sul territorio,
trasportata o ceduta risulta irrilevante57.
54
Cfr. C. Blengino, Clinical Legal Education and Reflective Practice: the Epistemology of Practice
on the Boundaries of Law, cit. e C. Blengino, “Reflective Practice: Connecting Assessment and Socio-
Legal Research in Clinical Legal Education”, cit. Sul tema cfr. anche S.L.Brooks e R.G. Madden
“Epistemology and Ethics in Relationship-Centered Legal Education and Practice”, in New York Law
School Law Review, 56, 2011-2012, pp. 331-366.
55
Per citare alcuni tra i più recenti contributi alla riflessione sulla tratta, esplorano il fenomeno, in
un orizzonte sociologico giuridico, M. Quiroz Vitale, Diritti umani e cultura giuridica. Il principio di
autodeterminazione e l’invenzione delle nuove schiavitù in Europa, Mimesis, Milano 2018 e, in
chiave filosofico giuridica, T. Casadei, “‘Corpi in transito’: sulla tratta contemporanea”, in La società
degli individui, 63, 2018, pp. 140-154. Offre, inoltre, spunti per approfondire il tema entro la pro-
spettiva dell’antropologia e dell’etnopsichiatria S. Taliani, “Coercion, fetishes and suffering in the
daily lives of young Nigerian women in Italy”, in Africa, 82, 4, 2012, pp. 579-608).
56
Art. 601 c.p.
57
Qualora la condotta avvenga con metodi coercitivi e, in ogni caso, quando la vittima è mino-
renne. La norma, evidentemente, tenta così di contrastare lo stato di profonda soggezione, anche
psicologica, che caratterizza la condizione di vulnerabilità della vittima di tratta.
289 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
58
Direttiva 2011/36/UE , art. 2, comma 2.
59
Art. 18 del D.Lgs. 286/98. Il permesso per motivi di protezione sociale che permette a una
persona che sia stata vittima di violenza o grave sfruttamento in Italia di sottrarsi alla condizione di
sfruttamento tramite l’inserimento in un percorso che prevede l’accoglienza, l’assistenza e l’ inseri-
mento sociale Per un approfondimento prettamente tecnico in merito ai requisiti necessari per po-
tervi accedere si rimanda, tra gli altri, in A. D’Angelo, Quadro giuridico sul contrasto alla tratta, in C.
Blengino (a cura di), Against Human Trafficking, cit., p. 15 e ss.
60
Non è questa la sede per potersi soffermare sui presupposti che giustificano il riconoscimento
della protezione internazionale per le vittime della tratta. Ci si limita a sottolineare che tale possibilità
- riconosciuta da 2006 dalle linee Guida dell’UNHCR relativa all’applicazione dell’art. 1(A) 2 della
Convenzione di Ginevra - si fonda sulle conseguenze dannose che la persona subirebbe in caso di
rientro nel paese d’origine e non richiede, a differenza del permesso per motivi di protezione sociale,
che la persona sia già stata vittima di violenza o grave sfruttamento in Italia.
61
Sottolineano il punto, in particolare, F. Nicodemi, “La tutela delle vittime della tratta di persone
in Italia oggi. Riflessioni sulla capacità di risposta del sistema italiano alle vittime del ‘trafficking’ ri-
spetto alle evoluzioni del fenomeno”, in Diritto, Immigrazione e Cittadinanza, 2015 e P. Degani - C.
Pividori, Attività criminali forzate e scenari della tratta di persone nel quadro degli attuali fenomeni
migratori, UP, Padova, 2016, p. 31 e ss. Si stima che l’80% delle donne richiedenti asilo che giungono
in Italia via mare tramite le rotte provenienti dall’Africa sub-sahariana siano vittime di tratta a fini di
sfruttamento sessuale (IOM, Human Trafficking through the Central Mediterranean Route, 2017).
62
Osservatorio Regionale sull’Immigrazione e sul Diritto d’Asilo, http://www.piemonteimmigra-
zione.it/temi/vittime-tratta.
290 CECILIA BLENGINO
per le vittime di sottrarsi a vincoli ben più stringenti, come ad esempio quelli che
discendono dal timore di subire gli effetti dei rituali woodo o juju cui esse sono state
sottoposte prima di intraprendere il viaggio verso l’Italia63.
Per quanto sopra esposto, l’identificazione delle vittime della tratta nell’ambito
dei richiedenti asilo64 costituisce un primo passo decisivo per permettere loro di
sottrarsi alla soggezione dei propri sfruttatori. A tal fine, nell’ambito delle misure di
coordinamento65 tra le amministrazioni che si occupano di vittime di tratta e quelle
che hanno competenza in materia di asilo, risultano cruciali le interazioni che si
realizzano quando le commissioni territoriali per il riconoscimento della protezione
internazionale ritengono di trovarsi in presenza di vittime di tratta e ne fanno segna-
lazione agli enti preposti alla tutela delle vittime.
I colloqui effettuati dagli operatori specializzati degli enti anti tratta a seguito delle
segnalazioni da parte delle commissioni territoriali costituiscono un momento de-
cisivo in cui prende forma il diritto in azione. Obiettivo di tali colloqui è permettere
alla presunta vittima di fornire, in un contesto per lei confortevole, gli elementi utili
per individuare la presenza degli indicatori della condizione di sfruttamento. Dalla
rilevazione di questi ultimi potranno derivare l’identificazione della persona come
vittima della tratta e le relative conseguenze giuridiche. Le relazioni che gli enti sti-
lano al termine del colloquio contengono gli elementi che questi ultimi ritengono
utili per facilitare una valutazione completa della domanda di protezione interna-
zionale da parte della commissione territoriale. Sulla base di tali relazioni, la com-
missione proseguirà il procedimento per il riconoscimento della protezione inter-
nazionale, assumendo una decisione a riguardo.
Risulta evidente a questo proposito che il colloquio con l’ente anti tratta riveste
un ruolo cruciale nell’ambito dei processi di implementazione del diritto. Il ricono-
scimento - o la mancata individuazione - della presenza degli indicatori della tratta
63
Per gli aspetti – che non è qui possibile approfondire – relativi alla rilevanza gli assunta dalla
percezione dei vincoli creati dai riti woodoo o juju nella dinamica che lega le vittime di tratta ai loro
sfruttatori si rimanda, per esempio, a S. Taliani “Coercion, fetishes and suffering in the daily lives of
young Nigerian women in Italy”, in Africa, 82, 4, 2012, pp. 579-608.
64
Così, tra l’altro, si è espressamente pronunciato il Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking
in Human Beings nel più recente rapporto riguardante l’Italia (cfr. GRETA Report concerning the
implementation of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Be-
ings by Italy, 2018, 28).
65
Il riferimento è all’art. 10 del D. Lgs. 24/2014. Le cosiddette procedure di referral sono definite
dal Piano Nazionale Antitratta https://www.osservatoriointerventitratta.it/wp-con-
tent/uploads/2018/01/piano-nazionale-di-azione-contro-la-tratta-e-il-grave-sfruttamento-2016-
2018.pdf. Si vedano, inoltre, le Linee Guida per l’identificazione delle vittime di tratta tra i richiedenti
protezione internazionale e procedure di referral, adottate dalla Commissione Nazionale per il Diritto
di Asilo il 30/11/2016: https://www.unhcr.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Vittime-di-tratta-Linee-
guida-compresso.pdf).
291 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
in questa sede può esercitare per la vittima di tratta effetti determinanti sulla sua
possibilità di essere riconosciuta e tutelata come tale sul piano della protezione giu-
ridica.
L’opportunità di essere presenti accanto agli operatori degli enti anti tratta nel
corso dei colloqui con le vittime permette agli studenti di osservare e di partecipare
ad un complesso lavoro di ricerca della presenza, nei racconti delle presunte vit-
time, degli indicatori che possono portare al riconoscimento giuridico formale dello
status di vittima. Simultaneamente, gli aspiranti operatori del diritto possono osser-
vare come il diritto in azione - lungi dall’essere un sistema ordinato di formule ver-
bali - prende forma entro un disordinato reticolo di interpretazioni e proiezioni66.
Conseguenza diretta del posizionamento assunto dalle cliniche legali rispetto al
campo giuridico67 - e aspetto originale rispetto ad altre prospettive empiriche al fe-
nomeno giuridico68 - è il fatto che cliniche legali prendono parte - come attori pro-
tagonisti - alle dinamiche conflittuali ed alle negoziazioni entro cui all’interno di tali
campi i significati delle norme giuridiche vengono definiti, il contenuto dei diritti
viene specificato ed i confini stessi dei diritti vengono estesi69.
Grazie alla loro presenza nel corso dei colloqui, agli studenti è dato di prendere
cognizione di vicende intrise di sofferenza, ma anche di contraddizioni e incon-
gruenze. Le immagini stereotipate delle vittime e delle loro vulnerabilità vengono a
decostruirsi per essere sostituite dalla consapevolezza che lo stato di soggezione -
che è conseguenza e causa dell’estrema vulnerabilità presentata della vittima di tratta
e sfruttamento – si manifesta attraverso modalità ambigue. Accostare tali ambiguità
e saperne interpretare i significati all’interno di discorsi reticenti e silenzi richiede di
abbandonare la presunzione che il fenomeno della tratta possa essere compreso
ricorrendo esclusivamente alle tradizionali categorie giuridiche, per assumere una
prospettiva interdisciplinare70.
Nei colloqui a cui gli studenti assistono emerge in modo ricorrente la difficoltà
delle vittime di tratta di percepirsi tali. Significativa è al proposito l’ambiguità del
66
K. Kruse, “Getting Real About Legal Realism”, cit, pp. 317-318.
67
Ricorrendo al concetto di campo giuridico si fa qui riferimento al significato con cui tale espres-
sione viene utilizzata da Bourdieu per evidenziare la dimensione socialmente costruita e dinamica del
diritto e per sottolineare quanto i processi di definizione del diritto siano condizionati dalle intera-
zioni, anche conflittuali, tra molteplici attori istituzionali e sociali (P. Bourdieu, “La force du droit.
Eléments pour une sociologie du champ juridique”, in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales,
64, 1986, pp. 3-19).
68
Il riferimento è, in generale, allo statuto epistemologico della sociologica del diritto (su cui V.
Ferrari, Lineamenti di sociologia del diritto, Laterza, Roma Bari, 2002) e, in particolare, al ricorso
che tale disciplina fa degli strumenti propri della ricerca sociale qualitativa (R. Treves, Sociologia del
diritto, cit.).
69
Per una riflessione più compiuta sul punto si rimanda a C. Blengino e A. Gascon Cuenca, Epi-
stemic Communities, cit.
70
Prendendo in considerazione, in particolare, i contributi alla comprensione della complessità
del fenomeno provenienti dall’approccio etnopsichiatrico, cfr. S.Taliani, “Coercion, fetishes and suf-
fering in the daily lives of young Nigerian women in Italy”, cit.
292 CECILIA BLENGINO
rapporto che lega le vittime di tratta alle proprie sfruttatrici. La compresenza di sen-
timenti di paura e di gratitudine che connota l’atteggiamento delle vittime nei con-
fronti della loro madame – cui non di rado sono legate da vincoli di parentela -
ostacola in modo significativo la possibilità che tra la vittima e l’operatore dell’ente
anti tratta si instauri il rapporto di fiducia necessario perché la vittima fornisca ele-
menti in grado di ricostruire la sua storia di sfruttamento. Si realizza, quindi, un
circuito per certi versi paradossale che vede nella condizione di vulnerabilità della
vittima il principale ostacolo alla possibilità che tale condizione possa trovare un
riconoscimento formale.
Gli incontri con vittime insicure, reticenti o improvvisamente latitanti sono cer-
tamente rivelatori dello stato di soggezione delle stesse, ma rivelano anche la vulne-
rabilità del diritto, intesa come inadeguatezza dei suoi dispositivi a raggiungere gli
scopi di tutela per i quali essi sono pensati. E’ infatti certamente vero che la reticenza
a riferire i dettagli del viaggio verso l’Italia si configura tra gli indicatori della tratta -
di cui gli enti sono chiamati a valutare la sussistenza -, ma è altrettanto evidente che
alla scarsa collaborazione delle vittime nel corso dei colloqui corrispondono attri-
buzioni di significati e valutazioni assai eterogenee da parte degli operatori degli enti
anti tratta e delle commissioni territoriali. Talvolta, ad esempio, al verificarsi di tale
circostanza la vittima viene ritenuta non ancora sufficientemente ‘meritevole’ per
potere fare ingresso in un programma di protezione sociale né ‘pronta’ per la pro-
tezione internazionale.
I processi cognitivi attivati dalla clinica legale stimolano una comprensione pro-
fonda dei diritti umani, addentrandosi nei percorsi tortuosi dai quali dipendono
l’implementazione ed il riconoscimento dei diritti delle vittime71. Partecipano a tali
processi interpretativi del diritto certamente le commissioni territoriali, gli operatori
degli enti anti tratta e i mediatori culturali, ma anche le stesse vittime. E’ quindi la
vulnerabilità stessa del diritto72 a dipanarsi sotto lo sguardo diretto degli studenti.
Entro “il fertile disordine della pratica”73 essi sperimentano quanto il diritto sia
esposto nella sua dimensione pratica all’incertezza, alla contingenza alimentata dalle
interazioni tra gli attori che assumono un ruolo - più o meno istituzionale – nell’am-
bito delle procedure e delle prassi proprie del ‘sistema dell’anti tratta’.
Così intesa, la vulnerabilità del diritto si manifesta significativamente anche ri-
spetto alla capacità - per converso - manifestata da rituali di tipo magico. Gli
71
Su questi aspetti, si sofferma anche M. Quiroz Vitale, Schiavitù e cultura giuridica. Una ricerca
empirica esplorativa nella Corte d’Assise di Milano in M.L. Ghezzi, G.Mosconi, C. Pennisi, F. Prina
e M. Raiteri (a cura di), Processo penale, cultura giuridica e ricerca empirica, Maggioli, Santarcangelo
di Romagna, 2018, pp.151-189.
72
Nell’accezione suggerita da F. Ciaramelli, La vulnerabilità: da caratteristica dei soggetti a carattere
del diritto, cit.
73
Così, per descrivere il significato assunto, entro gli approcci pedagogici che promuovono il ri-
corso dalla pratica riflessiva, si esprime D. Schön, The reflective practitioner: how professional think
in action. Temple Smith. London, 1983, p. 6.
293 Lo sguardo della clinica legale sulla vulnerabilità: tracce per una riflessione…
strumenti di protezione offerti dal diritto sono deboli nei confronti delle ‘schiavitù
da debito’74: la potenza vincolante dell’obbligazione che le vittime della tratta riten-
gono di dover estinguere si radica nel potere che costoro attribuiscono all’efficacia
esercitata da riti quali il woodoo o il juju75 nel produrre effetti malefici su di loro e
sulle loro famiglie.
Gli strumenti del diritto, il cui funzionamento è fondato sulla applicazione pre-
sunta di criteri logici, si trovano deboli di fronte alla forza coercitiva di elementi
irrazionali, relegati dalla nostra cultura nell’ambito del folklore e tuttavia capaci di
impedire alle vittime di rivelare le condizioni di soggezione e sfruttamento entro le
quali le stesse sono relegate.
Senza pretesa di esaustività, gli esempi cui si è poc’anzi fatto cenno delineano
alcune delle molteplici piste di riflessione emerse dalle considerazioni formulate
dagli studenti dopo i colloqui con le vittime. Si tratta di un materiale prezioso, che
merita di essere sistematizzato76 e che stimola a riflettere, non solo sulle variabili
che condizionano la capacità delle vittime della tratta di accedere ai diritti, ma anche
sui ruoli assunti dagli operatori entro i processi descritti.
Si può qui solo accennare al fatto che la vulnerabilità della vittima può manife-
starsi anche come una vulnerabilità rispetto al potere definitorio degli operatori77.
Il desiderio e l’obiettivo da parte di questi ultimi di fornire protezione può talvolta
manifestare una certa concezione paternalistica, la quale rischia di tradursi in forza-
ture interpretative o interventi nel racconto della storia di tratta. Si tratta, evidente-
mente di un tema di estrema complessità e delicatezza che meriterà di essere ap-
profondito in futuro.
La questione risulta, tuttavia, utile per sottolineare ancora una volta le potenzialità
che, nell’opinione di chi scrive, possono essere riconosciute nel rapporto sinergico
tra teoria e pratica che si realizza attraverso la clinica legale. Anche quest’ultima,
introducendo nello spazio discorsivo elementi nuovi, partecipa alle pratiche attra-
verso cui il diritto in contesto prende forma. Nell’esperienza qui considerata tale
fenomeno si esprime, in particolare, attraverso le argomentazioni giuridiche che gli
Cfr. L. Calderoli, Riti magici e prostituzione nigeriana: l’esperienza di una consulenza antropo-
74
logica per un tribunale italiano in P. G. Solinas (ed.), La Vita in prestito: debito, lavoro, dipendenza,
Argo, Lecce, 2007.
75
Si tratta dei riti magici a cui le vittime vengono sottoposte prima di intraprendere il viaggio verso
l’Italia (Cfr. infra nota 65).
76
Sono attualmente in corso la sistematizzazione e la rielaborazione del materiale prodotto dalla
clinica legale in questi tre anni. Quanto emerso dalle attività degli studenti costituisce l’oggetto di una
più ampia e compiuta ricerca, i cui risultati saranno pubblicati in altra sede.
77
L’espressione viene qui utilizzata in senso lato, riferendosi all’ampia sfera dei soggetti che, a vario
titolo e rivestendo ruoli differenti, operano entro il particolare campo giuridico che può essere indi-
viduato come il c.d. sistema dell’anti tratta. Rientrano quindi nella sfera così delineata, i commissari
delle commissioni territoriali, gli operatori degli enti anni tratta, i mediatori culturali, gli operatori dei
centri di assistenza straordinari, ed altri.
294 CECILIA BLENGINO
BIBLIOGRAFIA
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La ricognizione sistematica circa gli esiti di questa attività, che coinvolge gli studenti della clinica
legale da circa tre anni, è attualmente in corso e costituirà parte di una più approfondita pubblica-
zione, attualmente in fase di elaborazione. Il materiale fino ad ora raccolto permette di riconoscere
come le argomentazioni proposte dagli studenti della clinica influiscano, almeno in parte, sulle deci-
sioni della Commissione Territoriale rispetto al riconoscimento della protezione internazionale.
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298 CECILIA BLENGINO
GIOVANNI BLANDO
Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’
giovanni.blando@unina.it
ABSTRACT
The relation between law and love is closely linked to vulnerability. Love can rule out the
certainties of the people who are in love increasing their insecurities. The paper aims to briefly
describe the modalities through which vulnerability seizes love, questioning on the role played
by law in this problematic relation.
KEYWORDS
Love, desire, vulnerability, Rodotà, Bauman
300 GIOVANNI BLANDO
301 Appunti per una riflessione su diritto, amore e vulnerabilità
303 Appunti per una riflessione su diritto, amore e vulnerabilità
14
Ivi, p. 61. Thanopoulos descrive efficacemente la relazione di desiderio in questi termini: “Ti
desidero senza riserve e condizioni, in modo indipendente dal tuo desiderio (diversamente il mio
desiderio non sarebbe autentico, vero), ma, al tempo stesso, devo rispettare questo desiderio (che
esprime la tua autodeterminazione, la tua soggettività) perché altrimenti non saresti vivo e
desiderabile e il mio desiderio morirebbe con te”.
15
Ivi, p. 62. Sul punto cfr. F. Ciaramelli, La socializzazione del desiderio, in F. Ciaramelli – S.
Thanopoulos, Desiderio e legge, cit., pp. 99 – 211, p. 101 secondo il quale “il desiderio si rivela
irriducibile all’ansia di possesso: quest’ultima consuma i suoi oggetti (persone o cose), li priva della
loro alterità, sostituisce l’autoreferenzialità alla relazione e perciò alla fine mortifica lo stesso
desiderio, cioè la nostra soggettività”.
16
Ivi, pp. 62 – 63. Prosegue Thanopulos: “Non si può desiderare l’altro senza sentire di
minacciarlo e senza sentirsi minacciati da lui. Questo complica la difficile convivenza nel soggetto
desiderante tra passione di possesso e l’amore masochistico e rende problematico il senso di
responsabilità che è espressione dell’equilibrio tra queste due forme d’amore”. Secondo F.
Ciaramelli, La socializzazione del desiderio, cit., p. 99, “nel desiderio, infatti, s’esprime il punto più
alto dell’ «affettività», cioè della nostra attitudine a essere modificati, trasformati, coinvolti dagli
eventi che, in quanto ci accadono e ci colpiscono, subiamo, ma ai quali riusciamo anche a reagire
attraverso aspettative ed esigenze in cui si coagulano i fermenti del presente e la tensione verso il
futuro”.
17
F. Ciaramelli, La socializzazione del desiderio, cit., p. 145.
304 GIOVANNI BLANDO
305 Appunti per una riflessione su diritto, amore e vulnerabilità
23
A. MacIntyre, Dopo la virtú. Saggio di teoria morale, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1988, p. 225.
24
N. Luhmann, La fiducia, trad. it. L. Burgazzoli, il Mulino, Bologna, 2002, p. 64.
25
Ancora secondo N. Luhmann, La fiducia, cit., p. 99, “chi accorda la fiducia si libera di una
complessità che non è in grado di sostenere. Chiunque voglia abusare della sua fiducia deve farsi
carico di questa complessità”.
306 GIOVANNI BLANDO
307 Appunti per una riflessione su diritto, amore e vulnerabilità
alla morale o al costume”30. La guida degli amanti non è costituita, infatti, dalla
morale sociale – e dunque dai valori che prevalgono all’interno di un determinato
contesto sociale – ma dalla loro volontà – incoercibile – di stringere o meno con
l’altro un legame d’amore. Seppur i protagonisti delle relazioni moderne ravvisino
“oppressione” negli “impegni duraturi” e “nel rapporto stabile, una dipendenza
incapacitante”31, non spetta per ciò al Diritto di incentivare le relazioni
maggiormente accettate a livello sociale e disincentivare quelle che vengono
sempre più spesso reclamate da minoranze libere.
I legami d’amore nascono tutti allo stesso modo, con un desiderio di relazione
che ci rende, da una parte, più vulnerabili e, dall’altra, proiettati verso meccanismi
di riduzione della vulnerabilità come, ad esempio, la fiducia nella persona amata.
In questa fase istituente il Diritto deve ritrarsi, rinunciare al proprio ruolo
normativo e far sì che gli amanti scelgano liberamente come vivere il proprio
desiderio. Una volta accettata la situazione di vulnerabilità e stretto il patto di
fiducia con il partner, saranno gli amanti a reclamare la “presenza discreta” di un
Diritto che “deve muovere nella consapevolezza che l’amore è sempre un mettere
la propria vita nelle mani di un altro, correndo i rischi di questa condivisione”32.
Se gli amanti decidono di affidarsi al Diritto per affievolire ulteriormente la
vulnerabilità di cui l’amore è foriero, si sottopongono volontariamente ad una
“soglia necessaria per ottenere determinate garanzie giuridiche”; ma ovemai non
lo facciano, “il diritto deve sapere che siamo di fronte ad un momento di libertà,
che si fonda su un amore che né cerca, né può trovare collocazione anche nel più
aperto tra i paradigmi giuridici, che trova legittimità senza bisogno di
formalizzazioni”33. Rispetto all’amore, insomma, il Diritto è chiamato ad
esprimere – più che in ogni altro ambito – la propria “mitezza”34, prefiggendosi
come compito principale la riduzione della vulnerabilità di quei soggetti che ne
reclamano un intervento deciso ed informato ai principi di libertà ed eguaglianza.
Sono questi, infatti, i valori-guida di una pratica giuridica che, nell’attesa di essere
invocata a tutela di soggettività potenzialmente vulnerate dall’amore, deve ridurre
ai minimi termini il proprio ruolo potenzialmente vulnerante rispetto alle scelte
degli amanti35.
30
Ivi, p. 23. Sul punto v. ampiamente D. de Rougemont, L’amore e l’occidente, trad. it. L.
Santucci, Rizzoli, Milano, 1977, spec. pp. 295 ss.
31
Z. Bauman, Amore liquido, cit., p. 66.
32
S. Rodotà, Diritto d’amore, cit., p. 137.
33
Ibidem.
34
G. Zagrebelsky, Il diritto mite. Legge, diritti, giustizia, Einaudi, Torino, 1992.
35
Il diritto diventa esso stesso portatore di un vulnus nelle ricostruzioni offerte da F. Ciaramelli,
La vulnerabilità: da caratteristica dei soggetti a carattere del diritto, in O. Giolo – B. Pastore (a cura
di), Vulnerabilità, cit., pp. 171 – 182 e A. Abignente, Vulnerabilità del diritto: apunti per una mappa
concettuale, in O. Giolo – B. Pastore (a cura di), Vulnerabilità, cit., pp. 183 – 185.
309 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 309-321
ISSN: 1825-5167
VULNERABILITÀ E CURA.
ARGOMENTARE IN BIOETICA
GIUSY CONZA
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza
Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Federico II’
giusy.conza@unina.it
ABSTRACT
The application of legal argumentation to bioethics is sometimes seen as a decision process.
However, in the present work, we argue that the construction of the process is the key to the
successful implementation of law in bioethical issues. In fact, the construction should be a
compromise between principles and experience, a justification for the decision process in
which an active participation and the relationship between physicians and patients guarantee
freedom of choice and more attention to the patients’ vulnerability.
KEYWORDS
Vulnerability, Ethics of care, Bioethical decision-making, Balancing, Legal Argumentation.
1. PREMESSA
2
D. Gracia, Fondamenti di Bioetica. Sviluppo storico e metodo, San Paolo, Milano, 1993; M.
Mori, Manuale di bioetica, Le Lettere, Firenze 2015; P. Borsellino, Bioetica tra “morali e “diritto”,
Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2018.
3
In prospettiva critica sul tema del legame della dimensione giuridica con le scienze della vita,
della cura e della salute dell’essere umano in un contesto sempre più accelerato della scienza e della
tecnologia si veda: L. D’Avack, Il dominio delle biotecnologie. L’opportunità e i limiti
dell’intervento del diritto, Giappichelli, Torino 2018; Id., Il potere sul corpo. Limiti etici e giuridici,
Giappichelli, Torino 2015; C. Casonato, Introduzione al biodiritto, Giappichelli, Torino 2009.
4
N. Luhmann, Teoria della società, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1991; N. Luhmann, Stato di diritto
e sistema sociale, Guida, Napoli 1990, p. 54.
5
Per un approfondimento sul punto la letteratura è vastissima e citabile solo in modo parziale:
C. Tripodina, «Quale morte per gli “immersi in una notte senza fine”? sulla legittimità
costituzionale dell’aiuto al suicidio e sul “diritto a morire per mano d’altri», Rivista di Biodiritto,
2018, 3: 139-151. S. Prisco, «Il caso Cappato tra Corte Costituzionale, Parlamento e dibattito
pubblico. Un breve appunto per una discussione da avviare», Rivista di Biodiritto, 2018, 3: 153-170;
A. Massaro, «Il “caso Cappato” di fronte al giudice delle leggi: illegittimità costituzionale dell’aiuto al
suicidio?», Diritto penale contemporaneo, 2018, 1-28; A. Ruiz Miguel, 2010, «Autonomía
individual y derecho a la propia muerte», Revista Española de Derecho Constitucional, 2010, 89:
11-43; D. Napoli, «Il caso Cappato – DJ Fabio e le colonne d’Ercole del fine vita. Dal diritto a
lasciarsi morire al diritto a morire con dignità», Rivista di Biodiritto, 2017, 3: 355-386.
311 Vulnerabilità e cura. Argomentare in bioetica
verso l’Altro, di un prendersi cura dei bisogni dell’Altro10. È dal bisogno che nasce
la nostra vulnerabilità, ma è dallo stesso bisogno che deriva la responsabilità di
governare la nostra e l’altrui vulnerabilità11.
Riprodurrò nell’alveo dell’esperienza medica la dinamica relazionale, propria
del legame tra medico e paziente, provando ad analizzare come si argomenta in
bioetica o forse, come si dovrebbe argomentare.
Milano 2003 e, da ultimo, P. Ricoeur, Percorsi del riconoscimento. Tre studi, Raffaello Cortina
Editore, Milano 2005.
10
Sul punto P. Ricoeur, Sé come un altro, ed. it. a cura di D. Iannotta, Jaca Book, Milano 1993;
M. Nussbaum, Giustizia sociale e dignità umana. Da individui a persone, il Mulino, Bologna 2002.
11
Si veda J.C. Tronto, Confini morali. Un argomento politico per l’etica della cura, ed. it. a cura
di A. Facchi, Diabasis, Reggio Emilia 2006, pp. 115 ss.
12
Si rinvia a C. Gilligan, Con voce di donna. Etica e formazione della personalità (1982), Milano,
Feltrinelli, 1987; N. Noddings, Caring. A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education,
Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1984; A. Baier, Moral Prejudices, Cambridge
Mass., Harvard University Press, 1995; V. Held, Etica femminista, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1997.
13
Per un approfondimento sulla distinzione si rinvia a C. Botti, Prospettive femministe. Morale,
bioetica e vita quotidiana, Milano, Mimesis, 2014.
14
I termini “dilemmatico” e “solidaristico”, presi in prestito dalla teoria di Gracia, sono da me
applicati per identificare i due approcci all’etica della cura e rendere maggiormente visibile la
similitudine con le due modalità di ragionamento giuridico delineate più avanti nel testo.
15
In questo secondo senso di intendere la cura si rimanda a C. Gilligan, La virtù della resistenza,
Bergamo, Moretti &Vitali, 2014.
313 Vulnerabilità e cura. Argomentare in bioetica
narrativa tra la vulnerabilità del medico e quella del paziente - di aprire spazi alla
comprensione di storie, emozioni, dolori altrimenti sopiti.
Ebbene la distinzione appena emersa, che ai più potrebbe sembrare di mera
epistemologia, si ritrova nella pratica clinica quando si tratta di dare una risposta
alla persona che chiede di lasciarsi morire o di essere agevolata nella morte.
Sicché la soluzione non può risiedere, sic et simpliciter, nella messa a
disposizione di un farmaco letale, quanto nel sostegno che consenta di affrontare
il dolore e la sofferenza in un’ottica di riconoscimento e cura dei bisogni
dell’Altro.
Il malato terminale, ad esempio in condizioni comatose, può forse essere visto
come colui che prova, tenta disperatamente, con tutte le sue forze, di offrire un
segno che necessita di un Altro, un destinatario che non si limiti a ricevere quel
messaggio ma che si impegni e si preoccupi di ascoltarlo. Solo attraverso questa
operazione, ciò che sembrava indicibile, incomunicabile diviene esigenza di
ascolto che attribuisce dignità al segno. Ciò che inizialmente sembrava solo
l’adempimento di un dovere professionale di cura del paziente diviene invece un
‘prendersi cura’16. L’esigenza del ‘prendersi cura’ suggerisce di non fermarsi
nell’adempimento di un proprio dovere professionale, ma di coltivare la
comprensione di ciò che solo in apparenza sembra non intellegibile, mostrandosi
aperti al variegato e polisemico linguaggio che valica l’esistenza umana.
Nasceva così l’esigenza di decifrare il legame tra medico e paziente non più alla
luce di un rapporto di dipendenza basato sull’adempimento delle leges artis
(linguaggio dei doveri) ma di alleanza dialogica legittimata stavolta sul piano del
linguaggio dei diritti.
Tuttavia, oggi si è costretti a fare i conti con una trasformazione della medicina
e più propriamente del ruolo del medico. Il progresso scientifico e tecnologico ha
fatto della medicina una scienza fortemente specializzata nella quale il medico è il
burocrate e non più colui che trae dalla comunicazione con il paziente il legame,
la relazione di efficacia clinica. Il paziente non è un corpo da curare, ma è un
essere umano fatto di pensieri, sofferenze, relazioni affettive e sociali, il compito
del medico, quindi, è di tutelare il profilo umano e non solo fisico della persona.
Instaurare un rapporto di fiducia e di ascolto con il paziente significa
comprendere la devozione del medico da un lato, e la complessità del paziente
dall’altro, in modo da recuperare quel carattere relazionale che oggi è andato
perduto. L’allontanamento in cui il medico si trova ad operare è condizionato
dalla managerialità17 con cui oggi si guarda alla medicina condizionata
16
Per un approfondimento sulla tematica del passaggio dal linguaggio dei doveri a quello dei
diritti cfr. L’argomentazione del giudizio bioetico. Teorie a confronto, C. Viafora, S. Mocellin (a
cura di), Franco Angeli, Milano 2006.
17
Accanto alla figura manageriale del medico oggi si assiste anche a nuovi modelli di giustizia
manageriale. Sul punto si veda A. Garapon, Lo Stato minimo. Il neoliberalismo e la giustizia,
Cortina Raffaello, Milano 2012.
314 GIUSY CONZA
argomenti e delle posizioni emerse”. È indubbio, infatti, che il caso - sulla scia
delle suddette premesse - sia servito ad esaltare la funzione dei Comitati, in specie
del CNB, di incentivare e favorire una cultura bioetica che nasce a partire da una
difference of opinion25.
Nel parere si raffrontano tre diverse opinioni. La prima posizione è di coloro
che sono contrari alla legittimazione, sia etica che giuridica, del suicidio
medicalmente assistito in nome di una difesa assoluta della vita umana come
principio fondamentale in bioetica. Altri membri del CNB sono invece favorevoli
- sia sul piano morale che giuridico - alla legalizzazione del suicidio medicalmente
assistito “sul presupposto che il valore della tutela della vita vada bilanciato” con
“l’autodeterminazione del paziente e la dignità della persona”.
Infine, si attesta la posizione di coloro che non ritengono una “immediata
traducibilità” della questione “dall’ambito morale a quello giuridico” e che
pertanto, evidenziano i rischi imminenti a cui si incorrerebbe sia in caso di
depenalizzazione che viceversa nel caso di legalizzazione del suicidio
medicalmente assistito.
La pluralità di opinioni non è sinonimo di una mancata espressione di un’idea
consolidata ma risulta proprio la manifestazione di quell’approccio che per l’etica
della cura ho definito solidaristico o meglio sul piano argomentativo problematico,
mai dilemmatico. Non si tratta per il CNB di prendere una posizione netta da una
parte o dall’altra ma in ossequio al suo ruolo istituzionale, quale animatore di un
dibattito, di dar conto della complessità di una questione, problematizzandola.
Pertanto, il pluralismo di opinioni non deve essere visto come un segnale di
debolezza ma al contrario come un’idea di civiltà che consenta anche a chi non ha
competenze specifiche di comprenderne il significato più profondo delle varie
posizioni per una scelta consapevole e responsabile.
Come rigorosamente precisato dal CNB nel parere, la diversità di opinioni
costituisce uno stimolo alla riflessione profonda su tematiche alle quali non è
possibile offrire risposte monosemiche.
L’asserito intento legittima il ruolo dei comitati etici non solo come punto di
partenza per un dibattito democratico ma anche come necessità di una
partecipazione sociale.
Nel parere chiaramente si legge: “..di fronte alla richiesta di essere aiutati a morire,
l’approccio che ispira l’etica dell’accompagnamento nel morire è quello
dell’ascolto, dell’interpretazione della richiesta: ad ogni soggetto che, in condizioni
di particolare vulnerabilità fisica e psichica, manifesti la volontà di morire, deve
essere dedicato un ascolto particolare, perché il medico possa comprendere cosa
significhi la sua richiesta”.
25
F. H. Van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, Una teoria sistematica dell’argomentazione. Un
approccio pragma-dialettico, Mimesis, Milano 2008.
318 GIUSY CONZA
Vi sono per il CNB dei requisiti da cui non si può prescindere affinchè la
richiesta di aiuto al suicidio sia legittima. La richiesta deve essere “informata,
consapevole e libera”. Ed è proprio in questo preciso momento che si attiva
quell’incontro, quel legame relazionale tra medico, paziente: vi è una richiesta a
cui deve conseguire un “ascolto particolare”. La decisione di prestare assistenza
medicalizzata al suicidio, nel rispetto dei criteri stabiliti, non deve essere un
automatismo ma deve sempre essere presa pensando alla persona che la chiede e
alla situazione specifica, quel segno necessita sempre di una interpretazione. Ciò
implica per il CNB che qualora l’aiuto al suicidio venisse legalizzato, la sua
attuazione nella pratica potrà aversi solo nei casi di “concordanza” tra la volontà
del paziente e quella del medico disposto ad assecondarlo. È proprio nella
“concordanza” che risiede il significato più profondo della mediazione quale
metodo della ragione pratica da utilizzare come cornice per la giustificazione di un
caso bioetico.
IL CNB dà conto però anche del rischio imminente di una legalizzazione
dell’aiuto al suicidio ovvero quella del ‘pendio scivoloso’ ossia far rientrare casi
che normalmente non vi rientrerebbero con una forte estensione
dell’applicazione normativa. E che quindi il rischio di un ampliamento
considerevole dei soggetti coinvolti, sia da monito per il Parlamento nel voler
porre dei freni ovvero delle condizioni stringenti per l’ammissibilità dell’assistenza
al suicidio.
Il Comitato, nonostante vi siano diverse posizioni, “è pervenuto alla
formulazione di alcune raccomandazioni condivise, auspicando innanzi tutto che
in qualunque sede avvenga – ivi compresa quella parlamentare – il dibattito
sull’aiuto medicalizzato al suicidio si sviluppi nel pieno rispetto di tutte le opinioni
al riguardo, ma anche con la dovuta attenzione alle problematiche morali,
deontologiche e giuridiche costituzionali che esso solleva e col dovuto
approfondimento che esige una tematica così lacerante per la coscienza umana”.
Dopo aver riflettuto sulle ragioni che hanno spinto il CNB ad esprimere un
parere sul suicidio medicalmente assistito, resta da chiedersi qual è il ruolo attuale
dei Comitati e/o quali responsabilità potrebbero ricoprire in futuro considerando
il rapido progresso scientifico e tecnologico.
«Un comitato di bioetica è un comitato che sistematicamente e con continuità
affronta le dimensioni etiche connesse (a) alle scienze sanitarie, (b) alle scienze
della vita e (c) alle nuove politiche sanitarie. L’espressione “comitato di bioetica”
indica semplicemente che un gruppo di persone – un presidente e dei membri –
si riuniscono per discutere di questioni che non solo semplicemente fattuali, ma
profondamente normative. […] Sebbene in origine i comitati di bioetica siano stati
istituiti per consigliare la comunità medica e i professionisti della salute su come
affrontare alcune specifiche controversie morali, oggi ai comitati etici si richiede di
offrire la loro consulenza anche a policy makers, politici e legislatori». Si tratta
319 Vulnerabilità e cura. Argomentare in bioetica
modo che non restino principi e valori ben scritti sui libri di bioetica ma trovino
concretizzazione nell’esperienza particolare di ogni singolo individuo.
Il rischio è di cadere in una mera classificazione di principi29 da applicare in
bioetica senza spiegare come debba avvenire una loro effettiva concretizzazione.
Basti pensare che gli stessi principi enucleati da Beauchamp e Childress definiti
come regole specifiche per l’azione non hanno trovato una specificazione
concreta della loro attuazione.
L’argomentazione giuridica nel giudizio bioetico risulta, quindi, fondativa
perché consente di dar conto di certe forme relazionali senza ricadere nella più
bieca astrattezza. Mi spiego meglio, se si guarda alle istanze liberali si rischia di
dare spazio alla tutela della libertà di scelta (o alla sua negazione tout court)
prescindendo dall’aspetto individuale e dalla costruzione di una relazione con
l’Altro sul piano dell’esperienza umana.
Ad esempio, nel nostro caso, si potrà discutere a favore o contro la scelta di
lasciarsi morire nella consapevolezza che il confronto rischia di restare un mero
scambio di idee improduttivo di effetti sul piano dell’agire. Sarà necessario
comprendere, caso per caso, che tipo di scelta è stata fatta, se ad esempio si tratta
di una scelta autonoma del paziente o se essa è il frutto di una relazione con il
medico, ma ancora si tratterà di comprendere da chi proviene quella determinata
volontà: un soggetto capace di agire, un minore, una persona con disabilità?
La prospettiva argomentativa si colloca quindi, su uno sfondo che rifugge un
approccio dilemmatico ove tutto viene ridotto ad un aut aut, ma si fa partecipe di
risollevare dall’astrattezza quelle istanze che chiedono di essere ascoltate e
comprese. L’idea è di “richiamare il valore della responsabilità, dell’attenzione,
della sollecitudine e della cura nella gestione dei rapporti, o l’importanza del far
vivere le relazioni e del ridescrivere le situazioni, affinché le dimensioni della
scelta e della fioritura di ciascuno siano agibili e i compromessi necessari siano
trovati – come dicono le ragazze di Gilligan – senza che nessuno sia lasciato solo,
ovverosia con attenzione alla sofferenza di tutti, anche se questo non vuole dire
senza sofferenze30”.
E allora, a mio giudizio, scomodare l’attività ermeneutica può essere un’attività
feconda che consenta di leggere il “prendersi cura” come una possibilità di aprire
all’ascolto e alla comprensione di ciò che in un primo avvicinarsi all’Altro
sembrava non evidente.
In questo contesto problematico, ho l’impressione, che l’ermeneutica possa
dare un contributo non indifferente per le sue radici costitutive sul piano filosofico
e per i suoi risvolti sul terreno della teoria dell’argomentazione giuridica. In
29
Si è parlato di tassonomia dei casi in A. Jonsen, S. Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry, cit.
30
C. Botti, Vulnerabilità, relazioni e cura. Ripensare la bioetica, in Etica&Politica, XVIII, 2016,
3, pp. 33-57, spec. p. 51.
321 Vulnerabilità e cura. Argomentare in bioetica
31
F. Viola, G. Zaccaria, Le ragioni del diritto, il Mulino, Bologna 2003; F. Viola, Il diritto come
pratica sociale, Jaca Book, Milano 1990, nonché F. Viola, G. Zaccaria, Diritto e interpretazione.
Lineamenti di teoria ermeneutica del diritto, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2000, inoltre E. Pariotti, La
comunità interpretativa del diritto, Giappichelli, Torino 2000.
32
C. Viafora, S. Mocellin (a cura di), L’argomentazione del giudizio bioetico, cit. p. 37.
323 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 323-330
ISSN: 1825-5167
ABSTRACT
The article deals with the relationship between vulnerability in the legal realm and undecidability.
In the first part I introduce the link between vulnerability and the idea of a legal order. Moving
from an understanding of vulnerability as a character of the law, in the second part I focus on the
methodological crisis in legal science. In the last part a connection with the issue of undecidability
is established in order to show the boundaries of objective and subjective dimensions of legal
vulnerability.
KEYWORDS
Vulnerability; Legal Methodology; Undecidability; Law.
1.
Cfr., P. Blaikie, T. Cannon, I. Davis, and B. Wisner, At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vul-
1
vulnerabilità debba sempre far conto con le insidie del voler separare in modo nat-
uralistico ciò che vulnera e ciò che è vulnerato come opposizione falsamente binaria
tra natura e politica2. Se dunque vulnerabilità è termine che nell’uso contempora-
neo assume svariate forme concettuali e significati, esso svolge in modo forse meno
esplicito di quanto oggi tematizzato nel dibattito contemporaneo una funzione con-
cettuale importante anche nella sfera politica e giuridica, in particolare nella rela-
zione costitutiva tra costruzione dell’ordine sociale e protezione della soggettività.
In termini generali, colui che riesce a superare le avversità, colui che è in grado
di porsi al di là degli altri individui grazie alla sua superiorità e capacità di resistere
alla sopraffazione altrui, diventa un sopravvissuto ossia un soggetto che acquisisce
invulnerabilità attraverso la potenza3. Se questa è la dimensione antropologico-indi-
vidualistica delle relazioni tra soggetti che possono essere in competizione tra loro,
cui può fare da controcanto la precedenza che la salvaguardia, evidentemente col-
lettiva, dell’esistenza dell’umanità assume nella riflessione filosofica4, è con Hobbes
che si costruisce il nesso tra modernità e vulnerabilità, attraverso la sicurezza della
protezione che porta con sé la costituzione di un ordine sociale il cui mantenimento
è volto ad instaurare una sicurezza totale che liberi le soggettività dalla paura dell’ag-
gressione. Il che vuole sottolineare il dato qui più rilevante, ossia che “essere protetti
non è uno stato naturale”5. Nell’analisi di Castel, il modello hobbesiano appare la
fondazione del rapporto tra ordine e vulnerabilità in quanto la protezione dipende
essenzialmente dal permanere dell’ordine in senso oggettivo, mentre nel pensiero
liberale classico più avanti si farà strada la dipendenza del soggetto dalla proprietà
quale fondamento del suo liberarsi dalla dimensione del bisogno materiale quale
porta di ingresso prevalente nella sfera sociale. Secondo il sociologo francese questa
evoluzione storica porta fino alla dimensione dello stato di diritto e della sua inca-
pacità di assicurare allo stesso tempo protezione totale e libertà agli individui6.
Il rapporto tra diritto e vulnerabilità può essere concepito in diversi modi. In-
nanzitutto, il diritto è lo strumento che dovrebbe frapporsi tra i soggetti al fine di
preservarne quantomeno la inviolabilità fisica. Come mostrato da Hart, se si assume
la sopravvivenza come fine, questo fatto si riflette nella struttura del nostro pensiero
e del linguaggio7. È sulla necessaria garanzia della sopravvivenza che si fonda il con-
tenuto specifico del diritto e della morale8. La vulnerabilità diventa così uno dei
2
Cfr. E. Ferrarese, Vulnerability: A Concept with Which to Undo the World As It Is?, in “Critical
Horizons”, 17, n. 2, 2016, pp. 149-159, spec. p. 154.
3
Secondo l’intuizione di E. Canetti, Massa e potere, trad. it. F. Jesi, Adelphi, Milano 2016, pp.
297 e ss.
4
Cfr. H. Jonas, Il principio responsabilità. Un'etica per la civiltà tecnologica, trad. it. P. Portinaro,
Einaudi, Torino 2002, p. 126.
5
R. Castel, L’insicruezza sociale. Che significa essere protetti?, Einaudi, Torino 2011, p. 7.
6
Ivi, pp. 21 e ss.
7
H. L. Hart, Il concetto di diritto, Einaudi, Torino 2002, p. 224.
8
Ivi, p. 225.
325 Note su vulnerabilità del diritto e indecidibilità
primi fondamenti della giuridicità, in assenza della quale non sarebbe realmente
comprensibile neanche un precetto quale Non uccidere, fornendo un’obiezione
alla tesi che vede il diritto contenitore di qualsiasi contenuto9. Come mostra l’ar-
gomento hartiano, il diritto come sistema di sapere diventa un elemento essenziale
per comprendere le varie dimensioni della vulnerabilità. Si tratta di un legame che
solo di recente è stato oggetto di un’attenzione specifica nella cultura giuridica ed in
particolare in una declinazione incentrata sul soggetto10. Il punto di partenza, il pre-
supposto dal quale prendono le mosse queste brevi riflessioni sul rapporto tra vul-
nerabilità e diritto, è dato dal “duplice volto della vulnerabilità del diritto” ossia la
sua caratteristica, nell'odierno paradigma costituzionalistico, di essere sia oggetto
che soggetto attivo di produzione di vulnerabilità. Più precisamente si tratta di una
“transizione della vulnerabilità da caratteristica soggettiva a carattere distintivo dello
stesso diritto”11. Venuta meno l’immagine di un sistema coerente legato esclusiva-
mente alla razionalità logica e potenzialmente indifferente alla dimensione struttur-
almente contingente in cui opera ogni pratica sociale e dunque anche quella giu-
ridica, il diritto diventa fattore attivo e passivo di vulnerabilità. Se la capacità di essere
elemento di vulnerabilità del diritto è storicamente innegabile, si può osservare che
anche il diritto può essere esso stesso vulnerabile se si guarda al suo concreto rela-
zionarsi con fattori esterni – innumerevoli e tra i quali qui ci si limiterà a citare solo
la tracimazione delle categorie economiche a scapito di quelle giuridiche o la crisi
ecologica destinata prima o poi a stravolgere assetti dogmatici ancora oggi ritenuti
quasi assiomatici – ed interni allo stesso, come in particolare la perdita di capacità
stabilizzante del suo metodo. Valorizzando così la funzione euristica del concetto
di vulnerabilità nell'ambito giuridico, uno dei problemi riguarda il come concepire
le concrete modalità di protezione del diritto da questa “doppia vulnerabilità”, sia
come caratteristica oggettiva del sistema giuridico sia come attributo della stabilità e
protezione dei diritti fondamentali.
Concentrandosi sulla dimensione oggettiva della capacità del diritto di essere non
solo fattore di produzione di vulnerabilità ma anche oggetto esso stesso di vulnera-
bilità è possibile osservare che in effetti il diritto partecipa oggi a quella che è stata
definita l’angoscia storica, essendo entrato sempre più in crisi il paradigma di tipo
scientista, con cui il diritto aveva cercato di costruire un proprio apparato metodo-
logico sufficientemente stabile. Nell’epoca attuale “Il diritto è giunto a dubitare di
9
Si tratta della nota tesi del contenuto minimo del diritto naturale che, come si è visto, si fonda in
modo importante su un certo modo di intendere l’idea di vulnerabilità.
10
Nell’ambito italiano si veda ora B. Pastore, O. Giolo (a cura di), Vulnerabilità. Analisi multidi-
sciplinare di un concetto, Carocci, Roma 2018; G. Zanetti, Filosofia della vulnerabilità. Percezione,
discriminazione, diritto, Carocci, Roma 2019.
11
F. Ciaramelli, La vulnerabilità: da caratteristica dei soggetti a carattere del diritto, in Pastore,
Giolo (a cura di), Vulnerabilità, cit., p. 179, corsivo nel testo.
326 VALERIO NITRATO IZZO
se stesso”12, un dubbio che travolge sia la dimensione oggettiva del diritto ed in par-
ticolare quella della certezza, sia quella soggettiva che è per molti versi la ricaduta in
ambito individuale dell’inquietudine generata dall’accresciuta instabilità delle
norme giuridiche13. Il diritto non sembra più in grado di “decidere”, non tanto nel
senso potenzialmente violento e ancora attuale della decisione schmittiana che pre-
tende di stabilire un ordine a partire da un’unità di forza piuttosto che da un pro-
cesso sociale di condivisione normativa e politica, quanto nella constatazione cres-
cente dell’erosione della capacità dell’apparato giuridico di offrire risposte che siano
utili sotto il profilo dell’organizzazione sociale. L’ipotesi di lavoro, della quale si
discuterà in termini necessariamente succinti rispetto all’ampiezza del tema, è che
questa incapacità di decisione possa essa stessa diventare fonte di vulnerabilità “og-
gettiva del diritto”.
2.
Tra le tante crisi del diritto, oggi particolarmente avvertite in Europa14, quella
“metodologica” è stata denunciata con forza negli ultimi anni. Anche qui sembra
emergere una doppia vulnerabilità. Da un lato l’incapacità della scienza giuridica
pre-moderna di dotarsi di un metodo proprio e riconoscibile, qualificabile come
vulnerabilità congenita. Dall’altro, questa vulnerabilità viene a trasformarsi ma non
a cessare in quanto nel constatare l’impossibilità di soddisfare i criteri della scienza
moderna, la stessa ricerca del metodo diventa irraggiungibile15. Che questa prospet-
tiva colga davvero il punto è discutibile, soprattutto in considerazione dell’altro ter-
mine di comparazione, ossia quello dell’evoluzione dello statuto epistemologico di
una supposta scienza moderna, i cui requisiti sono oggi molto lontani dalle rap-
presentazioni ancora oggi a volte utilizzate per supportare una certa mancanza di
scientificità della giurisprudenza. È però indubitabile che l’attuale fase del pensiero
giuridico abbia prodotto una reviviscenza di interrogazioni sul punto, in particolare
attraverso il ripensare quelle che possono essere le funzioni del diritto nel contem-
poraneo. La cultura giuridica francese sembra, forse non casualmente, partico-
larmente attenta a questo tema, avendo negli ultimi tempi fornito opere di rilievo.
Così se la funzione antropologica del diritto viene fatta risalire alla sua capacità di
“istituire l’umano” avendo la regolamentazione giuridica il compito di umanizzare
J. Carbonnier, Flessibile diritto. a cura di A. de Vita, Giuffrè, Milano 1997, p. 156.
12
13
157 e ss.
14
Cfr. C. Margiotta, a cura di, Europa: diritto della crisi e crisi del diritto. Austerità, diritti, cittadi-
nanza, il Mulino, Bologna 2017.
15
F. Rouvière, La vulnérabilité de la science du droit: histoire d’une science sans méthode , in Le
droit à l’épreuve de la vulnérabilité, Bruylant, Bruxelles 2011, pp. 537-560.
327 Note su vulnerabilità del diritto e indecidibilità
la tecnica 16, il diritto non cessa di essere uno strumento rivelatore nell’analisi delle
società umane17. Pur dovendo riconoscere che le funzioni del diritto sono sempre
in qualche modo debitrici delle finalità che per lo stesso il mondo sociale immagina
e fornisce a meno che del diritto non si cerchi di farne a meno18, sotto il profilo
metodologico il problema rischia di trascinare la stessa utilità del diritto laddove il
ripensamento ancora incompleto di alcuni suoi elementi essenziali arriva a minarne
la stessa pensabilità dell’applicazione.
Guardando a quello che è un possibile riflesso di ogni teoria del diritto ossia la
sua concezione del ragionamento giuridico, l’attuale dibattito che attraversa la cul-
tura giuridica italiana sulle trasformazioni di concetti quali fattispecie e caso diventa
particolarmente indicativo. La perdita di capacità esplicativa del concetto di fat-
tispecie è in effetti esemplificativa di come il diritto oggi stia attraversando una fase
di profonda trasformazione che coinvolge anche il problema metodologico19, che
in una sintesi efficace può essere così riassunto: “Il metodo non è in grado di spie-
gare la scelta del metodo”20. La denuncia può essere utilmente ripresa dall’ultimo
periodo di riflessione di uno dei maggiori protagonisti della cultura giuridica italiana,
Natalino Irti21. La preoccupazione dello studioso è quella di mostrare come la per-
dita da parte del diritto della sua capacità di essere “calcolabile” e dunque anche
prevedibile, mini alle fondamenta la possibilità di funzionamento del diritto. In
mancanza di un livello adeguato di calcolabilità il diritto diventa allora eccessiv-
amente imprevedibile. In Irti il nesso calcolabilità-legge-decisione fa sì che vi sia
coincidenza assoluta tra decisione e applicazione della legge, in quanto “Lo stato
moderno riposa, a ben vedere, sulla circolarità logica fra decidere, giudicare e ap-
plicare la legge”22. Il che significa che ogni abbandono del metodo sussuntivo e che
qui appare legalistico nel senso di legato alle regole più che ad altre tipologie di
norme, oggi difficilmente ignorabili, non può non far precipitare il giudizio nell’in-
controllabilità di una decisione pronta a farsi arbitraria in quanto non controllabile
all’ingresso da quelli che Irti, con linguaggio evocativo, definisce i “cancelli delle
parole”23. Non è possibile qui entrare nel dettaglio della critica di Irti che ben altro
spazio meriterebbe. Si può sottolineare con Zaccaria che con tutta evidenza la crisi
16
A. Supiot, Homo juridicus. Saggio sulla funzione antropologica del Diritto, Mondadori, Milano
2006.
17
J. Commaille, À quoi nous sert le droit?, Gallimard, Paris 2015, pp. 33-34.
18
Cfr. F. Ost, À quoi sert le droit? Usages, fonctions, finalités, Bruylant, Bruxelles 2016, p. 13.
19
Si veda la Introduzione di G. Zaccaria, al numero dedicato a La crisi della fattispecie di “Ars
Interpretandi.”, 1, 2019.
20
F. Viola, G. Zaccaria, Diritto e interpretazione. Lineamenti di teoria ermeneutica del diritto,
Laterza, Roma-Bari 2002, p. 223.
21
Le riflessioni di Irti dedicate al tema sono ora raccolte in N. Irti, Un diritto incalcolabile, Giap-
pichelli, Torino 2016.
22
Ivi, p. 6, corsivo nell’originale.
23
Il titolo completo della lectio raccolta nel volume citato è ‘I cancelli delle parole’ (intorno a
regole, principi, norme), ivi, pp. 57 e ss.
328 VALERIO NITRATO IZZO
della fattispecie coinvolge aspetti fondamentali del funzionamento del diritto, quali
la rinnovata centralità del caso e le relative difficoltà di ripensamento del concetto
di legalità. Ma al di là dell’ormai stucchevole opposizione tra regole/principi che
oggi è ben lungi dal catturare l’ampissimo novero di problemi la cui scaturigine
principale ma non unica è data dal costituzionalismo24, è necessario osservare che
la proposta di Irti sembra restringere in modo forse eccessivamente perentorio il
ragionamento giuridico a quello sillogistico-sussuntivo trascurando gli ultimi de-
cenni di teoria del ragionamento giuridico e soprattutto la sua “svolta argomenta-
tiva”25. La riflessione di Irti solleva però un problema importante: un diritto che non
appare in grado di controllare adeguatamente la sua metodologia è destinato a
diventare maggiormente vulnerabile rispetto alla propria funzione primaria di rego-
lazione sociale. In questo modo si legano la vulnerabilità del diritto sotto il profilo
oggettivo e la questione dell’indecidibilità.
3.
Inteso in questo senso il problema della indecidibilità ovvero del non saper come
decidere è potenzialmente fonte di vulnerabilità del diritto stesso in quanto ne mina
alla base un carattere riconosciuto universalmente ossia del suo essere un tentativo
di orientamento delle condotte individuali e collettive. Vorrei ora brevemente
esaminare alcune nozioni e definizioni di indecidibilità nella teoria e filosofia giu-
ridica contemporanea al fine di chiarire cosa è possibile intendere con questo ter-
mine. Luigi Ferrajoli ha più volte insistito sulla centralità nel costituzionalismo di
un nucleo di diritti fondamentali la cui espressa costituzionalizzazione determina la
sfera del non decidibile a sua volta distinta in indecidibile che cioè di ciò che non
è permesso (o è vietato) decidere ..precludendo decisioni che possono ledere o
ridurre tali diritti; e la sfera del indecidibile che non ossia di ciò che non è permesso
non decidere (o è obbligatorio) decidere , determinata dall'insieme dei diritti so-
ciali, i quali impongono in quanto aspettative positive, decisioni idonee a sod-
disfarle26. In un senso che a me para abbastanza simile, almeno nei suoi tratti fon-
damentali, in precedenza Garzón Valdés, nel delimitare i rapporti tra sfera giuridica
e politica aveva elaborato a sua volta l’idea di un terreno recintato, proibito, un coto
24
Prova ne sia il dialogo tra Ferrajoli e Manero in cui il disaccordo su regole e principi non appare
come il principale fuoco della discussione cfr. L. Ferrajoli, J. Ruiz Manero, Due modelli di costitu-
zionalismo. Un dialogo sul diritto e sui diritti, Editoriale Scientifica, Napoli 2016.
25
Su cui si veda M. Atienza, Filosofía del Derecho y Trasformación social, Trotta, Madrid 2017,
pp. 95-116.
26 L. Ferrajoli, Principia iuris: teoria del diritto e della democrazia, vol. 2 Teoria della democrazia,
Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2007, pp. 19 ss.
329 Note su vulnerabilità del diritto e indecidibilità
vedado27. Nel contesto della teoria analitica, attraverso l’influenza del lavoro di Al-
chourrón e Bulygin, e maggiormente ancorata alla dimensione logica, la nozione di
indecidibilità è legata alla potenziale contraddittorietà insita in ogni sistema giuridico
per cui vi sono casi di norme delle quali non è possibile predicare con certezza
l'appartenenza o meno al sistema giuridico senza incorrere o in una modifica dello
stesso o nella sua contraddizione28.
Di tutt’altro tenore l’impostazione del problema da parte di Derrida, per il quale
“L'indecidibile non è soltanto l'oscillazione o la tensione fra due decisioni. Indecid-
ibile è l'esperienza di ciò che è estraneo, eterogeneo all'ordine del calcolabile e della
regola, deve tuttavia – è di dovere che bisogna parlare – abbandonarsi alla decisione
impossibile tenendo conto del diritto e della regola”29. In quella che Derrida
definisce seconda aporia dei rapporti tra diritto e giustizia, si ritrovano alcuni ele-
menti degni di nota. Il primo è quello, forzando forse un po’ il pensiero di Derrida,
che tutto sommato anche le decisioni impossibili debbano tenere conto del diritto:
ossia nessuna giustizia può essere interamente contenuta in una decisione giuridica
ma del diritto essa non può neppure fare completamente a meno. Il secondo
aspetto, più interessante ai fini dell'analisi che cerco di sviluppare, è il modo di in-
tendere l'indecidibilità come “il fantasma che si nasconde dietro ogni altra deci-
sione”30, ossia il fatto che per ogni decisione giuridica assunta vi si cela sempre, ap-
punto come un fantasma quello della decisione non assunta. Il problema allora è
come rappresentare la possibilità che ogni decisione contenga anche il suo possibile
opposto, un tema che affiora sia in autori legati alla lezione di Derrida come ad es.
Fitzpatrick31 ,sia di diverso orientamento come la compianta Fögen per la quale
l’aporia del procedimento decisionale è costituita dal paradosso per cui è sempre
possibile decidere in modo opposto rispetto a come si è deciso32.
Un’altra versione del concetto di indecidibilità è quella fornita da Luhmann, per
il quale il fenomeno dell'indecidibilità mostra invece la natura paradossale di ogni
sistema giuridico: “La decisione è l'unità di questa differenza. Questo significa che
è un paradosso. Decisioni possono essere assunte solo se l'indecidibilità è data
come una questione di principio (e non qualcosa che è stata meramente non
decisa)”33. Ad avviso di Luhmann la natura paradossale dell'unitarietà di ogni
27
E. Garzón Valdés, Representación y democracia, in Id., Derecho, Ética y Politica, Centro de
Estudos Constitucionales, Madrid 1993, pp. 644-645.
28
Sul punto cfr. G. B. Ratti, Sistemi normativi e proposizioni normative indecidibili, in “Ragion
Pratica”, 37, 2011, pp. 503-528.
29 J. Derrida, Forza di legge: il fondamento mistico dell’autorità̀, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2003,
p. 79, 77–80.
30 Ivi, p. 79.
31
Cfr. P. Fitzpatrick, Modernism and the grounds of law, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
2001, p. 89.
32 M. T. Fögen, Due "hard cases" sulle aporie della decisione giudiziaria, in "Materiali per una
storia della cultura giuridica", n. 1, 2003, p. 174.
33
N. Luhmann, Law as a Social System, Oxford University Press, Oxford-New York 2008, p. 282.
330 VALERIO NITRATO IZZO
sistema giuridico è visibile attraverso il principio del divieto di decisioni di non liquet
che in qualche modo autorizza, attraverso la funzione giurisdizionale, ogni sistema
giuridico ad essere universalmente competente e allo stesso tempo capace di as-
sumere decisioni34. In questa prospettiva sono i giudici ad esercitare una funzione
di guida sulla scelta tra ciò che è legale e ciò che non lo è, a causa della necessità di
assumere decisioni. Il che, lascia intendere Luhmann, conferisce ai tribunali un par-
ticolare vantaggio posizionale nell'affrontare, dal suo punto di vista, la
ricomposizione della natura paradossale dell'unità del sistema giuridico35.
Come spesso accade nessuna di queste definizioni, che evidentemente proven-
gono da stili prospettive e obiettivi filosofici diversi, esaurisce il problema; al tempo
stesso ognuna offre qualcosa o illumina un aspetto del problema che qui si cerca di
analizzare. Se l'indecidibilità sembra essere una sorta di fantasma da nascondere o
una presenza inconfessabile, evidente in particolare nelle prospettive di Derrida e
Luhmann, essa cattura allora un aspetto cruciale ossia che ogni sistema giuridico
deve fare i conti con la stessa possibilità di non poter contenere al proprio interno
la risposta ad ogni quesito giuridico. Persino Dworkin ammette tale possibilità pur
riservandola in realtà esclusivamente a sistemi giuridici immaturi. Il fenomeno della
difficoltà del decidere è allora rilevante per la questione della vulnerabilità in quanto
espone il sistema giuridico nel suo complesso ad un fallimento della sua missione
principale di regolazione delle condotte umane. Da questo punto di vista un diritto
“eccessivamente indeciso” può diventare un diritto oggettivamente vulnerabile. In
questo senso, nel ripensamento complessivo della metodologia giuridica contem-
poranea di fronte ad una complessità che rivela il “carattere insaturo e insaturabile
della regola”36 la difesa dei contesti giuridici degli spazi di argomentazione e giustifi-
cazione diventa cruciale. La possibile scomparsa della giustificazione, frutto di fe-
nomeni che di recente sembrano farsi sempre più penetranti, dalla procedimental-
izzazione e tipificazione dell'accesso al giudizio al crescente formalismo processuale
a discapito del momento di argomentazione, fino alla diffusione crescente di forme
di “governo degli algoritmi”, più che rassicurare attraverso una solo apparente mag-
giore “calcolabilità”, accrescerebbe inevitabilmente l’impossibilità per il diritto di
fungere da orientamento nelle condotte sociali e di indicare il sottile crinale tra di-
mensione oggettiva e soggettiva della vulnerabilità.
34
Ivi, p. 286.
35
Ivi, pp. 292 e ss.
36
Cfr. A. Abignente, Vulnerabilità del diritto: appunti per una mappa concettuale in Pastore,
Giolo, Vulnerabilità, cit. p. 185.
331 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 331-342
ISSN: 1825-5167
ABSTRACT
The focus of the paper is the distance between the experience of vulnerability lived by all the
people in their social practices and the social conditions of vulnerability resulting from the
institution of legal orders. The social practices of mutual trust and recognition among social
actors become a neutral object of legal norms; nevertheless only from these practices of
entrustment/recognition can arise the subject’s difficult path of emancipatory autonomy. In this
sense, legal and political institution are grounded in - and preceded by - ethics and politics of
recognition of human otherness.
KEYWORDS
Social Practices, Legal Orders, Care, Entrustment, Recognition.
dimensione storico-sociale, quella politico-statuale e quella individuale/universale dei diritti
dell’uomo, M. Gauchet, La democrazia contro se stessa, Città aperta Edizioni, Troina, 2005.
14
Su tutti, cfr. il bel saggio di P. Ricoeur, Autonomia e vulnerabilità, in Id., Il giusto, Vol. 2,
EffatàEditrice, Torino 2007, pp. 94 ss.; nonché gli imprescindibili lavori di A. Honneth e J.
Anderson, Autonomia, vulnerabilità, riconoscimento e giustizia, ora in A. Carnevale, I. Strazzeri (a
cura di), Lotte, riconoscimento, diritti, Morlacchi ed., 2011, pp. 107 ss.; sul tema, cfr. anche T.
Casadei, Soggetti in contesto: vulnerabilità e diritti umani, in Id., (a cura di), Diritti umani e soggetti
vulnerabili. Violazioni, trasformazioni, aporie, Giappichelli, Torino 2012, pp. 90 ss. e il bel saggio
sui soggetti disabili come “soggetti di giustizia” di M. G. Bernardini, Disabilità, giustizia, diritto.
Itinerari tra filosofia del diritto e Disability Studies, Giappichelli, Torino 2016.
15
Alla polarità ‘classica’ dignità/autonomia è dedicata una sezione monografica (a cura di F.
Mastromartino e G. Pino) nell’ultimo numero della “Rivista di filosofia del diritto – Journal of Legal
Philosophy”, il Mulino, 1/2019, con saggi di L. d’Avack, L. Ferrajoli, F. Poggi, A. Sperti, e G. Resta,
di notevole interesse. Sul tema, cfr. anche la bella voce di G. Zanetti, Autonomia, in M. La Torre,
G. Zanetti, Altri seminari di filosofia del diritto, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2010, pp. 67 ss.
16
Sul punto, cfr. G. Preterossi, La dimensione sociale della vulnerabilità, in O. Giolo, B. Pastore
(a cura di), Vulnerabilità. Analisi multidisciplinare di un concetto, cit., pp. 205 ss., nonché il su
citato lavoro di A. Carnevale, Tecnovulnerabili. Per un’etica della sostenibilità tecnologica, cit., pp.
115 ss.
338 PIER FRANCESCO SAVONA
Anderson, A. Honneth, Autonomia, vulnerabilità, riconoscimento e giustizia, in A. Carnevale, I.
Strazzeri (a cura di), Lotte, riconoscimento, diritti, cit., nonché A. MacIntyre, Animali razionali
dipendenti, cit. e C. Larmore, Pratiche dell’io, cit.. Sotto il profilo psicologico, vedasi anche M.H.
Hoffman, Empatia e sviluppo morale, il Mulino, Bologna 2008 e il bel saggio di L. Sander, Sistemi
viventi. L’emergere della persona attraverso l’evoluzione della consapevolezza, R. Cortina ed.,
Milano 2007, nonché cfr. E. Borgna, Le emozioni ferite, Feltrinelli, Milano 2009.
20
Sulla violenza delle istituzioni, cfr. il noto lavoro di A. Margalit, La società decente, Guerini e
Associati, Milano 1998; sulla tematica foucaultiana delle norme come dispositivi di soggettivazione
(e assoggettamento/disciplinamento), oltre al classico M. Foucault, Sorvegliare e punire. Nascita
della prigione, Einaudi, Torino 1998 e Id., Microfisica del potere, Einaudi, Torino 1977, si veda di
recente P. Macherey, Il soggetto delle norme, Ombre corte, Verona 2017, e i lucidi saggi di J.
Butler, La vita psichica del potere, Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2013 e Ead., Critica della violenza etica,
Feltrinelli, Milano 2006; per una lettura critica, cfr. L. Bazzicalupo, Dispositivi e soggettivazioni,
Mimesis, Milano-Udine 2013.
21
Sulla razionalità procedurale dei sistemi giuridici, cfr. N. Luhmann, Procedimenti giuridici e
legittimazione sociale, Giuffrè, Milano 1995 e – come risposta critica al proceduralismo
funzionalista – il denso lavoro di J. Habermas, Fatti e norme. Contributo ad una teoria discorsiva
del diritto e della democrazia, cit. Oggi non può non essere al centro dell’attenzione la razionalità
funzionarista-economicista dell’apparato giuridico-burocratico dell’Unione Europea, nelle sue
vistose rigidità e incapacità a gestire con visione politica e ragionevolezza giuridica le reiterate crisi
finanziarie che da più di un decennio hanno attraversato molti dei paesi membri e sconvolto (ancor
più a causa di quella gestione burocratica rigidamente funzionalista) le condizioni di vita dei cittadini
europei degli stati in difficoltà. Sul tema ormai la letteratura è vastissima; solo per un efficace visione
del problema soprattutto giuridico, cfr. l’interessante volume collettaneo di C. Margiotta (a cura di),
Europa: diritto della crisi e crisi del diritto. Austerità, diritti, cittadinanza, il Mulino, Bologna 2018.
340 PIER FRANCESCO SAVONA
culturale da cui sono stati generati, oggettivando – come norme vigenti e cogenti –
talune presupposizioni di senso (veri e propri principi generali, resi
normativamente ‘autoevidenti’), ad es. nel mondo occidentale il principio di
autonomia del soggetto, che ne consentono la piena utilizzabilità ed efficacia da
parte delle generazioni successive alla positivizzazione, ma che nascondono e
rimuovono i percorsi di ‘riconoscimento’ da cui derivano e le grandi lotte
politiche e sociali che ne hanno consentito la rivendicazione e poi la
positivizzazione, percorsi e lotte che sono le autentiche matrici genetiche dei
diritti, ma di cui si tace o si interrompe la narrazione, la ri-memorazione22.
In effetti, si può dire che l’intero percorso di costituzionalizzazione e
internazionalizzazione dei diritti e delle libertà fondamentali sia stato messo in
campo per arginare specifici ‘vulnera’ del vivente umano che ne compromettono
o ne comprimono la vitalità e la dignità; ma essi andrebbero sempre ri-declinati (e
in ciò sta il compito innanzitutto della comunità degli interpreti del diritto)
affinché il ‘formante’ istituzionale che funge da contenitore e da ‘significante’
veicoli quella ‘eccedenza’ di senso che ne amplifichi e incrementi il significato, ne
compia quella re-iterazione che ne sancisce ad un tempo la riattualizzazione e
l’originalità del senso per cui sono sorti23.
Così, l’intera gamma dei diritti generati e nutriti dal ‘principium vitae’ “libertà”
nascono per tutelare – almeno dalle Rivoluzioni moderne del ‘600 e ‘700 in avanti
– l’esistenza umana e la sua vitalità espressiva dal ‘vulnus’ (dalla continua e
persistente esposizione al ‘vulnus’) dell’arbitrio, del dominio, della soggezione al
potere e volere altrui, che oggi è risemantizzata come non-esposizione al ‘vulnus’
della mortificazione della dignità, della umiliazione fisica o psichica, del
misconoscimento della propria ‘differenza’ vitale e culturale (di genere, socio-
culturale, religiosa..)24; i diritti invece generati e alimentati dal ‘principium vitae’
22
Sul punto, oltre ai su citati lavori di A. Honneth, Lotte per il riconoscimento.., cit. e i bei saggi
del volume curato da A. Carnevale, I. Strazzeri, Lotte, riconoscimento, diritti, cit., sul problema
della ri-memorazione, e del diritto come evento di un’etica ricostruttiva, occorre ricordare il
possente lavoro filosofico di P. Ricoeur, La memoria, la storia, l’oblio, R. Cortina, Milano 2003, da
cui scaturiscono i lavori di A. Garapon, Chiudere i conti con la storia. Colonizzazione, schiavitù,
Shoah, R. Cortina, Milano 2009 e dell’allievo J.M. Ferry, L’etica ricostruttiva, Edizioni Medusa,
Milano 2006.
23
Sul concetto di ri-semantizzazione del lessico giuridico, insistono un po’ tutte le teorie ‘critiche’
del diritto, in un’area molto ampia che va dal femminismo al post-modernismo al post-
colonialismo, ovviamente con accenti e sfumature diverse; per un completo e denso quadro di
sintesi, da ultimo, cfr. M.G. Bernardini, O. Giolo (a cura di), Le teorie critiche del diritto, Pacini
editore, Pisa 2017; in part. sul concetto di “iterazione democratica” – di derivazione derridiana –
nella sua portata gius-generativa insiste da ultimo la filosofa americana Seyla Benhabib, nei suoi
saggi ricordati, S. Benhabib, I diritti degli altri. Stranieri, residenti, cittadini, cit., e Ead., Cittadini
globali. Cosmopolitismo e democrazia, il Mulino, Bologna 2008, pp. 59 ss.
24
Sul punto, cfr. i già ricordati lavori di A. Honneth, Riconoscimento e dsprezzo. Sui
fondamenti.., cit., e A. Margalit, La società decente, cit.; per un’ampia panoramica, cfr. L. Mazzone,
Una teoria negativa della giustizia. Per un’etica del conflitto contro i mali comuni, Mimesis, Milano-
341 Sulla vulnerabilità istituita: il doppio vincolo della soggettivazione tra affidamento…
“eguaglianza” nascono per tutelare l’esistente umano e la sua vitalità espressiva dal
‘vulnus’ della discriminazione, declinato sin dai tempi di Aristotele innanzitutto
come “eguaglianza formale”, ossia trattare gli eguali in modo eguale e i differenti
in modo differente, ma che oggi viene declinato nei sensi di quel principio di
‘ragionevolezza’ che consente di ponderare caso per caso gli eventuali conflitti tra
diritti fondamentali, circoscrivendone e valutandone ‘pesi’ e valori sottostanti con
le apposite tecniche di bilanciamento adoperate dalle corti e con il principio di
‘proporzionalità’ che valuta attentamente coerenza logica tra le norme e le fonti e
congruenza con i principi costituzionali25.
Infine, i diritti politici generati e alimentati dal principio di autodeterminazione
tutelano l’esistente umano da ogni forma di eteronomia politica, e dunque dal
‘vulnus’ del dominio totalitario, autocratico, teocratico o tecnocratico o persino
democratico, nei casi di “tirannia della maggioranza”26. Oggi, andrebbero ri-
semantizzati nel senso di un’appartenenza che vada al di là della cittadinanza
statuale e si renda consapevole e militante di una politica ‘ecologica’ delle libertà e
dei diritti, a salvaguardia delle sempre più compromesse (e scarse) risorse del
pianeta, declinate come autentici ‘beni comuni fondamentali’27.
E i diritti sociali, generati dal principio del benessere sociale, tutelano infine
l’esistente umano e la sua vitalità dal ‘vulnus’ dell’“indifferenza” tra individuo e
società, tale per cui la vitalità di ciascuno non è mai prerogativa esclusiva del
soggetto ma ne va dell’intera società, che deve farsi carico di realizzare le migliori
condizioni sociali possibili per l’esplicazione della sua vitalità. Oggi andrebbero
declinati, prima ancora che nelle loro diverse concrezioni istituzionali (diritto al
Udine 2014 e T. Casadei, Il rovescio dei diritti umani. Razza, discriminazione, schiavitù,
DeriveApprodi, Roma 2016, oltre al già citato T. Casadei (a cura di), Diritti umani e soggetti
vulnerabili. Violazioni, trasformazioni, aporie, cit. in part. pp. 119 ss.
25
Sul principio di ‘ragionevolezza’ che ormai informa di sé l’intera lettura costituzionalistica dei
principi fondamentali, cfr. L. D’Andrea, Ragionevolezza e legittimazione del sistema, Giuffrè,
Milano 2005 e M. Cavino, Interpretazione discorsiva del diritto. Saggio di diritto costituzionale,
Giuffrè, Milano 2004, nonché il bel volume degli atti di un convegno milanese del 2008 di M.
Cartabia e T. Vettor, (a cura di), Le ragioni dell’uguaglianza, Giuffrè, Milano 2009; negli studi di
teoria del diritto, è stata la “svolta argomentativa” con le teorie standard di Alexy e McCormick a
farsene carico, proseguita poi dagli importanti studi di M. Atienza in Spagna; sul tema, cfr. A.
Abignente, L’argomentazione giuridica nell’età dell’incertezza, Editoriale Scientifica, Napoli 2017.
26
Sul punto, cfr. gli studi di P. Rosanvallon, Controdemocrazia. La politica nell’era della
sfiducia, Castelvecchi, Roma 2012, nonché l’interessante prospettiva di Lea Ypi, Stato e avanguardie
cosmopolitiche, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2016.
27
L’espressione è di L. Ferrajoli, nel suo recente saggio L. Ferrajoli, Manifesto per l’eguaglianza,
Laterza, Roma-Bari 2018; sul superamento della cittadinanza, e i legami cosmopoliti e ‘ecologici’,
cfr. K.A. Appiah, Cosmopolitismo. L’etica in un mondo di estranei, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007,
nonché gli interessanti studi di A. Appadurai, Il futuro come fatto culturale. Saggi sulla condizione
globale, R. Cortina Ed., Milano 2014 e le prospettive gius-ecologiste di F. Capra, U. Mattei,
Ecologia del diritto. Scienza, politica, beni comuni, Aboca S.p.A., Sansepolcro (AR) 2017, e di M.
Bookchin, L’ecologia della libertà, elèuthera, Milano 2017.
342 PIER FRANCESCO SAVONA
28
Il riferimento è al noto dibattito sociologico e filosofico tra N. Fraser e A. Honneth,
Redistribuzione o riconoscimento? Una controversia politico-filosofica, Meltemi, Roma 2007; sul
tema, cfr. il bel volume di A. Lenci, A. Carnevale, Il “sociale”della giustizia. Questioni di genere e
questioni di riconoscimento, Pensa Multimedia, Lecce 2008; v. anche, in generale, S. Zullo, La
dimensione normativa dei diritti sociali. Aspetti filosofico-giuridici, Giappichelli, Torino 2013, e,
oltre al già citato e importante L. Ferrajoli, Manifesto per l’uguaglianza, cit., il recente e lucido
saggio di D. Fassin, Le vite ineguali. Quanto vale un essere umano, Feltrinelli, Milano 2019.
29
A tal riguardo, non è un caso che le più interessanti declinazioni del pensiero gius-filosofico
contemporaneo si inscrivano nell’orizzonte dell’etica della cura e del riconoscimento (da Honneth e
Ricoeur a Fraser e Nussbaum, sino al post-femminismo di Butler e Gilligan), come si è cercato di
mostrare in queste pagine; per una visione d’insieme, cfr. J.C. Tronto, Confini morali. Un
argomento politico per l’etica della cura, Diabasis, Reggio Emilia 2006; e, da un punto di vista
filosofico più generale, cfr. i bei volumi di E. Pulcini, La cura del mondo. Paura e responsabilità
nell’età globale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2009 e il recente L. Mortari, Filosofia della cura, R.
Cortina Ed., Milano 2015.
343 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 343-360
ISSN: 1825-5167
ENRICA RIGO
Università degli Studi Roma Tre
enrica.rigo@uniroma3.it
ABSTRACT
The article discusses the notion of vulnerability implemented in asylum cases regarding gender
violence on trafficked women. The findings of a case study of 70 administrative and judicial
decisions are analysed and compared with notions of vulnerability developed by the Court of
Cassation and the European Court of Human Rights. The analysis illustrates the different role
that gender plays in the decision when considered, on the one hand, as a subjective ascription
or, on the other, as a hermeneutical category in light of which the whole legal framework
should be interpreted.
KEYWORDS
Vulnerability, gender, gender violence, asylum, international protection.
Georg Simmel (1911), Weibliche Kultur, trad. it a cura di Lucio Perucchi, in Cultura
1
344 ENRICA RIGO
una delle ragioni che radica storicamente la subordinazione delle donne nella
società. Certamente, queste brevi note potrebbero essere introdotte altrettanto
efficacemente da citazioni tratte dai lavori di storiche, giuriste o sociologhe
femministe. La scelta di introdurle con le parole di Simmel è, tuttavia, dettata
dall’importanza che il celebre Excursus sullo straniero, pubblicato a glossa del
capitolo sugli ordinamenti spaziali della società ne la Sociologia del 19082, ha per
gli studi sulle migrazioni. Nell’Excursus lo straniero è descritto da Simmel come
colui che, diversamente dal viandante, «oggi viene e domani rimane»3. La sua
essenza è data dall’«unità di vicinanza e lontananza» che lo contraddistingue in
quanto forma di relazione sociale: egli non è estraneo alla società, bensì è un
elemento del gruppo «la cui posizione immanente e di membro implica
contemporaneamente un di fuori e un di fronte».4 Seppure tratteggiato in poche
pagine, lo straniero di Simmel, coglie e coagula gli opposti della vicinanza e della
lontananza, della presenza e dell’assenza, e non sorprende, dunque, che sia stato
indicato tra le concezioni che hanno precorso approcci all’immigrazione
improntati all’idea di ibridazione e transnazionalismo, in contrapposizione
all’abitudine di considerare le migrazioni in funzione delle comunità riceventi,
come “problema” di integrazione o assimilazione.5 Nonostante la sua importanza
per gli studi sulle migrazioni, lo straniero simmeliano non ha tuttavia attirato molta
attenzione da parte della letteratura sulle migrazioni in una prospettiva di genere,
la quale non si è chiesta se lo straniero, inteso come colui che viene e domani
rimani, possa darsi indifferentemente al maschile o al femminile.
Le note che seguono propongono una riflessione sulla natura sessuata dei
regimi di controllo e governo delle migrazioni a partire dall’applicazione che gli
organi giurisdizionali e amministrativi hanno fatto del concetto di vulnerabilità. La
riflessione di Simmel si presta particolarmente bene a introdurre il tema. Non
solo per la critica del sociologo tedesco all’oggettività della modernità declinata al
maschile e, dunque, anche del diritto e dello Stato in quanto prodotti della cultura
e delle relazioni umane, ma anche per il modo in cui egli descrive e concettualizza
la vulnerabilità. Quest’ultima è sì legata alla condizione femminile, ma non per
una struttura più delicata o più debole delle donne, bensì per l’impossibilità delle
2
Georg Simmel (1908), Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die formender Vergesellshaftung,
trad. it a cura di M. Guareschi e F. Rahola, Sociologia, Meltemi Press, Milano, 2018. Sull’ influenza
di Simmel nel dibattito sulle migrazioni, si vedano Vince Marotta, Georg Simmel, the Stranger and
the Sociology of Knowledge, in «Journal of Intercultural Studies», Vol. 33, No. 6, 2012, pp. 675-
689; Simonetta Tabboni, (a cura), Vicinanza e lontananza,. Modelli e figure dello straniero come
categoria antropologica, Franco Angeli, Milano 1993.
3
Simmel, Sociologia, op. cit., p. 821.
4
Ibid.
5
Cfr. Miriana Morokvasic, Transtanional mobility and gender: a View from Post-Wall Europe,
in Morokvasic, M., Erel U. e Shinokazi K. (a cura) Crossing Borders and Shifting Boundaries. Vo.
I: Gender on the Move, Springer, Wiesbaden 2003.
345 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
Per Simmel, la natura unitaria delle donne, ossia una natura che contrasta con
la differenziazione dei ruoli sociali,7 è anche ragione della pervasività della
violenza che le colpisce e, dunque, della loro vulnerabilità. Concettualizzata in
questo modo, ovvero, come impossibilità di confinare la violenza dell’offesa a un
ambito specifico della vita, e perciò di delimitarla in modo predeterminato, la
vulnerabilità richiama nodi centrali per il dibattito filosofico giuridico. Da un lato,
essa deve essere espressa come dimensione situazionale, legata «ai momenti della
vita individuale e alle differenti modalità in cui si articolano le relazioni
intersoggettive»8, e non è riconducibile, dunque, a categorie soggettive prestabilite.
Dall’altro, la vulnerabilità è strettamente correlata a una dimensione di
dipendenza inter-relazionale. Come ha sottolineato Martha Fineman, è proprio la
messa in questione, da parte dell’esperienza umana, dell’autosufficienza e
indipendenza dei soggetti che impone di ripensare anche il soggetto giuridico alla
luce della categoria di vulnerabilità. Quest’ultima implica, infatti, la necessità di
riconoscere che poteri e privilegi sono conferiti attraverso l’operato delle
istituzioni sociali, attraverso le relazioni e la creazione di identità sociali che si
presentano talvolta come inique9.
Nella riflessione di Simmel la relazione tra vulnerabilità e sfera femminile è
legata all’impossibilità per le donne di determinare quella differenziazione sociale
che connota la sfera del maschile come sfera della laboriosità produttiva. Per
converso, pur se il sociologo non sembra pronunciarsi sul genere dello straniero,
vi sono pochi dubbi sul fatto che egli lo ritragga al maschile, nella misura in cui lo
straniero «che oggi viene e domani rimane» (enfasi mia) è colui che occupa uno
spazio produttivo. La figura tipica dell’ estraneità è, per Simmel, il commerciante
6
Simmel, Cultura femminile, op. cit., p. 34.
7
Da più parti la letteratura ha sottolineato alcune contraddizioni in Simmel che finisce con il
ricondurre la differenza tra maschile e femminile su un piano ontologico, e non semplicemente
epistemologico. Questo tema non verrà discusso in questa sede, per approfondimenti si rimanda a
Anne Witz, Georg Simmel and the Masculinity of Modernity, «Journal of Classical Sociology», Vol.
1, no.3, 2001, pp. 353-370.
8
Baldassare Pastore, Vulnerabilità, in L. Barbare, F. De Vanna (a cura) Il diritto al viaggio.
Abbecedario delle Migrazioni, Giappichelli, Torino 2018, p. 313.
9
Martha Albertson Fineman, Vulnerability and Inevitable Inequality (December 13, 2017), in
«Oslo Law Review», Vol. 4, 2017, pp133-149.
346 ENRICA RIGO
347 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
caratterizza la condizione dei richiedenti asilo preceda o segua, sia causa o effetto,
di quella marginalizzazione dallo spazio produttivo che ne caratterizza il rapporto
di dipendenza e deprivazione.
Si tratta di domande che configurano una complessità a cui queste note non
ambiscono di fornire risposte, ma solo spunti di riflessione sulle possibili chiavi di
lettura attraverso cui leggere l’applicazione della nozione di vulnerabilità nella
pratica del diritto. Il tema verrà discusso, anche alla luce dell’esperienza maturata
dalla Clinica del Diritto dell’Immigrazione e della Cittadinanza dell’Università di
Roma Tre nell’assistenza delle donne richiedenti asilo. Prendere le mosse dalla
da Simmel se, per un verso, consente di mettere a fuoco l’intreccio tra
vulnerabilità, genere e condizione delle e degli stranieri, per l’altro, ci ricorda che
nessun concetto è oggettivo, nel senso di poter essere compreso a prescindere dal
genere come costruzione sociale e culturale.
Il diritto d’asilo è probabilmente uno dei settori più fecondi dove il concetto di
vulnerabilità ha trovato applicazione, sia da parte della giurisprudenza sia, più in
generale, nella pratica del diritto ascrivibile ad organi amministrativi come le
Commissioni Territoriali per il Diritto d’Asilo o gli apparati di sicurezza pubblica.
La decisione nel caso M.S.S. v Belgio e Grecia, del 21 gennaio 201115 (per il
prosieguo M.S.S.), è considerata un punto di riferimento sul tema. Per la prima
volta, la Corte Europea dei Diritti dell’Uomo ha esteso, infatti, la definizione di
vulnerabilità a un gruppo di individui non identificabile per la discriminazione
riconducibile a un pregiudizio radicato storicamente nei loro confronti, così come
aveva fatto, per esempio, per la popolazione Rom o per soggetti appartenenti a un
gruppo sociale identificato dall’orientamento sessuale o da diverse abilità fisiche e
mentali.16
Sono diversi i passaggi della sentenza M.S.S. in cui la Corte richiama il criterio
della vulnerabilità, e vale la pena ripercorrerli brevemente. Nella decisione, la
Corte «attribuisce considerevole importanza allo status del ricorrente e, in quanto
richiedente asilo, appartenente a una popolazione particolarmente sotto-
Corte Europea dei diritti dell’uomo, decisione del 21 gennaio 2011, recueil 30696/09.
15
16
Per una ricostruzione dell’evoluzione giurisprudenziale sul tema, Lourdes Peroni e
Alexandra Timmer, Vulnerable groups: The promise of an emerging concept in European Human
Rights Convention law, in «International Journal of Constitutional Law», Vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 1056-
1085; Maria Giulia Bernardini, Vulnerabilità e disabilità a Strasburgo: il
“vulnerabile groupsapproach” in pratica, in «Ars Interpretandi», Vol.VII, no. 2, pp. 77-93.
348 ENRICA RIGO
Veronika Flegar, Vulnerability and the Principle of Non-Refoulement in the European Court
17
of Human Rights: Towards an Increased Scope of Protection for Persons Fleeing from Extreme
Poverty, in «Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice», Vol. 8, no. 2, 2016, pp. 148-169.
349 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
350 ENRICA RIGO
20
Si vedano, Direttiva 2013/32/UE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 26 giugno 2013,
recante procedure comuni ai fini del riconoscimento e della revoca dello status di protezione
internazionale; Direttiva 2013/33/UE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 26 giugno 2013,
recante norme relative all’accoglienza dei richiedenti protezione internazionale.
21
AIDA – Asylum Information Database, The concept of vulnerability in European asylum
procedures, European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 2017, accessibile a
http://www.asylumineurope.org/sites/default/files/shadow-
reports/aida_vulnerability_in_asylum_procedures.pdf
22
La fonte dello status di rifugiato è il diritto internazionale pattizio, nello specifico, la
Convenzione sullo status dei rifugiati siglata a Ginevra il 28 luglio 1951. A livello europeo, le
condizioni uniformi di applicazione dello status di rifugiato sono state specificate dalla Direttiva
2011/95/UE del Parlamento europeo e del Consiglio, del 13 dicembre 2011, recante norme
sull’attribuzione, a cittadini di paesi terzi o apolidi, della qualifica di beneficiario di protezione
internazionale, su uno status uniforme per i rifugiati o per le persone aventi titolo a beneficiare della
protezione sussidiaria, nonché sul contenuto della protezione riconosciuta (cosiddetta Direttiva
qualifiche). La Direttiva prevede anche la forma di protezione complementare della protezione
sussidiaria, anch’essa normata a livello europeo, e lascia agli Stati membri la possibilità di prevedere
una ulteriore forma di protezione umanitaria.
351 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
23
Ai sensi della definizione della Convenzione del 1951, ripresa dall’art. 2 lettera d) dalla
Direttiva qualifiche, per rifugiato si intende un «cittadino di un paese terzo il quale, per il timore
fondato di essere perseguitato per motivi di razza, religione, nazionalità, opinione politica o
appartenenza a un determinato gruppo sociale, si trova fuori dal paese di cui ha la cittadinanza e
non può o, a causa di tale timore, non vuole avvalersi della protezione di detto paese, oppure
apolide che si trova fuori dal paese nel quale aveva precedentemente la dimora abituale per le stesse
ragioni succitate e non può o, a causa di siffatto timore, non vuole farvi ritorno».
24
Ai sensi dell’art. 2 lettera f) della Direttiva qualifiche per persona avente titolo a beneficiare
della protezione sussidiaria si intende un «cittadino di un paese terzo o apolide che non possiede i
requisiti per essere riconosciuto come rifugiato ma nei cui confronti sussistono fondati motivi di
ritenere che, se ritornasse nel paese di origine, o, nel caso di un apolide, se ritornasse nel paese nel
quale aveva precedentemente la dimora abituale, correrebbe un rischio effettivo di subire un grave
danno». Il grave danno è specificato dall’art. 15 lettera a) come «la condanna o l’esecuzione della
pena di morte»; lettera b) «la tortura o altra forma di pena o trattamento inumano o degradante ai
danni del richiedente nel suo paese di origine»; lettera c) «la minaccia grave e individuale alla vita o
alla persona di un civile derivante dalla violenza indiscriminata in situazioni di conflitto armato
interno o internazionale».
352 ENRICA RIGO
353 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
29
Sul punto si consenta il rimando a Enrica Rigo, Donne attraverso il Mediterraneo. Una
prospettiva di genere sulla protezione internazionale, in «Notizie di Politeia», 124, 2016, 82-94; Id.
La protezione internazionale alla prova del genere: elementi di analisi e problematiche aperte, in
«Questione giustizia», 2, 2018, pp. 117-128.
30
Il caso di studio è stato costruito grazie ai materiali raccolti, con il consenso delle interessate,
nell’ambito del progetto Accesso alla giustizia per richiedenti asilo e titolari di protezione
internazionale, finanziato dalla Fondazione Charlemagne tra le attività della Clinica del diritto
dell’immigrazione e della cittadinanza (Clinica Legale) attiva presso l’Università di Roma Tre. Per
ragioni di riservatezza, i provvedimenti delle CT sono citati solo con la data della decisione e le
iniziali della richiedente asilo.
354 ENRICA RIGO
355 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
Due sembrano essere, dunque, i criteri sulla base dei quali la CT ha fondato le
decisioni di riconoscimento della protezione umanitaria. Il primo riguarda
l’emergere di indicatori che le richiedenti asilo possano essere vittime di tratta; il
secondo la disponibilità a entrare in una struttura protetta senza, peraltro, che la
struttura o l’eventuale programma di protezione siano meglio definiti. Entrambi i
criteri suscitano alcune perplessità, almeno per come vengono articolati nelle
motivazioni. Per quanto riguarda gli indicatori della tratta, essi sono ricondotti
nella motivazione riportata, così come in altre, a elementi che vengono descritti
nel modo seguente: «storia priva di riferimenti temporali e circostanze dettagliate,
casualità di incontro con benefattori che gratuitamente l’hanno condotta in Libia e
poi in Italia, condizioni di lavoro promesse non sufficientemente chiare». In altre
parole, gli indicatori di tratta sono rinvenuti nella stessa carenza di riferimenti
circostanziati e nella inverosimiglianza dei fatti riferiti sulla base dei quali viene
contestata la credibilità della richiedente asilo, e quindi negato status di rifugiata, o
addirittura sulla base dei quali è motivato il rigetto di ogni forma di protezione.
Per quanto riguarda, invece, la richiesta di consenso da parte della richiedente
asilo a entrare in una struttura protetta o ad aderire a un programma di
reintegrazione, presente in 7 delle 8 decisioni favorevoli al rilascio di un permesso
umanitario, è un requisito che la legge non prevede come condizione per il
riconoscimento della protezione, e che diviene eventualmente rilevante nella fase
successiva dello specifico percorso di assistenza riservati alle vittime di tratta.35 Si
tenga presente che, almeno in una delle 44 decisioni esaminate, la motivazione
del rigetto afferma «che alcuni degli elementi emersi in corso di audizione (la
giovane età, la mancanza di dettagli sulle vicende poste a fondamento
dell’espatrio, l’organizzazione del tragitto finale del viaggio) sono stati ritenuti dalla
Commissione quali indicatori della tratta di esseri umani», per concludere poi
«che non emergono, nel caso di specie, gravi motivi di carattere umanitario»36 e
decidere quindi di non riconoscere alcuna forma di protezione. La CT non
menziona esplicitamente, nella decisione ora riportata, l’ulteriore elemento del
consenso della richiedente asilo a collaborare con un programma di protezione,
tuttavia, alla luce del fatto che lo stesso provvedimento riconosce che la storia
riferita dall’interessata è compatibile con gli indicatori della tratta di esseri umani,
sembra essere proprio la mancata adesione a un ulteriore livello di collaborazione
il criterio sulla base del quale l’organo amministrativo rigetta la domanda.
Tale prassi non si registra solo presso la Commissione territoriale di Roma.
Tra le fonti esaminate durante la ricerca, alcuni provvedimenti di rigetto della
35
Le linee guida sulla protezione delle vittime di tratta del 2006 (UNHCR) chiariscono che la
protezione internazionale per le vittime di tratta è autonoma e distinta rispetto a quella prevista dal
Protocollo di Palermo, che copre aspetti diversi come quello che riguardano la privacy e l’identità
delle vittime.
36
Provvedimento della Commissione Territoriale di Roma, decisione I.M. dell’11/09/2015.
356 ENRICA RIGO
37
CT Torino del 5/07/2017; nello stesso, CT Torino del 22/08/2017.
38
Il d.lgs 251/2007 è il decreto legislativo di trasposizione nell’ordinamento italiano della
Direttiva qualifiche (cfr. supra, nota 21).
357 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
358 ENRICA RIGO
che verosimile il pericolo, in caso di suo rientro in patria, di cadere ancora vittima
di tratta, atteso il particolare sviluppo della prostituzione proprio nell’Edo State e
tenuto conto, comunque, della condizione femminile nel paese di provenienza,
notoriamente priva della necessaria tutela per le specificità di genere, e dei
conseguenti trattamenti degradanti la dignità della sua persona». L’ordinanza ha
pertanto riconosciuto alla donna la protezione sussidiaria ai sensi dell’art. 14,
lettera b), del d.lgs 251/2007 (Trib. Rm., sez. I civ., del 07/02/2017, est.
Ciavattone; in senso analogo, Trib. Rm., sez. XVIII civ., del 04/05/2018, rel.
Salvio, rg 57662/2017)
Nei casi in cui le ricorrenti abbiano riferito elementi che configurano un timore
fondato di persecuzione personale, per esempio per essere state già reclutate ai
fini dello sfruttamento sessuale, il Tribunale ha invece riconosciuto loro lo status
di rifugiate. Per esempio, nella decisione del Trib. Rm., sez. XVIII civ., del
03/05/2018, rel. Albano rg. 67145/2017, il collegio giudicante ha riconosciuto lo
status di rifugiata a una donna proveniente da Benin City che aveva dichiarato di
essersi trasferita in Italia, a Torino, dove aveva iniziato a prostituirsi per aiutare
economicamente i fratelli in patria. Racconto che non era stato considerato
credibile dalla Commissione territoriale di Roma e che, in sede processuale, è
stato confermato dalla relazione di una organizzazione in supporto alle vittime di
tratta. Sulla base di tali elementi, il Tribunale ha stabilito che «Non vi è dubbio,
pertanto che l’odierna ricorrente sia stata vittima di una persecuzione personale e
diretta per l’appartenenza a un gruppo sociale (ovvero in quanto donna), nella
forma di “atti specificamente diretti contro un genere sessuale” (art, 7, comma
secondo, lettera f, d.lgs 251/2007) e che la sua vicenda personale narrata le dia
diritto allo status di rifugiato poiché vittima di tratta». La motivazione precisa, poi,
che ai sensi della legge e della giurisprudenza di legittimità responsabili della
persecuzione possono essere anche soggetti non statuali se le autorità statali non
possono o non vogliono fornire protezione: «Sebbene, infatti, il quadro normativo
nigeriano preveda forme di tutela a favore delle vittime di tratta, tali misure,
considerata anche l’estensione e l’incidenza del fenomeno nel paese, non possono
essere assicurate con certezza ed efficacia tali da scongiurare il fenomeno
rappresentato, ed il rischio ad esso connesso, stante anche la generalizzata
corruzione delle forze di polizia nel paese». Il decreto riconduce, dunque,
esplicitamente la tratta agli atti di violenza specificamente rivolti contro un genere
sessuale, i quali, anche ai sensi della Convenzione di Istanbul40, devono essere
presi in debita considerazione quali presupposti della protezione internazionale.
40
Convenzione del Consiglio d’Europa sulla prevenzione e la lotta contro la violenza nei
confronti delle donne e la violenza domestica, firmata a Instanbul l’11 maggio 2011. L’art.60 della
Convenzione dispone che gli Stati firmatari «adottano le misure legislative o di altro tipo necessarie
per garantire che la violenza contro le donne basata sul genere possa essere riconosciuta come una
forma di persecuzione ai sensi dell’articolo 1, A (2) della Convenzione relativa allo status dei
359 La vulnerabilità nella pratica del diritto d’asilo: una categoria di genere?
rifugiati del 1951 e come una forma di grave pregiudizio che dia luogo a una protezione
complementare/sussidiaria».
41
Cfr., Arbel, E., Douveregne, C. and Millbank, J., Introduction, in Arbel, E., Douveregne, C.
and Millbank, J. (eds) Gender in Refugee Law. From the margins to the centre, Routledge, London,
2014.
42
Cfr., supra nota 22.
43
Mariana Valverde, Jurisdiction And Scale: Legal ‘Technicalities’ as Resources for Theory, in
«Social e Legal Studies», 18, 2, 2009, pp. 139-157.
360 ENRICA RIGO
Non vi è dubbio che nel caso della tratta a scopo di sfruttamento sessuale ci si
trovi di fronte a una violenza diretta contro un genere sessuale, anche quando a
esserne vittima non sono le donne. Nell’atteggiamento delle Commissioni
territoriali, tuttavia, il genere emerge come una categoria volta a ricercare
un’ascrizione soggettiva della coppia genere-vulnerabilità, quasi che le donne
richiedenti asilo dovessero performativamente confermare una qualità di vittime.
Al contrario, nelle argomentazioni della giurisprudenza di merito, il genere è
piuttosto la lente attraverso il quale opera la ricostruzione esegetica, sia delle
norme, sia delle situazioni soggettive da tutelare. Non una performatività di genere
dunque, ma la coppia concettuale normatività-vulnerabilità letta attraverso il
genere in quanto categoria analitica44, alla luce della quale l’intero quadro
legislativo deve essere interpretato.
Non si può tacere, a conclusione di queste note, che il legislatore ha di recente
abrogato la protezione umanitaria con la legge 132 del 2018, di conversione del
decreto legge 113 del 2018, sostituendo l’istituto di carattere generale con una
serie di permessi speciali che tipicizzano le situazioni di vulnerabilità. Anche in
questo caso la scelta è dunque di costringere la nozione di vulnerabilità all’interno
di una serie di figure tipiche, ascritte soggettivamente. Si tratta di una scelta
legislativa, e dunque politica, che tuttavia non esime da una sua valutazione a
partire da una posizione epistemologica di genere, tenuto conto del crescente
numero di donne che, in Italia, si trovano nella situazione vulnerabile di
richiedenti asilo e delle conseguenze che tale scelta avrà sulle loro esistenze.
Come ci ricorda Simmel, non esiste infatti alcun prodotto della cultura umana, e
dunque alcuna normativa, che possa arrogarsi un’obbiettività che prescinde dalla
distinzione tra maschile e femminile.
44
Cfr. Joan W. Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis, in «The American
Historical Review», Vol. 91, no. 5., 1986, pp. 1053-1075.
361
Symposium
Hans Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 2018
362
363 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 363-369
ISSN: 1825-5167
CONTEXTUALIZING HANS
LINDAHL’S LEGAL-PHILOSOPHICAL
OEUVRE
FERDINANDO G. MENGA
Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
ferdinandogiuseppe.menga@unicampania.it
ABSTRACT
This introduction to the Symposium devoted to Hans Lindahl’s book Authority and the
Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion aims at delivering an overview of his legal-
philosophical theory by picking out some of its structural features, orienting and guiding
readers who are interested in in what way his scholarship innovates in the debate on the
constitution of legal orders in a global setting.
KEYWORDS
Legal orders, Globalization, Contingency, Limits/Borders, Lindahl.
In 2014 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics hosted a first critical exchange
section1 to Hans Lindahl’s work by discussing his inaugural and important
monograph, Fault Lines of Globalization. Legal Order and the Politics of A-
Legality.2 This conceptually dense and critically well received book,3 which was
even defined – following Neil Walker’s phrasing – as «a pathbreaking study […] in
the world of legal theory»,4 was to be understood, however, as a provisional and
unclosed – although large and extremely detailed – conceptual attempt to analyze
how legal orders are structured and manifest themselves in a global setting.
1
Cf. Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics 16, 2, 2014, pp. 919-1025.
2
H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization. Legal Order and the Politics of A-Legality, Oxford,
Oxford University Press 2013.
3
Besides the Symposium in E&P, other critical exchange sections to the book have been
published in: Contemporary Political Theory (Dec. 2015) and Jurisprudence. An International
Journal of Legal and Political Thought (7, 2, 2016).
4
H. Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press 2018.
364 FERDINANDO G. MENGA
II
7
Cf. H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., chapt. 1.
8
H. Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., pp. 137ff.
9
In this respect, Lindahl’s overall reading of the constitutive structure of legal orders – as
expressively developed in Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion (cf. chapt. 3)
– is based on the co-operating of three intertwined dimensions: collective, pragmatic and normative,
whereby the latter represents – with some license of simplification – the never accomplished
crystallization of the former two dimensions.
10
Cf. H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., pp. 77ff.
11
Cf. ibid., pp. 80ss. and Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., pp.
137s.
12
Cf. H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., p. 234.
13
Ibid., p. 115.
14
Ibidem.
366 FERDINANDO G. MENGA
III
IV
A second line of implications follows from the first: if legal orders are
irreducibly contingent, limited, and modifiable, then this calls for a more precise
specification as to how legal orders are limited and transformable. Lindahl
investigation shows two things in this respect: firstly, it shows that the limitedness
of any given order specifically means the insuperable limitedness in membership,
content, space, and time. To put it otherwise: any imaginable order cannot avoid
15
In the use of the semantic of ownness and strangeness clearly transpires Lindahl’s reference to
Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenological doctrine as one of the major sources of philosophical
inspiration for his work.
16
These issues are extremely well developed by Lindahl in his Reply to Critics.
17
Cf. H. Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., p. 108.
18
Cf. H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., p. 30 and Authority and the Globalisation of
Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., p. 47.
19
Cf. H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., pp. 153ff.
367 Contextualizing Hans Lindahl’s Legal-Philosophical Oeuvre
establishing, qua order, who ought to do what, where, and when.20 Secondly, the
transformation of any given order takes place exactly under the condition that a
demand for its modification to take place, thereby calling it into question and
intimating a new organization or shaping of its extant boundaries.21
According to Lindahl, however, the fundamental element that emerges here is
represented by the fact that such a demand can by no means be seized if one
simply remains within the legal/illegal bi-partition typical of the way in which legal
orders are usually conceived. Indeed, a demand for transformation cannot be
merely understood as only “within” the order, or only “outside” it. Instead – as the
author puts it –, this demand is to be conceived of as «a-legal»,22 i.e. as deriving
from a normative claim that registers in the legal order as legal or illegal (and is in
that sense “inside” the order), yet also questions both poles of the distinction
between the legal and illegal. In this other sense it is “outside” order, thereby
opening up possibilities of the legal order which it could realize while also
intimating possibilities that lie beyond its scope of transformation.
In the context of a comprehensive definition, Lindahl delineates a-legality as
follows:
Legal orders structure the real as either legal or illegal. I dub “strange”
behavior or situations the domain of a-legality, where the “a” of a-legality
does not refer to legal disorder, which is intelligible in the form of illegality,
hence as a negative determination of legality. Instead, it refers to another
legal order that organizes the legal/illegal distinction differently, hence
structures reality in a way that is unintelligible for the order it questions. A-
legality refers to an emergent normative order that is strange by dint of
challenging how a given legal order draws the spatial, temporal, subjective,
and material boundaries through which it configures what counts as (il)legal
behavior’.23
Given the central role that the transgression of boundaries plays for the
understanding of the phenomenon of a legal order’s alteration, an accurate
phenomenological inquiry becomes necessary for Lindahl, such that one cannot
be theoretically appeased by the simple attestation that challenges generally lead to
a modification of order. To seize the transformative drives taking place along the
boundaries of order requires, instead, a careful analysis as to the ways and
intensities whereby boundaries are accessed and challenged.
This gives rise, in Lindahl’s investigation, to a structural differentiation as to
how boundaries manifest themselves and can be transgressed. According to this
20
Cf. ibid., esp. Part 1.
21
Cf. ibid., p. 37.
22
Ibidem.
23
H. Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law (Julius Stone Address)” in: Sydney Law Review
41, 1, 2019, pp. 8-9.
368 FERDINANDO G. MENGA
differentiation, boundaries may appear as borders, limits and also as fault lines. In
order to not transcend the space appropriate to a short introduction, I cannot
comment here on the typology of “fault lines”.24 What can be said on borders and
limits boils down to this: while borders are necessary elements of territorial states,
they are not fundamental features of all legal orders. Borders therefore may be
possibly overcome, thereby giving rise to a borderless legal order. Yet the same
does not hold for limits.25 Limits are, instead, a fundamental trait of any
imaginable legal order, such that all legal orders cannot institute themselves absent
the performing of an inclusion and exclusion, whereby an inside and an outside –
the realm of an “own” and of a “strange” – is produced. This entails that legal
orders may be borderless but not unlimited.26
Regardless of the forms through which they manifest themselves or are
challenged, and even though they may be transformed, the boundaries of legal
orders can never be surpassed or incorporated into a «all-inclusive»27 formation,
whereby limits are erased permanently: the cleavage into an inside and an outside
is a constitutive feature of legal orders as such.
A third and final consideration follows from this if one draws on Lindahl’s
trajectory of thinking: a universal, global or total order in its claim to finally or
prospectively overcome the inside/outside distinction is not a viable option.28 It is
only under the false premise that state borders, and not limits, are the
fundamental feature of legal orders that one may come to the conclusion that
globalized legal orders can appear to have an inside without an outside. Yet, this is
indeed a false premise since limits, not borders, constitute the «ingredient feature
of all legal orders».29
As one can easily grasp, Lindahl’s phenomenological thrust displays here all its
deconstructive potential, especially in opposition to the current broadly endorsed
assumption in political and legal studies, according to which, in a global setting, we
are nowadays moving towards a configuration of an all-encompassing legal order,
e.g. a global regime of human rights. In opposition to this more or less
unquestioned assumption, Lindahl’s analysis seeks to show how any universal
24
On this point see H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, cit., pp. 174 ss.
25
Cf. H. Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., pp. 25 ss.
26
Cf. ibid., p. 32.
27
Ibid., p. 43.
28
Cf. ibid., chapt. 4-7.
29
Ibid., p. 26.
369 Contextualizing Hans Lindahl’s Legal-Philosophical Oeuvre
claim entailed in emergent global legal orders remains exactly what it is, i.e. only a
claim which cannot be actualized.
Therefore, all kinds of global law, qua law, must have – as Lindahl puts it in the
title of the annual Julius Stone Address delivered in 2018 at the Sydney School of
Law – an «inside vis-à-vis an outside».30
30
H. Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., p. 6.
371 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 371-381
ISSN: 1825-5167
A CRYPTO-LIBERALISM OF
COLLECTIVE SELF-RESTRAINT?
ON LINDAHL’S AUTHORITY AND THE
GLOBALISATION OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION
ALESSANDRO FERRARA
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Alessandro.Ferrara@uniroma2.it
ABSTRACT
The author argues that in Lindahl’s Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclu-
sion, and also in his Julius Stone Address “Inside and Outside Global Law”, one can find a) a
great rebuttal to the once fashionable deconstructionist fantasies about “multitudes” (Hardt and
Negri) and to a variously termed “community of difference” (Nancy, Blanchot, Esposito,
Agamben) that excludes nothing and no one; b) an interesting concept of law as linked with col-
lective action; c) an ingenious questioning of the vexed binary of representative and direct de-
mocracy. At the same time, Lindahl’s theory is argued to be susceptible of significant improve-
ment if the central notion of a-legality were to be defined in a non-ambiguous way, if the pres-
ently unclear relation of his guiding principle of the “dutiful restraint of majorities” to political
liberalism were to be spelled out, and if his counterintuitive blessing of a-legal conduct with the
insignia of constituent power were to be backed up by a stronger justification.
KEYWORDS
Legality; constituent power; community; liberalism; collective self-restraint
It is a great pleasure to comment on Hans Lindahl’s thought-provoking book
Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion. It is a very rich text,
with so many distinct points that it is impossible to do justice to even a significant
number of them. I will then have to be selective and focus on what from my angle
– as a political philosopher schooled in Rawls’s “political liberalism” and Haber-
mas’s deliberative democracy – seems most challenging and ground-breaking. I’ll
focus on three points: 1. Lindahl’s sobering message to the philosophies of multi-
tude and difference; 2. the notion of a-legality 3. the imperative of restraining the
self-assertion of majorities and preserving the strange in our midst.
372 ALESSANDRO FERRARA
The book battles on many fronts. The overall message is a very sobering one in
the end. To radical, cosmopolitan-revolutionary critics of the present form of
globalization, like Hardt and Negri, who long for a cosmopolis of the multitude,
antagonistic to the global capitalist economy and integrated by a form of law that
includes everyone and excludes no one, Lindahl breaks the news that “no such le-
gal order is possible”1 and that “if the multitude is to overturn global capitalism, it
can only do so by way of a taking place that includes and excludes”.2 All legal or-
ders, not just the global one emerging before our eyes, are predicated on some
kind of exclusion. Domestic legal orders exclude what is territorially foreign, rela-
tive to some physical border. Global regimes of law (for example, WTO and HR)
misleadingly seem to exclude no one because they recognize no territorially exter-
nal domain, but they also exclude, by way of marginalizing the “strange”. Alien
practices within their midst, to the extent that they are “un-ruly” or “im-proper”,
coalesce as an internal limit. “Not all legal orders are bordered”, but all certainly
are “spatially limited”.3 Indeed, as Lindahl argues, “it makes no sense to secern lit-
eral and metaphorical forms of legal inclusion and exclusion. The WTO’s enact-
ment of a global market, and the contestation thereof by the KRRS [Karnataka
State Farmers’ Association], suggests that legal obligations, to the extent that they
presuppose a reference to the limited (rather than bordered) unity a collective
calls its own space”.4
The roots of such inwardly-directed, as opposed to outwardly-directed, exclu-
sion reach much deeper than the political will of powerful stakeholders or the log-
ic of capitalism. These roots reach all the way down to the “basic function” of a le-
gal order. According to Lindahl, if considered from an angle different from legal
positivism, a legal order is a “pragmatic order” that coordinates the consociates’
actions by determining “who ought to do what, where, and when”.5 As all pragmat-
ic structures, also a legal order has a point, a finalité (to use the language of the
EU): the point of the WTO is to bring about “free global trade”, the point of the
ICC is to prosecute “the most serious crimes of concern to the international
community”.6 (6). This “point” determines “what is important to joint action” and
thus worth including. When such point is contested, the protesters appear “as
1
H. Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, Julius Stone Address, in Sydney Law Review,
2019, 41/1, 2.
2
H. Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2018), 193.
3
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 5.
4
Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., 29.
5
Ibid., 65.
6
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 6.
373 A Crypto-Liberalism of Collective Self-Restraint? On Lindahl’s Authority …
strange, that is, as resisting intelligibility on the basis of how the collective struc-
tures reality”.7
As Lindahl rightly suggests, this pragmatic approach to law – dubbed IACA by
him, an acronym standing for “institutionalized and authoritatively mediated col-
lective action” – sinks its roots in a narrative view of collective identity, or “differ-
ence”, “in the process of telling a story about ourselves ‘as’ being about this or
about that”. Drawing on Benedict Anderson – but the same could have been said
with reference to Cover’s “nomos and narrative”8 – “narrativity explains why all
groups are imagined communities, even a group of two persons: to imagine a
community is to tell a story that creates/recreates a collective by answering the
question: What is/ought our joint action to be about?”.9
This is a point of broad philosophical interest. Not just Hardt and Negri ro-
manticize a multitude, structured as a centerless network, set against and eventual-
ly victorious over the one-willed “people” typical of the domestic rule of law, and
victorious over the neoliberal global Empire as an equally centerless network – the
world as the stage of a gigantic, if unseemly, epic “battle of the networks”: multi-
tude against empire. Lindahl’s point efficaciously rebuts an entire philosophical
tradition originating in Derrida’s, and later in post-Derridean deconstructionism à-
la-Nancy, as well as in their poor relation, so-called “Italian-theory” of Esposito
and Agamben. Within this variegated tradition, the “irreducible plurality of the
multitude” is renamed “difference”. Communitas and the “coming community”,
the “inoperative community” and the “inavowable community” may replace
Negri’s multitude,10 but the blind spot is the same: no awareness that agency, in-
cluding the collective agency coalescing in legal systems, requires a “point”, and le-
gal regimes exclude competing “points” but also the “pointlessness” of pure dif-
ference. Community without a “point” becomes a self-defeating notion, haunted
by two interrelated problems. First, when defined through the shared exposure to
finitude of its members, community paradoxically loses its difference and be-
comes synonymous with the human condition, with humanity. There is no way of
rescuing any sense in which this community is different from any other, or its ex-
istence now differs from its existence one thousand years ago. Second, also the
lower threshold that separates the inoperative, inavowable, coming, munus-
connected community from random and transient human groupings can hardly
7
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 7.
8
R. Cover, The Supreme Court 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative, (1983) Faculty
Scholarship Series. Paper n. 2705.
9
Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., 69.
10
See M. Blanchot, The Inavowable Community (1983) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1988); J.L. Nancy, The Inoperative Community (1986) (Minneapolis: University of Minneso-
ta Press, 1991); G. Agamben, The Coming Community (1990) (Minneapolis: University of Minne-
sota Press, 1993); R. Esposito, Communitas. The Origin and Destiny of Community, (1998) (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
374 ALESSANDRO FERRARA
VARIETIES OF “A-LEGALITY”
Second, let me focus on the notion of a-legality, central for Lindahl’s project.
Fresh insight into the nature of authority is offered here. In order to coordinate ac-
tion, someone has to outline the general point of joint action, establish whether
our present conduct favors or hampers the attainment of that “point”, and must
deal with deviant action.12 Authority does precisely what the romantic extollers of
centerless multitude and communitas are bound to miss: it monitors and reinter-
prets the “limit between collective self and other-than-self”.13 Inevitably, for Lin-
dahl to represent who we are always amounts to including or excluding someone
from joint action or, in other words, with establishing what is legal, illegal or a-
legal.
Authority so conceived is integral to the “IACA model” of law as institutional-
ized and authoritatively mediated collective action. Furthermore, authority and law
closely relate to representation, insofar as “the unity implied in the group perspec-
tive of a ‘we together’ is always and necessarily a represented unity”,14 to which no
direct access is possible. Interestingly, in a move reminiscent of Mead’s intersub-
jective theory of the subject, Lindahl suggests that a “we” never has direct access to
its constitutive unity, that which makes it that collectivity. Representation is rele-
vant in that such access is mediated by representations that others form about
11
On this point, see A. Ferrara “The Dual Paradox of Authenticity in the 21st Century”, in Th.
Claviez, K. Imesch, B. Sweers (eds.), Critique of Authenticity (Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon
Press, 2019, forthcoming).
12
Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., 2-3.
13
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 8.
14
Ibid., 11.
375 A Crypto-Liberalism of Collective Self-Restraint? On Lindahl’s Authority …
“us”. There is a priority of the “us” over the “we” – like a priority of the “me” over
the “I” is presupposed by Mead. As Mead famously put it, “the individual experi-
ences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly, from the particular stand-
points of other individual members of the same social group, or from the general-
ized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs. For he enters
his own experience as a self or individual, not directly or immediately, not by be-
coming a subject to himself, but only in so far as he first becomes an object to
himself and he becomes an object to himself only by taking the attitudes of other
individuals toward himself”.15
An important consequence of this approach to law and agency is that because
there is no essentialized unity to provide a touchstone, representations of “us” are
contestable. Questionability (and actual questioning by “a-legal” groups) then leads
collectivities to respond ever anew to challenges about the point of being together,
regardless whether these challenges arise from within or without. In a sense, col-
lective selves are never prior to the other-than self and are always ex-centric, in that
“they begin elsewhere than in themselves”. Even the “first act” that gets a collective
going has a responsive structure: it “must come second if it is to be the first act”.16
Constituent power, Lindahl convincingly argues, cannot be conceived as an abso-
lute Prime Mover without causing us “fall prey to political Cartesianism”.17 How-
ever, if constituent power is indeed “always under law”, to put it with Michelman,18
rather than above the law – as a long tradition from Sieyes to Schmitt has under-
stood it – there remains to be determined which law constituent power is under. It
seems to me that in order to avoid both “political Cartesianism” and the self-
contradictory subjection of constituent power to a “law” that constitutes it, one
could understand the responsiveness of constituent power as responsiveness to an
exemplary normativity, unique to the political subject but, like any external law,
not at the subject’s disposal. In the tradition of political philosophy, that unique
and exemplary normativity has taken the form of what Rousseau’s legislator
should track and convince his fellow citizens to pursue or what Rawls has identi-
fied as a view of justice being “most reasonable for us”.19
15
G.H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934), edited
and with an introduction by Ch. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 138.
16
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 13.
17
Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., 408.
18
F. Michelman, “Always Under Law?”, Constitutional Commentary, 1995, 12, 2, 227-47.
19
See J.J. Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762), in The Social Contract and Discourse on the
Origin of Inequality, edited by L.G. Crocker (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967), 46; J. Rawls,
“Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, Journal of Philosophy, 1980, 88, 519. On exemplary
normativity as it applies in the public realm, see A. Ferrara, The Force of the Example. Explora-
tions in the Paradigm of Judgment (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 62-79, and “Ex-
emplarity in the Public Realm”, Law & Literature, 2018, 30, 3, 387-399.
376 ALESSANDRO FERRARA
In the case of this vagrant’s entering a restaurant, demanding a meal for which
he would never pay, and inviting the waiter to share it with him, we can imagine a
threefold but convergent critique of Lindahl’s analysis, coming from as diverse
philosophers as Searle, Wittgenstein and Husserl. Law as institutionalized collec-
tive action is a human practice. Like any other human practice, it unfolds against
20
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 16. See also Authority and the Globalisation
of Inclusion and Exclusion, cit., 109-110.
21
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 17.
22
H. Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization. Legal Order and the Politics of A-Legality (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1.
377 A Crypto-Liberalism of Collective Self-Restraint? On Lindahl’s Authority …
378 ALESSANDRO FERRARA
24
B. Ackerman, We the People. Volume 2: Transformations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1998) 154; see also ibidem, 9 and 22-23; and “The Living Constitution”, Harvard Law
Review, Vol. 120, No. 7 (May, 2007), pp. 1737-1812. More recently, Ackerman has again made use
of this key-concept in Revolutionary Constitutions. Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 34.
25
For a discussion of the various meanings and gradients of “unconventional adaptation”, see A.
Ferrara, “Unconventional Adaptation and the Authenticity of a Constitution”, in R. Albert (ed.), xxx
(Oxford: Hart, 2019, forthcoming).
379 A Crypto-Liberalism of Collective Self-Restraint? On Lindahl’s Authority …
380 ALESSANDRO FERRARA
tion”: differently than for Schmitt, for Lindahl “the exception radically questions a
rule by raising a normative claim that registers as legal or illegal within the order,
yet resists inclusion whether as legal or illegal. In a word, the exception is what
manifests itself as strange to a legal order: the strong dimension of a-legality”.31
While for Schmitt the exceptional measure aims at drawing a line that excludes
the strange as enemy, for Lindahl the exception is aimed at including the other
without assimilating her to one of us.
It seems to me that as far as the overarching principle of “collective self-
restraint”, and two of these directives, are concerned, we are on a plain liberal
ground. Even the third directive could be reconciled with liberalism, if we only
think of the institution of “pardon”, which falls entirely under the heading of what
Locke used to call “the prerogative”, or a discretionary exercise of political judg-
ment aimed at filling the gaps that necessarily all humanly imperfect rule of law
leaves open. Accommodating the other translates into classic limits to the power
of majorities, with a sprinkle of multicultural “exemptions”, in order to preserve a
plural society. As John Rawls, famously put it, “the zeal to embody the whole truth
in politics is incompatible with an idea of public reason that belongs with demo-
cratic citizenship”.32 However, in the index of Authority and the Globalisation of
Inclusion and Exclusion surprisingly there is no entry for liberalism, and all the
entry for “rights” mentions, is “see human rights”, as if human rights were the al-
pha and the omega of limiting the collective self-assertion of majorities. In my
opinion, such neglect of properly locating his effort in relation to political, as op-
posed to classical atomistic and “comprehensive”, liberalism is one of the main la-
cunae of Lindahl’s argument, alongside a somewhat dubious romanticizing of
strangeness. Lindahl adds: “even when exercising self-restraint … a (global) collec-
tive continues to have an outside”. The principle that should inspire a non-
oppressive legal regime then is: “set collective boundaries in such a way that they
do not eliminate the strange (in ourselves)”33 – as though the strange always con-
veyed a positive message. No one is stranger and more disquieting than Steve
Bannon.
Finally, the “strange” obtains a surprising extra-bonus: namely, the glorious la-
bel of “constituent power”. No constitution, according to Lindahl, can miraculous-
ly neutralize the struggles for representation and recognition and exorcise the
“strange” within the legal order. To this “internal outside”, Lindahl offers the illus-
trious qualification of being “the constituent power available to alter- and anti-
globalization movements”. Constituent power qua “primordial manifestation of
collective self-assertion” belongs in a collective’s inception, but it is also “a-legal
31
Ibid., 344.
32
J. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, in Political Liberalism (1993). Expanded edi-
tion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 442.
33
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit., 28.
381 A Crypto-Liberalism of Collective Self-Restraint? On Lindahl’s Authority …
CONCLUSION
To sum up, in Lindahl’s Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Ex-
clusion and in his Julius Stone Address “Inside and Outside Global Law”, one
can find a) a great rebuttal to once-fashionable deconstructionist fantasies about
“multitudes” and to a variously termed “community of difference” that excludes
nothing and no one; b) an interesting concept of law as linked with collective ac-
tion; c) a fabulous questioning of the vexed binary of representative and direct
democracy. At the same time, Lindahl’s argument would be significantly improved
if his central notion of a-legality were to be defined in a non-ambiguous way, if the
presently unclear relation of his guiding principle of the “dutiful restraint of major-
ities” to political liberalism were to be spelled out, and if his counterintuitive bless-
ing of a-legal conduct with the insignia of constituent power were to be backed up
by a stronger justification.
34
Ibid., 32.
383 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 383-390
ISSN: 1825-5167
THOMAS FOSSEN
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
t.fossen@phil.leidenuniv.nl
ABSTRACT
This contribution develops two objections to Hans Lindahl’s legal philosophy, as exhibited in
his Authority and the Globalization of Inclusion and Exclusion. First, his conception of constit-
uent power overstates the necessity of violence in initiating collective action. Second, his rejec-
tion of the distinction between participatory and representative democracy on the grounds that
participation is representation is misleading, and compromises our ability to differentiate quali-
tatively among various forms of (purportedly) democratic involvement. Both problems stem
from the same root. They result from conflating two distinct senses of ‘representation’: acting-
for-someone (or representative agency) and portraying-something-as-something (or representa-
tion-as).
KEYWORDS
Representation, democracy, constituent power, collective action, law
Hans Lindahl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion (Cambridge: Cam-
1
bridge University Press, 2018). All in-text page numbers refer to this work.
384 THOMAS FOSSEN
specific form of collective action. At each of these levels of analysis, the book con-
cerns the politics of representation because Lindahl argues that representation in-
evitably operates by including and excluding (in a complex, dynamic way: includ-
ing also what is excluded and excluding what is included), and he seeks to come to
terms with the fundamental contestability that follows from this.
I find much to learn and little to disagree with in Lindahl’s conception of law,
including the role of representation therein. My critical remarks focus on two ar-
guments that Lindahl advances which are perhaps tangential to legal theory, but
pertinent to political theory. The first claim is about the nature of collective action:
it essentially involves violence. This has to do with Lindahl’s view of constituent
power. The second claim concerns democracy. Lindahl maintains that the distinc-
tion between participatory and representative democracy is specious because all
democracy involves representation. Both claims, I will argue, are problematic.
The first leads to an overly bellicose view of collective action, which obscures the
possibility of constituent power in the mode of invitation. And the second com-
promises our ability to distinguish qualitatively among various forms of (purport-
edly) democratic involvement. Moreover, I’ll try to show that the cause of both
problems is the same: they result from conflating two distinct senses of ‘represen-
tation’: acting-for-someone (or representative agency) and portraying-something-as-
something (or representation-as). Lindahl’s analysis of representation in the sense
of portrayal is more careful and sophisticated than much of the literature on rep-
resentation in political theory that I am familiar with, particularly in attending to
the dynamics of representing-something-as-something, But if the ‘as’ tends to gets
lost in contemporary political theory, it seems to me that Lindahl makes the op-
posite mistake of treating this particular sense of the word (portraying-something-
as-something) as the only sense there is.
1. REMARKS ON ‘REPRESENTATION’
Let me start with a reminder: many languages have various words that translate
as ‘representation’ in English. This speaks to the polysemy of representation: the
word has multiple meanings. Two senses are crucial in the present context: the
sense of acting-for-someone in the capacity of a representative, as an MP might
represent a constituency or a lawyer a client (vertegenwoordigen in Dutch and ver-
treten in German), and the sense in which a picture might represent something:
portraying-something-as-something (voorstellen and darstellen). Call the former
representative agency, and the latter portrayal or representation-as. Both are polit-
ically salient. At an abstract level, both senses involve rendering present in some
sense what is also absent. But it is important not to conflate them.
385 Collective Action, Constituent Power, and Democracy: On Representation in H. Lindahl’s …
These senses don’t just come apart semantically, but also logically. When we
speak of representative roles, such as when an MP is said to be the representative
of her constituency, or the government of “the people”, the posited relation of
representation is dyadic: x represents y. But to speak of a picture as portraying
something in one way or another is to posit a triadic relation: x represents y as z.
This is true also for discursive representation-as, e.g. “the MP portrays the plan as
being contrary to the public interest”.2
Recognizing the triadic structure of representation-as is vital to understanding
the dynamics (and politics) of portrayal. What is represented as thus-and-so can
always be represented differently. This is also central to Lindahl’s analysis: “Rep-
resentation always discloses something as this, rather than as that, which entails
that it is not possible to include without excluding” (6). This brings out the crucial
“difference between the interpreted and the interpretation” “between something
and its disclosure as something” (7). Likewise any particular representation-as can
be taken to be about this, or instead about that. Any portrayal is subject to inter-
pretation, and therefore contestable, both with respect to what it is a representa-
tion of (its referent) and what it is represented as—how it is characterized.
We fully agree about representation-as, I believe. But in my view, Lindahl is
too hasty to claim that all representation is to be understood along these lines:
“representation is indissolubly representation of (something) and representation as
(this or that)” (109). This overextends his insightful analysis, and misses the dyadic
structure of relations of representative agency: if I call someone a representative of
some constituency, I posit a relation with two terms. It makes no sense to call
someone the “representative” of her constituency as thus-and-so. Of course the
representative may represent her constituency as having such-and-such interests,
but so may a journalist. We have now switched back to the sense of portrayal. It
may be true that the sense of representation-as is ontologically more fundamental
than representative agency, in that the roles of representative and constituent de-
pend on being portrayed. But that does not entail that, conceptually speaking, rep-
resenting, in the sense of acting-for-someone, can be reduced to representing in
the sense of portraying (representing-as).
With this in the back of our minds, let’s turn to the first claim I wish to discuss,
which is about the form of power that animates collective action. Lindahl argues
2
I develop this point and some implications for theoretical disputes about representative de-
mocracy and constituent power in my “Constructivism and the Logic of Political Representation”,
American Political Science Review 113, no.3 (2019): 824-837.
386 THOMAS FOSSEN
that law is a specific form of collective action, and collective action draws on and is
sustained by a certain form of power: constituent (or constituting) power—the
power through which groups or collectives are brought into being, as opposed to
the constituted power of an established collective. On Lindahl’s conception, con-
stituent power operates essentially through a kind of dissimulated annexation. An-
nexation, because Lindahl holds that all collective action stems from a moment of
illicit appropriation, a taking or seizure. Someone has to take the initiative to say
“we” in order to institute—to represent—“us” as a collective. Insofar as the initiative
succeeds, the addressees are swept up into a collective, and this ineluctably carries
an element of violence. This moment of violence is then veiled because in order
to succeed the initiatory act must present itself as legitimate. And in legitimating it-
self, Lindahl believes, it must appeal to the collective agent that it seeks to bring
about. The initiator thus initiates while pretending that the initiative has already
taken place.
Lindahl sees this bootstrapping conundrum as characteristic of all collective ac-
tion (and consequently all law): a collective must, but cannot, authorize its own ini-
tiation. “Representation deploys a paradox: a foundational act of inclusion and ex-
clusion can only originate a putative collective unity to the extent that it succeeds
in representing an original unity” (292). The radical implication Lindahl draws is
that violence is at the root of all collective action, hence all law: “To call attention
to the moment of seizure inherent to representation is to insist that violence, even
if a productive (but never only productive) violence, is necessarily ensconced in all
legal orders” (181).
Is it true that all collective action, by definition, rests on dissimulated annexa-
tion? This is no doubt a common, perhaps pervasive, mode of constituent power.
But is it true as a matter of conceptual necessity? We need to carefully examine
the sense or senses of representation involved.
It seems to me there are two distinct ideas running through Lindahl’s argu-
ment: a thought about collective ontology and a normative claim about authoriza-
tion. The first is a basic insight about the mode of existence of collectives: that
they exist in being portrayed. The key idea, as Raf Geenens et alia have put the
point, is that a group “needs to be represented as a collectivity in order for it to be
a collectivity.”3 To speak of a people is to portray a multiplicity of individuals as a
unity. The sense of representation involved here is representation-as. This, I take
it, is the point Lindahl is making when he says, for example: “A collective, i.e. the
unity implied in we* together, is always a represented unity, a unity that is only
given indirectly (as this or as that), regardless of whether the collective has two, 2
billion or more participants” (109).
3
Raf Geenens, Thomas Decreus, Femmy Thewissen, Antoon Braeckman, and Marta Resmini,
“The ‘Co-Originality’ of Constituent Power and Representation,” Constellations 22, no. 4 (2015):
515.
387 Collective Action, Constituent Power, and Democracy: On Representation in H. Lindahl’s …
4
Here Lindahl draws on a seminal article by Bert van Roermund: “First–Person Plural Legisla-
ture: Political Reflexivity and Representation,” Philosophical Explorations 6, no. 3 (2003): 235–50.
388 THOMAS FOSSEN
5
See, for example, Sofia Näsström, “Where Is the Representative Turn Going?,” European
Journal of Political Theory 10, no. 4 (2011): 501–10.
6
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1990): 278.
390 THOMAS FOSSEN
7
Ibid.: 276.
8
Quoting ibid.: 273.
391 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 391-396
ISSN: 1825-5167
FROM JUSTIFICATION TO
VINDICATION: LINDAHL AND
ASYMMETRICAL RECOGNITION
DAVID OWEN
University of Southampton, UK
dowen@soton.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
This commentary addresses Lindahl’s discussion of asymmetrical recognition and his critique
of legal universalism. I highlight some salient links between Lindahl’s work and that of James
Tully and Jacques Rancière, before drawing attention to two different ways in which he appeals
to the concept ‘unjustified’ and proposing that his analysis needs to deploy a distinction be-
tween justification and vindication as modes of normativity.
KEYWORDS
Recognition, Exclusion, Justification, Vindication, Rancière.
“a distribution of the sensible” (1999, 29) and refers to what, following Wittgen-
stein, we may call ‘a regime of continuous aspect perception’ (where ‘perception’
stands for the senses more generally). Rancière defines ‘politics’ as ‘whatever shifts
a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place’s destination. It makes visi-
ble what had no business being seen, and makes heard a discourse what was once
only heard as noise’ (1999, 30). Politics in this formal sense necessarily takes the
form of aspect-change. Following the recent exchange between Rancière and
Honneth (2016), we can put this point another way: a police order is an order of
recognition; politics is a struggle over recognition.
Notably, however, Lindahl’s analysis is rather more conceptually refined than
Rancière’s in its treatment of boundaries and the politics of boundary-setting.
When Lindahl speaks of boundaries, he is pointing out that it is a condition of
possibility of individuating (il)legal acts that we refer to ‘ought-places’ where such
‘places’ must be distinguished from what is outside – or not within – them. Notice
then that such places are located in legal space and, more generally, normative
space – they are spatialized. As such, although any ‘place’ can be related to physi-
cal locations to which we can assign map coordinates, the mode of space and spa-
tial boundary that is disclosed here is not that of physical space any more than the
topological map of the London Underground is a representation of the relations
in physical space of the stations whose relations it discloses. In being bounded in
this sense, a legal order is also necessarily limited, Lindahl proposes, because lim-
its (along each boundary) are conditions of collective identity. A limit opens up a
realm of practical possibilities and closes down others and this opening up and
closing down, including and excluding, is just the articulation of the collective iden-
tity – in both idem and ipse senses - of the ‘we’ whose joint action with a norma-
tive point individuates a legal order as the/our legal order. Limits – which denote
the distinction between legal (dis)order and the ‘unordered’ (that which is ‘irrele-
vant and unimportant’ from the standpoint of the/our legal order) - are disclosed
when the a-legal interrupts legal (dis)order to bring to light the possibility of an-
other legal order. A-legal acts are act that make the limits of a legal order appear
by introducing the strange into relationship with the familiar. Importantly, Lindahl
distinguishes ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ forms of a-legality. The former refers to contexts
in which the transformation of the legal order called for by engagement with an a-
legal act can be accomplished without the destruction of the legal collective. By
contrast, ‘strong’ a-legality that is incompatible with such continuity-in-
transformation. He refers to the latter as the disclosing of ‘fault-lines’. The ques-
tion posed by Tully’s reflection on the dilemma of indigenous peoples is thus
whether it is an instance of weak or strong a-legality.
The parallel with Rancière may help with the second of Lindahl’s criticisms of
legal universalism, namely, that recognition requires unjustified exclusion and in-
clusion. The sense of ‘unjustified’ here though is not that of the first criticism
395 From Justification to Vindication: Lindahl and Asymmetrical Recognition
that the language of justification is not – and cannot be for any adequate account
of politics – the only game in town.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hindess, B. (2003) ‘Responsibility for others in the modern system of states’, Jour-
nal of Sociology, 39(1): 23–30.
MARKUS PATBERG
University of Hamburg, Hamburg (Germany)
markus.patberg@uni-hamburg.de
ABSTRACT
In this brief comment, I deal with the role of constituent power in Hans Lindahl’s considerations
on struggles for representation in a global context. In his recent book “Authority and the Glob-
alisation of Inclusion and Exclusion”, Lindahl brings constituent power into play as a potential
way of practising restrained collective self-assertion in conflicts over the boundaries of legal or-
ders. I formulate three questions regarding this idea, which concern the difficulty of identifying
subjects of constituent power, the issue of who can legitimately articulate and exercise constituent
power, and the relation between constituent power and restrained collective self-assertion.
KEYWORDS
Constituent power, boundaries, inclusion, exclusion, legitimacy.
In this brief comment, I engage with the final chapter of Hans Lindahl’s book
“Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion”, which is entitled
“Struggles for Representation in a Global Context”. I will first reconstruct the main
theses and then formulate a few questions, which concern the difficulty of identify-
ing subjects of constituent power, the issue of who can legitimately articulate and
exercise constituent power, and the relation between constituent power and re-
strained collective self-assertion.
On the very first page of the book, Lindahl raises the question of whether it is
possible to develop a normative perspective on the formation of global legal orders
– and the definition of their limits – that avoids both naïve universalism and ques-
tionable relativism. In his words: “Is an authoritative politics of boundaries possible
that neither postulates the possibility of realising an all-inclusive global legal order
398 MARKUS PATBERG
nor accepts resignation or political paralysis in the face of the globalisation of inclu-
sion and exclusion?” (p. 1). The answer that Lindahl develops in the course of the
book is, in short: yes, if we engage in restrained collective self-assertion – a notion
that rests on two assumptions. First, a global hierarchy of public authority, such as a
cosmopolitan democracy, is unlikely to ever be established or perhaps even impos-
sible. This means that the problem of inclusion and exclusion arises in the context
of multiple global legal orders that are subject to contestation and need to negotiate
conflicts horizontally. Second, the boundaries of these global legal orders are de
facto determined and re-determined through political struggles for recognition,
which means that if we are interested in legitimacy, we need to ask if and how such
processes could take a normatively acceptable form.
As I just mentioned, the solution proposed by Lindahl is restrained collective
self-assertion. The idea is that legal orders should respond to contestations of their
boundaries by, first, incorporating the demands of opposing parties as far as it is
possible without giving up on their self-understanding and, second, where this
reaches its limits, by tolerating difference – again, as far as possible. The purpose of
the book’s final chapter is to consider different institutional solutions for putting this
idea into practice. In a first step, Lindahl discusses techniques and practices that
serve to negotiate conflicts between legal orders, such as the doctrine of the national
margin of appreciation used by the European Court of Human Rights or the prin-
ciple of complementarity invoked by the International Criminal Court. The analysis
leads to the conclusion that these and other mechanisms indeed enable restrained
collective self-assertion, but also support the claim formulated in previous chapters
that the recognition that can be achieved in conflicts between competing identities
is ambiguous because there always remains a tension between unity and difference.
Moreover, the considered techniques and practices turn out to have piecemeal char-
acter. They address very specific problems and thus do not offer generalisable so-
lutions. In particular, they do not provide avenues for non-state actors such as alter-
globalisation movements to effectively articulate their claims for recognition.
Therefore, in a second step, Lindahl turns to the idea of global administrative
law, which aims at a comprehensive institutional framework that regulates the deci-
sion-making of global governance bodies and increases their accountability – by en-
hancing transparency, for example. Some models of global administrative law also
seek to establish deliberative settings that enable rule-subjected actors to participate
in processes of standard setting. Again, Lindahl’s assessment is that while such pro-
posals are in line with the idea of restrained collective self-assertion, their potential
scope of application is rather limited. The problem is that while global administra-
tive law offers a pathway to higher public scrutiny and possibilities for affected par-
ties to make their voices heard, it does so only with regard to already existing, highly
specialised legal orders. The “point of joint action” (p. 54) of these institutions is
defined so narrowly that they simply lack the capacity to respond to the political
399 Constituent Power and Struggles for Representation in a Global Context. A Comment …
members. Nevertheless, the fact that subjects of constituent power are narrative con-
structions opens up the possibility of detaching the category from its classical con-
nection to the state. ‘We, the people” do not have to be a nation.
What Lindahl then proposes is that we approach the globalisation of inclusion
and exclusion through the lens of constituent power – and he discusses how the
category needs to be reformulated for this purpose. This is where I have three ques-
tions:
1. Does the paradox of constituent power really arise in the context of global legal
orders?
It seems to me that the paradox, or Lindahl’s account of it, relies on the hypo-
thetical notion of a non-constituted initial situation, which finds no equivalent in
today’s world – especially not at the supra-state level where we are, by definition,
dealing with forms of constitution making that presuppose constituted entities,
namely the states involved. Lindahl himself notes that constituent power beyond
the state is “a dependent sense of constituent power” (p. 413, emphasis in original)
because it relies on the capacity of the relevant states to enforce global legal orders
– if necessary, by invoking their means of physical force. I agree with this assess-
ment, but think that it should give rise to doubts whether we actually run into a
paradox of constituent power at the supra-state level. In the context of a ‘levelling
up’ of constituent power (Patberg 2017) we know in advance which states are in-
volved and who their citizens are, which means that, in principle, it should be pos-
sible to structure such processes in a democratically legitimate manner. Since there
already is an institutional context, there is no need for an extra-legal founding act asso-
ciated with all kinds of unknowns to which we are perhaps unable to provide a non-
paradoxical answer. Of course, difficult questions still arise, such as in what role citi-
zens should act. In the European Union, for example, the subject of constituent
power could be composed of EU citizens, of member state citizens, or even of citi-
zens in both capacities. It is true that all of these answers imply that we define an
outside, but not every exclusion is an unjustified exclusion.
2. How can we assess, if at all, whether a social group that articulates constituent
power has a legitimate claim to exercise it?
If I understand Lindahl correctly, he ultimately rejects the view that I just
sketched, according to which constituent power beyond the state can be conceptu-
alized as derivative of domestic constituent power. One of the reasons is that Lin-
dahl is concerned about transnational actors such as alter-globalisation movements
that do not intend to speak in the name of one or several nation-state peoples but
for other kinds of collectives. Both (peoples of) states and civil society groups are
capable of engaging in the construction of narratives; they can both formulate claims
to constituent power and present stories that explain where their presumed author-
ity comes from. In that sense, they can both engage in the representational act that
401 Constituent Power and Struggles for Representation in a Global Context. A Comment …
Lindahl regards as crucial for constituent power. However, only states have the ca-
pacity to establish global legal orders backed by a monopoly of force. Now, Lindahl
points out that alter-globalisation movements call into question the primacy states –
but what follows from that? Not every actor who articulates a claim to constituent
power automatically also has a legitimate entitlement to exercise it (see Niesen
2019). Lindahl focuses on the demands of vulnerable groups that are negatively
affected by global legal orders and voice concerns that are justified – at least on the
face of it. However, we can just as well imagine privileged citizens with more prob-
lematic agendas lamenting supposed exclusions and articulating claims to constitu-
ent power (e.g. far-right movements). Are there criteria that allow us to distinguish
between claims to constituent power that deserve a positive response and that do
not? To regard states as stepping stones for constituent power beyond the state has
the advantage that they provide an institutional framework that, at least in principle,
allows for the establishment of formal democratic procedures that secure the equal
status of participants and can filter out illegitimate constitutional projects. I wonder
what could deliver this function if we drop the primacy of states. Even if constituent
power does not lie with states themselves but with their citizens, they are not easily
replaceable.
structure and competences of global legal orders are determined should be orga-
nized. However, this does not enable us to adjudicate between the self-assertions of
different collectives that are not engaged in shared but rather in conflicting projects
of constitution making.
REFERENCES
GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
Department of Jurisprudence, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
fzanetti@mac.com
ABSTRACT
Hans Lindahl’s new book is an extremely valuable contribution. It offers a fresh notion of globaliza-
tion processes, grounded in a sound social ontology. Lindahl’s theory is described on the background
of most of the contemporary debate, painstakingly scrutinized in the book. The sobering conclusion
is that no Great Emancipation is truly possible: the only contingency-burden solutions are those nor-
mative practices that Lindahl calls “restrained collective self-assertion”.
KEYWORDS
Inclusion/exclusion, borders/limits, recognition, equality, bio-cultural rights.
The Argentinian writer Jorge Louis Borges stretched his wild imagination beyond
the usual boundaries that even phantasy writers set to themselves. Among the labyrin-
thine, mind-bending ideas his fertile mind was able to conceive, there is of course the
notorious Book of Sand, an enchanted volume whose pages, each of them, can always
split into two different pages, in a seamless process, and whose not-reachable, unthink-
able central page has no back1. One does not have to delve into the optical paradoxes
by Escher or by Victor Vasarely to enjoy the thrill of an intellectual challenge of this
kind. It is possible to experience a sort of healthy, theoretical bewilderment even in the
mundane, analytical field of contemporary legal and political philosophy.
El libro de Arena, Buenos Aires, Emecé, 1975; Norman Thomas Di Giovanni translated it into
1
The new book by Hans Lindahl2 is in fact, among other things, a daring exploration
of a puzzling, intriguing subject – can there be an inclusion that does not exclude, a
political space that has only an inside, but no outside? That sounds like a highly ab-
stract, rarefied subject. This seems to be, nevertheless, “the most fundamental issue
raised by the notion of global law, namely, whether a legal order is possible or even
actual that has an inside but no outside, hence that could realize a unity that includes
without excluding” (p. 87). This is, again, “the central conceptual and normative ques-
tion about the globality of global law: is an emergent global order possible or even actual
that has an inside but no outside?” (p. 140). This is “the single question that drives this
entire book: can legal (alter)globalisations mean anything other than the globalization
of inclusion and exclusion?” (p. 177).
Spoiler alert, it cannot. Some of us would like such an ozonic notion to be reasona-
ble, and such a program to be feasible, but Lindahl’s scrutiny of the subject, although
compassionate and respectful, cuts quite deep – and what gets cut and sliced in the
process, is a large part of the contemporary discussion on global legal orders. The book
is more than four hundred pages long, but despite the repetitions, which I actually
found useful, it makes for quite a compelling reading.
There are several reasons for this, and one is Lindahl’s style. The author effortlessly
surveys the debate on globalization issues, but has also a solid philosophical back-
ground; the style, neither intimidating nor fastidiously sparkling, is therefore often quite
technical, but occasionally colloquial expressions pop up in a sudden rhetorical change
that grabs the reader’s attention, usually when an important point is at stake.
Beside the official structure of the book, described in the Introduction, there is, I
submit, an underpinning, but transparent, incremental strategy in Lindahl’s book.
For example, early in the book the reader is told the tale of a Gandhian movement,
active in India, the so called Karnataka State Farmers’ Association, KRRS (Karnataka
Rajya Raitha Sangha; I am not sure that the acronym is explained in the book –
“sangha” is an interesting notion for those who study encompassing groups).
KRRS took action in order to occupy and destroy fields of Genetically Modified
Organisms, owned by Monsanto (readers may find interesting to know that Monsanto,
after the green light by US antitrust authority, was acquired by Bayer in 2018; the brand
will therefore soon disappear), as a way to assert and revalorize Indian peasant ways of
life, against measures of trade liberalization under the aegis of the WTO. The tale is
told at page 24. From that moment on, the resilient members of the KRRS, their point
of view, the implications of their actions, and so on, keep cropping up in the pages of
2
Hans Lindahhl, Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion, Cambridge, UK, Cam-
bridge University Press, 2018.
405 A New Book by Hans Lindahl
3
John Mitchell Finnis, “Law as Co-ordination”, Ratio Juris, 1989, 2 (1): 97-104.
406 GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
There is a point of view, however, from which every single chapter is simply about
Lindahl sparring and fencing with some of the main characters of the contemporary
debate, basically testing his own philosophical position against those hold by other
thinkers. These other positions are sometimes refuted (although acknowledged in their
important role: e.g., Negri and Hardt on the notion of multitude and its implications),
and sometimes absorbed as at least syntonic with the one he is advocating for (e.g.,
Saskia Sassen’s sociology of globalization).
Even those authors with whom Lindahl vigorously disagree are refuted with respect
and good philosophical manners: on a single occasion one can get the feeling of a mild
yet simmering impatience, when he slips in that dreaded formula “whatever this might
mean”, which usually implies that in the writer’s humble opinion there is no serious
meaning involved under the circumstances (it’s about Castells’ “space of flows”, p. 83).
It must be said from the outset that, just because of the above mentioned reasons,
this is a very good book: it is a sound, structured text, with a clear position, extremely
well documented, readable and sometimes compelling, supported by a first rate philo-
sophical background, and indeed useful.
One of the reasons Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion is
specifically useful is, of course, that it provides an original vision of globalization prob-
lems, but on the other side it also lets the reader see, as it were, the forest through the
trees, it offers an help to better survey an often complex debate – always within the
frame of an original reading of such issues.
It is nonetheless possible, of course, to offer some criticism: a good book is never
wholeheartedly beyond reproach. Some books are like Monteverdi’s madrigali: you
may like them, and if you like them you like them a lot, because they are exquisite
tokens of a difficult genre, or you may dislike them, because madrigals are an acquired
taste, and perplexity is an acceptable reaction to the Selva Morale e Spirituale. If the
reader is looking for some ready-made, brilliant and ground-breaking solution, he may
find Authority and the Globalization occasionally dazzling, rather than intriguing. The
flavor of the book is that of an embraced, and harnessed, complexity.
A good example is the notion of territory and space. That territory is a notion that
does not belong exclusively to geography is something known at least since Hannah
Arendt famously challenged (in some passing remarks) the traditional view in Eich-
mann in Jerusalem4.
In recent years, spatial concepts have been exposed in all their normative potential,
a potential that can involve dangers and risks. The notion of cyberspace, emphasis on
4
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York, NY, The
Viking Press, 1963.
407 A New Book by Hans Lindahl
space, led some courts of justices to conceptualize the first hackings into private web-
sites as trespass: a legal notion that for many reasons was not appropriate. Websites are
no fenced estates, they are no spaces with clear borders that can be drawn in a map.
Yet, as Mark Lemley, of Stanford, summarized back in 2003, if we buy into the meta-
phor of cyberspace, we may expect very concrete, very real legal effects and conse-
quences5.
Lindahl is, on this point, extremely effective. He starts from the distinction between
a position and a place, that can be tracked all the way back to the first Heidegger of
Sein und Zeit. A geometrical space is a thing of positions, each of them identified by a
set of coordinates. An everyday space is a thing of places, and often one is not truly
aware of the “region of a place” until he fails to find something in its place. From this
starting point, Lindahl is able to show why de-territorialisation does not and cannot
mean delocalisation, in other words why globalization must be a specific way to localize
action. “Succinctly, if (global) law is defined as a specific sort of social order, then
(global) law must be a spatial […] order that differentiates and interconnects places into
a unity of sorts: a network of places” (p. 21).
Now, on the one hand, this is a refreshing insight. Lindahl is aware of the novelty of
his approach: “most, perhaps all, contemporary discussions of globalization processes
share a common assumption” (p. 10), “[s]ociologists of globalization often argue that
law is becoming increasingly de-territorialised” (p. 21). Lindahl’s program is to debunk
this narrative, together with the lofty claim that a global order that includes without
excluding can exist. Even a global order requires a spatial closure, and if there is a
closure there is, somewhere, somehow, an outside – an exclusion.
Borders are spatial boundaries that join and separate what is deemed as domestic
and what is labeled as foreign. Borders, although a controversial notion (Italy is a coun-
try that came to existence as such by conjuring up the narrative of the oxymoronic
“natural borders”, the Alps and the Sea, shaped as a Boot), are something easy to grasp.
They follow our primary intuitions, supported by centuries of cartography (ancient
Greeks, on the other hand, would have probably used Greek Language as the main
factor to define Hellas).
Borders are reassuring, not just in a quasi-irenic scenario where good fences make
good neighbors, as Robert Frost most famously put it, but even on a dystopian back-
ground. In Elysium6, an elitist Jodie Foster prevents humans living on earth to join the
aristocracy of those lucky few men and women who live in a separate artificial environ-
ment, orbiting Earth, whose expensive health technology grants them an extraordinarily
5
Mark Lemley, “Place and Cyberspace”, California Law Review, 2003, 91: 521-558.
6
Elysium, by Neill Blomkamo, 2013, with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster.
408 GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
long life. Needless to say, Elysium already exists, but in a less reassuring way: it is not
far from us in outer space, it is among us, because life expectancy has dramatically
grown, although the last ten years of a quality life are way more expensive, from a Med-
icare point of view, than all the years needed to reach that point. The growth of life
expectancy is probably one of the driving forces that motivates global discrimination.
Limits, on the other hand, are far from being reassuring. They are truly another
kettle of fish: they are spatial boundaries that join and separate “the own” and “the
strange”. Their philosophical ancestry dwells in the phenomenology of Husserl. A
global legal order can have no borders, but cannot exist without limits, without some
kind of inclusion and exclusion (they can be “borderless but not limitless”, p. 43), alt-
hough of a rather different and abstract kind. Global legal orders imply a “limited” (in
this technical meaning) spatial unity, in the mere sense of a given interconnection of
“places” that necessarily excludes many other (theoretically available) ways of organiz-
ing those places.
This implies a globalization of inclusion and exclusion. “The IACA model of law
substantiates the conjecture that whereas (state) borders and their attendant distinction
between domestic and foreign places are a contingent feature of legal orders, limits,
hence the distinction between own and strange places, is a structural feature of a range
of legal orders that claim or might come to claim global validity. Indeed, nothing in the
concept of IACA requires that this spatial unity be bordered in the form of state terri-
toriality” (p. 64, italics added).
This is tantamount to stating that legal orders, both global and otherwise, must have
spatial boundaries, although globalization processes seem to be specifically responsible
for legal topographies that are “significantly different from the bordered territoriality of
states” (p. 145). For example, lex constructionis, a sectorial form of the new merchant
law, is revealed to be endowed with a spatial unity that is pragmatic, rather than geo-
graphic – and the reason is that it is grounded on an interconnection of places that are
physically removed from each other (pp. 144-45). Lindahl’s concept of place (this was
Castells’ mistake, p. 148), as far as globalization processes are concerned, does not
therefore imply physical proximity.
So far so good; and it is sound, valuable and rich philosophy. The poison may be
found in the very same brilliant strategy that made such achievements possible in the
first place.
Once the meaning of all the key words has been (wisely) changed, of course the
theoretical outcome will be different. Global orders can be conceptualized as all inclu-
sive, when the “globe” one has in mind is the spherical surface of planet Earth, because
that turns space into a surface – national states are bounded extension, global legal
orders can therefore be unbounded extension. But a world is not a thing, not even a
409 A New Book by Hans Lindahl
planet or a universe, a world is a kosmion of meanings enlightened from within (as Eric
Voegelin would have put it7), a nexus of meaningful relations (Lindahl’s favorite for-
mula), a necessary background for all things and events that dwell in such a world. It
makes possible an horizon of inter-subjective experience, that exposes itself as limited
when challenged by and from another point of view, by and from a strange place, by
and from a different world: “different worlds – partially different worlds – intersect […];
legal globalisations attest to the entwinement of worlds, where entwinement means both
interference and interconnection” (p. 36).
This is possible because behind a world, behind each world, there is a group of
some kind and its narrativity – individuals can perceive and conceptualize themselves
as a group mostly because such narrativity is able to embed that group in a “wider
plexus of social relations and meanings – a world” (p. 69).
This certainly is, in my opinion, a much more interesting way to look at the problems
of global legal orders. But I am not sure it is, strictly speaking, a debunking: if words
are given a (very) different meaning, then the outcome will be different. Inclusion/ex-
clusion is a now an inescapable feature of legal orders, included global legal orders, but
that is because the new meaning of the words is so different, so thin and at the same
time wide, broad, so far away from the usual and intuitive sense we usually attach to
them (even in the scientific discussion among academia dwellers), that Lindahl’s thesis
is validated.
Lindahl’s “space” is so abstract as to be inescapable. Obviously any personal author-
ity and jurisdiction has to be territorial – “in the wide sense” Lindahl has “defended in
this book” (p. 153, italics added). At this point even cyber law is but a variation on the
“phenomenologically inspired IACA model of law” (p. 153). eBay, for example, has
no access that is not also a spatial access, although “a spatial access in the sense of joint
action that interconnects places by bringing near what is far: goods and payment” (p.
155) – and this is, literally, eBay’s own legal topography.
Once his premises are accepted, and words are correctly translated into Lindahl’s
phenomenological English, the outcome is almost certain. My opinion is that it is worth
the effort: that Lindahl’s philosophy of global orders is subtler, more interesting, more
instructive, and much more appealing than most of the contributions one reads on this
subject. It is, however, also a reasoned departure from the usual way to organize the
Western conceptual lexicon on the subject. The pleasant risk, in these cases, is to make
such strong assumptions that the result seems to be already implied, built in them.
Armed with this “phenomenologically inspired IACA model of law” Lindahl is able
to come to grips with several scholars of different orientations, fleshing out at the same
7
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952.
410 GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
time his very same IACA model, and providing precious insights on several hot issues
in the field of legal and political philosophy.
The book is so rich that even an overview is simply impossible, but it is probably
fair to mention a few random sub-subjects, just to give a hint of the food for thought to
be found in Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion.
Once Lindahl’s lexicon and its implied theoretical consequences are accepted, it
must be acknowledged that between state law and emergent legal orders there are both
similarities and key differences. Emergent legal orders do not certainly enjoy the “bor-
dered territoriality of states”. But they certainly share with traditional and bordered
states Lindahl’s “broader sense” (p. 158, italics added) of a truly “transhistorical” (Sas-
sen) territoriality that is implied, as hinted above, by lex constructionis or by eBay.
Even this kind of spatial territoriality, however, implies a constitutive exposure to
forms of contestations in which spatial boundaries (again, it is not about geographic
borders here) are conceptualized as the limits of collective action. This perception is
the direct outcome of experiencing the un-removable outside, an outside that can be
boiled down to a fan of practical options, marginalized options, possibilities bracketed
away as “strange” and not validated as our “own”. This exposure, this vulnerability, is a
crucial aspect of legal orders. It is “here” that the rather abstract and theoretical notion
of an inescapable “outside” morphs into a politically relevant issue.
Lindahl deftly conjures up the famous DDoS attack of PayPal’s website by Opera-
tion Payback. Such an attack can be conceptualized in two ways, namely both as a
healthy normative challenge, in order to change the own/strange configuration, and as
a simply, merely malicious or even criminal act. This has to do with the “lexical war-
fare” described by Peter Ludlow: is ‘hacktivism’ related to social change, or to sinister,
immoral, criminal activities? Lindahl nails it: “For there is no independent position, no
bird’s-eye view, that allows for establishing whether an act is simply (il)legal or whether
it also raises a normative challenge that authorities should heed […]” (p. 159).
This is a remarkable features of legal orders. It is visible, for example, in the civil
disobedience phenomena. Legal systems cannot absorb or include civil disobedience,
as a special norm whose ratio would be, say, that of catalyzing a (from a given point of
view) “necessary” legal reform, a normative change. There are specific procedures to
determine legal change, but by definition civil disobedience cannot be one of them.
Legal systems, however, have no way to prevent civil disobedience phenomena: phe-
nomena that aim precisely at such a change. Any act of deliberate disobedience can
always be conceptualized as the outcome of a selfish attitude, as a reluctance to bow
before the majesty of those rules that are obeyed for the sake of collective freedom, as
411 A New Book by Hans Lindahl
Cicero would put it8. The point of view of those who practice civil disobedience is
obviously different, and such as that it is always possible to take that position and claim
for such acts a different and so loftier ratio. There is no independent position, no bird’s-
eye view, that allows for establishing whether an act of civil disobedience is a normative
challenge carried out in order to make the legal-political system fairer and therefore
stronger, more bent to the values of, say autonomy and equality, or that act is simply
mere illegal disobedience, whose outcome is a weaker and less fair legal-political system
– whether authorities should at least listen to it, or rather harshly repress it.
The IACA model of law is no natural law system; it offers no moral absolutes; it
embraces complexity at the expense of any kind of normative Gemütlichkeit.
There is no world, there are only worlds. And this has far reaching consequences
for counter-globalization movements, well-intentioned as they may be: there can be
only emancipations in the plural “rather than an emancipatory process in the singular”;
legal orders cannot be transparent crystals, pure normative pyramids, because ambigu-
ity is inherent to them from the very beginning, when they emerge by including and
excluding at the same time (p. 199).
This is true even when Lindahl turns his attention to a very special domain of law,
that seems specifically apt for justifying “the idea of forms of legal globalization which
are strongly global by dint of having an inside but no outside: human rights” (p. 207).
Again, this could be the subject of another book and another review – although the gist
is simply that human rights are simply no exception to Lindahl’s (general) rule.
On the most basic level, even establishing what should be deemed as a massive hu-
man rights abuse implies a local set of shared value. Is an extermination of unborn
babies by abortion such an abuse? This is not Lindahl’s example – but I get very dif-
ferent results if one theorizes the notion of massive abuse of human rights aiming at
human beings independently from sex, religion, “race”, and sexual orientation, or if
the same notion is theorized aiming at human beings independently from sex, religion,
“race”, and stage of development (so that embryos are included). The former list leads
to Senator Clinton’s famous statement: gay rights are human rights9. Most conservative,
white evangelical, MAGA hats Americans, can safely embrace the latter. It is a pity that
Lindahl does not directly address the issue of equality in any specific chapter (there are,
however, important hints passim, for example on p. 248 ss).
This is, therefore, my first remark. Global orders that allegedly create an inside with-
out an outside, an inclusion without exclusion, are linked to a narrative of borders and
8
Pro Aulo Cluentio Habito, 146: legum servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus.
9
In a well known speech on December 6, 2011 at the UN in Geneva.
412 GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
surfaces – a narrative that played an important role in Western history, but whose ex-
plicative power is all but spent. Lindahl’s book provides the conceptual tools that can
help us to conceptualize global orders in a subtler way. According to this different, and
more appealing, narrative, however, an exclusion of those who dwell outside is impos-
sible to avoid. Try as we may we end up excluding. There can’t be a (the) Great Eman-
cipation, the Last Emancipation. We can only have partial, situated, context-depend-
ing, contingency-burden emancipations (what I call Lindahl’s sobering thought). One
would expect a direct scrutiny of the notion of equality, but there is no chapter, in
Lindahl’s book, directly devoted to such a notion. We cannot, most likely, realize any
Equality with capital E. We can detect a specific inequality, and then fight in order to
make sure it is removed, so that the given “difference” which was the ground for dis-
crimination has no longer any legal impact. Vico’s famuli, the serfs of the “heroic” age,
fight for universal equality, and universal citizenship. Such an universal inclusion does
not include women, of course – yet what they must claim, what they have to claim, is
universal equality. Women are not foreign, they are “somewhere else”. Those heroic
plebeians cannot demand “equality for each and all except women”, they just do not
consider women an issue to begin with. This could be the logic of equality: it is always
about the removal of a given inequality, and yet it must claim to be about universal
equality, for each and all.
Contingency cannot therefore be expunged, it is a radically built-in feature of (global)
legal orders; “it is an ineradicable feature of legal orders”10. Now, while it is true that it
is a “contingency that those very same orders conceal when claiming universality for
themselves” (p. 225) one wonders if this is not a performative condition of an emergent
legal order. It has been pointed out that a scientist perfectly knows that his theory will
be, sooner or later, falsified, but “has to” claim that his theory is correct. Alexy’s well-
known thesis is that a legal system cannot claim to be unjust, even if every such system
is more or less unjust. Contingent emancipations (in the plural) “must” perhaps claim
to be the universal emancipation they cannot be. This could be the latest incarnation
of Makinson’ s Preface Paradox11; this would shed light on a haunting line by Lindahl:
“Certainly, representation must claim to be able to articulate who and what we really
are about; yet this articulation is premature and contestable […]”12. It is perhaps, at
bottom, a Nietzschean theme: representation is always misrepresentation because con-
tingency makes the represented at least partially inaccessible to an impossible “authen-
tic” representation.
10
Hans Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law (Julius Stone Address)”, Sydney Law Review, 41, 1,
2019: 23.
11
David Clement Makinson, “The Paradox of the Preface”, Analysis, 1965, 25: 205-7.
12
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law”, cit.: 12 (italics added).
413 A New Book by Hans Lindahl
This is, by the way, consistent with the “irreducibility of political plurality to the unity
of global legal order” (p. 227), because a self-identity grounded on a (false) notion of
universal emancipation, on such a daring claim, makes that (each) position specifically
difficult to absorb or dilute, or blend in another equally self-styled universal identity.
Claiming a universality without an outside dramatically ends up reinforcing a pluralism
of contingent emancipation identities.
This train of thought is consistent with a social ontology that prevents any absolute
legitimacy of any representation. Representation acts (the best part is of course the
grana fina of Lindahl’s analysis, that makes use of the distinction between representa-
tion of and representation as by Nelson Goodman), that are necessary to collectives,
always take for granted something, and for this reason they are, again, always, “contest-
able” (p. 233). They are, as it were, essentially contestable identities.
The problem is that identities do not exist in a vacuum, and there can be no self-
identification without an other-identification – a collective is included and the rest is
excluded – this is about boundaries, not necessarily about borders. This is, in a nutshell,
Lindahl’s social ontology: a group closure into an inside (self-identification) confronts
it with an outside (the “rest”: other-identification) that, as long as it is conceptualized as
unordeable, challenges the power and the order that dwell “inside” (and such an out-
side does exist within the collective, too, shaped as a resistance force against what is
determined as the “point” of that given collective action, see p. 301).
This is my second remark. “Questionability is a constitutive element of the mode of
beings of collectives” (Inside and Outside ….). So far so good. The practical outcome
of such a position seems to be that legal orders are inherently exposed to legitimate
contestation – a contestation radiating from that outside that gets marginalized by the
order, and bracketed away by the necessarily false narrative of universal equality.
Granted: groups, “collectives”, cannot be deemed as endowed with absolute legitimacy
because they always take “something” for granted – Vico’s famuli would not consider
half the population. This exposure, this vulnerability, nevertheless, is probably a con-
dition of their value (a la Nussbaum) for human beings; it is not a regrettable feature of
our human condition. An unquestionable collective, an unquestionable legal order,
would strike us as inhuman and nightmarish13.
This is a major contribution to social ontology, and a most needed one, after
Searle14 (it somehow resonates with the notion of nested encompassing groups, versus
13
Martha Craven Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press,
1986.
14
John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, New York, NY, The Free Press,1995.
414 GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
Avishai Margalit, Joseph Raz, National Self-Determination, in Joseph Raz, Ethics in the Public Do-
15
techniques of political wisdom, “strategies that defer acts of setting the boundaries of
(il)legality)”?
Yes, but this is no mean feat. There can be only “provisional responses” (Inside and
Outside …, cit.), true, but provisional responses are first and foremost responses. These
provisional responses are grounded on a sound philosophy, one that validates political
virtues - listening skills, one that enables the listeners to acknowledge and respect the
“scream” of counter-globalization movements, and maintain a compassionate attitude
toward the marginalized ones – self-restraint turns out to be a key virtue for political
entities.
417 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 417-501
ISSN: 1825-5167
A-LEGALITY, REPRESENTATION,
CONSTITUENT POWER
REPLY TO CRITICS
HANS LINDAHL
School of Law, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Lindahl@uvt.nl
ABSTRACT
In different ways and from different angles, the participants in this special issue critically probe
the conceptual and normative underpinnings of the model of legal order developed in to Au-
thority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and Exclusion and other writings. This offers me the
opportunity to flesh out these underpinnings more fully and to draw out some of their implica-
tions which were not discussed in the book. In particular, my response focuses on the concepts
of, and systematic relation between, representation, recognition, constituent power, equality, re-
strained collective self-assertion, and a-legality.
KEYWORDS
Representation, Recognition, Constituent Power, Equality, Restrained Collective Self-Assertion,
A-Legality.
I can imagine no greater intellectual gift than the range of insightful commentaries
that have come my way in the symposia on Authority and the Globalisation of In-
clusion and Exclusion (henceforth Authority) hosted by Enrica Rigo, Fiona Mac-
Millan, and Giorgio Pino at the University of Rome III, and by Peter Niesen at the
University of Hamburg. My heartfelt thanks to all of them for organizing these
events. I am extremely grateful to Ferdinando Menga, a dear intellectual and per-
sonal friend, for his generous initiative to put together this special issue of Etica &
Politica / Ethics & Politics. It is a rare privilege to be given philosophical license to
write an extended Response to Commentators in this prestigious journal. Many
thanks, finally, to Alessandro Ferrara, Thomas Fossen, David Owen, Markus Pat-
berg, and Gianfrancesco Zanetti for their comments, sympathetic yet critical, which
418 HANS LINDAHL
1. ALESSANDRO FERRARA
Ferrara’s comments move along two vectors. The first points out that the IACA-
model of law offers a strong rebuttal of those legal and political theories for which
inclusion without exclusion is possible, namely, Hardt and Negri’s “cosmopolis of
the multitude” and the philosophies of difference, in particular those espoused by
Derrida, Nancy, Esposito, and Agamben. Authority indeed inveighs against theories
of the multitude, as regards their attempt to imagine a (global) political collective
that has no outside. Yet I also argued that there are elements in Hardt and Negri’s
account of the multitude that have affinities with the notion of a-legality, and that are
worth salvaging from what I view as an otherwise untenable project. Furthermore, I
share Ferrara’s concern about philosophies of difference, when they advocate a no-
tion of community that could include without excluding, and that, as he pointedly
remarks, identify community with humanity. Against these philosophies, Authority
argues, as Ferrara puts it, that “no transcending of exclusion is possible, unless we
are prepared to altogether renounce the ability of law to steer action.” But I would
be chary of dismissing all philosophies of difference as relativistic. I understand
much of the work being done under this blanket term as searching for an alternative
to both universalism and relativism. Perhaps there are ways of acknowledging that
a certain sense of the universal is irreplaceable in politics, without having to embrace
universalism in the strong sense of an all-encompassing legal order as the regulative
idea of an authoritative politics of boundaries. In any case, instead of too quickly
dismissing philosophies of difference lock, stock, and barrel, I would like to reserve
a more definitive evaluation of where I stand vis-à-vis these philosophies for another
occasion.
The second vector of Ferrara’s analysis focuses on a-legality. Ferrara is concerned
about what he views as an ambiguity, or in any case an ambivalence, in my descrip-
tion of a-legality. This leads to two problems. The first is that I grant too wide a
1
Note to the reader: In Authority I added an asterisk to the pronouns “we” and “us”—we*, us*—
to indicate the first-person plural use of these pronouns. As this makes for somewhat cumbrous rea-
ding, I have omitted this usage hereinafter, with the exception of a couple of citations of the book,
relying on the benevolent reader to identify when the subjective and objective cases of the pronoun
designate the first-person plural perspective.
2
I appreciate comments to a draft of this Reply to Critics by Lukasz Dziedzic and Ricardo Spin-
dola.
419 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
scope to the concept of constituent power. The second is that it remains unclear
how restrained collective self-assertion stands in relation to political liberalism. I
take the opportunity of responding to these questions at some length, drawing out,
hopefully, productive convergences and divergences between Ferrara’s work and
mine.
for the boundedness of all legal orders, and why an account of how legal boundaries
are posited, breached, and transgressed demands an inquiry into the first-person
perspective, both singular and plural, of legal ordering.
Third, the incident is relevant exactly because it is modest and discreet, in con-
trast to the “big” events that tend to monopolize the imagination and analytical prow-
ess of political and legal theorists. This is also the case for Ferrara’s defense of what
he calls the “judgment model” or “paradigm of judgment” in political philosophy,
which focuses, following Ackerman and Michelman, on modes of “higher lawmak-
ing.”3 I take this to be a reductive approach to the contestation of legal orders, if
nothing else because what Ferrara, following Ackerman, calls the “signaling” func-
tion that kicks off modes of higher law-making, namely, “the formal placing of a
constitutional problem on the public agenda,” actually begins much earlier: in mi-
cro-political events like that of the clochard.4 The incident is exemplary, in my view,
because it invites us to reorient our thinking about and sensitivity to the disruption
of legal orders in a way that, without neglecting macro-political events, adverts to the
micro-politics of a-legality in which the limits and fault lines of legal orders also an-
nounce themselves.
Fourth, and closely tied to my insistence on a granular approach, I think it is safe
to say that this incident remained only that: an ephemeral interruption of a legal
order that, in retrospect, led to no fundamental transformation of the Dutch legal
order. But far from being a drawback, this finding highlights an important point:
whether an event is an exemplary event in the strongly transformative sense of the
term that interests Ferrara, only becomes apparent in hindsight. The meaning of
what takes place now is shot through with ambiguity, for its significance and capacity
to mobilize individuals to novel forms of joint action can only be established after
the event, and never fully or definitively. On the one hand, what seemed to be a
simple incident—a syncope that barely disturbs the steady heartbeat of order—can
become, with the benefit of hindsight, a veritable foundational moment, the signifi-
cance of which eluded its protagonists in that now. On the other, what now seems
to be a revolutionary moment, galvanizing participants to great achievements and
sacrifices, can retrospectively appear to be, literally, a revolution, that is, a return of
the same. The paradox of representation entails that there is no way of definitely
establishing whether an act taking place now is an act of constituent power or of
constituted power; only retrospectively, and only inconclusively, will it manifest itself
as the one or the other.
3
Alessandro Ferrara, Justice and Judgment: The Rise and the Prospect of the Judgment Model in
Contemporary Political Philosophy (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 133-149. Bruce Ackerman,
We the People: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991); Frank Michelman,
“Always Under Law?” in Constitutional Commentary 12 (1993) 2, 227-47.
4
Ferrara, Justice and Judgment, 113. Bruce Ackerman, We the People: Transformations (Cam-
bridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1998), 40 ff.
421 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
Fifth, the incident intimates that there can be no collective action absent a world
in which we are always already situated, and which is itself called into question, in
one way or another, in the face of a-legal acts. I was reminded, when witnessing the
incident with the clochard, of Hannah Arendt’s comment that “[t]o live together in
the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in
common, as a table is situated between those who sit around it; the world, like every
in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.”5 The restaurant table as-
signed their places to the clochard and the waiter; it joined and disjoined them. The
invitation to sit down and share the meal was the equivalent of yanking the table
away from those who sit around it, leading to their disorientation because they no
longer have their own place. By calling into question what counts as one’s own place,
the clochard’s invitation rendered conspicuous the world the clients of the restau-
rant called their own, even if only for a flash. It betokened the encounter between
a home world (Heimwelt) and a strange world (Fremdwelt).6
A sixth and final point concerns Ferrara’s qualification of the incident with the
clochard as an instance of “idiosyncratic” behavior, in contrast to signal cases of civil
disobedience. Can it be taken for granted that there is a perspective from which one
might adjudicate conclusively for all parties concerned, including the clochard, what
is idiosyncratic and what is not? More pointedly, is it at all possible to distinguish
between what merits political and legal attention (e.g. civil disobedience by Plessy
and Parks or direct action by the Karnataka State Farmers Association), and what
does not (e.g. the invitation to share a meal with a clochard), absent the structures
of relevance and importance made available by a subject-relative and irreducibly
contingent circumambient world?7 Ferrara’s qualification of the event shows, I be-
lieve, that all judgments about what counts as relevant and irrelevant have a blind
spot, a domain of normative indifference that is insurmountable, even if variable
over time for any given order, because a blind spot conditions the possibility of
issuing such judgments in the first place. In brief, responding to the incident by
labelling it as “idiosyncratic” illustrates what the IACA-model of law calls the asym-
metrical structure of recognition, marked by the precedence—Vorgängichkeit—of
what questions a legal order and the retroactivity—Nachträglichkeit—of the response.
5
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958), 52.
6
See the fragment “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt,” in Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomeno-
logie der Intersubjektivität, edited by Iso Kern (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 214-218. See
also the eponymously titled article by Klaus Held in Phänomenologische Forschungen 24 (1991),
305-337.
7
See Alfred Schütz, Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, translated by Richard M. Zaner
(New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1970).
422 HANS LINDAHL
8
Alessandro Ferrara, The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
9
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (Ox-
ford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), §17.
10
Ferrara, The Force of the Example, 37.
11
Hans Lindahl, “Intentionality, Representation, Recognition: Phenomenology and the Politics of
A-Legality,” forthcoming in Thomas Bedorf and Steffen Herrmann (eds.), Political Phenomenology.
Experience, Ontology, Episteme (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).
12
See Kim Willsher, “‘Burqa ban’ in France: housewife vows to face jail rather than submit,” in
The Guardian, April 10, 2011, available at: “https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/10/france-
burqa-law-kenza-drider (accessed on May 22, 2019). Of particular interest is that Drider’s use of the
niqab amounts to the claim that her identity as a modern subject has been misrecognized by the very
legal order that claims to defend modern subjectivity by prohibiting its use in public spaces.
424 HANS LINDAHL
to law-making. Ferrara would surely identify the enactment of the American consti-
tution or the US Supreme Court’s ruling, Roe v. Wade, as exemplary in this sense.
In short, regardless of whether the exemplary is situated inside or outside a legal
order, it partakes of the sign’s capacity to open up a world of and for collective
action.13
Importantly, while these cases instance what is intended to operate as a (count-
er-)sign, something can become, perhaps through a process akin to psychoanalytic
condensation, a (counter-)sign without initially having been intended to be such, or
operated as such. The niqab and the burqa are good examples of this. No less con-
sequentially, (counter-)signs can take on new meanings, disclosing novel worlds. So,
for instance, the lyrics of Bella Ciao, which became famous as the anti-Fascist an-
them of resistance sung by Italian partisans during World War II, was given an
animal rights twist by activists who sang it during a recent demonstration in Amster-
dam demanding animal liberation.14 15
I referred, previously, to “signal acts of resistance” and to “signal events,” when
referring to Parks, Plessy, and direct action by the Karnataka State Farmers Associ-
ation. I can now render explicit the two senses that govern my use of the word “sig-
nal”: what is deemed important and what discloses a world.
13
I venture the hypothesis that further developing these ideas would require shifting attention from
signs to symbols, in particular to “dominant symbols,” in Turner’s sense, which “saturate” norms and
values with emotions and, conversely, orient emotions by rendering them intelligible as drivers of
action. See Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1967), 30. It seems to me that a political phenomenology runs parallel to the para-
digm of reflective judgment, not by highlighting the peculiar kind of sensibility that Kant associated to
judgment but rather the motivational force deployed by symbols. In effect, symbols, political symbols
in particular, galvanize to action by eliciting emotions, and emotions evince motivational structures
that move persons to act in one way rather than another. Chantal Mouffe and others have complained,
correctly, that models of rationality premised on rational calculation of interest or on moral delibera-
tion banish the affective dimension from politics, and which is an integral dimension of the individual
identification with a collective. Although I must leave this issue for another occasion, phenomenolo-
gical insights into the affectivity of world-disclosure and of affectivity as world-disclosure contribute, I
believe, a promising avenue of approach to understanding the symbolic force of the exemplary. See
Chantal Mouffe, On the Political (London: Routledge, 2005), 24.
14
As Italians know all too well, the anti-Fascist version of Bella Ciao is itself a re-appropriation of
an older version of the folk song sung by the “mondinas,” the female seasonal paddy rice workers in
the Po Valley, who protested at the harsh working conditions they endured during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. The animal rights lyrics of Bella Ciao sung during the demonstration can be heard
(in Dutch) on this Facebook video of the Party for the Animals: https://www.facebook.com/Partijvoor-
deDieren/videos/vb.102287806490622/351797965728686/?type=2&theater (accessed on August 24,
2019)
15
These examples underscore the strong affinities between a phenomenological radicalization of
the concept of representation and the notions of “translation,” as developed by Derrida, and “recep-
tion,” as espoused by Stuart Hall and Hans-Robert Jauss.
425 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
Yet a caveat is required: although a sign can disclose the world otherwise, it can-
not disclose the world directly.16 As Roe v. Wade and the niqab show all too well,
signs open up and close down circumambient worlds, they enworld and deworld.
Likewise, the commemorations of Australia Day signal for numerous Aboriginal
peoples the Day of Mourning or Invasion Day, and, since January 26, 2007, Abo-
riginal Sovereignty Day.17 In each of these cases, like in so many others, the sign
rives a collective in two, or if you wish, it joins and separates two worlds. For some
individuals and groups, these signs exhibit the force of the example, or as Ferrara
deftly puts it, “the force of what is as it should be.”18 For others, the force of the
example is exemplary violence: the force of what is as it should not be. It would
seem that such signs vouch for the irreducible ambiguity of the exemplary, which
can call forth self-incongruency, even radical self-incongruency (meaning by such
irreconcilable visions of collective identity), because it enables self-congruency. The
exemplary, as a mode of the sign, signals a circumambient world; the counter-ex-
emplary, as rendered manifest in a-legality, signals the limits and, to a lesser or
greater extent, the fault lines of collective action and its circumambient world.
I wrap up these ideas by making explicit how they mesh with the IACA-model
of law: the exemplary and the counter-exemplary are, respectively, situated repre-
sentations and counter-representations of collective unity. Likewise, a representa-
tion of collective unity is always also the co-presentation of a circumambient world.
16
In a brilliant study, Menga compellingly argues that polities have an Umwelt, but no direct access
to the world, and that preserving this difference is essential to democratic politics. See Ferdinando G.
Menga, Ausdruck, Mitwelt, Ordnung: Zur Ursprünglichkeit einer Dimension des Politischen im An-
schluss an die Philosophie des frühen Heidegger (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2018). See my review
of Menga’s book in Contemporary Political Theory (2019), available in a read-only version here:
https://rdcu.be/byQxL.
17
“Australia Day – Invasion Day,” See https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/hi-
story/australia-day-invasion-day (accessed on May 22, 2019).
18
Ferrara, The Force of the Example, 2-3. See also Alessandro Ferrara, “Debating exemplarity:
The ‘communis’ in sensus communis,” in Philosophy and Social Criticism 45 (2019) 2, 146-58, 147
in fine.
426 HANS LINDAHL
A-legality is the name I give to experiences of what manifests itself as strange from
the first-person plural perspective whence a legal order establishes what counts as
legal or illegal. Hence, a-legality is a relative concept in the strict sense of the term:
nothing is a-legal as such. Cognitively speaking, the strange concerns what is more
or less unintelligible or incomprehensible in terms of the conceptual framework
with which reality is apprehended. The compound expression, a-legality, yokes the
two dimensions of what constitutes strangeness as a legal phenomenon. On the one
hand, a-legality concerns behavior that prima facie can be qualified by a given legal
order as either legal or illegal. If no such qualification were possible, then behavior
would not even register as being legally relevant.19 On the other, behavior is a-legal
because it resists qualification either as legal or as illegal. A-legality interrupts legal
intentionality—the disclosure of something as legal or illegal—by intimating another
way of drawing the legal/illegal distinction that entrammels the further course of
collective action. So a-legality is both inside a legal order (as legal or illegal) and
outside it (as neither legal nor illegal).
But the strange is never only a cognitive experience; in fact, phenomenological
studies of intentionality gainsay that experience is every only cognitive. As concerns
legal orders, qualifying behavior as legal or illegal, or as just or unjust, does not have
the same emotional valence. Paul Ricœur refers to the emotional structure of polit-
ical and legal experience when noting that “our first entry into the region of lawful-
ness (droit) [is] marked by the cry: "that’s not fair!”20 Instead of simply saying it, one
cries out this experience, which in turn calls attention to the embodiment of an
intentionality in which the cognitive and emotional dimensions of experience can
only be dissevered ex post, through an abstractive move. The anti-austerity Mo-
vimiento de los indignados, in Spain, makes this explicit in its self-identification. In
this vein, and although I cannot develop this idea here at any length, suffice it to
note that the experience of the strange is emotionally charged. By confronting indi-
viduals and groups with the contingency of legal order, a-legality calls forth a com-
plex of emotions that may include fascination, anger, hilarity, discomfiture, fear, and
19
Analogously, Ferrara notes that “the idea of total incommensurability is ultimately incoherent.
For people who articulate their understanding of the matter at hand from within vocabularies that are
totally unrelated could not, strictly speaking, make sense of their being in any kind of relation with
one another.” Ferrara, Justice and Judgment, 183.
20
Paul Ricœur, The Just, translated by David Pellauer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2000),
x. For her part, Douglas-Scott notes that “[j]ustice is an emotive concept . . . Our sense of justice is .
. . gained . . . cumulatively, through experiences of its perceived opposite, through the sensations of
indignation or intolerability.” Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Law After Modernity (Oxford: Hart Publish-
ing, 2014), 175, 208.
427 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
even dread. Ferrara himself evokes this emotional charge of strangeness when re-
ferring to Steve Bannon.21 These considerations on the emotional density of a-le-
gality are linked, on the one hand, to the motivational force of exemplarity, to which
I have already referred heretofore, and, on the other, to the world-disclosing func-
tion of rhetoric, to which I shall refer when engaging with David Owen’s commen-
tary. Developing these ideas more fully would require a full-blown study of the em-
bodied nature of intentionality, a task I briefly refer to again when discussing Zan-
etti’s comments.
Although the examples I have marshaled typically concentrate on behavior that
registers as illegal, a-legality also includes behavior that is prima facie legal but that
resists qualification as legal. So, for example, in Fault Lines I discuss the social un-
rest leading up to the fall of the Milosević regime in Yugoslavia. In the wake of a
ban on the assembly of persons in public spaces, dwellers of Belgrade decided to
walk their dogs, side by side, in the streets of the city.22 Their act was legal, but at
the same time an affront to the regime—a “counter sign” in the sense described
heretofore. Notice that cases such as these do not fall, on the face of it, under Fer-
rara’s description of a-legality, namely an “intentional violation of legal provisions
perceived as inconsistent with higher norms or worth reconsidering.” (emphasis
added)
But perhaps such cases should be construed as an indirect intentional violation
of legal provisions. Moreover, they seem to confirm Ferrara’s assumption that a-
legality has an intentional character, a feature he offsets against the spuriousness of
the clochard’s dinner invitation. Yet here again my account of a-legality is broader
than what Ferrara takes it to be. In Fault Lines I refer to situations in which legal
behavior has no intention of challenging the law, yet resists qualification as either
legal or illegal. Think, for instance, of open-pit mining operations that fall squarely
within the scope of the law, yet which come to appear as unacceptably detrimental
to the environment. So also the clochard’s dinner invitation may not have been
intended to challenge the law, yet questions who ought to do what, where, and when.
Thus, the animus to violate rules with a view to transforming a legal order is not a
necessary feature of a-legality. To couch this point in the vocabulary of political lib-
eralism: civil disobedience by no means exhausts the precinct of a-legality. It is a
broader category that seeks to characterize the general nature of experiences in
which the putative unity of a legal order is challenged, whether intentionally or un-
intentionally.
21
To be sure, Bannon is strange for Ferrara as a person with liberal convictions, not so for persons
who share Bannon’s world-view; strangeness, as I noted, is a relational concept. This points to an
interesting methodological issue: it is impossible to illustrate strangeness without presupposing a sha-
red world between author and readers in which behavior can appear as either familiar or strange.
22
I am grateful to Ivana Ivković, a doctoral student in legal philosophy at the Tilburg Law School,
for describing this incident to me.
428 HANS LINDAHL
23
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1971), 364. See also
Rawls’ essay, “The Justification of Civil Disobedience,” in John Rawls, Collected Papers (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 176-189. For a fuller discussion of Rawls’ (and Philip Pettit’s)
conception of civil disobedience, see Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalisation, 182-4.
24
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 382.
25
Ibid, 382, 376.
26
Ackerman, We the People: Transformations, 88.
429 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
recognized by all other Americans as free and equal citizens of the Republic.27 As
Ferrara describes it, the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, the New Deal,
and Civil Rights legislation are exemplary by dint of securing a greater self-congru-
ency of the American collective. In sum, Ackerman conceives of civil disobedience,
as do Rawls and Ferrara, in terms of a struggle oriented to progressively begetting
mutual reciprocity between free and equal citizens.28
Although there are only two further, cursory references to the exclusion of Native
Americans in the first volume, and none in the third, of Ackerman’s We the People,
nor in Ferrara’s commentary thereof, there can be no doubt that Rawls, Ackerman,
and Ferrara would vigorously support civil disobedience by Native Americans ori-
ented to obtaining the rights required for them to burgeon as individuals and groups
on an equal standing with all other American citizens and minorities.
Yet, need inclusion be the nisus of all indigenous peoples? Might there be indig-
enous persons or groups of indigenous persons for whom their recognition as Na-
tive Americans is a form of domination because they are included in Ackerman’s
narrative of “an ongoing American struggle for popular sovereignty”? The question
is neither hypothetical nor spurious, as evinced, amongst others, by the Lakota
Sioux Indian Declaration of Sovereign Nation Status in 2007, following up on their
withdrawal from the 1851 and 1868 Treaties agreed between their forefathers and
the US government at Fort Laramie, Wyoming.29 Were they or other like-minded
indigenous peoples to engage in a-legal acts oriented to demanding political sover-
eignty vis-à-vis the American Republic, their resistance would not be civil disobedi-
ence in the sense espoused by Rawls and Ferrara. For they would not resist that they
have been excluded in the Founding and thereafter; they would resist their inclusion
in the Republic. They would not demand the right to have rights in the American
Republic; they would demand not to have rights therein, so as to be able to partici-
pate in a collective they could call their own.30 Likewise, they would resist having to
demand that they be recognized as Americans, as the price to be paid for making
their demand “understandable” to the broader public. Their recognition as Native
Americans is an act of misrecognition of who they take themselves to be because
27
Ibid. In Ferrara’s words, “all these transformative events are instances of a more and more com-
plete realization of the political identity of the American People as a nation.” Ferrara, Justice and
Judgment, 131.
28
See Alessandro Ferrara, Reflective authenticity: Rethinking the project of modernity (London:
Routledge, 1998), 13-16, for the role of mutual recognition in the judgment paradigm of politics.
29
“Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status,” at https://nativeamerican-
netroots.net/diary/50 (last accessed on June 12, 2019).
30
I borrow this formulation from Nanda Oudejans, “The Right not to Have Rights: A New Per-
spective on Irregular Immigration,” in Political Theory 47 (2019) 4, 447-474.
430 HANS LINDAHL
they are recognized, albeit formally, as free and equal citizens of the American Re-
public.31
It may well be the case that, for pragmatic reasons, such indigenous persons and
groups see no alternative for themselves other than to make use of the rights the
American legal order grants them, and, as a consequence, are inured to fighting for
greater inclusion and/or a limited autonomy regime. But does this entail that “we
can assume that an implicit consensus to [the project of a political community] is
expressed by the citizen who resides in his country, exercises her right to vote, col-
lects the benefits of her participation in the division of labour and exerts the prerog-
atives of citizenship”?32
The analysis I just offered of “Native American” resistance illustrates why a-le-
gality encompasses both weak and strong dimensions of a challenge to collective
unity, the correlates of which are, respectively, the limits and fault lines of a legal
order. A limit refers to the strange insofar as it appears as unordered but orderable
within the legal order it challenges. Acts of civil disobedience fall within this dimen-
sion of a-legality. As described by Rawls, civil disobedience regards a demand for
recognition oriented to securing inclusion in a legal order on the basis of the practi-
cal possibilities available to that order, but which it has not (yet) realized. Homer
Plessy’s and Rosa Park’s conduct is a-legal in this sense. The IACA-model of law
argues that Plessy’s and Park’s challenges can call forth transformative acts of col-
lective self-assertion that aim to recognize the other as one of us. Park’s challenge
did. A fault line, by contrast, concerns a challenge to the boundaries of collective
unity that is unordered and unorderable within the legal order it challenges. Such is
the case for indigenous peoples and individuals who refuse to view themselves as
Native Americans because the American Republic is, for them, the outcome of a
violent colonization to which they refuse to submit normatively, even if they can do
no other, factually speaking.
1.4. Judgment
These considerations on a-legality prepare the ground for assessing Ferrara’s
comments on constituent power. As he sees it, the concept of constituent power
deployed by the IACA-model of law is “at the core of liberal constitutional theory.”
In particular, Ackerman’s theory of “unconventional adaptation” shows constituent
power to be a “limited breach of legality . . . in the service of creatively transforming
31
For an analogous discussion of the Quebec Secession Reference by the Canadian Supreme
Court and its implications for First Nations, see Hans Lindahl, “Recognition as Domination: Consti-
tutionalism, Reciprocity and the Problem of Singularity, in Neil Walker, Stephen Tierney and Jo
Shaw (eds.), Europe’s Constitutional Mosaic (Oxford: Hart Publishers, 2011), 205-230.
32
Ferrara, Justice and Judgment, 192-3.
431 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
‘the point’ of living together.” Although the breaches of legality displayed in uncon-
ventional adaptation have different levels of intensity, they share “the kind of dis-
continuity with established legal, political, social patterns that Lindahl captures un-
der a-legality in its second meaning.” But whereas Ackerman’s model of unconven-
tional adaptation can accommodate the difference between constituent power and
constitutional interpretation, the IACA-model of law collapses this important dis-
tinction into the single rubric of constituent power.
As to this last point, I happily concede that Authority does not offer a sufficiently
differentiated notion of constitutional transformation. But that was not its aim. It
focused exclusively on establishing whether the exercise of constituent power ger-
mane to global constitutionalism could avoid the logic of inclusion and exclusion as
per the IACA-model of law, not on providing a full-fledged theory of constituent
power. An earlier article deals head on with different modalities of constitutional
transformation, so I will not canvass these here.33
I also agree that there are significant affinities between my account of constituent
power and Ackerman’s model of unconventional adaptation. Ackerman’s recon-
struction of the phases through which higher law-making breaches legality to trans-
form collective action—signaling, legitimating, proposing, triggering, ratifying, and
consolidating—offers a fine-grained functional analysis of constituent power. These
phases parse what my formulation of the paradox of constituent power condenses
into the two moments of seizing the initiative to represent a collective otherwise and
the self-recognition by the addressees of that initiative.34
There are significant differences between the two accounts of constituent power,
too. Most obviously, Ackerman’s three-volume We the People ignores those revo-
lutionary foundations, such as the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, that “challenge . .
. an entire constitutional tradition.” Instead, he focuses on revolutionary founda-
tions, such as the American Revolution, that “challenge . . . well-established
norms.”35 The IACA-model of law, by contrast, offers an account of constituent
power that encompasses both kinds of revolutionary foundations. For, as noted ear-
lier, a-legality does not only manifest itself as what is unordered but orderable in a
legal order; it also comprises challenges that, as unordered and unorderable, can
lead over into a new legal order. Ackerman does discuss revolutionary foundations
in his most recent book. But what is of cardinal importance to my examen, namely,
in what way representation is effectual in the exercise of constituent power oriented
to what Ackerman calls a “revolutionary ‘new beginning’” or the “collective struggle
33
Hans Lindahl, “Possibility, Actuality, Rupture: Constituent Power and the Ontology of Change,”
in Constellations 22 (2015) 2, 163-174.
34
Ackerman, We the People: Transformations, 32-68.
35
Ibid, 11.
432 HANS LINDAHL
for political redefinition,” remains unclarified in this book as well.36 So I ask for
Ferrara’s indulgence, as I will dedicate no further attention to Ackerman’s work.
While certainly engrossing as regards the cornucopia of doctrinal and historical ma-
terials his work puts on display, its theoretical framework regarding representation
and constituent power is meager.
Ferrara’s own thinking is far more interesting in this respect. And so I propose
to take up the question about constituent power by focusing on where I think Fer-
rara and I stand closest to and furthest removed from each other: judgment.
He is interested in Ackerman’s theory of higher law-making because it illustrates,
in his view, the turn towards the judgment paradigm of politics. More precisely,
Ferrara’s inquiry focuses on Kant’s notion of reflective judgment, as he rejects any
attempt to posit trans-subjective and a priori criteria that could determine how to
settle political conflict. Habermas’ appeal to the transcendental conditions of an
ideal speech situation and Rawls’ concept of rationality, as developed in the Theory
of Justice, are good examples, he posits, of an approach to intersubjectivity that at-
tempts to overcome the irreducibility of plurality by appealing to determinative judg-
ment. The Linguistic Turn exposes this move as foundationalist: “there is simply
no way of grasping reality from outside an interpretative framework, and . . . there
exists an irreducible multiplicity of interpretative frameworks.”37 Ferrara argues in
favor of “reflective” or “exemplary” universalism as an alternative to the foundation-
alism of principle universalism and the relativism of the Linguistic Turn. In his view,
an exemplary act of higher law-making enables a collective to become more con-
gruent with itself over time by dint of progressively realizing the conditions for equal
and free citizenship that truly hold for us, while perhaps also inspiring other collec-
tives to adopt this exemplary law as their own. Leading by example.
I am sympathetic to this approach insofar as I understand authority to be contex-
tually responsive in a way similar to Ferrara’s notion of exemplary law-making. “Au-
thority is the capacity to articulate a representation—a vision—of who we* really
are/ought to be that, in hindsight and for the time being, gains wide allegiance among
its addressees and motivates them to act as a group that can deal with challenges to
its contingent existence.” (Authority, 329) Not surprisingly, both Ferrara and I are
interested in developing a contemporary reading of the Aristotelian notion of
phrónēsis, the discussion of which I postpone till my response to David Owen.
Ferrara’s focus on judgment and my interest in representation show similarities
and differences. Following Kant, Ferrara holds that judgment in general posits “the
36
Bruce Ackerman, Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 27, 35, 40-2. (italics added in the “re” of “redefi-
nition”)
37
Ferrara, Reflective authenticity, 11. I was struck, when reading Ferrara’s books, that there is not
a single reference to Lyotard’s interpretation of reflective judgment, presumably because it belongs to
the post-modernism Ferrara is keen to distance himself from.
433 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
38
Ferrara, The Force of the Example, 18 (italics added) The internal connection between judg-
ment and representation is evident in Ackerman’s conception of a “dualist” constitution, for both
“higher” and “lower” law-making are modes of the political representation of the people. See Acker-
man, We the People: Foundations, 6-10.
39
This also holds for works of art, which are themselves representations. No work of art is either
the first or the last, none is conclusive about what it aspires to reveal, and none can be either purely
repetitive or purely innovative with regard to earlier works of art. And like a sign—nay, because it is a
sign—a work of art is embedded in and reveals a world. See Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the
Work of Art,” in David Farrel Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (London & New York:
Routledge, 2011), 83-140.
434 HANS LINDAHL
40
Ferrara, Justice and Judgment, 145.
41
Ibid, 146.
42
Ibid, 147.
435 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
acts of higher law-making that follow it, can be “aptly attributable to all affected per-
sons.”43
Although Ferrara vigorously defends the internal, immanent criterion that un-
dergirds the collective self-congruency of reflective universalism against the external,
transcendent criterion of what he calls “principle universalism,” this stark cleavage
conceals a more fundamental agreement between both forms of universalism. In
both cases, the question of the validity of founding acts demands finding an inde-
pendent and objective set of identity-criteria to track the self-congruency (reflective
universalism) or self-rule (principle universalism) of a collective for all persons con-
cerned. While reflective universalism abjures impartiality under principles, it shares
with principle universalism the quest for an independent and objective criterion that
could vouch for “impartiality without principles,” the title of the last chapter of Fer-
rara’s Justice and Judgment. I wonder, however, whether the price that Ferrara pays
for this strategy is not too steep. Does not postulating a pre-existent and pre-political
cultural identity as the fons et origo of collective self-congruency reintroduce the
foundationalism he seeks to eradicate from politics?
Furthermore, as the citation of Ferrara makes clear, his understanding of consti-
tutional transformation embraces a simple linear temporality of a before and an
after, in which an extant cultural collective becomes a political collective through an
initial constituent act that, if all goes well, is “aligned” with its core cultural identity,
while also leaving room, in subsequent acts of higher law-making, for reinterpreting
the constitution in ways that better “reflect” that political identity.44 This teleological
interpretation of constituent power has a significant drawback. Strictly speaking,
nothing new emerges in a teleological concept of change: the passage towards
greater political self-congruency actualizes cultural possibilities that were already
there, latent, from the very beginning. In good Aristotelian fashion, constitutional
change means, for the model of collective self-congruency, the progression from
dúnamis to enérgeia.
Drawing on a phenomenological radicalization of the “as” in judgment/represen-
tation, the IACA-model of law rejects this simple linear account of transformation,
underscoring the paradoxical temporality at work in representation. Let me phrase
this in terms of Ferrara’s distinction between cultural and political identity: a con-
stituent political act originates the cultural identity of a collective if it succeeds, ret-
roactively, in representing an original cultural identity. A polity with a distinct cul-
tural identity is the effect of a successful retrojective anticipation, not an aborning of
our better political self that unfolds who we already are, culturally speaking. To par-
aphrase Bert van Roermund’s wonderful formulation of the temporal paradox en-
43
Ibid, 143, citing Michelman, “Always under Law?”, 234.
44
Ibid, 148.
436 HANS LINDAHL
sconced in the representational “as,” the foundation of a collective posits a past cul-
tural identity that we can look forward to. This paradoxical temporality introduces
discontinuities in and reorganizations of the consecution going from past to present
to future, disrupting a linear understanding of collective transformation as the pro-
cess by which a collective becomes more or less authentic.45
Crucially, while Ferrara is right to note that judgment/representation claims to
articulate what truly conjoins us, and that what truly joins us is never simply “at the
subject’s disposal,” as per his comments, the temporal paradox of constituent power
gives the lie to the idea of a “core identity” that is fully independent of the unauthor-
ized positivity of representational acts that succeed—nowise fully, always provision-
ally—in founding a collective by including and excluding, and which ruins the at-
tempt to independently and objectively track progress toward or deviation from col-
lective self-congruency and authenticity for all parties concerned.
The importance of the representational “as” is not limited to its temporal dimen-
sion; it also brings about a representational difference between the represented and
its representations. As I have sought to show in Authority, processes of collective
self-identification are also always processes of collective self-differentiation: we iden-
tify ourselves as this—rather than as that. The point is not simply, as Ferrara puts it,
that “something changes and something remains the same.”46 Instead, the repre-
sentational “as” differentiates a collective with respect to itself in the very move by
which it posits its identity over time. As a result, collective self-representation is al-
ways also, to a lesser or greater extent, a collective self-misrepresentation, which is
something quite different to understanding the career of a collective as becoming
more or less self-congruent over time. This is why I earlier insisted that signs also
operate as counter-signs, and the exemplary as counter-exemplary, giving rise to a
split collective self.
The implication of this train of thoughts is also clear, I hope, for the notion of
constituent power: while every collective’s possibilities are in excess of its default
setting of legal order, the possibilities for living and acting together are in excess of
the possibilities available to any given collective. Constituent power goes hand in
hand with constituent powerlessness. “We can,” i.e. we are capable of asserting our-
selves as a collective by including the other (in ourselves) as one of us, runs up
against a “we cannot”: the other (in ourselves) who obstinately demands to be
treated as other than us, e.g. as a sovereign Indian nation rather than as a group of
Native Americans. Constituent powerlessness explains why I am loath to reserve
the honorific label of constituent power, as Ferrara urges me to do, for transfor-
mations of a constitutional order oriented to securing its greater self-congruency.
45
See Lindahl, “Possibility, Actuality, Rupture,” for a more detailed analysis of the temporal dis-
locations at the heart of an ontology of change.
46
Ferrara, Justice and Judgment, 145.
437 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
47
Alessandro Ferrara, The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political
Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 219-20.
438 HANS LINDAHL
political liberalism, and which defines it as such: the refusal to relinquish the dem-
ocratic “distinction between legitimate (consensus-deserving) and arbitrary
power.”48 This means that in a democracy, including a “multivariate democracy,”
legitimate power is intransitive power: power that we, as a whole, exercise over our-
selves. Here, then, is the bottom line: political liberalism refuses to relinquish the
principle of identity as the independent and objective criterion that allows of adju-
dicating for all affected parties what counts as legitimate and as arbitrary exercise of
power. Having rejected the attempt by principle universalism to posit a transcendent
set of conditions for collective identity, Ferrara appeals instead to an immanent set
of conditions of collective identity that, when met, give rise to collective self-congru-
ency. Thus, his defense of (hyper)plurality is also—and ultimately—a defense of
unity, of plurality within unity, because, in his reading, collective identity is the inde-
pendent and objective (albeit not transcendent) criterion that allows of differentiat-
ing between legitimate and arbitrary power: we, as a unity, rule over ourselves.
I agree that the aspiration to realizing collective identity, hence to achieving unity,
is an ingredient element of democratic politics. And I agree that reflective judgment
expresses this aspiration without embracing the mode of foundationalism he rightly
detects and condemns in principle universalism. I know of no other theory of po-
litical liberalism that is more sensitive to and more creative in dealing with the ten-
sion between unity and plurality than Ferrara’s. Yet if representation cannot but
pluralize what it unifies, if it cannot but differentiate what it identifies, then not only
are the realization of collective self-identity and self-unity postponed sine die, but
are subverted from within by difference and plurality.
So, yes, collective self-assertion encapsulates the aspiration to realizing collective
identity and unity, hence to being able to distinguish between legitimate and arbi-
trary power. But the representation of collective unity calls for collective self-re-
straint, as far as that goes, because no legal order can justify how it draws this dis-
tinction without ultimately falling prey to a petitio principii. No collective self-con-
gruency without a blind spot as to what counts as collective self-congruency; this
insight differentiates the IACA-model of law from Ferrara’s defense of political lib-
eralism. This entails an important correction to Ferrara’s reading of my inversion
of Schmitt’s exception: I am not claiming, as he puts it, that “the exception is aimed
at including the other without assimilating her to one of us.” My inversion of the
exception consists precisely in not applying the law that is applicable in those cases
in which including the other cannot but assimilate her to one of us. This reading of
the exception is the extreme mode of restraint whereby “a collective acknowledges
that it has an outside . . . that eludes the collective’s self-assertion and that ought to
be preserved as its outside . . . if collective recognition of the other (in ourselves) is
48
Ibid.
439 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
2. THOMAS FOSSEN
also defending the priority of the represented over their representatives. This prior-
ity is important, he holds, if we are to make sense of representatives as being re-
sponsive and accountable to their constituencies.
I am sympathetic to his move to develop a concept of political representation
that takes up the cause of (a certain reading of) constructivism and that insists on the
responsive nature of representation. But, I will argue, what he wants to say about
representative agency and the priority of the represented is captured by a phenom-
enological reading of the interplay between the referential and semantic functions
of representation, which is always and only the representation of something as some-
thing to someone.
Fossen moots the distinction between the aforementioned modes of representa-
tion in the course of a critique of Michael Saward’s analytical framework of repre-
sentational claims. I’ll ignore Saward’s framework, concentrating on Fossen’s con-
ceptualization of the two modes of representation, which he exemplifies as follows:
“(a) The lawyer represents her client before the court; (b) In her closing statement
to the jury, the lawyer represents her client as an innocent bystander.”49 Perusal of
these two examples reveals three key differences, according to Fossen. Whereas (a)
deploys a relation between two individuals, (b) involves a statement, an individual,
and an account of a role in some situation. Furthermore, they are semantically dif-
ferent. Most importantly, “the relation of subject and object in (a) is dyadic (x rep-
resents y), whereas in (b) it is triadic (x represents y as z).”50 Because Saward and
other constructivists focus only on representation-as, Fossen holds that they lack the
analytical wherewithal to account for the priority of the represented, hence the re-
sponsiveness incumbent on representative agents.
Fossen goes to considerable lengths to parry the objection that acting-for-others
collapses into representation-as. According to the objection, (a) can be recon-
structed as stating that the lawyer represents someone as her client. Fossen retorts
that this “does not capture the point of representative agency, because by the same
token we could say that she represents herself as a lawyer. We could not, however,
just as well say that she acts on her own behalf in the courtroom.”51 But this rebuttal
is clearly wrong. To assert that the lawyer represents the client is to say that the
lawyer treats someone as such, referring to her in certain ways, laying out certain
arguments beneficial to her case, etc. Likewise, to represent someone as one’s client
in a courtroom scenario is to represent oneself as a lawyer, undertaking the kinds
49
Thomas Fossen, “Constructivism and the Logic of Political Representation,” forthcoming in
American Political Science Review, (2019) doi:10.1017/S0003055419000273. I also ignore in what
follows other contributions to the current debate on representation among political theorists, such as
the work of Nadia Urbinati. I hope, on another occasion, to contrast my own approach to the posi-
tions defended in that debate.
50
Ibid, 4.
51
Ibid, 5.
441 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
52
Ibid, 6.
53
Heidegger, Being and Time, §§ 31 and 32.
442 HANS LINDAHL
54
Fossen, “Constructivism and the Logic of Political Representation,” 12.
55
Menga, Ausdruck, Mitwelt, Ordnung, 62.
443 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
Here we stand shoulder to shoulder: “authority,” I argue, “is the capacity to ar-
ticulate a representation—a vision—of who we* really are/ought to be that, in hind-
sight and for the time being, gains wide allegiance among its addressees and moti-
vates them to act as a group that can deal with challenges to its contingent existence.”
(Authority, 329) Fossen speaks of “genuine interests” of the represented; I refer to
authoritative representations as articulating, more or less successfully, what “really”
concinnates us. In both cases, responsive representation involves the priority, which
is not simply temporal, of the represented with respect to the representational
claims—the precedence or Vorgängichkeit of the represented. On the other hand,
a representation is not merely a reproduction of the represented because the chal-
lenge to which representation responds is not independent of how the response
represents it—the retroactivity or Nachträglichkeit of the representation. See here
the double asymmetry that governs representational processes, an asymmetry that
avoids both pure realism and pure constructivism without having to appeal to a
mode of political representation distinct from the triadic structure indicated above.
The interplay between representation of and representation as does all the work
necessary to explain how representation in general, and political representation in
particular, can be responsive. The notion of “representative agency” falls prey to
Ockham’s razor.
56
Fossen, “Constructivism and the Logic of Political Representation,” 11. (italics added)
444 HANS LINDAHL
a taking or seizure.” To the extent that this annexation succeeds, “the addressees
are swept up into a collective, and this ineluctably carries an element of violence.
This moment of violence is then veiled because in order to succeed the initiatory
act must present itself as legitimate.”
I have indeed insisted on exposing the moment of unauthorized inclusion and
exclusion that accompanies the emergence of collectives. The concern animating
this strategy is to debunk claims to universality that aborning global legal orders are
wont to claim for themselves. Yet to acknowledge this does not mean that constitu-
ent power is simply an act of annexation: to take is also to initiate, to set something
new on its way. I consistently argue in Authority and earlier work that constituent
power empowers and disempowers, that it opens up and closes down possibilities
for joint action. Accordingly, the act of seizing or taking the initiative is never only
an annexation, dissimulated or otherwise, never only an illicit appropriation of col-
lective unity. To take or seize the initiative through unauthorized representational
acts is always also to create an opportunity for joint action, which would not arise
absent such acts, and regardless of whether they explicitly present themselves as
constituent acts or emerge silently, as interventions that unexpectedly change the
course of daily interaction. In a word: constituent power innovates, unveiling novel
opportunities.
Furthermore, as Fossen himself acknowledges, seizing the initiative is not on its
own sufficient for the success of constituent power. There is a fundamental passivity
in constituent power, which depends on the continued uptake—activity—of its ad-
dressees, who may or may not recognize themselves in a representation of what
joins them together as members of a collective.57 Securing uptake in the form of
self-recognition by constituent power’s addressees turns on being responsive to their
interests. Thus, constituent power may or may not be authoritative in the sense
noted above, namely, it may or may not be successful in articulating a vision—a rep-
resentation—of who we really are with which its addressees can durably identify. For
this reason, I insisted in Chapters 4 and 6 of Authority that the exercise of power
has an intransitive purport: someone seizes the initiative to say “we” on behalf of us,
not of them. The theory of constituent power outlined in Authority nowhere es-
pouses the view that “addressees are swept up into a collective” or that acts of con-
stituent power are simply illegitimate, passing themselves off as legitimate.
Although Authority rejects a reductive interpretation of constituent power as a
moment of loss and incipient decay, it does emphatically argue for the ambiguity of
constituent power and its representational claims. The act of seizing or taking the
initiative to represent collective unity enables new possibilities for living and acting
together; but constituent acts cannot enable without also disabling other practical
57
See Hans Lindahl, “Constituent Power and Reflexive Identity: Towards an Ontology of Collec-
tive Selfhood,” in Martin Loughlin & Neil Walker (eds.), The Paradox of Constitutionalism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2007), 9-24.
445 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
58
Bernhard Waldenfels, Schattenrisse der Moral (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 191, fn. 18. For a
rich development of and bibliography on this theme, see Menga, Ausdruck, Mitwelt, Ordnung, 67-8.
446 HANS LINDAHL
tive, he avers, as it only accounts for the imposition of collectivity, whereas the Ham-
burg symposium on Authority illustrates the broad range of collectives that emerge
through the exercise of constituent power in the invitational mode: “Peter says:
‘Shall we discuss Hans’ new book in Hamburg?’” Fossen acknowledges that “of
course, Peter must assume the standing to invite”; in other words, Peter takes the
initiative to invite us to Hamburg. True, this initiative or self-attribution of standing
“usually comes unasked, may sometimes be impertinent, and you cannot un-invite
yourself. But you can ignore or refuse an invitation. And when you do, if it is genu-
inely an invitation, that’s the end of it.”
I am grateful to Fossen for this perceptive comment, which allows me to intro-
duce nuances into the account of constituent power that have been absent in Au-
thority and my earlier writings. Public lawyers will perhaps hoot and holler, protest-
ing that Fossen’s example trivializes the political gravitas and preconditions of con-
stituent power. But this would miss the point of his example. It is deliberately trivial
precisely because Fossen wants uncluttered access to the varieties of acts through
which collectives emerge.
So I am happy to follow him in this methodological move, although I will take it
in another direction altogether. What I find interesting is that the disjunction he
posits between invitation and imposition elicits two inverted questions. The first:
can constituent power ever be purely an imposition, or does it always involve, at
least minimally, an invitation? The second: can constituent power ever be purely an
invitation, or does it always involve, at least minimally, an imposition? Understand-
ing why constituent power must trade in both dimensions allows for differentiation,
with some manifestations of constituent power that are more invitational or more
“impositional” (if I may be allowed the neologism) than others, while also inveighing
against a simple diremption of its two poles.
Does the IACA-model of law reduce constituent power to imposition, neglect-
ing an invitational moment? Nay! As noted heretofore, I argue in Authority and
other writings that there is a fundamental passivity in constituent power: that some-
one says “we” on behalf of us, as in “Shall we discuss Hans’ new book in Ham-
burg?”, is never enough to get a collective up and going. In effect, constituent power
depends on the uptake of the addressees of this representational act, on their self-
recognition as members of a group of individuals who, say, are interested in discuss-
ing a book. Naked coercion can never be sufficient to secure this uptake, if nothing
else because whoever commands that coercion be used against recalcitrant address-
ees depends on the uptake and recognition of those who exercise coercion. For this
reason, I refer in Authority to the exercise of constituent power as convoking or
interpellating individuals to view themselves as members of a collective. So the con-
cept of constituent power I defend is congenial to an invitational dimension. In fact,
it asserts that such a dimension is an ingredient feature of constituent power, inas-
much as the convocation to view ourselves as members of a group can be refused
447 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
pretation makes sense on the assumption that the sense of representation in ques-
tion is representative agency.” That is: x represents y. Representation-as is prospec-
tive; representational agency, retrospective.
Notice, to begin with, that this argument confirms my earlier remark that, despite
his avowed intention, Fossen ends up embracing realism to save constructivism.
Representational agency is a form of representation in which the represented indi-
vidual or group already exists as this or that particular individual or group, prior to
and independently of the representation itself. In turn, representation-as involves
the ab ovo production of a collective, which only comes into existence with the
acceptance of an invitation to participate in joint action. Notice also that, taken to-
gether, these two modes of representation involve a specific temporal interpretation
of a collectivity’s career, the inception of which begins now, at present, in the ex-
change of invitation and acceptance, thereafter becoming the original or originating
past of a collective. To the extent that invitation and acceptance are comparable to
the to-and-fro unfolded in deliberation, Fossen’s model of representation approxi-
mates the discourse-theoretical assumption that constituent power, in its rational
form, involves a linear temporality that originates in deliberation and leads over to
representation. I’ll return to this point when discussing Patberg’s comments.
“Shall we discuss Hans’ new book in Hamburg?” Peter convokes a range of in-
dividuals to engage in joint action. His is a representational act, in a twofold sense.
Representation of, the referent of which is a group, not simply an aggregate of indi-
viduals: “Shall we [i.e. we together, not we each] discuss Hans’ new book in Ham-
burg?” Representation as: “Shall we gather together as the group of individuals who
is interested in discussing Hans’ new book in Hamburg?” The group does not exist
prior to this representational act. We had not thought of ourselves as members of
a group interested in Hans’ new book prior to Peter’s invitation. That we are a group
and what we are as a group depends on Peter’s representation of us. Peter—or some-
one else—must take or seize the initiative to convoke the group, which means that,
by definition, his representational act cannot have been authorized in advance by
those whom it convokes as members of the group. Yet, when inviting us to go to
Hamburg, Peter presupposes that we already share an interest in reading and dis-
cussing Hans’ book, prior to the invitation, which is why he invites—selects—us. The
presupposition is not merely logical: it is also chronological.
But, as mentioned heretofore, there is a fundamental passivity in acts of constit-
uent power: Peter’s invitation may well fall entirely flat. How embarrassing, perhaps
even painful, for Peter and Hans; but this simply shows that the representation of a
group depends on there being a group to represent. If no one accepts the invitation,
there was no such group, and the invitation is, in hindsight, misguided or inappro-
priate. Yet, as it happens, each or some of us accept the invitation, representing
ourselves as members of the group by reading Hans’ book, preparing comments
449 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
for the symposium, communicating with each other to avoid overlap in our ques-
tions, traveling to Hamburg, participating in the discussions, and so on. Our uptake
of Peter’s invitation gives retroactive credence to the presupposition that we are a
group and what we are as a group. The representation proved, in hindsight, to be
appropriate, confirming that Peter is authorized to act in our behalf by convening
and organizing the symposium in which we will jointly discuss Hans’ book. In the
same way that the failure of an invitation shows that representations depend on the
represented, so, too, its success.
Accordingly, Peter’s representational act has the temporal structure of a retrojec-
tive anticipation. An anticipation: “Shall we discuss Hans’ new book in Hamburg?”
A retrojection: “Shall we [the group who is interested in Hans’ work] discuss his
new book in Hamburg?” Here, then, is the temporal and ontological paradox at
work in constituent power, a paradox that plays out in the interplay between repre-
sentation of and representation as: we are not simply the group that we are, but
rather we become who we are by representing ourselves. Only this way of describing
the temporality of representation can avoid the oscillation between realism and con-
structivism, between the reproduction and the production of an original unity, reg-
nant in Fossen’s theory of representation.
not the bromide that referenda are in breach of the principle of representation.59
The same argument about representation can be extended to other forms of citizen
participation, such as Dorf and Sabel’s “democratic experimentalism,” Arendt’s
“workers’ councils,” or motley extra-institutional participatory venues invented by
alter-globalization movements.60 This expanded view of representation is also ger-
mane to the current disenchantment with traditional channels of representation in
what Pierre Rosanvallon calls “counter-democracy.”61
As concerns “representative” democracy, I have elsewhere resisted a too narrow
interpretation of its scope, arguing that Article 50 of the Dutch Constitution could
be rephrased as follows: “The legislative, executive, judiciary, and citizen decision-
making organs represent the entire Dutch people.” One thing is the appointment
procedure for political representation, electoral or otherwise; another altogether the
representation of collective unity by a range of bodies. The notion of checks and
balances, so dear to advocates of the rule of law, only makes sense against the back-
drop of a joint representational practice, namely, the representation of collective
unity. Checks and balances between public powers is one of the ways in which de-
mocracies institutionalize the insight that the representation of collective unity is
both necessary and impossible. In this vein, the well-known “counter-majoritarian”
function of constitutional courts, which, on occasion, invoke constitutional norms
to defend minority interests, presupposes that the court represents the interests of
the collective as a whole, hence also minority interests when the legislative majority
identifies itself as being the whole.62
If the IACA-model of law offers a defense of participation, it also cautions against
assuming that participation can overcome the ambiguities that befall representation.
The analysis of the emergence of the World Social Forum, in Chapter 4 of Author-
ity, shows that participation does not, and cannot, get started through participatory
acts. The WSF, which presents itself as a forum for discussion without representa-
tion, got off the ground by way of a small group of intellectuals who seized the initi-
ative to draw up the Charter of the WSF. The Charter certainly opens up a space
59
Hans Lindahl and Bert van Roermund, “Is er een plaats voor het referendum in de
representatieve democratie?” in Openbaar bestuur. Tijdschrift voor Beleid, Organisatie & Politiek,
10 (2000) 1, 26-29.
60
Arendt’s discussion of the relation between representation and participation is more ambiguous
than what I assume, or so argues Hanna Lukkari. Although Arendt often opposes the two terms,
Lukkari explores other passages in which Arendt views participation as a form of representation. See
Hanna Lukkari, “Hannah Arendt and the Glimmering Paradox of Constituent Power,” forthcoming
in Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brännström and Panu Minkkinen (eds.) Constituent Power: Law, Popular
Rule, and Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
61
Pierre Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust, translated by Arthur
Goldhammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
62
Hans Lindahl, “Rechtsvorming als politieke representatie: de kwestie van constitutionele
toetsing,” in E.-J. Broers & B. van Klink (eds.), De rechter als rechtsvormer (The Hague, Boom
Juridische Uitgevers, 2001), 173-196.
451 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
for broad consultation and participation by interested parties, but it also begets the
conditions for establishing who counts as an interested party, i.e. those interests that
deserve to get a hearing in line with the scope of the WSF, and those that do not.
The IACA-model of law reminds us that legal orders are a species of authoritatively
mediated collective action, which means that authorities claim to be entitled to draw
the boundaries of what counts as relevant and appropriate participation in legal or-
dering. While these boundaries can be renegotiated, they are never only the result
nor the object of participation. My concern, therefore, is not to downplay the im-
portance of participation; it is to ensure that claims about participatory decision-
making neither mask the authoritative moment that sets the limits of participation
nor conceal that, like all forms of representation, participatory practices cannot rep-
resent collective unity without also misrepresenting it.
3. DAVID OWEN
Owen helpfully points to parallels between Jim Tully’s and my work on imperi-
alism and legal universalism, as well as to the parallel between Jacques Rancière’s
notion of disagreement (mésentente) and the concept of a-legality. With reference
to a-legality, Owen suggests that the conceptual framework I put in place offers more
resources than Rancière’s for making sense of politics as the transformation of po-
lice. Nonetheless, he argues, the IACA-model of law needs to be pushed further to
adequately conceptualize the normativity of acts of representation that respond to
a-legal challenges. My appeal to phrónēsis cannot carry this burden, he asserts, for
it remains within the compass of what Rancière calls police. To address this short-
coming, Owen’s interesting proposal is to secern two distinct modes of normativity:
justification and vindication. Whereas my interpretation of responsive representa-
tion focuses on the prospectivity of justification, the IACA-model of law would do
well, he argues, to focus on the retrospectivity of vindication. “The central question
with respect to founding, re-founding or transforming a policy is not whether the
actions are justified—often they may, at least in moral terms, have as a success con-
dition that they are not—but whether they are vindicated.”
theory, only foraying into adjoining philosophical perspectives where this was of
help to elucidate the specificity of my own project. For the other, and mindful of
the resemblances and discrepancies between the IACA-model of law and
Rancière’s work, I have wanted to reserve a fulsome discussion thereof for another
occasion.
This is, nonetheless, a propitious opportunity to discuss salient points of conver-
gence and divergence between our respective projects, especially because, as Owen
points out, Rancière has recently engaged in a debate with Honneth about recogni-
tion and disagreement. This collation will be of help when discussing Owen’s dis-
tinction between justification and vindication. Indeed, it seems to me that the core
issue Owen raises concerns the normativity of rupture. Equality (Rancière), vindi-
cation (Owen), and asymmetrical recognition (Lindahl) are different ways of con-
ceiving the vexed relation between normativity and the temporality of rupture.
Owen observes that both disagreement and a-legality can be read as exploiting
the distinction between two modes of unjustified exclusion and inclusion: “(a) ‘un-
justified’ as failure to comply with, or fall under, the relevant rule or standard, and
(b) ‘unjustified’ as not subject to a normative rule or standard, that is, outside the
game of justification . . .” Whereas the unjustified, in the first sense, is the domain
of police, thus of illegality as concerns the law, unjustified, in the second sense, ap-
pertains to the realm of politics, hence to a-legality in the law. In both cases, what is
at stake is the encounter between (dis)order and an-other order, which Rancière
dubs “heterogeneous,” and I, “strange.” In Rancière’s words,
Spectacular or otherwise, political activity is always a mode of expression that undoes
the perceptible divisions of the police order by implementing a basically heterogenous
assumption, that of a part of those who have no part, an assumption that, at the end
of the day, itself demonstrates the sheer contingency of the order, the equality of any
speaking being with any other speaking being.63
By laying out who ought to do what, where, and when, that is, by positing the
subjective, material, spatial, and temporal boundaries of behavior, a legal order de-
termines what can appear as (il)legal from the first-person plural perspective of the
respective collective. In Rancière’s argot, a legal order lays out an “order of the sen-
sible,” of what can and cannot appear—hence of what is included and excluded—
from the first-person plural perspective articulated by a legal order. In this sense,
the account of legal (dis)order advanced by the IACA-model of law stands close to
Rancière’s notion of police:
The police is thus first an order of bodies that defines the allocation of ways of doing,
ways of being, and ways of saying, and sees that those bodies are assigned by name to
a particular place and task; it is an order of the visible and the sayable that sees that a
Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy, translated by Julie Rose (Minneapolis:
63
particular activity is visible and another is not, that this speech is understood as dis-
course and another as noise.64
What is more, both approaches coincide in noting that the other of (dis)order
manifests itself through rupture, through interruptions that reveal the contingency
of what participants call (dis)order. Likewise, they concur in exploring the trans-
formative potential of the encounter between (dis)order and the heterogene-
ous/strange. And both insist on prioritizing subjectification over subjectivity, in a
broad sense of subjectification that, in the reading proposed by the IACA-model of
law, includes all four dimensions of legal order in the gerundial mode of an order-
ing: spacing, timing, subjectifying, and materializing behavior.
There are also significant differences between our two démarches. While both
projects are interested in the notion of political agency, mine approaches it from a
first-person perspective, both singular and collective. As is clear from his reference
to an “order of bodies,” Rancière abstracts from the first-person perspective when
conceptualizing the encounter between police and politics. But to characterize dis-
agreement as an encounter between “bodies” that intervene through speech and act
in heterogenous “orders of bodies” is to fundamentally distort the experience of
being wronged (tort)—lest one has in mind Merleau-Ponty’s notion of a corps-sujet
or corps propre. I see here a residual manifestation of Rancière’s early commitment
to a structuralist critique of subjectivity. The absence of an embodied first-person
singular perspective in Rancière’s work goes hand in hand with the lack of a con-
ceptual framework to explain “community” as a first-person plural concept, and its
inception through disagreement. The reference to a “we” remains incontournable,
yet unclarified by Rancière: “Any political subjectification holds to this formula. It
is a nos sumus, nos existimus . . .”65 Likewise, the very idea of political claims that
resist exclusion and demand inclusion presupposes the reference to a first-person
perspective, both singular and plural.66 As Deranty perceptively points out, “[p]olit-
ical claims arguably arise as claims about aspects of social reality, and since the
claims are to be made by the agents themselves, some anchoring of politics within
forms of experience appears inevitable.”67
My concern goes further, however, than re-anchoring politics in forms of expe-
rience. What Rancière’s analysis of political agency misses is an account of the struc-
tures and conditions of possibility of concrete experience itself, absent which no
sense can be made of what he calls the “fields of experience” in which the encounter
64
Ibid, 29.
65
Ibid, 35.
66
Ibid, 38, 41.
67
Jean-Philippe Deranty, “Between Honneth and Rancière: Problems and Potentials of a Con-
temporary Critical Theory of Society,” in Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty (eds.), Recognition
or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity (New York:
Columbian University Press, 2017), 33-80, 50.
454 HANS LINDAHL
between police and politics takes place. How and why is it that “[p]olicing is not so
much the ‘disciplining’ of bodies as a rule governing their appearing . . .”?68 Again
the question imposes itself on us: does one do justice to the mode of appearance of
who raises a political claim, and of the claim as the experience of being wronged,
by stating that a “body” appears to another “body”? And what are the general struc-
tures of experience such that a mésentente, in the twofold sense of misunderstand-
ing and “not heeding,” might describe the mode of appearance of the hetero-
genous?69 In fact, can the notion of the “heterogenous” adequately grasp the nature
of the experience of disagreement that Rancière construes in terms of misunder-
standing and not heeding?
My own endeavor has been to describe (il)legality and a-legality by appealing to
the key phenomenological concept of (collective) intentionality, namely, the appear-
ance of something as something to someone. Intentionality, I aver, is the point of
departure for articulating the experiences of normality and familiarity accruing to
legal (dis)order, while also offering a precise description of the experience of rup-
ture in which the a-legal irrupts into a legal order, revealing a strange—not merely a
heterogenous—order. What Rancière calls disagreement is but a particular—the po-
litical—manifestation of a mode of appearance that cuts across all domains of expe-
rience, namely, the experience of the strange. Husserl characterizes this experience
thus: “accessibility in its genuine inaccessibility, in the mode of incomprehensibil-
ity.”70 When Rancière notes that although “politics implements a logic entirely het-
erogenous to that of the police, it is always bound up with the latter,” he offers a
simplified version of the paradoxical mode of appearance of the strange, as de-
scribed by Husserl.71 Likewise, when Rancière notes that “politics is . . . made up
of relationships between worlds,” he echoes, perchance unwittingly, Husserl’s phe-
nomenology of the encounter between a Heimwelt and a Fremdwelt. A-legality, in
my reading, is the legal mode of appearance of the strange: what appears from the
first-person plural perspective articulated by a legal order appears as either legal or
illegal (hence the “legality” of a-legality), yet is unintelligible in its legal intelligibility
because it resists qualification through both terms of this binary distinction (hence
the “a” of a-legality). For this reason, I claim that “[a]-legality is the central manifes-
tation of the political in legal orders.” (Authority, 308)
68
Rancière, Disagreement, 29. (italics added)
69
As Rancière notes, the notion of mésentente is linked to entendre, such that disagreement means
both misunderstanding and not hearing or heeding. See Jacques Rancière, “Critical Questions on the
Theory of Recognition,” in Genel and Derant (eds.), Recognition or Disagreement, 83.
70
Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, 631.
71
Rancière, Disagreement, 31.
455 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
72
The internal connection between these three terms is made explicit in Lindahl, “Intentionality,
Representation, Recognition: Phenomenology and the Politics of A-Legality.”
73
Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, translated by Steve Corcoran (London: Verso, 2007),
53.
74
Ibid.
75
Éric Aeschimann, “Representation Against Democracy: Jacques Rancière on the French Presi-
dential Elections,” in Verso Books Blog, March 20, 2017, available at: https://www.verso-
books.com/blogs/3142-representation-against-democracy-jacques-ranciere-on-the-french-presiden-
tial-elections (last accessed on May 5, 2019). Asserting that a “political system creates a people” effec-
tively falls back on the Althusserian reading of structure that Rancière was keen to reject with his
interpretations of subjectification and emancipation.
456 HANS LINDAHL
and realism, which, in Rancière’s case, has him identify representation with repro-
duction and realism.
Elsewhere, Rancière notes that “every subjectification is a disidentification, re-
moval from the naturalness of a place . . .”76 Yes. But there can be no subjectifica-
tion other than through a novel identification that includes a collective self—collec-
tive self-identification—and excludes other-than-self—other-differentiation. Subjecti-
fication through disidentification and a novel identification takes place as a re-iden-
tification and re-differentiation. Indeed, the paradox of representation makes a sub-
rosa comeback as the paradox of re-identification: collective identity begins with a
re-identification. To found a collective self through a novel identification is to re-
identify an original self to which there is no direct access, and which only manifests
itself retroactively, in the re-identification. Furthermore, because there is no direct
access to an original collective self-identity, that is, because there are only original
re-identifications, the representational “as” opens up the possibility of re-identifying
collectivity otherwise, even if never ex nihilo.
The question of identity is, of course, central to a theory of recognition, so it
should not surprise us that Rancière concludes his first intervention in the debate
with Honneth by asserting that his account of subjectification amounts to “a kind of
‘Rancièrian’ conception of the theory of recognition,” albeit different from Hon-
neth’s.77 His reservations about Honneth run parallel to his concern about repre-
sentation, namely, how to interpret “the ‘re’ of recognition.”78 There is in Honneth,
Rancière remarks, “a notion of the subject that has a strong consistency as a self-
related identity, and there is also a strong emphasis on the community as a nexus of
interrelations based on a model of mutual recognition.”79 By these lights, the “re”
of recognition confirms, in Honneth’s work, a pre-given identity and community.
Small wonder that the title of their debate is diremptive: “recognition or disagree-
ment.” If there is a theory of recognition in Rancière, it has to be found in the pri-
ority of subjectification over subjectivity, a priority political liberalism is wont to over-
look. But what is the nature of the dynamic of recognition that emerges from an
account of politics that privileges the internal connection between subjectification
and disagreement over the catenation of identity and mutual recognition?
Rancière provides no comprehensive answer to this question, so it is up to his
readers to piece it together. One of the various characterizations he offers of sub-
jectification offers a clue of the way to go: “By subjectification I mean the production
through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously
identifiable within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the
76
Rancière, Disagreement, 36.
77
Rancière, Disagreement, 95.
78
Ibid, 84.
79
Ibid, 85, 86.
457 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
80
Ibid, 35 (italics omitted and added)
81
Rancière, “The Method of Equality,” in Genel and Deranty (eds.), Recognition or Disagree-
ment, 141, 142, 143, 146.
82
Jacques Rancière, “Politics, Identification and Subjectivisation,” in John Rajchman (ed.), The
Identity in Question (New York: Routledge, 1995), 65.
83
Rancière, “The Method of Equality,” 139.
84
Rancière, “A Critical Discussion,” in Genel and Deranty (eds.), Recognition or Disagreement,
114.
458 HANS LINDAHL
names. In particular, ‘workers’ does not designate an already existing collective iden-
tity. It is an operator performing an opening.85
This reading of representation calls for careful analysis. To begin with, Rancière
errs when holding that “a collective subject says, ‘We, the workers . . .’” Someone
takes—seizes—the initiative to say “we” on behalf of us, workers, and of us, the col-
lective of workers, spokesperson for the larger collective of which we are a part, yet
have no part.86 This is, furthermore, a representational act in the triadic sense noted
earlier: someone represents a multitude of individuals as a unity composed of work-
ers. We are convoked—interpellated, in a non-Althusserian sense—to recognize our-
selves and the broader community of which we are part (without a part), as workers.
To be sure, the collective of workers does not exist prior to such representational
and recognitive acts; but the presupposition of equality is not a purely logical pre-
supposition. Whoever seizes the initiative to represent a collective presupposes that
the collective already exists, such that what remains to be done, in what Rancière
calls emancipation, is to verify equality: “[e]mancipation designates that prior deci-
sion to enact the capacity of anybody and verify it.”87 Verification takes place as the
more or less successful uptake of the convocation by those who recognize them-
selves as workers, that is, by their retroactive self-recognition as members of a col-
lective.
Here then is the answer to our question about the temporal dynamic at work in
the “re” of a Rancièrian theory of recognition. As has transpired, “re” is not an
adscititious appendage to the “cognition” of what is given. It captures the paradoxi-
cal temporality deployed by representation: “We, workers, are equal to all other
members of the collective, even though we have not been given our part therein,
and intervene in the police order to represent who we really are as a collective of
equals.” If it is not to be an avatar of the correspondence theory of truth, the verifi-
cation of equality, i.e. of what really joins us, deploys the retroactivity of an original
85
Rancière, “Critical Questions on the Theory of Recognition,” in Genel and Deranty (eds.), Re-
cognition or Disagreement, 92-3.
86
Rancière introduces “Proletarian Nights,” as follows: “The point is not to revive memories of
the sufferings of factory slaves, of the squalor of workers' hovels or of the misery of bodies sapped by
unbridled exploitation. All that will only be present via the views and the words, the dreams and the
nightmares of the characters of this book. Who are they? A few dozen, a few hundred workers who
were twenty years old around 1830 and who then resolved, each for himself, to tolerate the intolerable
no longer . . . The historian will ask what they represent . . . But perhaps the masses who are invoked
have already given their answer. . . [I]t is precisely because those men are other. That is why they go
to see them the day they have something to represent, something they want to show to the bourgeoisie
(bosses, politicians, judges). It is not simply that those men can talk better. It is that what had to be
represented before the bourgeoisie was something deeper than salaries, working hours or the thou-
sand irritations of wage-labour. What has to be represented is what those mad nights and their
spokesmen already make clear: that proletarians have to be treated as if they have a right to more
than one life.” Jacques Rancière, “Proletarian Nights,” in Radical Philosophy 31 (1982), 11-13, 11.
87
Rancière, “The Method of Equality,” 140.
459 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
88
Menga, Ausdruck, Mitwelt, Ordnung, 49.
89
A point I develop at greater length in response to Ralf Michaels’ comments on Authority. See
the special section, “CLSGC Book Symposium on Authority and the Globalisation of Inclusion and
Exclusion,” in Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 29 (2019) 3, 361-472, especially
417-419 and 457-9.
460 HANS LINDAHL
of subjectification. The recognitive “as” reveals that political equality and inequal-
ity—more accurately: an originating re-equalization and re-inequalization—are con-
stitutive features of subjectification because some, or even many, may contest their
inclusion in a collective, demanding to be treated unequally rather than equally.
This is what Nietszche had in mind, I think, when provocatively asserting, “‘[e]qual-
ity for equals, inequality for unequals’that would be the true voice of justice: and,
what follows from it, ‘Never make equal what is unequal’.”90 This insight is no en-
emy of emancipation; instead, it suggests, more cautiously, that there can be eman-
cipations, but not emancipation. Only thus can a theory of subjectification as eman-
cipation be consonant with Rancière’s insistence on the irreducible contingency of
any given police order. I return to this point when discussing Zanetti’s comments.
90
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ, translated by Reginald John Hol-
lingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 113.
461 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
be.”91 More broadly, phrónēsis, in my reading, alludes to the concreteness and con-
textuality of responsive representations of collective unity, not to political realism, a
connotation typically associated with the notion of prudence.
Moreover, when conceptualizing authority, the IACA-model of law takes up the
first-person plural perspective of a legal collective to explore how it can respond to
demands for recognition, demands, I argue, that are to a lesser or greater extent in
excess of the recognitive possibilities of the legal order. Thus, appealing to the no-
tion of phrónēsis neither gainsays nor traduces the distinction between the limits
and fault lines of legal orders. It acknowledges the finite questionability and finite
responsiveness available to an authority who must deal with a demand for recogni-
tion by taking up the first-person plural perspective articulated by a legal order.
For the same reason, I have insisted, in my response to Ferrara, on the need to
hold fast to the notion of constituent power, against moves to reduce demands for
recognition to demands that understand themselves as demands for inclusion within
a police order. But if constituent power is not to be the production ex nihilo of a
collective, then it, too, must latch onto social reality, representing concrete possibil-
ities for living and acting together otherwise, perhaps unbeknownst to the envisaged
participants of an emergent collective, yet that retroactively become visible to them
as their own possibilities. Even though constituent power exploits the surplus of
meanings available in social reality, it could not represent collectivity otherwise un-
less representations have some purchase on a social and natural reality that is “in-
trinsically organized to a minimal degree, since it must be at least organizable.”92 In
short, phrónēsis must do its work if constituent power is to succeed in convoking
multifarious individuals to institute themselves as a novel and durable order of
recognition. Owen correctly notes that phrónēsis is deployed in curating an order
of recognition; I want to add that it is also deployed by constituent resistance to a
police order in the course of “struggles over recognition” that could eventuate in
“aspectival change.”
For these reasons, my interest in the term is linked to the richer set of features
associated to the Heideggerian notion of Umsicht, translated into English as “cir-
cumspection.” Indeed, Heidegger translates phrónēsis as “solicitous circumspec-
91
Ferrara, Reflective authenticity, 12. As I have tried to show, when discussing his account of
foundations, everything turns on how to interpret the “re” of “redefining,” which I have sought to
clarify in terms of the paradox of representation.
92
Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, edited by David Ames Curtis (Oxford
University Press, 1991), 89
462 HANS LINDAHL
those patterns of what is relevant and important—that open up spaces for recogniz-
ing ourselves otherwise through durable reconfigurations of the subject (represen-
tation of) and content of collective unity (representation as). Looking around as a
looking anew is also a looking back and looking ahead.95
5) Umsicht as a solicitous circumspection involves choosing the “right occasion
and the appropriate time” to disclose something as something.96 Responsive repre-
sentations of collective unity hearken to the context of legal ordering in the temporal
form of kairòs. Hence, circumspection can call forth, but by no means entails, pru-
dence in the sense of political realism. Umsicht as attentiveness to the right time to
act can also mean biding one’s time until the conditions are propitious for repre-
sentations of collective unity that allow us to recognize ourselves otherwise than
heretofore.97
6) There is a sixth feature I want to add, although it falls beyond the purview of
Heidegger’s discussion of circumspection: the rhetorical dimension of phrónēsis.
While I have foregrounded the absolutely central role of the “as” of disclosing
something as something, if we are to make sense of authority, I have said little or
nothing about how the “as” operates discursively, such that collective unity can be
represented/recognized otherwise. A full-blown analysis of this important question
will have to wait for another occasion. For the moment, I submit that metaphor,
metonymy, and analogy are three rhetorical tropes that capture the tralatitious ef-
fects of the representational “as.” So, returning to Rancière’s example, the repre-
sentational claim that “we are [all] workers” is metonymic. The part that has no part
represents itself as a pars pro toto. One misunderstands the nature of these tropes
if one levels them down to “figures of speech”; they are discursive modes of the
representational “as” whereby something is disclosed as something. In the same way
that there are “live metaphors,” to borrow Ricœur’s felicitous expression, so, too,
live metonymies and live analogies contribute to novel representations of collective
95
Zanetti’s development of a “situational potential,” originally introduced by François Jullien, me-
shes well with this dimension of Umsicht. According to Jullien, “[i]nstead of constructing an ideal
Form that we then project onto things, we could try to detect the factors whose configuration is favo-
rable to the task at hand; . . . In short, instead of imposing our plan upon the world, we could rely on
the potential inherent in the situation.” Zanetti adds: “the situation potential is circumstantial and
circumstances make up the potential. Thus, what becomes fundamental is to look at the various fac-
tors at play, having their exploitation in sight . . . The heedful study of circumstances is of crucial
importance.” Succinctly: circumspection is a circumstantial heeding. See Francois Jullien, Treatise on
Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2004),
16; Gianfrancesco Zanetti, “On Normative Discourse,” in Ratio Juris, 29 (2016) 1, 44-58, 51.
96
Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, translated by Theodore Kisiel
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 274. See also Heidegger, Phänomenologische Inter-
pretationen zu Aristoteles, 383.
97
Negri characterizes kairòs as an ingredient element of constituent power in Antonio Negri, Time
for Revolution, translated by Matteo Mandarini (London: Bloomsbury, 2003), 151-182.
464 HANS LINDAHL
98
David Owen, “Power, Justification and Vindication,” (manuscript on file with the author).
99
Ibid.
465 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
The distinction between limits and fault lines underscores the finite questionabil-
ity and finite responsiveness of any given “order of recognition,” beyond which lies
the domain of normative indifference whence the strong dimension of a-legality ir-
rupts into legal (dis)order: the unordered and unorderable. Against theories of jus-
tification such as those proposed by Forst, Habermas, and their kin, I argue that
[l]egal orders claim to be authoritative by dint of having instituted or being capable
of instituting relations of reciprocity between the members of the collective; but this
claim has a blind spot that cannot be suspended by reciprocity. To the contrary: this
blind spot is the condition of possibility of reciprocity. As a result, acts of recognition
that institute relations of reciprocity are also always exposed to being a form of dom-
ination because they bring about and enforce relations of reciprocity. (Authority, 318-
9)
If I am not mistaken, Owen and I agree that justification is key to what I have
called collective self-assertion, that is, an authoritatively mediated collective self-
transformation that shifts the limit between legal (dis)order and its other in response
to demands for recognition. And we agree that the justificatory practices available
to a collective cannot bridge the fault line marking a legal rupture. This rupture
signals the exercise of constituent power, in my idiom, and aspectival-change, in
Owen’s. For instance, when discussing the performativity of a circular reasoning
deployed in two famous judgments of the European Court of Justice, I noted that
“legal transformation involves a rupture which cannot be fully bridged in terms of
100
Ibid.
466 HANS LINDAHL
101
Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, 211. And elsewhere: “the performative circularity gov-
erning Van Gend & Loos and Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee attests not so much to the absence of reasons
but precisely to the creation of a reason for acting.” See Hans Lindahl, “The Paradox of Constituent
Power: The Ambiguous Self-Constitution of the European Union,” in Ratio Juris 20 (2007) 4, 485-
505, 500.
102
David Owen, “Justification and Vindication in Political Philosophy,” (manuscript on file with
the author).
103
Owen, “Power, Justification and Vindication.”
104
Owen, “Justification and Vindication in Political Philosophy.”
467 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
response, of other and self, goes to the heart of what authority is about . . . (Authority,
330-1)
Founding acts can never be fully nor definitively vindicated. Contingency and
what is at least a residual foundational violence, in the sense discussed in my re-
sponse to Fossen, are irreducible features of all legal orders. Constituent circum-
spection enworlds and deworlds, empowers and disempowers. For this reason, a
combined justification-vindication program, as proposed by Owen, does not suffice
to make sense of the normative issues raised by legal ruptures. The notion of re-
strained collective self-assertion proper to asymmetrical recognition suggests that the
authoritativeness of an authoritative politics of boundaries turns on asserting our-
selves as a collective by including the strange (in ourselves) as one of us in a way that
also makes room for preserving the strange (in ourselves) as other than us.
Here, then, is a final feature of (constituent) circumspection: 7) forbearance, not
as an expression of the political realism associated to prudence, but rather as a hold-
ing back that holds out to preserve the strange as strange.
4. MARKUS PATBERG
Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and
106
Democracy, translated by William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 170.
469 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
Patberg points out that deliberation at the foundational moment cannot take place
between the totality of citizens; citizenship is the outcome of a deliberative process
between persons, or more precisely, by those who participate in deliberation with a
view to enacting a novel constitution.
We have reached what is surely the question de confiance confronting Patberg’s
entire theory of constituent power. Can an original constituent act take place as a
deliberative praxis that authorizes representation by an interim constituent assem-
bly, while also avoiding the danger of usurping constituent power? Is original delib-
eration possible prior to all representation?
Predictably, an answer to this question turns on how the interim constitution is
enacted. Drawing on and modifying Andrew Arato’s account of constituent praxis,
Patberg proposes to establish roundtables composed of “representatives of the sig-
nificant societal groups” that, once appointed, jointly draw up an interim constitu-
tion. This interim constitution eschews all substantive determinations, limiting itself
to laying down the organizational rules for an interim constituent assembly, the
members of which are to be appointed in “free elections.”107 As Patberg concedes,
deliberation between the members of the roundtables presupposes that they act as
representatives. But this need not be a problem, he argues, as long as the
roundtables succeed in creating procedural rules that respect the normative princi-
ples of non-violence, equality, inclusiveness, and discursiveness.
Can these conditions be met? Focusing for the moment on inclusiveness, who
gets to identify who deserves representational standing in the roundtables? Would
this not require an earlier act of deliberative authorization that establishes who may
identify who may participate in roundtables? But then: who identifies who is author-
ized to participate in that earlier act of deliberative authorization? In short, is not
the authorization of representation caught up in an infinite regress? Relatedly, is it
possible to determine which deliberative groups count, at least provisionally, as “sig-
nificant” (maßgeblich), or even as groups that might be concerned parties to a con-
stituent act, absent a prior substantive representation of the collective unity of which
those groups are deemed to be part? “Original” deliberation by the constituent
roundtables presupposes a representation of collective unity, hence both an open-
ing up and a closing down of practical possibilities for joint action, without which it
makes no sense to speak of a subject of constituent power, in the singular, nor of
“free elections” by an identifiable range of persons, in the plural. To belabor the
point: can these persons have been identified as (future) voting citizens without a
substantive representation of collective unity that includes and excludes, a represen-
tational act that, by definition, could not have been authorized in advance by those
whom it includes and excludes?
107
Patberg, Usurpation und Autorisierung, 207.
470 HANS LINDAHL
This predicament becomes acute when Patberg addresses the problem of how
to activate the deliberative process leading up to an interim constitution. Indeed,
how does deliberation get started? His answer is that deliberation is launched by a
“political movement that agrees on the necessity of a radical transformation of the
constitutional order and that, as a sign of resistance to the dominant relations, occu-
pies public places, generates communicative power, because the participants are
motivated to engage in collective action.”108 This account of the original founda-
tional moment—assuming such a zero point in time can actually be identified: quod
non—exactly parallels the description by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt of how
militants mobilize the multitude to exercise constituent power. “In the postmodern
era, as the figure of the people dissolves, the militant is the one who best expresses
the life of the multitude.”109 By resisting the extant order of domination, militancy
aims to bring about “the collective construction and exercise of a counterpower ca-
pable of destroying the power of capitalism and opposing it with an alternative pro-
gram of government.”110 Patberg refers to an “avant-garde” that activates constituent
power, rather than to a revolutionary militancy.111 But the upshot is the same; de-
liberation begins with an unauthorized representational claim of collective unity.
The origin of deliberation is an original representation.
The notion of an original representation is, of course, a paradox, the paradox at
work in the exercise of constituent power: an act of constituent power only succeeds
if its addressees retroactively recognize themselves as having been its subject, hence
recognize those who seized the constituent initiative as having been their represent-
atives—a constituted power. It disrupts the simple linear temporality that governs the
“systems of sluices,” “transmission belts,” and “communication streams” leading
from constituent to constituted power, from the subject to the bearer of democratic
legitimacy, from deliberation to representation, and from presence to representa-
tion. Instead, the paradox bespeaks the temporal dislocation of, as Van Roermund
puts it, a past we can look forward to. Patberg comes within a whisker of acknowl-
edging the retrojective anticipation deployed by the paradox of constituent power
in the very sentence that culminates his argument for deliberation as marking the
immaculate beginning of political praxis. In his words, the enactment of an interim
constitution “opens up the possibility of representing future associations of legal
associates in revolutionary foundational moments.”112
108
Ibid, 213-4.
109
Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000),
411.
110
Ibid, 412. See Lindahl, Fault Lines of Globalization, 216.
111
Patberg, Usurpation und Autorisierung, 319 ff.
112
Ibid, 20. (Italics added)
471 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
If this paradoxical temporal dynamic governs constituent praxis, how can one
know that the avant-garde or the militant truly represents the collective? If, paradox-
ically, the beginning of political praxis is an original representation, can we ever fully
disentangle and oppose usurpation and authorization in constituent praxis?
113
Ibid, 140-1.
472 HANS LINDAHL
114
Ibid, 270.
115
See Hans Lindahl, “The Paradox of Constituent Power: The Ambiguous Self-Constitution of
the European Union,” in Ratio Juris. An International Journal of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of
Law, 20 (2007) 4, 485-505. Patberg takes me to task on normative grounds for arguing that the ECJ,
in the Van Gend & Loos and Costa v. ENEL rulings, deployed the paradox of constituent power.
Only a constituent assembly, not a judicial body, can enjoy democratic legitimacy to exercise consti-
473 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
tuent power; to mantle European judges with constituent power is to legitimate an undemocratic usur-
pation. My point is, however, that an (interim) constituent assembly also emerges through an unau-
thorized representational act of the collective it creates, thereby undermining any simple disjunction
between legitimate and illegitimate constituent praxis. See to this effect my considerations on Acker-
man and the founding of the American Republic, in my response to Ferrara. Regarding the EU, I
have nowhere suggested that the modes of representation available to judicial law-making are suffi-
cient to deal with what I take to be the two key political questions confronting the EU: What really
defines the commonality of the common market? Is the market what is really common to us?
116
See Hans Lindahl, “In Between: Immigration, Distributive Justice, and Political Dialogue,” in
Contemporary Political Theory 8 (2009) 4, 425-434. Unfortunately, the article appeared in truncated
form in the journal; the full version is available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa-
pers.cfm?abstract_id=1726285.
117
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, available at: https://therightsofnature.org/?cli_ac-
tion=1568718838.902 (last accessed on September 17, 2019).
474 HANS LINDAHL
alt-right movements that would do the same? Must we not, ultimately, posit a nor-
mative criterion that is universal in character if we are to evade relativism in our
account of constituent power?
I start by noting that, in contrast to Patberg, I have steadfastly refused to engage
directly in a normative account of constituent power, insisting on the need to first
unpack the dynamic that governs the inception of any possible collective, to then
spell out the normative implications that follow therefrom. As a conceptual matter,
I am no less interested in making sense of the structural conditions for the exercise
of constituent power by an alt-right movement than by DiEM-25. Those conditions,
or so the IACA-model of law argues, lead back to a-legality and the paradox of
representation. Whether propelled by an alt-right group, by DiEM-25, or by any
other political movement, constituent power emerges from the domain of what is
unordered for a given order. Moreover, and regardless of the political stance of
constituent power, it must claim to colorably articulate who we are/ought to be as a
collective. Also, it can only be validated ex post, through acts of collective self-recog-
nition of their addressees. And, finally, no claim to the representation of collective
unity raised by constituent power can validate itself fully and definitively, as it com-
bines in variable measure invitation and imposition.
What normative implications follow from a-legality and the paradox of constitu-
ent for a theory of constituent power?
As has transpired in Authority and my earlier remarks on Patberg’s commentary,
there are excellent reasons for being cautious about the attempt to enumerate a
discourse-theoretical set of “pre-juridical” principles that can and must be met at the
foundation of a collective if constituent power is to be democratically legitimate. I
submit that the paradox of constituent power destabilizes each of the four principles
that Patberg identifies with respect to state constituent praxis, and a fortiori for
“mixed” constituent praxis—non-violence, equality, inclusiveness, and discursive-
ness.
Non-violence. I have granted to Fossen, when responding to his complaint about
my assimilating constituent power to violence, that Authority and other writings do
not adequately distinguish between inaugural violence and the violence visited on
the other as other. As concerns the former, which is the bone of contention between
Patberg and myself, I insist that the emergence of a collective must rely on unau-
thorized representational acts that cannot but marginalize in the process of includ-
ing, a more or less forceful marginalization that is experienced as violent by those
excluded from a collective when the force of the law is brought to bear on their acts
of resistance to the legal order.
Equality. The paradox of constituent power entails that equality is never simply
given prior to representation. As I have shown in my comments on Rancière, and
to which I return when discussing at some length Zanetti’s question concerning
equality, the exercise of constituent power is always also a process of equalization
476 HANS LINDAHL
118
See Lindahl, “Authority and the Globalization of Inclusion and Exclusion: Conceptual and
Normative Issues,” 468.
477 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
presence, that is, to the assumption that there can be a direct or unmediated collec-
tive self-identity. Because no collective can emerge absent acts that seize the initiative
to represent us as this, rather than as that, constituent praxis is irreducibly contin-
gent, which is why constituent praxis by those who contest the terms of exclusion
and inclusion of an extant legal order remains a latent possibility confronting every
constituted collective. Patberg is right: unless constituent power can be discursively
grounded, a constitutional discourse will not deliver the criteria for democratic le-
gitimacy demanded by discourse theory. Habermas is right: constitutional discourse
has a non-discursive origin.119
Is avowing that constituent acts have a normative blind spot they can neither re-
move nor fully justify tantamount to professing relativism? Does it involve norma-
tively assimilating an alt-right movement to, say, DiEM-25? Not at all: the normative
question called forth by the paradox of constituent power is how to deal, even if
only indirectly, with the blind spot ensconced in the exercise of constituent power,
including those cases in which those who would exercise constituent power on dis-
course-theoretical grounds claim that they should be followed because their cause
is the cause of democracy.
This is where collective self-restraint and asymmetrical recognition enter the pic-
ture. I take the liberty of citing in full an apposite passage of Authority:
Against the charge of relativism directed against it by legal universalism, the IACA
model of law argues for a concept of authority in which collective self-assertion is
tempered by the injunction to preserve the strange as strange, hence to preserve the
‘inter’ of intersubjectivity as beyond our control. It is the way in which a collective
acknowledges that it has an outside—a domain of the strange—that eludes the collec-
tive’s self-assertion and which ought to be preserved as its outside, including the out-
side within ourselves, if collective recognition of the other (in ourselves) is not to col-
lapse into a process of totalisation and therewith of domination. (Authority, 345)
5. GIANFRANCESCO ZANETTI
I am grateful to Zanetti for his perceptive comments, the first on the problem of
equality, the second on social ontology, the third on biocultural rights. The first two
comments allow me to further elaborate on features of collectivity apposite to the
120
Lindahl, “Inside and Outside Global Law,” 34.
121
See here the point of departure for a critique of “egalitarian universalism” as defended, inter
alia, by Habermas and Cohen, in particular Jean Cohen, “Whose Sovereignty? Empire versus Inter-
national Law,” in Ethics and Foreign Affairs 18 (2004) 1, 1-24. Çubukçu makes a similar point when
arguing against the move by egalitarian universalists to set up a simple disjunction between “empire’s
law” and “law’s empire.” See Ayça Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on
Iraq (Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 146-157. I’ll briefly return to egali-
tarian universalism when discussing Zanetti’s contribution.
479 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
IACA-model of law. The third question—fittingly his last question and the last ques-
tion to be addressed in this Response to Commentators—takes me to the very edge
of my thinking about legal ordering, summoning me to ingress into novel terrain.
Paul Ricœur, Oneself as Another, translated by Kathleen Blamely (Chicago: Chicago University
122
(dis)order and the unordered, hence between what is relevant and irrelevant to col-
lective action. In the same way that a-legality reveals legal boundaries to be the ques-
tionable limits of a legal order, so, too, a-legality reveals the intra-ordinal cleavage
between the equal and the unequal to be the questionable limit between collective
selfhood and the other. In short, all claims and counterclaims about (in)equality
within a legal order are, at bottom, claims and counterclaims about inclusion and
exclusion, hence about the boundaries, limits, and fault lines of that order.
For the same reason, struggles for equality are struggles about what counts as the
unity of a collective. The struggle by the Civil Rights Movement against the segrega-
tion of whites and blacks mandated by Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States
consisted in a struggle to transform a legal order by reconfiguring the rules that es-
tablished who (e.g. blacks) ought to do what (e.g. sit), where (e.g. in the back of the
bus), and when (e.g. while travelling). More generally, the struggle against racial dis-
crimination, as epitomized by “I have a Dream,” Martin Luther King’s stirring ad-
dress culminating the March on Washington in August, 1963, illustrates why strug-
gles for equality are struggles to change the threefold unity of legal orders. The unity
of a pragmatic order: “We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with
the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels
of the cities . . .” The unity of a legal system: “There will be neither rest nor tran-
quility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.” The unity of a
first-person plural perspective: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up,
live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal’.”
Most political and legal theories focus on struggles for equality; Ferrara’s refer-
ences to acts of civil disobedience are exemplary in this respect. Yet the IACA-
model of law suggests that there are also struggles for inequality, struggles by those
who resist being treated in the same way as others and demand differential treat-
ment. One response to such demands is to enact a limited autonomy regime, rec-
ognizing a minority group as different to the majority regarding certain dimensions
of social life, e.g. its linguistic or religious facets. In such cases, however, the recog-
nition of inequality in the form of an autonomy regime goes hand in hand with the
recognition of equality in the form of a limited autonomy regime. The recognition
of a minority group as different, as other than us, presupposes the recognition of
the minority and its members as the same as us because they are deemed to share
with us what truly or really unites us all. Equality must be presupposed if a collective
is to make room for inequality by recognizing a group as a minority group: plurality
within unity; a differentiated collective identity.
There is withal a more radical struggle for inequality: the struggle in which a
group resists being recognized as a minority group within a larger collective. These
are struggles sparked by the other (in ourselves) who demands to be recognized as
other than us. Theirs is a demand for inequality that seeks to release them from
481 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
participation in the collective of which they are forcibly part. Theirs are demands
for exclusion as a result of unjustified inclusion in a collective. They do not resist
having been “othered”; they resist having been “selved.” In this vein, my response
to Ferrara alluded to demands for sovereignty by indigenous peoples in the United
States and Australia. And, when exploring the similarities and differences between
Rancière’s work and mine, I noted that whereas Rancière focuses exclusively on
equality, namely, on subjectification as the demand for recognition of those who are
a part but have no part in a collective, the IACA-model of law also makes room for
struggles for unequal treatment by those who have a part in a collective of which
they want no part: a right not to have rights, to repeat Oudejans’ startling formula-
tion.
But on closer inspection, such struggles for inequality are struggles for a more
fundamental equality. Granted, these are not emancipatory struggles for equality
within a given collective of which a group is deemed a minority; they are struggles
for emancipation from that collective—for secession. But this demand for recogni-
tion as a group that is other than us involves a demand to be treated as equal to the
addressee of the demand, namely, to be recognized as a sovereign collective. For
instance, the Lakota Sioux indicate in a communication of December 20, 2007,
that, “[f]ollowing Monday’s withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota
Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to
hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.”123 Analogously, the Aboriginal
Sovereign Treaty ‘88 Campaign of Australia asserted the following: “We, the Abo-
riginal People, restate that we are the Sovereign Owners of Australia. There have
been no treaties with us and we have never ceded our Sovereignty.”124 When dis-
cussing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the famous Mabo 2 ruling of the Austral-
ian Supreme Court, I speculated about the possibility of enacting a coimperium
between indigenous peoples and the Australian collective as a way of responding to
the demand for recognition as sovereign peoples raised by members of the for-
mer.125 Here again, a coimperium would imply reciprocal recognition between the
Australian state and indigenous peoples as equal under international law. Thus, is
not their demand to be treated as other than us, e.g. us, the citizens of Australia or
the United States, derivative with respect to their demand to be treated as one of us,
e.g. us, the members of the international community of sovereign nations? In both
situations, a group’s grievance that it has been unjustifiably included in a colonizing
123
See “Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status.”
124
Aboriginal Sovereign Treaty ‘88 Campaign, “Aboriginal Sovereignty—never ceded,” in Austra-
lian Historical Studies, 23 (1988) 91, 1-2. See also Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and Tor-
res Strait Islander Studies, https://aiatsis.gov.au/collections/collections-online/digitised-collec-
tions/treaty/treaty-88 (accessed on July 1, 2019). Notice the “re” of “restate.”
125
Lindahl, “Intentionality, Representation, Recognition.”
482 HANS LINDAHL
collective is co-originally the complaint that it has been unjustifiably excluded from
the collective of nations.
Is, then, a demand for a more capacious equality—ultimately universal equality:
the equality of all with all—the presupposition of all demands for (in)equality? Can
there be a struggle for inequality that is not, at bottom, a struggle for equality? I hold
this question in abeyance, returning to it after discussing the genesis of (in)equality.
notes that “first comes equality as a practice, for example, in egalitarian policies.
The much-vaunted basic equality, pace Waldron, becomes the outcome. Equality
as a practice, the fighting for equality, is the prius; basic equality, the posterius.”130
He adds that “there is no logical contradiction between the two alternative concep-
tual itineraries, from basic equality to equality as an aim, from equality as an aim to
basic equality.”131 By sustaining the tension between both itineraries, Zanetti es-
chews the pure reproduction of equality, wherein equality-as-aim merely aligns itself
with basic equality, and the pure production of equality, in which basic equality is
but the effect of equality-as-aim.
Basic equality is both the presupposition and the outcome of equality-as-aim be-
cause basic equality is always a represented equality, a point I made earlier, when
discussing Rancière’s theory of subjectification. If the assertion that all humans are
equal is to have any purchase, then one needs to spell out in what sense humans are
equal, that is, to determine the concept of humanity for political and legal pur-
poses.132 Two decisive implications follow from this insight. First, the representa-
tional “as” folds inequality into equality: equality-as-aim represents basic equality as
this—rather than as that. Second, equality-as-aim deploys the paradoxical temporal-
ity of the representational “as”: equality-as-aim originates basic equality if, retroac-
tively, it succeeds in representing an original basic equality. In other words, the
representation of basic equality unfolds as an original re-equalization. When taken
in conjunction, these two features entail that an original re-equalization and re-ine-
qualization are the two faces of the single process of representation. It has often
been lamented that the sempiternal formula of justice, “Treat the equal equally and
the unequal unequally,” is formal, hence unable to provide a substantive criterion
with which to adjudge on the (in)justice of legal orders. The real issue is that the
paradox of representation is operative in struggles for justice. Basic equality does
not provide an independent and objective standard that could conclusively and ob-
jectively settle a struggle for equality between all parties concerned. It is part and
parcel of what the struggle is about. This, as I read him, is the gist of Zanetti’s insight,
which I cite in full:
Equality is an aequalitas aequans, never an aequalitas aequata. Every result of nor-
mative equality practice can be charged with forgetting about those who are somehow
left out. Equality is a critical category, bound by its very logic to a performative neces-
sity to conceptualize itself as a substantial category: as based on, and implementing,
an universal notion of basic equality. That equality, however, is but the outcome of
the normative narrative of those equality practices.133
130
Zanetti, “Astrology and Race,” 277.
131
Ibid.
132
A point I raise when discussing human rights in Fault Lines and in Authority.
133
Zanetti, “Equality.”
484 HANS LINDAHL
look forward to. In short, the Lakota demand for sovereignty is a demand for an
original re-equalization.
But what price do they pay for representing themselves as a sovereign nation
equal to all other nations under international law? What might be elided by depict-
ing themselves (ipse) as being the same (idem) as other sovereigns from the first-
person plural perspective of the international community of nations? An obvious
price would be the informal inequality that ensues from entering the relations of
economic and political dependency linked to what James Tully and others call the
“free trade imperialism” of contemporary processes of globalization, and that
Bhupinder Chimni cuttingly qualifies as the emergence of an “imperial global
state.”134 But even if this issue were addressed, could a sovereign indigenous people
avoid the pressure of formal equality that demands taking on board the legal, polit-
ical, economic, and police/military trappings of a modern state? Could it survive, let
alone flourish, as a member of the international community of states absent these
state appurtenances? By representing itself as a sovereign people, that is, by claiming
the same—equal—treatment for itself as other sovereign peoples under international
law, an indigenous people becomes different—unequal—with respect to itself. An
original re-equalization goes hand in hand with an original re-inequalization. An
indigenous people is in excess of the representation of itself as a sovereign nation
under international law, and so also its demand for equality is in excess of the equal-
ity that the international community of nations has on offer, were it to respond by
welcoming the indigenous people “back” into its fold.
This is not to say that the Lakota Sioux people would not be prepared to pay the
price of sovereignty under international law. There is a form of inclusion and recog-
nition to be had in such equalization. The point I want to make is, instead, that the
equality to which their recognition as a sovereign people would give rise does not
amount to equality without remainder, as suggested by egalitarian universalists—a
vertical form of equalization. Their recognition as members of the international
community of nations would be a lateral equalization that opens up one way of
being equal by closing down others.
These considerations suggest, more generally, that the challenge raised by those
who demand (un)equal treatment and the response thereto by the respective collec-
tive appeal explicitly or implicitly to a more encompassing equality as the respective
horizons of justice within which the equal must be treated equally and the unequal
unequally. In other words, all representations of collective unity, of what renders us
134
James Tully, “The Imperialism of Modern Constitutional Democracy,” in Martin Loughlin &
Neil Walker (eds.), The Paradox of Constitutionalism: Constituent Power and Constitutional Form
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 315-338; Bhupinder S. Chimni, ‘International Institutions
Today: An Imperial Global State in the Making’, in European Journal of International Law, 15 (2004)
1, 1-37. See also Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
486 HANS LINDAHL
the same as—hence equal to—others from the first-person plural perspective of a
given collective, go hand in hand with a representation of what renders us the same
as—equal to—all other human beings from a first-person plural perspective: basic
equality. This follows from the structure of collective action, which, as noted in Au-
thority and in my response to Ferrara, always involves the co-presentation of a cir-
cumambient world in which collective action is embedded. But because there is no
direct access to what unifies us as human beings, that is, because basic equality must
be represented as this or as that, what counts as basic equality—i.e. what we are really
about as human beings—is directly or indirectly at issue in all struggles for intra-
ordinal (in)equality, as well as in struggles oriented towards securing secession from
a given collective.
Thus, basic equality does not have a critical function with respect to any given
collective because it operates as a pre-existent, independent, and objective criterion
to which all parties must have submitted in advance of their struggle if their inter-
ventions are to count as interventions aiming to secure human equality. Instead,
basic equality enjoys a critical function because it does not collapse into any of its
representations, that is, because every legal and political representation of human
equality is contingent. There is an irreducible difference between a circumambient
world and the world, as Menga points out.135 This is no dirge for rationality, no
repining about contingency! As I have insisted earlier in this Response, the repre-
sentational dynamic at work in struggles for equality is much more than a story of
loss and decay; it is also the scene of innovation, of social bonds of which we may
have been nescient, and to which we only accede après coup, through novel repre-
sentations of what renders us equal as human beings.
Perhaps, then, a case can be made for defending a certain reading of the universal
without defending universalism. It would be a strictly negative universal called forth
by the Faktum that there are first-person plural perspectives on human equality, but
no first-person plural perspective of human equality.136
140
“Contingency expresses the ontic constitution of a world created from nothing and destined to
disappearance, a world conserved in being only through the divine will, [a world] measured against
the idea of an unconditioned and necessary being.” Hans Blumenberg, “Kontingenz,” in Kurt Galling
(ed.), Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Handwörterbuch für Theologie und
Religionswissenschaft (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1959), Vol. III, 1794.
141
Hans Blumenberg, “Self-Preservation and Inertia: On the Constitution of Modern Rationality,”
in D.E. Christensen et al., Contemporary German Philosophy (University Park, PN: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 10083), Vol. 3, 218. See further Dieter Henrich, “Die Grundstruktur der mo-
dern Philosophie,” in Hans Ebeling (ed.), Subjektivität und Selbsterhaltung: Beiträge zur Diagnose
der Moderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976),
489 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
made- or feasible-being.142 This is not the place to delve into the details of the in-
version of the relation between existent and possible being that leads over the ep-
ochal threshold from Scholastic to modern philosophy. Suffice it to say that instead
of regressing from real possibility to logical possibility, as was required in a consid-
eration of the relation between the existent world and its divine creator, the principle
of self-preservation has humankind’s ontological productivity consist in a bringing
forth into being that progresses from logical to real possibility. For a being to whom
a material must be given as the condition for its productive, ordering activity, other
worlds are possible (feasible) working out from the existent world.143 The clarion
call of alter-globalization movements, “Another world is possible,” presupposes the
novel ontology that yokes human power to possibility as feasibility; so also all con-
temporary references to the “empowerment” of those individuals or groups that a
legal order has “disempowered.”
Authority moves within the horizon of this epochal transition, contrasting two
modern stances with respect to the challenge of radical contingency, hence two dif-
ferent approaches to social ontology and its associated concept of normative
power—authority—as the capacity to order collective existence.
The first leads back to the concept of practical freedom that obtained its initial
full-blown formulation in what Kant’s Grundlegung calls the negative and positive
moments of freedom. In this vein, if humans are initially in thrall to an alien world-
order that resists their self-activity (heteronomy), the first—negative or destructive—
moment of freedom consists in rendering the extant world-order non-binding and
orderable for human action. In its second—positive or productive—moment, free-
dom is the power of the will to be the ground of its own principles. To become free,
to become a subject, is to become the formal ground of a world order that can aspire
to necessity if it falls under a law that meets the negative condition of non-contradic-
tion: a universal law.144
This interpretation of freedom finds its most significant political expression in
Marx’s account of revolutionary praxis. In its first, negative moment, revolutionary
praxis deploys a critique of the ideology that makes of capitalism an allegedly nec-
essary world-order. This prepares the way for the positive moment of revolutionary
142
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, translated by James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), Book II, 5.
143
The first philosophical articulation of the shift from a regressive to a progressive interpretation
of the relation between logical and real possibility is found in the second section of Kant’s pre-critical
essay on the existence of God. The section’s title aptly summarizes the epochal transformation: “On
internal possibility, in so far as it presupposes existence.” See Immanuel Kant, “The Only Possible
Argument In Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God,” in David Walford (ed.), Theo-
retical Philosophy, 1755-1770, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 107–201, 122-126.
144
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by H.J. Paton (London:
Routledge, 1991), BA 97, BA 119.
490 HANS LINDAHL
praxis that, acting upon an oppressive world that has lost its binding character, brings
forth a new and universal world-order rid of internal contradictions: communism.
On this reading, constituent power is the political manifestation of freedom as au-
tonomy, the bringing forth into being of a necessary social and legal order in which
humanity has become identical to itself: the emancipation of humanity from con-
tingency. All of this is encapsulated in the terse wording of Thesis 11: “Philosophers
have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Rancière’s characterization of subjectification as a process of disidentification and
novel identification is but one of various late echoes of the social ontology articu-
lated by the negative and positive concepts of freedom limned in Kant’s Grund-
legung. A second is Hardt and Negri’s project of a fully immanent self-governing
global multitude. A third is the early Habermas’ critique of the ideological function
of technique in the welfare state. Habermas portrays praxis as a two-step movement
of destruction and construction that, in Legimitation Crisis, manifests itself as the
critical reduction of advanced capitalism to the status of facticity (bloße Existenz:
mere existence) in view of its transformation into a classless society characterized by
the universalizability of the ends of action.145 A fourth is Philip Pettit’s interpretation
of republican freedom as non-domination.
The social ontology that undergirds the modern concept of praxis as a collective
self-grounding is indentured to the determination of (legal) ordering as, literally, the
real-ization, the bringing-into-being, of universalizable practical possibilities. Legal
ordering, as a mode of collective self-ordering, is, on this reading of modern social
ontology, a mode of emancipatory praxis that, beginning from a situation of contin-
gent existence, strives to real-ize necessary existence.
Normatively speaking, this ontological interpretation of collective self-assertion
involves a passage from an initial situation of misrecognition of some parties by oth-
ers to a situation in which all affected parties could reciprocally recognize each other
as free and equal citizens: an inside without an outside. Certainly, it may be neces-
sary to postpone sine die the realization of complete reciprocal recognition, postu-
lating it as the regulative idea of an authoritative politics of boundaries. But an all-
inclusive legal order that we are capable of real-izing is the a priori and objective
standard of authority, of normative power, to which all affected parties must submit
if they are to act rationally. This conception of authority is tantamount, in terms of
the tension between unity and plurality, to the assumption that reasonable political
plurality can be contained within the unity of one legal order, whether through a
revolutionary act of constituent power at some point in historical time or through
145
“Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis, translated by Thomas McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon
Press, 1975), 105. “The discursively formed will may be called ‘rational’ because the formal properties
of discourse and of the deliberative situation sufficiently guarantee that a consensus can arise only
through appropriately interpreted, generalizable interests, by which I mean needs that can be com-
municatively shared.” Ibid, 108.
491 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
Bernhard Waldenfels, Order in the Twilight, translated by David J. Parent (Athens, OH: Ohio
148
the tragic condition that haunts collective existence, beyond which lies the realm of
the unordered and unorderable whence novel collectives might emerge.
its lands and waters.” On the other hand, granting biocultural rights to such com-
munities is also an act of self-recognition: the recognition of the other (in ourselves)
as one of us. Whatever the differences between the movements that have pushed
for biocultural rights, they “converge in a common goal: to protect local ecosystems
and to accept that this goal is best achieved by securing the rights of communities
who live in them.”153 This goal is our goal too, the goal of the broader collectives in
which those communities are situated. We recognize ourselves in those communi-
ties in our concern for protecting local ecosystems as part and parcel of the ecosys-
tems in which we are situated as the broader collective. The conservation of Nature
is also collective self-conservation. In the very move by which biocultural rights posit
a difference they also posit an identity.
Furthermore, and in line with the finiteness of questionability and responsive-
ness, the attentive reader of Bavikette and Bennett’s article uncovers the traces of
an excess, a strange remainder that gets elided when biocultural rights are granted
to those communities, even when they couch their demands for recognition in the
language of ecosystems and human rights. In effect, the language of “ecosystems”
is, at first blush, the antipode of “cosmovisions” and “traditional ways of life.” Closer
consideration shows, however, that these three terms are concatenated in the very
move by which they mark a difference. A cosmovision and a traditional way of life
are expressions used by whom speaks and acts the techno-scientific language of eco-
systems and the language of rights to render the strange accessible, recognizable. To
grant communities biocultural rights in recognition of their cosmovision and tradi-
tional way of life with a view to protecting ecosystems is to already have culled their
challenge, separating the orderable from what remains unorderable for the respec-
tive legal order.
When biocultural rights are interpreted in this way, Zanetti is surely right to indi-
cate that they operate as a form of collective self-restraint—directly, vis-à-vis the re-
spective communities; indirectly, vis-à-vis Nature. I would add that biocultural rights
are also an ingredient element of collective self-assertion. What appears ever more
urgently and menacingly as a looming environmental catastrophe reaches us from
the realm of what, having been banished to the domain of the unordered, challenges
us to reconsider what counts as relevant and important for collective action, i.e. to
reconsider what we qualify as legal (dis)order in the face of a-legality. Looming en-
vironmental catastrophe is the mode of manifestation of the other (in ourselves) that
we call Nature, and which increasingly constrains collective action. “Nature resists;
it cannot be entirely established in front of us,” as Merleau-Ponty puts it.154 Cer-
tainly, Nature resists its transformation into a commodity, as reflected in capitalist
property law. Yet the commodification of Nature through capitalist property law is
153
Ibid, 20.
154
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, translated by Ro-
bert Vallier (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003), 83.
495 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
155
Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans-
lated by Martin Nicolaus (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 336, available on line at: https://www.mar-
xists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ (last accessed on August 16, 2019).
156
A further development of this line of inquiry would have to engage with Heidegger’s critique of
Ge-stell, “enframing” as the mode of disclosure of technology, “in which the real reveals itself as
standing-reserve (Bestand),” such that “everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand,
indeed to stand there just that it may be on call for a further ordering.” At the background of this
interpretation of technology lies Heidegger’s interpretation of modern rationality as the secularization
of divine power in the form of human self-empowerment. Perhaps an interpretation of restrained
collective self-assertion along the lines of asymmetrical recognition can parry Heidegger’s thesis that,
through Ge-stell, “man exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes
to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives
rise in turn to one final delusion: it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters himself.”
See Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Heidegger, Basic Writings, 287-
317, 305, 298, 308. For a critical analysis of Heidegger’s genealogy of modern rationality as developed
in the Nietzsche volumes, see Hans Lindahl, “Collective self-legislation as an actus impurus: a re-
sponse to Heidegger’s critique of European nihilism,” in Continental Philosophy Review (2008), 323-
342.
496 HANS LINDAHL
leave undisturbed what counts, for legal purposes, as a collective and what counts
as collective action.
In the concluding pages of On Social Facts, Gilbert raises the question about
whether the notions of collective action and plural subjectivity can be extended to
nonhumans. In her view,
there is an available sense of ‘social’ in which man may be the only ‘social animal’.
That sense – in which social beings are plural subject forming beings – is important.
It needs to be articulated and properly understood. Meanwhile, nothing in what I
have said entails that animal populations may not be plural subjects.157
The question Gilbert does not raise, however, is whether the notions of collec-
tivity and plural subjectivity could conjoin humans and non-humans. This question
is the background issue informing Christopher Stone’s renowned article on the
standing of trees:
It is not inevitable, nor is it wise, that natural objects should have no rights to seek
redress in their own behalf. It is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have
standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak either;
nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities or universities. Lawyers
speak for them, as they customarily do for the ordinary citizen with legal problems.158
The question about who counts as a participant in collective action has become
ever more pressing in light of a slew of suits with nonhuman beings as plaintiffs,
which a range of courts around the world have declared admissible and, in some
cases, ruled favorably for the plaintiff. Local communities are, moreover, issuing
ordinances that grant rights and standing to nonhuman beings. The Ecuadorian
constitution of 2008 recognizes certain rights to Nature, and Bolivia’s Plurinational
Legislative Assembly passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth in 2010. Legal
157
Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 442-444,
444.
158
Christopher Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing? — Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects,”
in Southern California Law Review 45 (1972), 450-501, 464.
159
Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, available at https://supreme.justia.com/cases/fede-
ral/us/405/727/ (accessed on July 24, 2019).
497 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
personhood has been granted to rivers and large ecosystems by rulings, legislation,
and treaties in, amongst others, Colombia, India, and New Zealand.
If these legal developments challenge the notion of collectivity, they also call at-
tention to notion of action presupposed in collective action theory. In response to
the question concerning the criterion for extending plural subjectivity to a nonhu-
man group, Gilbert responds:
wherever a set of creatures behaves in such a way that it would be appropriate for
them to think “we are doing A” where “we” is the plural subject concept. But if this is
so the concept in question is a derivative one, derived from the core concept of a
(human) social group . . .160
160
Gilbert, On Social Facts, 443.
161
“The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two ele-
ments – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material sub-
stratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man.” True, Marx later, and
presciently, castigates the destructive consequences of the capitalist mode of production for both na-
ture and labor: “Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of
various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth-the soil (Erde)
498 HANS LINDAHL
to contribute to making conceptual and normative sense of legal ordering in the face
of potentially catastrophic environmental degradation, then it must reconsider, per-
haps radically, the presuppositions of what might be called the politics of boundaries
that governs the human relation to Nature.
When approaching this vast field of inquiry, I will stay away from postulating
either a simple unity or duality of nómos and phúsis. What interests me is to con-
ceptualize the relation between its two poles as what Merleau-Ponty calls an entwine-
ment or chiasm, and how this entwinement plays out in a politics of boundaries. In
other words, instead of simply removing or solidifying this boundary, I conjecture
that a more fruitful approach is to explore how their entwinement renders the
boundary between nómos and phúsis unstable and provisional, such that legal or-
ders are compelled to redefine who and what counts as a participant in collective
action, and what really is its point, when responding to such challenges. In short,
what interests me is to understand the nómos/phúsis divide as the outcome of iter-
ative responses by legal orders to the emergence of normativity in Nature.
At issue, therefore, is a radicalization of the concepts of representation and asym-
metrical recognition that animate my earlier thinking about legal ordering as a mode
of collective action. As I envisage it, this radicalization moves along two vectors. The
first stays on the level of representation and asymmetrical recognition. As concerns
representation, it calls into question the assumption that, in US Supreme Court Jus-
tice Earl Warren’s apodictic formulation, “legislators represent people, not trees or
acres.”162 The task for the IACA-model of law is to conceptualize responsive rep-
resentation as the representation of a collective unity comprising humans and non-
humans. As regards asymmetrical recognition, the task is to clarify how normativity
emerges from Nature, a thesis I briefly alluded to, but left fallow, when referring to
the legal recognition of animals rights and even of ecosystems.163 (Authority, 333)
and the labourer.” But his censure is based on the matter-form distinction, which remains unquestio-
ned. This, it seems to me, is what one might call the metaphysical question de confiance raised by
environmental degradation: does critically reassessing the category distinction between Nature and
society demand moving beyond the interpretation of the matter/form opposition germane to the mo-
dern principle of self-preservation and operant in Marx’s concept of labor? See Karl Marx, Capital,
translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (London: Elecbook, 1998), Vol 1, 64; 726-7.
162
Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), cited by Stone, “Should Trees Have Standing?”, 487.
163
This initiative to radicalize the concepts of representation and asymmetrical recognition can and
should be pushed further, by way of an inquiry into how they condition the possibility of a political
and legal relation to future generations (and not only of human beings!). For instance, Article 50 of
the Dutch constitution reads: “Parliament represents the entire Dutch people.” Should not future
generations fall under “the entire Dutch people”? Appealing to a phenomenology of responsibility,
Menga proposes a reading of intergenerational justice that compares favorably, in my view, with ap-
proaches to the topic which rely on social contract theory. As he shows, these mainstream approaches
elide the double asymmetry that governs our relation to future generations. See Ferdinando Menga,
Lo scandalo del futuro. Per una giustizia intergenerazionale (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura,
499 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
A second, more fundamental vector explores the conditions that explain and justify
this extension of the scope of representation and asymmetrical recognition. In this
context, I propose to draw on and carry forward phenomenological explorations of
human embodiment—of embodied intentionality—as the locus of the entwinement
of nómos and phúsis. With different accents, phenomenological and post-phenom-
enological philosophies call attention to embodiment as a constitutive feature of
human subjectivity.164 Here again, my colleague, Bert van Roermund, has taken
the lead in opening up this field of inquiry for legal theory.165 Accordingly, two fun-
damental questions confront the IACA-model of law. Most generally: why and how
might embodied intentionality condition the possibility of legal ordering as a repre-
sentational and recognitive process? And then: in what way or ways might embodied
intentionality destabilize all attempts by legal orders to definitively partition reality
into the domains of society and Nature?166
My hunch is that the key to these questions, and more generally to embodiment
as the locus of the entwinement of nómos and phúsis, is life: bíos. The very notion
of environmental degradation, and of legal responses that could deal with this exis-
tential challenge, only makes sense against a background concern about life and
about what counts as life for the law. Invocations of a “right to a healthy environ-
ment” fall far short of capturing the novel ways in which environmental degradation
challenges the doctrinal and philosophical conceptualization of a “right to life.”
2016, especially 97-112; Ferdinando Menga, “Natalità come appello di giustizia. Quello che Vita ac-
tiva può insegnarci sulla responsabilità intergenerazionale,” in Studium 114 (2019) 6, 130-165; Ferdi-
nando Menga, “Was sich der (Ohn-)Macht entzieht: Lévinas’ ethischer Widerstand der Transzen-
denz im Licht einer Zukunftsverantwortung,” in Rebekka A. Klein and Friederike Rass (eds.), Gottes
schwache Macht: Alternativen zur Rede von Gottes Almacht und Onmacht (Leipzig: Evangelische
Verlaganstalt, 2017), 55-72.
164
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible (Paris: Gallimard, 1988); Jacques Derrida, L’ani-
mal donc que je suis (Paris: Galilée, 2006); Bernhard Waldenfels, Das leibliche Selbst: Vorlesungen
zur Phänomenologie des Leibes (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000).
165
Van Roermund argues that embodied intentionality is prior to and conditions the possibility of
political representation as elaborated in Authority. While agreeing with him on the need to integrate
embodied intentionality into a theory of the “body politic,” as he puts it, I hold that there is no em-
bodied intentionality that is or can be only pre-representational: it is always also post-representational,
that is, the result of apprenticeship in practices that involve political representation, either directly or
indirectly. See Bert van Roermund, “Representation and Beyond,” and my response to his com-
ments, in an Author Meets Readers section, forthcoming in the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Stu-
dies (2020). Van Roermund will further elaborate on his interpretation of embodied intentionality in
Law in the First-Person Plural, forthcoming with Edward Elgar in 2020.
166
Bruno Latour’s “politics of nature” and the ethics of complexity theory are two excellent inter-
locutors for this endeavor. See Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into
Democracy, translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004);
Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climactic Regime (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2017). As concerns complexity theory, see Edgar Morin, The nature of nature, translated by J.L.R.
Bélanger (New York: Peter Lang, 1992; for its connection to post-structuralist ethics see Minka Woer-
mann, Bridging Complexity and Post-Structuralism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2016).
500 HANS LINDAHL
This set of issues makes a very discrete appearance in Authority, when I discuss
Carl Schmitt’s thesis about the threefold meaning of nómos as taking, distributing,
and cultivating. In his view, social order begins, logically and chronologically, with a
taking, a Nahme: initially a land-taking, and more recently a taking of the seas and
space. Were he still alive, Schmitt would no doubt refer to the seizure of deep sea
beds, the Arctic, and outer space as part and parcel of this primordial taking. This
seizing is the precondition for distributing, i.e. for the allocation of rights and obli-
gations. In turn, legal distribution is the logical precondition for cultivation, namely,
“the productive work which normally occurs with ownership.”167 He adds: “[t]his
third meaning of nómos obtains its content from the type and means of the produc-
tion and manufacture of goods.”168
By and large, I have followed Schmitt’s reading of this progression to both sup-
port and critique his interpretation of nómos as a taking. (Authority, 169-73) I point
out, however, that the paradox of representation also demands inverting Schmitt’s
progression: taking and distributing come second because economic processes—
weiden as producing or cultivating—come first, absent which the former would spin
in thin air. (Authority, 293-4) I will take a further step: might weiden come first
because “culture”—as cultivation—evinces how life first makes its appearance in so-
cial order, an order of beings for whom to live is to be in a reflexive process of
exchange with their surroundings, a reflexive process that already begins with me-
tabolism?169 In this inversion of Schmitt’s thesis, weiden comes first because life
and its continuation are the primordial concern driving social order. However dis-
parate their historical periods and corresponding social orders, this concern con-
joins
[t]he search for pasture and the tending of animals, which nomads like Abraham
and Lot pursued; Cincimatus plowing his field; the shoemaker Hans Sachs at work in
his shop; the industrial work of Friederich von Krupp in his factory - all this is nemein
in the third sense of our word: to pasture, to run a household, to use, to produce.170
The point is not, however, to simply invert Schmitt’s construal of the political,
legal, and economic dimensions of social order: the paradox of representation has
nómos going both ways.
Returning to Zanetti’s comment, perhaps the deeper significance of emergent
biocultural rights lies in exposing a nómos of the earth that is reaching its end, and
adverting to a new nómos of the earth, a novel configuration of the bidirectional
167
Carl Schmitt, “Appropriation/distribution/production: toward a proper formulation of basic
questions of any social and economic order (1953),” in Telos 95 (1993), 52-64.
168
Ibid.
169
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Evanston, IL: North-
western University Press, 2001).
170
Schmitt, “Appropriation/distribution/production.”
501 A-Legality, Representation, Constituent Power. Reply to Critics
relation between taking, distributing, and cultivating. When read in this way, biocul-
tural rights—an expression that tethers society to life and therewith to Nature—invite
a reflection on how embodied intentionality informs the representational and re-
cognitive processes through which legal orders respond to environmental degrada-
tion. On this reading of the task that lies ahead, three categories may help to orient
further thinking about authority and a politics of a-legality in the Anthropocene:
bíos, nómos, phúsis.
503
Varia
504
505 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 505-524
ISSN: 1825-5167
MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
Università di Torino, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione
maurizio.balistreri@unito.it
ABSTRACT
After embryo production, the couple could be separated or the partner could have changed
his mind on the use of excessive embryos or lost the desire to transfer them. This makes no
legal difference, a man has the right to deny his consent to reproduction up to the moment of
fertilisation: straight after fertilisation, the man loses all rights on embryo reproduction to the
woman. The 40/2004 law on assisted reproduction gives the woman this right regardless of
whether her partner gave his genetic material for fertilisation, whether the frozen embryo was
produced with the gametes of a donor or with that of her partner: in both cases, the woman has
the right to decide alone and, if so, even against her partner’s wish to try and have a child from
the embryo. We will examine whether it is right to give the woman exclusive embryo rights.
Our conclusion will be that there are no truly convincing reasons to leave to the woman alone
the right to decide on in vitro produced embryos, in that the birth of an unwanted child can
cause damage to the health of women as well as men. We are though aware of the importance
that in vitro and possibly cryoconserved embryos may have for one who years before launched
an assisted reproduction path. For this reason, we think that the law should recall that even
significant changes occurring recently in the field of reproduction and foresee the man’s
possibility of agreeing to his partner’s possible request to for embryo transfer, without being
obliged to recognise the son and cover maintenance fees.
KEYWORDS
Embryos; Assisted Reproduction; Abortion: Bioethics; Rights.
1. INTRODUZIONE
Nel campo della riproduzione, tuttavia, gli uomini non sono sempre
svantaggiati rispetto alle donne. Oggi, ad esempio, le donne possono scegliere di
avere un bambino con l’aiuto di un’altra persona (cioè, con una maternità
surrogata ovverosia con una gestazione per altri) o, in alternativa, possono
ricorrere all’adozione. A prescindere, però, da come avvenga il concepimento,
sono le donne che devono affrontare la gravidanza e il parto. La gravidanza
‘maschile’ assicurerebbe una condizione di maggiore uguaglianza tra uomini e
1
E. KENDAL, Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis, London 2015;
C. LIMON, From Surrogacy to Ectogenesis: Reproductive Justice and Equal Opportunity in
Neoliberal Times, in Australian Feminist Studies, 31, 88, 2019, pp. 203-219.
2
S. SEGERS, G. PENNINGS, W. DONDORP, G. DE WERT, H. MERTES, In Vitro Gametogenesis
and Reproductive Cloning: Can We Allow One While Banning the Other?, in Bioethics, 33, 2019,
pp. 68–75; S. ZULLO, Le tecnologie riproduttive del futuro tra libertà e responsabilità, in Ethics &
Politics, XVIII, 3, 2016, pp. 591-600; F. J. AYALA, Cloning Humans? Biological, Ethical, and
Social Considerations, in PNAS, 112, 29, 2015, pp. 8879–8886.
3
J. TUDELA, Parthenogenesis – A New Possibility for Regenerative Medicine and a New
Bioethical Dilemma, in Bioethics News, 25 maggio 2015,
https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2015/05/parthenogenesis-a-new-possibility-for-regenerative-
medicine-and-a-new-bioethical-dilemma/; A. BOS-MIKICH, F. F. BRESSAN, R. R. RUGGERI, Y.
WATANABE, F. V. MEIRELLES, Parthenogenesis and Human Assisted Reproduction, in Stem Cells
International, 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/1970843
4
M. HÄYRY, Ethics and Cloning, in British Medical Bulletin, 128, 2018, pp. 15–21.
5
K. L. MACINTOSH, Human Cloning: Four Fallacies and Their Legal Consequences,
Cambridge University Press, 2015.
507 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
donne , ma, almeno per ora, l’‘uomo incinta’ è soltanto una fantasia che troviamo
6
raccontata nei film e nei romanzi di fantascienza. Forse nel prossimo futuro anche
le donne non dovranno più preoccuparsi della gravidanza e del parto. Ci sono
donne che ritengono che la gravidanza e il parto siano un’esperienza meravigliosa
ed irrinunciabile, altre donne, invece, se potessero, farebbero volentieri a meno
della gravidanza perché non vogliono passare mesi con nausea, insonnia e altri
problemi o perché non vogliono cambiare il loro stile di vita. Tuttavia, non 7
avere un figlio con il proprio genoma. Se domani fosse possibile produrre gameti
in vitro o artificiali dalle cellule somatiche, le cose cambierebbero, in quanto a
quel punto anche le donne potrebbero avere un figlio biologico, in qualsiasi
momento. È possibile che, a partire da una certa età, alcune cellule somatiche
presentino difetti genetici e non possano essere più trasformate in cellule staminali
pluripotenti indotte e successivamente in spermatozoi e/o cellule uovo. Tuttavia,
in linea di principio c’è sempre la possibilità di intervenire sulle nostre cellule e
modificarle: gli interventi di genome editing non sono ancora considerati sicuri ma
in futuro le cose potrebbero cambiare. Per il momento, però, la ricerca sui gameti
9
6
R. SPARROW, Is it “Every Man’s Right to Have Babies If He Wants Them”?: Male Pregnancy
and the Limits of Reproductive Liberty, in Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 18, 3, 2008, pp.
275-99.
7
A quel punto, però, si porrebbe la questione se le donne hanno il diritto di chiedere la
distruzione degli embrioni in vitro che hanno iniziato a svilupparsi in un utero artificiale: B. P.
BLACKSHAW, D. RODGER, Ectogenesis and the Case Against the Right to the Death of the Foetus,
in Bioethics, 33, 2019, pp. 76-81; J. RÄSÄNEN, Ectogenesis, Abortion and a Right to the Death of
the Fetus, in Bioethics, 31, 2017, pp. 697-702; C. OVERALL, Rethinking Abortion, Ectogenesis, and
Fetal Death, in Journal of Social Philosophy, 46, 1, 2015, pp. 126–140.
8
E. J. FORMAN, Ovarian Tissue Cryopreservation: Still Experimental?, in Fertility and Sterility,
109, 3, marzo 2018, pp. 443-444.
9
C. GYNGELL, T. DOUGLAS, & J. SAVULESCU, The Ethics of Germline Gene Editing, in
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 34, 2016, pp. 498–513. doi:10.1111/japp.12249
10
A. L. BREDENOORD, I. HYUN, Ethics of Stem Cell-Derived Gametes Made in a Dish: Fertility
for Everyone?, in EMBO Molecular Medicine, 9, 4, 2017, pp. 396-398; S. SEGERS, H. MERTES, G.
PENNINGS, G. DE WERT, W. DONDORP, Using Stem Cell-Derived Gametes for Same-Sex
Reproduction: an Alternative Scenario, in JME, 2017 Oct;43(10), pp. 688-691.
508 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
sul fatto che l’ordinamento italiano attribuisca di fatto interamente alla donna la
decisione se lasciare trasferire nel proprio utero oppure no gli embrioni prodotti
in vitro. In linea di principio dopo la fecondazione il divieto di revoca del
consenso varrebbe per entrambi i partner, in quanto essa, come ricorda la Corte
di Cassazione, non sarebbe compatibile con la tutela costituzionale degli
embrioni, più volte affermata dalla Consulta (tra le altre Corte Costit. 151/2009 e 14
11
S. D. HALES, Abortion and Father’s Rights, in J. M. HUMBER, R.F. Almeder, Biomedical
Ethics Reviews, Clifton NJ 1996, pp. 5-26, in particolare pp. 9-10.
12
F. GALLO, M. PERDUCA, Proibisco ergo sum, Roma 2017.
13
N. VASSALLO, Il matrimonio omosessuale è contro natura: falso!, Roma-Bari 2015.
14
CORTE COST., sent. n. 151/2009 in tema di procreazione medicalmente assistita.
15
CORTE COST., sent. n. 22972015 – PMA e diagnosi genetica preimpianto.
16
LEGGE 19 febbraio 2004, n. 40, Norme in materia di procreazione medicalmente assistita,
pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 45 del 24 febbraio 2004.
17
Riguardo al ricorso presentato da un uomo che aveva revocato il consenso dopo la
fecondazione, la Corte di Cassazione ha ribadito che l’interessato non può contestare la paternità, in
quanto non c’è dimostrazione che «la comunicazione di revoca del consenso» sia «intervenuta
prima dell’attivazione della tecnica di preparazione dell’embrione, ovvero della fecondazione
dell’ovulo destinato all’impianto. Si tratta ovviamente di questione di fatto, insuscettibile di controllo
in questa sede». CASS. CI., sez. VI, 18 dicembre 2017, n. 30294: Rel. Presidente Dogliotti.
509 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
gioco soltanto la loro salute. Analizzeremo poi l’ipotesi secondo la quale gli
18
uomini non possano rivendicare un diritto sugli embrioni in vitro, perché hanno
acconsentito all’intervento di riproduzione e di conseguenza sono responsabili
della loro produzione. L’ipotesi successiva che esamineremo è che le donne
abbiano il diritto di decidere sul trasferimento degli embrioni soltanto per una
questione biologica, cioè perché hanno una vita riproduttiva più breve. In fondo,
soprattutto se sono passati molti anni dall’intervento di riproduzione assistita, gli
embrioni crioconservati potrebbero essere l’ultima occasione per loro di avere un
figlio ‘biologico’, cioè dalle proprie cellule. La donna, infatti, potrebbe essere
entrata in menopausa oppure l’uso dei suoi ovociti potrebbe essere ormai
sconsigliato, perché la donna ha superato una certa età: cioè, le possibilità di avere
una gravidanza potrebbero essere molto basse, mentre il rischio di trasmettere
gravi anomalie genetiche potrebbe essere considerevole. Infine, ci confronteremo
con l’idea che sia giusto che sia la donna a decidere in merito agli embrioni in
vitro perché la riproduzione assistita richiede un impegno e sacrifici diversi per gli
uomini e le donne. La nostra conclusione sarà che non ci sono ragioni veramente
convincenti per lasciare soltanto alla donna il diritto di decidere in merito al
trasferimento degli embrioni prodotti in vitro, in quanto la nascita di un figlio non
desiderato può arrecare un danno importante anche alla salute ed al benessere
psico-fisico degli uomini. A questo aggiungeremo che l’uso degli embrioni in vitro
contro o in assenza della volontà dell’uomo non è ammissibile perché rappresenta
una violazione della sua autonomia e del suo diritto all’autodeterminazione. In
altri termini, sosterremo che anche l’uomo dovrebbe avere il diritto di decidere
sugli embrioni in vitro ed eventualmente anche opporsi alla richiesta della donna
di impiegarli per finalità riproduttive. Tuttavia, siamo consapevoli che per le
persone che hanno avviato un percorso di riproduzione medicalmente assistita, gli
embrioni crioconservati possono acquistare col passare del tempo sempre
maggiore valore. Per questa ragione, noi crediamo che la legge dovrebbe
prevedere la possibilità per una persona di acconsentire all’eventuale richiesta di
trasferimento degli embrioni da parte del partner con il quale ha prodotto gli
embrioni, senza tuttavia essere obbligato a riconoscere il figlio ed a provvedere
alle spese di mantenimento. 19
18
M. P. IADICICCO, Corpo e procreazione medicalmente assistita. I nodi ancora irrisolti della
disciplina italiana, in Questione giustizia, 2, 2016, pp. 238-249.
19
Non esistono solamente le coppie formate da un uomo e una donna: almeno per il momento,
però, la legge 40/2004 permette soltanto alle coppie eterosessuali di avere accesso agli interventi di
riproduzione assistita. Tuttavia, le nostre riflessioni hanno una validità più ampia e potrebbero
essere applicate senza difficoltà anche ad un ordinamento giuridico molto più favorevole alle coppie
dello stesso sesso.
510 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
Si potrebbe supporre che nelle scelte che riguardano gli embrioni in vitro sia
giusto che la volontà della donna prevalga su quella dell’uomo perché la
gravidanza e la nascita sono eventi possono mettono a rischio la sua salute. In base
alla legge 40 del 2004, le persone che avviano un ciclo di riproduzione assistita
hanno una responsabilità giuridica nei confronti degli embrioni che producono:
hanno l’obbligo di non abbandonarli e devono procedere appena possibile al loro
trasferimento in utero, tuttavia la salute della donna ha la priorità. La legge 40
riafferma la rilevanza dell’embrione già espressa dalla legge 194 che nel difendere
il diritto alla procreazione responsabile «riconosce il valore sociale della maternità
e tutela la vita umana dal suo inizio (art. 1)». Anche la legge sulla riproduzione
assistita riconosce a chiare lettere al concepito la natura giuridica di soggetto: «Al
fine di favorire la soluzione dei problemi riproduttivi derivanti dalla sterilità o dalla
infertilità umana è consentito il ricorso alla procreazione medicalmente assistita,
alle condizioni e secondo le modalità previste dalla presente legge, che assicura i
diritti di tutti i soggetti coinvolti, compreso il concepito (art. 1)». Tuttavia, sia la
legge 40 che la legge 194 sull’interruzione di gravidanza sottolineano che, in caso
di conflitto tra il valore e diritti dell’embrione e la sopravvivenza o la salute della
donna , prevale il diritto alla salute della donna. La legge 194 permette
20 21
20
V. TIGANO, De Dignitate non disputandum est? La decisione della Consulta sui divieti di
sperimentazione sugli embrioni e di revoca del consenso alla PMA, in Diritto pensale
contemporaneo, 8 maggio 2016 pp. 1-22, p. 6.
21
M. P. IADICICCO, Corpo e procreazione medicalmente assistita. I nodi ancora irrisolti della
disciplina italiana, cit., p. 240; C. TRIPODINA, Studio sui possibili profili di incostituzionalità della
legge n. 40 del 2004 recante «Norme in materia di procreazione medicalmente assistita», in Dir.
Pubbl., 2004, 501-548. P. SANFILIPPO, Dal 2004 al 2014: lo sgretolamento necessario della legge
sulla procreazione medicalmente assistita, in Diritto penale contemporaneo, 3-4, 2014, pp. 376-394.
511 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
un grave pericolo per la salute della donna; b) quando siano accertati processi
patologici, tra cui quelli relativi a rilevanti anomalie o malformazioni del nascituro,
che determinino un grave pericolo per la salute fisico o psichica della donna (art.
6)». Al momento dell’approvazione, la legge 40 prevedeva che, dopo la
fecondazione degli ovociti, il trasferimento degli embrioni nel corpo della donna
dovesse avvenire il prima possibile. Tuttavia, la Corte Costituzionale ha stabilito
che la rilevanza giuridica dell’embrione va considerata ma deve essere bilanciata
anche con gli interessi della donna, per cui nessuna donna può essere costretta
all’impianto degli embrioni se la gravidanza mette a rischio il suo benessere.
Pertanto, l’art. 14, comma 3 della legge 40 dispone ora che il trasferimento degli
embrioni freschi oppure crioconservati debba essere realizzato «senza pregiudizio
della salute della donna». 22
Per altro, nel caso di rifiuto del trasferimento in utero degli embrioni malati,
l’inapplicabilità dell’art. 6, comma 3 (relativa all’impossibilità da parte della coppia
di revocare la volontà all’intervento di riproduzione assistita dopo il momento
della fecondazione dell’ovocita), trova fondamento nell’art. 6, comma 4 della
stessa legge 40, secondo cui «il medico responsabile della struttura può decidere
di non procedere alla procreazione medicalmente assistita, esclusivamente per
motivi di ordine medico-sanitario». Inoltre, l’art. 14, comma 3, obbligando gli
operatori sanitari a rinviare la riproduzione e a crioconservare gli embrioni non
trasferibili «per grave e documentata causa di forza maggiore relativa allo stato di
salute della donna non prevedibile al momento della fecondazione», permette alla
donna di rifiutare il trasferimento in utero dell’embrione, di cui sia stata accertata
la condizione patologica, laddove possa cagionare un pregiudizio alla sua salute
psico-fisica. L’art. 14, comma 3 non fa riferimento a possibili anomalie o
23
22
CORTE COSTITUZIONALE, sentenza n. 151 dell’8 maggio 2009.
23
V. TIGANO, De Dignitate non disputandum est? La decisione della Consulta sui divieti di
sperimentazione sugli embrioni e di revoca del consenso alla PMA, cit. p. 5.
24
Così E. DOLCINI, Embrioni nel numero ‘strettamente necessario’, in Rivista italiana di diritto e
procedura penale, 52, 2, 2009, pp. 950-966, in particolare p. 962-963; O. DI GIOVINE, Un diritto
penale empatico? Diritto penale, bioetica e neuroetica, Torino, 2009, p. 42-43, che opta per
un’interpretazione ampia del concetto di “salute” della donna. Si ricordi, a tal proposito, che
l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità, nel Protocollo di costituzione del 22 luglio 1946, ha
stabilito che la salute è «uno stato di completo benessere fisico, psichico e sociale, e non solo
l’assenza di malattia o di infermità».
512 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
alla salute della donna. Inoltre, un’ulteriore deroga all’art. 6, comma 3 sembra
25
prevista dagli artt. 6, comma 4, e 14, comma 3 che giustifica la sospensione dei
trattamenti, con il conseguente congelamento degli embrioni anche quando non è
possibile accertare la loro condizione di salute, a causa ad esempio di una
sopravvenuta impossibilità, previamente imprevedibile e permanente, di
procedere alla biopsia. In base, infatti, alla legge 40, l’assenza di adeguate
26
resto, il quinto comma dell’articolo 14, secondo cui «I soggetti di cui all’articolo 5
sono informati sul numero e, su loro richiesta, sullo stato di salute degli embrioni
prodotti e da trasferire nell’utero», da leggersi in combinato disposto con l’articolo
6, comma 1, prevede per il medico un obbligo generale di informare la donna in
ogni fase di applicazione delle tecniche di riproduzione assistita. 28
Se, allora, una cellula del corpo non è persona per quale ragione dovrebbe esserlo
un ovocita fecondato?
Comunque, la questione che vogliamo discutere non riguarda la rilevanza che
spetta all’embrione e tanto meno se la legge 40 viola il ‘principio’ di
autodeterminazione, non permettendo l’abbandono degli embrioni. A noi 32
interessa molto di più capire perché la legge 40 ammette la revoca del consenso al
trasferimento soltanto quando è a rischio la salute della donna e non riconosce
valore agli interessi degli uomini. Il fatto che il trasferimento degli embrioni
prodotti in vitro possa avvenire soltanto nel corpo della donna spiega solamente
perché la donna abbia un diritto all’interruzione di gravidanza e perché non possa
essere sottoposta ad un intervento di riproduzione assistita (con trasferimento
degli embrioni) contro la sua volontà. Non giustifica ancora, però, perché le
decisioni sugli embrioni in vitro dovrebbero essere lasciate interamente alle donne
e perché, dopo la fecondazione dell’ovocita, il consenso degli uomini non è più
necessario. Una nascita non desiderata, del resto, può nuocere seriamente anche
al benessere psicologico dell’uomo e problemi psicologici importanti possono
avere a lungo termine conseguenze anche sulla salute fisica. A questo si aggiunga
che l’uomo potrebbe aver cambiato partner, avere costruito una nuova famiglia,
avere dei figli oppure vivere in un’altra città e non avere l’opportunità di seguire la
nascita e la crescita del bambino. Oppure potrebbe trovarsi in una situazione
economica difficile e le responsabilità anche ‘economiche’ nei confronti del
bambino che nasce potrebbero incidere negativamente sulla sua qualità della vita.
In brevissimo tempo, cioè, potrebbe trovarsi ad affrontare cambiamenti
importanti che non aveva programmato ed essere costretto ad assumersi gravi
responsabilità senza aver avuto modo di partecipare alla decisione. In altri termini,
la legge 194 riconosce che la prosecuzione della gravidanza, il parto o la maternità
possono comportare un serio pericolo per la salute fisica o psichica della donna,
in relazione non soltanto alle sue condizioni economiche, o sociali o familiari, ma
anche alle circostanze in cui è avvenuto il concepimento. Perché considerazioni
31
R.A. CHARO, Every Cell Is Sacred: Logical Consequences of the Argument from Potential in
the Age of Cloning, in P. LAURITZEN (ed.), Cloning and the Future of Human Embryo Research,
Oxford, 2001, pp. 82-92; E. KINGMA, Lady Parts: The Metaphysics of Pregnancy, in Royal Institute
of Philosophy Supplement, 82, 2018, pp. 165-187.
32
C. MILLS, Reproductive Autonomy as Self-Making: Procreative Liberty and the Practice of
Ethical Subjectivity, in The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 38, 6, December 2013, Pages
639–656; J. A. ROBERTSON, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive
Technologies, Princeton (NJ), 1994.
514 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
analoghe a queste non dovrebbero valere anche nel caso della fecondazione
assistita e soprattutto per gli uomini che in passato hanno pure acconsentito alla
produzione e al congelamento degli embrioni soprannumerari e che però ora non
desiderano più che vengano impiegati per la nascita di un bambino? È vero che la
legge 194 attribuisce soltanto alle donne il diritto di decidere se interrompere la
gravidanza, ma nel caso di revoca del consenso alla riproduzione da parte
dell’uomo dopo la fecondazione dell’ovocita e/o la crioconservazione degli
embrioni soprannumerari la donna non dovrebbe sottoporsi ad un aborto. Non ci
sarebbe cioè nessun intervento chirurgico, nessuna anestesia e nemmeno
l’aspirazione dell’embrione. Semplicemente, una volta prodotto, l’embrione non
verrebbe impiegato e sarebbe crioconservato o, nel caso fosse già stato
crioconservato, non verrebbe più scongelato ed impiegato per una PMA. Perché,
allora, l’uomo non dovrebbe partecipare nelle decisioni che riguardano il
trasferimento degli embrioni? Forse, nell’ambito della riproduzione, la salute
dell’uomo conta meno di quella della donna? Oppure, anche se la salute e il
benessere degli uomini sono importanti quanto quelli della donna, vanno
considerati comunque anche altri aspetti che spiegano la ragione per cui, almeno
dopo la fecondazione degli ovociti, gli uomini non possono più rivendicare alcun
diritto sugli embrioni e perdono il diritto di revoca del consenso?
poi scegliere di non utilizzarli più. Il fatto, cioè, che la donna sia – senza alcuna
ombra di dubbio – causalmente responsabile della loro produzione, non la
obbliga al trasferimento degli embrioni o a portare avanti la gravidanza fino al
termine fisiologico. Per quale motivo, allora, gli uomini dovrebbero avere una
maggiore responsabilità nei confronti degli embrioni in vitro e, una volta prodotti,
non potrebbero più ritornare sulla loro decisione e revocare il proprio consenso
alla PMA, opponendosi, ad esempio, alla volontà della donna di trasferirli in
utero e farli sviluppare?
34
F. S. PORCELLI, Sulla restituzione degli embrioni soprannumerari crioconservati, in Nuovo
Diritto Civile, II, 1, 2017, pp. 186-199. In altri termini, la donna ha il diritto di chiedere la
distruzione degli embrioni soltanto dopo il suo trasferimento, perché soltanto nel caso della
gravidanza sussisterebbe un conflitto tra diritto alla salute della donna e tutela dell’embrione.
516 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
Si potrebbe affermare, inoltre, che nelle decisioni che riguardano gli embrioni
in vitro è giusto che la volontà delle donne prevalga su quella degli uomini, in
quanto gli uomini hanno la possibilità di avere un figlio biologico vita natural
durante, mentre le donne dopo la menopausa possono avere un figlio biologico in
517 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
Una donna che desidera avere un figlio può ricorrere agli spermatozoi di un
donatore: la legge 40 non permette alle donne single l’accesso alla riproduzione
assistita, ma ci sono altri paesi dove invece la legge lo consente. Per una donna
36
single, l’adozione è una soluzione più complicata, ma anche questa è una strada
percorribile: tuttavia, dopo aver superato una certa età ed in assenza di una
relazione stabile, l’adozione è difficile. In Italia sono adottabili da single soltanto
quei bambini che rientrano nelle adozioni speciali : tuttavia, un single può
37
35
M. BAIOCCHI, In utero, Milano 2018.
36
P. PRÄG, M. C. MILLS, Assisted Reproductive Technology in Europe: Usage and Regulation
in the Context of Cross-Border Reproductive Care, in M. KREYENFELD, D. KONIETZKA (a cura
di), Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, Causes, and Consequences, Cham, 2017, pp. 289-309, in
particolare p. 298.
37
LEGGE 184 del 1983, Disciplina dell’adozione e dell’affidamento dei minori: le adozioni
speciali sono regolate dall’articolo 44.
38
E. PESCE, La lunga marcia verso l’adozione piena da parte del single: una decisione originale,
in Famiglia e diritto, 2, 2018, pp. 151-167.
518 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
in cui l’uomo potesse rinunciare alla responsabilità genitoriale, per lui sarebbe
molto più facile accettare la richiesta da parte della donna di usare gli embrioni
precedentemente prodotti. Sia nel caso inglese Evans contro Johnston che in
42 43
quello americano Davis contro Davis , entrambi i tribunali hanno assunto che la
44
richiesta delle donne all’uso degli embrioni crioconservarti non poteva essere
accolta, in quanto la nascita avrebbe comportato per i loro ex compagni onori
economici e una genitorialità forzata: «Tuttavia, questo non è necessariamente il
caso, dal momento che i donatori di sperma non hanno alcun obbligo economico
nei confronti dei bambini che nascono. Se fosse stato permesso al Signor
Johnston di cambiare il suo stato legale in quello di donatore di spermatozoi, si
sarebbe potuta considerare la questione della sofferenza psicologica
separatamente dalle questioni relative alla responsabilità economica nei confronti
del nascituro». 45
39
A. SMAJDOR, D. CUTAS, Artificial Gametes and the Ethics of Unwitting Parenthood, in J Med
Ethics, 40, 2014, pp. 748–751; NUFFIELD COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS, Artificial Gametes, a cura di
A. Smajdor, D. Cutas, dicembre 2015, p. 14,
40
A. SMAJDOR, Deciding the Fate of Disputed Embryos: Ethical Issues in the Case of Natallie
Evans, in Journal of Experimental & Clinical Assisted Reproduction, 4, 2, 2007, pp. 1-6, p. 3.
41
Non esistono solamente le coppie formate da un uomo e una donna: almeno per il momento,
però, la legge 40/2004 permette soltanto alle coppie eterosessuali di avere accesso agli interventi di
riproduzione assistita. Tuttavia, le nostre riflessioni hanno una validità più ampia e potrebbero
essere applicate senza difficoltà anche ad un ordinamento giuridico molto più favorevole alle coppie
dello stesso sesso.
42
A. SMAJDOR, Deciding the Fate of Disputed Embryos: Ethical Issues in the Case of Natallie
Evans, cit., p. 3.
43
EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, Case of Evans v. The United Kingdom, Application
no. 6339/05, STRASBOURG 10 April 2007.
44
TENNESSEE SUPREME COURT, Davis v. Davis, 842 S.W.2d 588, 604 (Tenn. 1992); L. E.
MURRAY, Davis v. Davis: The Embryonic Stages of Procreational Privacy, in Pace Law Review, 14,
2, 1994, pp. 567-596.
45
A. SMAJDOR, Deciding the Fate of Disputed Embryos: Ethical Issues in the Case of Natallie
Evans, cit., p. 3.
519 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
Una critica che si potrebbe avanzare contro questa nostra proposta è che non
consideriamo adeguatamente i problemi psicologici che gli uomini potrebbero
patire per la nascita di bambini dai loro gameti. È stato paventato, del resto, che i
donatori di gameti o le persone che danno in adozione i propri bambini
sarebbero condannati a vivere il resto della loro vita con il senso di colpa per aver
abbandonato i figli. Tuttavia, le persone interessate non sembrano considerare la
46
comprensibile, invece, che una persona abbia preoccupazioni nei confronti del
benessere dei propri figli, ma non si diventa genitore semplicemente cedendo i
propri gameti per un intervento di riproduzione assistita. Genitori sono le persone
che si prendono cura del bambino e che contribuiscono nel tempo alla
formazione del suo carattere e della sua personalità, a prescindere dal fatto che
abbiano dato o meno il proprio genoma. Del resto, ognuno di noi ha connessioni
genetiche importanti con un numero più o meno grande di persone (è per questa
ragione che alcune persone preferiscono scegliere i donatori di gameti nella
propria famiglia ) ma non per questo ci consideriamo loro genitori oppure
49
sentiamo per loro una responsabilità parentale. In ogni caso, non ci sarebbe il
pericolo di limitare la libertà riproduttiva di nessuna persona, in quanto quegli
uomini non interessati potrebbero sempre negare il proprio consenso al
trasferimento degli embrioni.
Si potrebbe sostenere, infine, che è giusto che sia la donna a decidere in merito
al trasferimento gli embrioni prodotti in vitro perché la riproduzione assistita
46
S. READER, Abortion, Killing, and Maternal Moral Authority, in Hypatia, 22, 1, 2008, pp.
132–49; L. CANNOLD, Women, Ectogenesis, and Ethical Theory, in Journal of Applied
Philosophy, 12, 1, 1995, pp. 55–64; J. A. ROBERTSON, Resolving Disputes over Frozen Embryos,
in Hastings Cent. Rep., Nov/Dec 1989, pp. 7-12.
47
A. MIETTINEN ET AL., Attitudes of Anonymous and Identity-Release Oocyte Donors Towards
Future Contact with Donor Offspring, in Human Reprod., 34, 4, 2019, pp. 672-678; M. KIRKMAN
ET AL., Gamete Donors’ Expectations and Experiences of Contact with their Donor Offspring, in
Human Reprod., 29, 4, 2014, pp. 731-738; G. FUSCALDO, Gamete Donation: When does Consent
Become Irrevocable, in Human Reproduction, 15, 3, 2000, pp. 515-519.
48
I. WALKER, P. BRODERICK, The Psychology of Assisted Reproduction – or Psychology
Assisting its Reproduction, in Australian Psychol., 34, 1999, pp. 38-44.
49
ESHRE TASK FORCE ON ETHICS AND LAW including G. DE WERT, W. DONDORP, G.
PENNINGS, F. SHENFIELD, P. DEVROEY, B. TARLATZIS, P. BARRI, K. DIEDRICH, Intrafamilial
Medically Assisted Reproduction, in Human Reproduction, 26, 3, 2011, pp. 504-509.
520 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
richiede un impegno e sacrifici diversi per gli uomini e le donne. Per avviare un 50
percorso di riproduzione assistita, una coppia deve sottoporsi ad una serie di visite
e analisi per permettere ai medici di conoscere la loro condizione di salute e
decidere insieme a loro che cosa fare: se ricorrere ad una fecondazione con i
propri gameti oppure, se la fertilità è bassa, con quelli di un donatore. Per l’uomo,
però, le cose sono molto semplici: generalmente, per controllare la sua fertilità
non sono necessari interventi invasivi, in quanto è sufficiente raccogliere il liquido
seminale in un contenitore e farlo analizzare. Nel caso, poi, il volume, la viscosità,
la mobilità e la morfologia ecc. degli spermatozoi non fosse buona, l’uomo può
assumere integratori a base di zinco e acido aspartico e, se necessario, piccole
quantità di cortisone. Una terapia a base di antiossidanti e la loro combinazione
può migliorare la fertilità, agendo, tra l’altro, sulla concentrazione, il numero, la
vitalità e la mobilità degli spermatozoi, senza avere conseguenze nocive. La donna,
invece, deve sottoporsi ad una serie di ecografie transvaginali a distanza di pochi
giorni l’una dall’altra per monitorare l’ovulazione, la condizione delle ovaie e lo
spessore dell’endometrio, ad analisi del sangue per controllare i livelli ormonali e
ad un’isteroscopia (inserimento nella vagina di una piccola telecamera) che
permette di accertare la condizione dell’utero. In alcuni paesi è possibile
51
ricorrere ad una maternità surrogata, ma in Italia non è permesso, per cui una
donna che vuole avere un figlio con un intervento di riproduzione medicalmente
assistita deve avere un utero che permette l’annidamento e lo sviluppo
dell’embrione. 52
50
J. ANNAS, The Shadowlands – Secrets, Lies, and Assisted Reproduction, in New England
Journal of Medicine, 339, 1998, pp. 935-939.
51
C. FLAMIGNI, La procreazione assistita, Bologna 2011.
52
E. MAZZONI, In becco alla cicogna! Procreazione assistita: istruzioni per l’uso, Biglia Blu 2016.
521 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
53
M. BAIOCCHI, In utero, cit., p. 46.
54
M. BAIOCCHI, In utero, cit., p. 76.
55
M. BAIOCCHI, In utero, cit., p. 77.
56
M. BAIOCCHI, In utero, cit., p. 77.
522 MAURIZIO BALISTRERI
57
Del resto, se si adottasse questo criterio, quando una coppia si separa i bambini dovrebbero
essere necessariamente affidati alla madre che ha sostenuto il peso fisico maggiore per la loro
nascita. J. A. ROBERTSON, Resolving Disputes over Frozen Embryos, cit., p. 7.
523 È giusto che le donne abbiano l’ultima parola sugli embrioni in vitro?
6. CONCLUSIONI
riproduzione assistita vadano a vantaggio soltanto degli uomini e che le donne, che
chiedono di ricorrere ad essa, siano sempre manipolate ed oppresse dai maschi.
Accusare, cioè, le donne che intendono avere un figlio con la PMA di non essere
autonome o di essere vittime del patriarcato significa non essere in grado di
comprendere che non esiste la donna, ma persone diverse: argomenti di questo
tipo, poi, non sembrano rispettare minimamente le preferenze delle persone
coinvolte. Anche ammesso, poi, ma non concesso che la riproduzione assistita sia
una forma di violenza sessuale, non si comprende perché l’uomo dovrebbe
perdere qualsiasi diritto sugli embrioni in quanto nemmeno con lo stupro, nel
nostro ordinamento, viene meno il diritto dell’uomo al riconoscimento del figlio:
«Fuori del matrimonio il puro legame biologico fonda non soltanto una
responsabilità per le conseguenze di un atto procreativo voluto o casuale, ma
l’acquisto della funzione di padre del procreato: il compagno occasionale, e, se ci
si ferma alla lettera della legge, perfino chi fa violenza ha titolo di riconoscere il
figlio, e trova un ostacolo solo in una opposizione della donna, peraltro superabile
con provvedimento del Tribunale dei minori». 59
stessi diritti sugli embrioni prodotti e non si ignorerebbe il fatto che nel tempo gli
embrioni possono acquistare per le persone un valore diverso. Non sono, però,
soltanto le donne che col tempo possono attribuire agli embrioni un valore
sempre maggiore. Gli embrioni soprannumerari potrebbero essere l’ultima
possibilità di avere un figlio biologico anche per gli uomini che si sono sottoposti
ad interventi chirurgici (ad esempio, interventi demolitivi in seguito a neoplasie) o
che sono diventati aspermatici o i cui spermatozoi non possono più essere
impiegati per la riproduzione. In questi casi, vale il discorso precedente a parti
invertite: le donne, cioè, dovrebbero avere la possibilità di riconoscere agli uomini
l’uso degli embrioni, senza però essere obbligate al riconoscimento dei bambini.
Affinché comunque uno scenario di questo tipo possa realizzarsi pienamente
dovrebbe essere modificata la parte della legge sulla riproduzione assistita che
prevede il divieto di maternità surrogata o gestazione per altri , in quanto gli 61
uomini avrebbero bisogno di una donna che porti avanti la gravidanza al loro
posto.
60
Non esistono solamente le coppie formate da un uomo e una donna: almeno per il momento,
però, la legge 40/2004 permette soltanto alle coppie eterosessuali di avere accesso agli interventi di
riproduzione assistita. Tuttavia, le nostre riflessioni hanno una validità più ampia e potrebbero
essere applicate senza difficoltà anche ad un ordinamento giuridico molto più favorevole alle coppie
dello stesso sesso.
61
G. FERRANDO, Gravidanza per altri, impugnativa del riconoscimento per difetto di veridicità e
interesse del minore. Molti dubbi e poche certezze, in GenIUS, 2, 2017, pp. 12-19; M. CAIELLI, B.
PEZZINI, A. SCHILLACI, Riproduzioni e relazioni. La surrogazione di maternità al centro della
questione di genere, Studi di Genere, Convegni n. 5, CIRSDe, Torino 2018; D. DANNA, “Fare figli
per altri è giusto”: Falso!, Roma-Bari 2017.
525 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 525-552
ISSN: 1825-5167
FAUSTO CORVINO
Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa
DIRPOLIS Institute (Law, Politics and Development)
f.corvino@santannapisa.it
ABSTRACT
In this article, I firstly discuss why a prioritarian clause can rescue the utilitarian doctrine from
the risk of exacerbating inequality in the distribution of resources in those cases in which utility
of income does not decline at the margin. Nonetheless, when in the presence of adaptive prefer-
ences, classic prioritarianism is more likely than utilitarianism to increase the inequality of re-
sources under all circumstances, independently of the diminishing trend of utility. Hence, I pro-
pose to shift the informational focus of prioritarianism from welfare to either social income or
capabilities in order to safeguard those who are worse off. Following this, I argue that we may
have reasons to limit the aggregative logic of priority-amended utilitarianism through one or more
sufficiency thresholds, and that we can partially defuse the negative-thesis objection that is usually
levelled against sufficientarianism, provided we interpret the threshold(s) as valid only as long as
everyone is led above it.
KEYWORDS
Capabilities, income, marginal utility, prioritarianism, quiescent sufficientarianism, threshold,
welfare.
1. INTRODUCTION
Both prioritarianism and sufficientarianism have usually been presented and dis-
cussed in relation to egalitarianism and as valuable alternatives to it, since they are
two theories of distributive justice that are not influenced by relativities between in-
dividuals but only by absolute levels of wellbeing. Roughly speaking, prioritarianism
is the view that justice commands recognizing the priority of the worse off in the
redistribution of benefits, by assigning a decreasing value to the benefits accruing to
any potential recipient as we move from those individuals who experience low levels
of welfare up to those who enjoy the highest levels1. Meanwhile, the proponents of
the sufficiency principle hold that duties of distributive justice are fulfilled when
every individual is provided with the means for meeting a sufficiency threshold—or
1
This is the welfarist version of prioritarianism that I shall criticize later on.
526 FAUSTO CORVINO
in other words, when everyone is given enough. Obviously, what kinds of things
people should have in order to stay above the sufficiency threshold and how we
should evaluate individual positions are open to debate and marked by consistent
differences among sufficientarian philosophers.
In this article I discuss the prioritarian and sufficientarian doctrines not in relation
to egalitarianism, but rather as improved variations of utilitarianism. I move from
the consideration that prioritarianism represents an advance on utilitarianism be-
cause, by renouncing what Amartya Sen has defined as the ‘“hidden” egalitarianism
in utilitarian philosophy’2, and which consists in the tenet of equality of individual
utility functions, prioritarianism is able to avoid the inegalitarian drifts that occur
within utilitarianism when utility does not decline at the margin as expected. Indeed,
in the latter case the utility principle tends to favour the better off for the simple
3
reason that they manage to get more utility than the worse off from an equal basket
of resources – differently from those other cases in which utility decreases at the
margin and thus the utility principle leads toward an egalitarian distribution of re-
sources. Moreover, I shall also argue that if we shift from a welfarist interpretation
of prioritarianism—which is dominant in the literature—to alternative versions of pri-
oritarianism that weigh utility on either income or capabilities, we could solve the
utilitarian problem of the mental distortions stemming from the psychological phe-
nomenon of adaptive preferences.
Meanwhile, sufficientarianism represents an amended form of priority-amended
utilitarianism, because it allows us to grant priority to those who are worst off while
preventing the trade-offs between the bottom and the top of society, which is al-
lowed in prioritarianism. So, in the final analysis, the theoretical evolution from util-
itarianism to prioritarianism first, and from prioritarianism to sufficientarianism
next, does leave us with a normative account of justice that provides us with the
philosophical tools for preserving the interests of the poorest and partially maintains
– up to the sufficiency threshold - the aggregative spirit that is at the heart of the
utilitarian doctrine, but obliges us to remain silent - from the point of view of justice
- about inequalities occurring among those individuals who live above sufficiency.
The latter would imply, as rightly highlighted by Paula Casal, that from a classical
sufficientarian perspective, we ‘cannot support the preference for progressive over
regressive taxes’, not simply among the super-rich but also among the super-rich
and those who barely have enough for living a decent life4.
In other words, sufficientarianism can safeguard people who are in dire need in
a much more effective way than both utilitarianism and prioritarianism can do, but
this comes at the price of renouncing axiological incisiveness over the group of the
better off. This occurs because, differently from other theories of justice advocating
2
Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 13.
3
In terms of available resources.
4
Paula Casal, ‘Why Sufficiency Is Not Enough’, Ethics 117, no. 2. (2007): 311.
527 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
justice is exclusively about leading people above the basic threshold. The conse-
quence is that sufficientarianism cannot be coupled with other approaches to justice.
Therefore, sufficientarianism can be said to consist of both a positive and a neg-
ative thesis. The positive thesis holds that justice requires everyone to have enough
of something and was initially formulated by Harry Frankfurt in antithesis to the
egalitarian view, according to which justice consists primarily in equalising the wel-
fare of all the individuals involved in the distributive scheme. Whereas, the negative
thesis maintains that every individual having enough is the only distributive require-
ment, hence the whole discourse on justice runs out at the sufficiency threshold . 6
5
Martha Nussbaum is clear when she argues that with the capability approach she is not aiming to
reject Rawls’s contractualism, but rather to ‘extend[…] [his] principles to cases that he believed a the-
ory like his own could not reach’. See Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality,
Species Membership (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 25.
6
Both the positive and the negative theses were initially formulated in Harry Frankfurt, ‘Equality
as a Moral Ideal’, Ethics 98, no. 1 (1987): 21–24. But they were named in this way for the first time
in Casal, ‘Why Sufficiency’, 297-303.
7
As we shall see in the next sections, sufficiency can also consist of multiple thresholds, that can
either be in a vertical or horizontal relation.
528 FAUSTO CORVINO
operative, blocking the other principles of justice that were adopted after the previ-
ous sufficiency threshold(s) got into quiescent mode.
In the next paragraphs, I will firstly explain the reasons that make prioritarianism
preferable to utilitarianism and that make sufficientarianism preferable to prioritar-
ianism. Later, I shall put forward the idea of quiescent sufficientarianism based on
temporary thresholds by also tackling some objections that may be levelled against
its underlying mechanism and its own definition. In the course of the article, I will
alternate some considerations on the principles of justice – utility, priority and suf-
ficiency – and on their possible axiological modifications – different weighting fac-
tors, higher/lower/single/multiple thresholds - with other remarks on the currency
and the informational focus of justice, namely the ‘things’ that should be redistrib-
uted according to the principle of justice we are considering from time to time and
the ‘things’ that we can/should take into consideration for assessing the individual
position in society – realised utility, income, capabilities.
The final argument is that quiescent sufficiency has the advantage over utilitari-
anism and prioritarianism – in all its variants considered here – to be more radical
in safeguarding the interests of the worst off, and has the advantage over classic suf-
ficientarianism of allowing to tackle those inequalities that might emerge above the
threshold, hence preventing the accumulation of excessive wealth at the top of soci-
ety in comparison to the medium strata.
Quiescent sufficientarianism should be properly interpreted as a reformative po-
litical project aimed at securing a decent living condition for the millions of people
who are experiencing dire poverty all around the world by temporarily shifting any
concern of justice from the top to the bottom of society. In other words, sufficien-
tarianism should not be considered as a classic principle of justice, which is valid in
every circumstance, rather as normative requirement that precedes routinary dis-
tributive justice and whose purpose is to institutionalise a decent life for all.
8
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1962), 411.
529 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
quentialism, and a hidden form of egalitarianism. The last element is the one that
interests us most in this article and it could be made explicit in this way: pleasure
weighs the same independently of who feels it. Utilitarians seek the maximization
of overall utilities, regardless of how equally they are distributed, and they are ready
to sacrifice a perfectly equal sum of utilities for a bigger, but much more unequal,
sum. However, the ‘objective function’ they want to maximize is egalitarian, for util-
itarians ascribe the same value to every utility function10. The egalitarianism of utility
functions is the distinctive trait of utilitarianism that, paradoxically, leads the theory
toward outcomes that are inegalitarian from the point of view of the distribution of
resources. In other words, it is the characteristic that causes utilitarianism to foster
the interests of the better off to the detriment of the worse off.
Imagine, for example, that we have to decide whether to allocate an extra benefit
of €2.000 either to Marco, who is relatively poor, or to Giulio, who is relatively well
off. Assume also that Marco has freely decided to live his life as a bohemian and
the satisfaction of his basic desires does not mainly depend on money. He likes to
frequent bars every night, to buy cheap drinks, to write experimental novels, and, in
general, what he craves the most is to be recognized as an intellectual. While Giulio
lives only to buy clothes and accessories for his cars. His happiness lies in collecting
goods that he can show off when going out with his friends. Both in terms of welfare
and resources Giulio is better off than Marco. Nonetheless, imagine that Giulio
would gain more utility from an extra benefit of €2.000 than Marco. We might say
that if we allocate €2.000 to Giulio we would yield 20 marginal units of utility (UG
20) while if we give the same money to Marco we would only yield 17 marginal units
(UM 17). This can occur for several reasons. The main reason is that an equal
marginal increase of money has a stronger effect on Giulio’s dominant life-goal—
showing off luxury commodities—than on Marco’s one—being appreciated in his
intellectual and alternative circle11.
9
Utilitarians disagree on what constitutes welfare. Some of them argue that welfare is the product
of mental states (the most common example being hedonism), some others look at the satisfaction of
preferences (either first-order or second-order preferences) or at ‘objective’ elements that are taken
to be valuable for everyone. See also Tim Mulgan, Understanding Utilitarianism (Stocksfield Hall,
UK: Acumen, 2007), 61–92.
10
Sen, Inequality, 12–14.
11
Consider also the importance of the ‘utility thresholds’, discussed in Frankfurt, ‘Equality’, 27–
30.
530 FAUSTO CORVINO
In these circumstances, utilitarians would opt for the outcome that reinforces the
inequality of welfare and of resources. They would allocate the money to Giulio
because, through this, he would realise a higher marginal increase of utility than
Marco; hence, this move would be preferable in terms of aggregate utility. This is a
result that can be hardly accepted by those who believe in the moral principle that—
setting aside any issue of deserts and responsibilities—we cannot let those who have
more, both in terms of welfare and resources, take precedence over those who have
less. Moreover, although the utilitarian doctrine does not look at equality in the
distribution but only at the total sum of utilities, this is not because utilitarians are
indifferent to the conditions of the worse off. Rather, they believe that if overall
utility has been maximized, this has occurred because resources have been allocated
where their utility declines less at the margin—in other words, they have been allo-
cated to the worse off12. Therefore, I believe that the idea of allocating the extra
benefit to Giulio rather than to Marco should in some way also trouble those think-
ers who have appealed to the utilitarian principle for advocating radical schemes of
redistribution (including global redistribution) from the better off to the worse off13.
One way for utilitarians to get out of this theoretical trap is to renounce the egal-
itarianism of utility functions and to accept the prioritarian principle, according to
which the value of a benefit is not an absolute value, rather it gets lower the better
off the recipient is14. Therefore, in our case, prioritarians would not deny that €2.000
would bring more utility to Giulio than to Marco, and in relation to this extra benefit,
they would accept that UG=20 while UM=17. But prioritarians would go further
and say that we should not be satisfied with these results, rather we should weigh
them based on the welfare level of the recipients15. So, they would take into account
that Giulio is better off than Marco in terms of welfare, hence they would assign
different weighting factors to the two potential recipients—say, 5 to Giulio and 7 to
12
But my point in this article is that this utilitarian assumption does not hold true in every circum-
stance.
13
See, for example, Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: How To Play Your Part in Ending
World Poverty (London: Picador, 2010).
14
See the first famous formulation of the prioritarian view given by Derek Parfit in his Lindley
Lecture, ‘Equality or Priority’ of 1991: ‘benefiting people matters more the worse off these people
are’14. Derek Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority’, Ratio 10, no. 3 (1997): 213. However, it is important to
clarify that from the fact that utilitarians could renounce the egalitarianism of utility function we cannot
infer that they might have normative reasons for doing it. Accordingly, my aim here is simply to dis-
cuss how utilitarians could safeguard the interests of the worst off without giving up on moral aggrega-
tion and welfarism. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for prompting me to clarify this point.
On the difference between the prioritarian and the utilitarian function, see also Nils Holtug, ‘The-
ories of Value Aggregation: Utilitarianism, Egalitarianism, Prioritarianism’, in The Oxford Handbook
of Value Theory, eds. Iwao Hirose and Jonas Olson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 277;
and Iwao Hirose, Egalitarianism (London: Routledge, 2014), 91–92.
15
For now, I accept the assumption made by the majority of prioritarian thinkers that we should
look at the welfare level of individuals. Later on, I challenge this assumption and argue that we should
focus instead on resources or capabilities.
531 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
Marco. In the sense that the value of any benefit accruing to the two can only be
obtained by weighting the utility that the benefit yields on their utility curve—which
obviously varies according to the benefit—on their personal weighting factors—that
remain stable as long as their welfare level does not change.
Therefore, prioritarians would conclude that the value of €2.000 accruing to
Marco is higher than if it were accruing to Giulio: VG(of €2.000) = UG(20) *5 =
100; VM(of €2.000) = UM(17) * 7 = 119. Given that also prioritarianism is an ag-
gregative theory16, it would recommend allocating the extra benefit where it tends to
maximize overall value—that is to say, to Marco rather than to Giulio. So, by extend-
ing the discourse at the policy level, we can notice how the priority principle can
guide the decision-maker towards the implementation of public policies that are
more egalitarian than the ones commanded by the utilitarian principle.
The upshot is that prioritarianism can be considered as a form of amended util-
itarianism, because when the utility of income does not decline at the margin as
expected - hence an additional good produces a higher marginal utility if given to a
person who has more goods rather than to the one who has less - the utilitarian
doctrine tends to favour the wealthier potential recipient of benefits over the poorer
one, while prioritarianism tends to do the opposite. Therefore, if utilitarians incor-
porate the prioritarian weighting factors in their calculations, they could preserve
welfarism and aggregation while correcting for the inegalitarian drifts that emerge in
a case as the one we have just examined. Conversely, in those other cases in which
utility decreases at the margin, this further guarantee would not overturn the utilitar-
ian results but only reinforce them17.
However, some cases do exist in which the prioritarian variant that is dominant
in the literature, according to which the individual weighting factor should be in
inverse proportion to welfare levels (welfare-prioritarianism18), might fall short of its
commitment to giving priority to the worse off, up to the point of exacerbating the
limits that utilitarianism has with interpersonal comparisons. I am referring to those
See Nils Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, in Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of
16
Equality, eds. Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
134.
17
In other words, in the more common situations in which the utility of money does really diminish
at the margin, prioritarian weighting factors would reinforce the egalitarian tendency of utilitarianism.
Imagine this were the case in our previous example. So, assume that Marco would obtain more utility
than Giulio from an extra benefit of €2.000. We might say that in relation to this benefit, UM=20 and
UG=17 (the opposite of what I have postulated in the text). In this case, the prioritarian clause would
not alter the utilitarian normative claim that we should allocate the benefit to Marco (UM>UG) but
would only strengthen it, because VM=20*7=140 while UG=17*5=85. So, VM – VG > UM – UG.
Hence, from a prioritarian view, it is even more important to benefit Marco than from the utilitarian
perspective.
18
See, for example, Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, 132; Hirose, Egalitarianism, 89–99; and Richard
Arneson, ‘Egalitarianism’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Sum-
mer 2013 Edition), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/ egalitarianism/>.
532 FAUSTO CORVINO
19
Consequently, their level of happiness and satisfaction is much higher than it would have been
had this process of adaptation not occurred. See also Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 62–63, 67–70; and Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice,
111–166.
The example of Giulio and Marco is simply a case of utility that does not decrease at the margin,
rather than a case of adaptive preferences, because I postulate that they have freely developed their
tastes and plans of life.
533 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
20
Or in other words, on condition that the person who is poorer but at a higher utility level does
obtain more utility from a given additional benefit than a second person who is wealthier but is at a
lower utility level. Obviously, this would not entail that under such circumstances utilitarianism has
solved the whole problem with adaptive preferences, because independently from the choice related
to the allocation of the extra benefit, if you ask a utilitarian to judge which of the two persons is better
off, she would still indicate the poorer one. Therefore, even when the utility of a given benefit does
not decline at the margin, hence with regards to this benefit a utilitarian would favor the poorer recip-
ient, the criticisms moved by Sen against the utilitarian indifference toward adaptive preferences still
hold true. See Sen, Development, 62–63.
534 FAUSTO CORVINO
Does this mean that we should drop both the utilitarian and the prioritarian doc-
trine? Does this also irreparably undermine the hypothesis that prioritarianism
might represent a positive theoretical evolution of the utilitarian theory in safeguard-
ing the interests of those who have fewer assets and capabilities? I do not believe so.
For the limits of prioritarianism derive from the fact that this doctrine has generally
been equated to welfare-prioritarianism. Nonetheless, the prioritarian basic formu-
lation, initially proposed by Derek Parfit, and according to which ‘benefiting people
matters more the worse off these people are’21, does leave open the issue of how we
should measure, for the purpose of weighting benefits, who is worse off. My point
is that if we shift from welfare-prioritarianism—that is, the formulation that in the
literature has generally been associated with the wider prioritarian idea—to other
variants of prioritarianism that adopt different informational foci22 – as for example
resources or capabilities – prioritarianism might perform better than utilitarianism
with regard to the poorer people even in the presence of adaptive preferences.
Consider how Nils Holtug automatically proceeds from the general principle of
prioritarianism to welfare-prioritarianism. He first offers the following formulation
of what he defines as ‘Overall Outcome Welfare Prioritarianism’:
‘An Outcome is intrinsically better, the larger a sum of weighted individual benefits
it contains, where benefits are weighted such that they gain a greater value, the worse
off the individual to whom they accrue’23.
Such a principle, taken by itself, is not yet welfarist; rather, it is the analytical
formula of the generic prioritarian doctrine. But it becomes welfarist a few lines later
when Holtug specifies that prioritarianism ‘ascribes intrinsic values to compound
states of affairs’24, each consisting of the size of the benefit and of the welfare level
of the individual who receives it. The higher the welfare level, the lower the com-
pound state will be.
As I was arguing before, nothing is granted in the move from Holtug’s formula-
tion of ‘Overall Outcome Welfare Prioritarianism’ to his further specification. Be-
cause following Sen’s famous argument, we can judge ‘a person’s position in a social
arrangement’ either in terms of realized achievements, means to achievement, or
freedom to achieve25. Welfare-prioritarians adopt the first criterion, ascribing a low
weighting factor to a person who gets low welfare out of her bundle of resources,
independently of how wide this bundle is and how many freedoms she can obtain
with the resources at her disposal. The consequence, as we have seen, is that wel-
fare-prioritarianism is presented as a theory that aims to give priority to the worse
21
Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority’, 213.
22
‘informational focus’ is an expression that I borrow from Sen, Development, 72.
23
Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, 133.
24
Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, 132.
25
Sen, Inequality, 31–38. See also Sen, Development, 72–76.
535 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
off but that ends up exacerbating the utilitarian indifference to poverty when poverty
does not result in the level of dissatisfaction that we would normally expect.
A solution for rescuing prioritarianism from this limit can consist—and in my view
should consist—in changing the ‘informational focus’ of prioritarianism. It needs to
shift from welfare-prioritarianism to two other prioritarian variants that we might
label as income-prioritarianism and capability-prioritarianism. I shall place the latter
principles in analytical terms by modifying the definition of welfare prioritarianism
that Holtug has provided26.
Income-prioritarianism: An Outcome is intrinsically better, the larger a sum of
weighted individual benefits it contains, where benefits are weighted such that they
gain a greater value, the lower the social income27 of the individual to whom they
accrue.
Capability-prioritarianism: An Outcome is intrinsically better, the larger a sum of
weighted individual benefits it contains, where benefits are weighted such that they
gain a greater value, the less the capabilities of the individual to whom they accrue.
Both versions of prioritarianism would solve the problem that welfare prioritari-
anism has in relation to adaptive preferences. Yet, capability-prioritarianism might
be preferred to income-prioritarianism because it provides a more accurate concep-
tion of what it means to be better off. Accordingly, two individuals might control
exactly the same basket of resources and yet occupy two different positions in soci-
ety because either social or individual factors allow them to achieve different func-
tionings, that is to say things they may have reasons to value having or being . Con- 28
sider, for example, two persons who have the same income but different chances to
get a job they might wish for or different recreational opportunities because one of
them happens to live in a liberal society, while the other lives in authoritarian re-
gime. Or consider also two individuals who live in the same place, control the same
income, but live two very different lives because one of them suffers from severe
disabilities.
On the other hand, income-prioritarianism might be preferred to capability-pri-
oritarianism because it resorts to an informational focus that is easier to calculate;
hence, it renders the theory more promptly utilizable by policymakers. In other
words, calculating how many resources a given individual controls is much easier
than estimating in which different combinations of functionings she can convert the
resources she has.
26
See Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, 133.
27
The social income of an individual refers to the sum of all the sources of income she can obtain
in society: from the state (through money transfers or through services), from private employers (both
in terms of wages and of benefits), from the family, from the community, from self-production, and
from private activities. See Guy Standing, ‘Labor Recommodification in the Global Transformation’,
in Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty–First Century: Market Economy as a Political Project, eds.
Ayse Buğra and Kaan Agartan (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007), 69.
28
Sen, Development, 70–76.
536 FAUSTO CORVINO
So imagine that in our example benefit B was a ski holiday and that Francesca did not know how
to ski while Claudia did. Both utilitarians and prioritarians would recommend giving B to Claudia, if
Francesca cannot get any utility out of it. Meanwhile, telic egalitarians would be forced to admit that,
at least in one respect, it would be preferable to renounce allocating B instead of giving it to Claudia,
hence increasing the distance between the two women. (Obviously this would occur under the as-
sumption that the telic egalitarian were interested in equality of resources, with regards to which Clau-
dia is better off than Francesca - if the telic egalitarian were interested in equality of welfare, with
regards to which Francesca is better off than Claudia, we would have to reverse the ski example).
31
The problem with prioritarianism is that it would remain indifferent to two outcomes that make
the same contribution to the overall value, even if in one outcome the whole marginal value is pro-
duced by many at the top and in the second it is produced by a few the bottom – assuming that we
had no other solution but to choose between one of the two options.
32
At this point, it might be interesting to wonder whether prioritarianism and sufficientarianism
are theories of distributive justice that are necessarily global in scope. The great majority of their
proponents seem to maintain this view (see, for example, Parfit, ‘Equality and Priority’, 214; and
Robert Huseby, ‘Sufficiency: Restated and Defended’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 18, no. 2
[2010]: 279). Nonetheless, I believe that whether you take into consideration the utility, priority, or
sufficiency of every living (or even future) person or rather you are simply interested in the members
of a given group depends on the second-order issue of whether you are cosmopolitan or rather na-
tionalist about justice. This is an issue that precedes the debate on utilitarianism, prioritarianism, or
sufficientarianism and can only be resolved separately. Therefore, I would say that there is no theo-
retical contradiction in proposing statist versions of prioritarianism or sufficientarianism.
538 FAUSTO CORVINO
Assume also that this job is extremely hazardous because of the consequences on
children’s health and that, on the other hand, smartphones and tablets are the vec-
tors of a considerable portion of the world economy that includes apps, e-com-
merce, communication, and so on (in a few words, a lot of jobs and a lot of money).
Shall we tolerate that these children shoulder the burden of the wealth of a large
group of people living in developed countries, even though this means spending
their lives in obnoxious conditions? If the group of children is small and the sector
of the world economy based on smartphones and tablets is huge enough, prioritar-
ians would justify this practice33. Imagine that we need to choose between allocating
some resources to 50 child miners who are providing the precious material to com-
pany X in order to lead them to less miserable conditions, and not allocating these
resources to these children. If these additional resources would make the children
unwilling to continue working in an unsafe place, thus causing an immediate shock
for company X, that would hurt its business34 and might result in a loss of welfare
for thousands of employees, then not only from an utilitarian prospective but also
from a prioritarian one we might still have reasons to prevent the children from
shifting from ‘miserable’ to ‘less miserable’ conditions35.
In other words, prioritarianism may allow for a trade-off between those who ben-
efit from the extraction of the precious material and the children. For the numerical
difference between the former and the latter may call off the egalitarian mechanism
that is implicit in prioritarianism and that in this case consists in the children having
much higher weighting factors of utilities than their counterparts. Even though the
children are really bad off, either in terms of welfare, resources or capabilities, hence
their weighting factors are extremely high, the fact that they are only 50 may render
the action of benefiting them sub-optimal from the point of view of maximised ag-
gregative value . 36
33
However, prioritarians might be pluralist. They might hold that in my example other values—
such as freedom from exploitation—matter. So, they might be ready to sacrifice an outcome with a
higher value, obtained by exploiting children, for an outcome with a lower one, in which there is no
exploitation. But in every case they would be forced to argue that the first outcome is at least in one
respect preferable to the second one. See also Holtug, ‘Prioritarianism’, 132.
34
We are assuming that company X would need time to adjust to the loss of the child miners.
35
On this issue, see also the famous example of the World Cup final that Casal recently readapted
from T. M. Scanlon. See Casal ‘Why Sufficiency’, 320; and Thomas M. Scanlon, What We Owe to
Each Other (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 235.
36
Here I make no distinction between the different versions of prioritarianism because it would
not substantially alter my conclusions, in the sense that by changing the currency of justice we would
not reverse the inegalitarian tendency that the axiological principle of prioritarianism shows in this
situation.
539 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
to the prioritarian principle37. And it is also interesting to note how this restriction
to the aggregative imperative that prioritarianism inherits from utilitarianism is in-
troduced at the price of rendering the outcomes of utility functions even more un-
equal than in prioritarianism. For while prioritarianism holds that individual utilities
are not the same, but they matter more the worse off the person who produces
them is, the sufficientarian threshold adds the stricter provision that some utilities—
those of the better off— are excluded from the calculation of overall value. In this
sense, as we move from utilitarianism towards a distributive principle that better
sustains the equality of resources or capabilities, we progressively mitigate the ‘hid-
den form of egalitarianism’ that Sen ascribed to the utilitarian doctrine.
The idea of the sufficientarian threshold was initially proposed by Harry Frank-
furt when he addressed the advocates of economic equality, holding that many of
them were mistaking a quantitative consideration for a qualitative one. Frankfurt’s
hypothesis is that many egalitarians intuitively declare considering inequality as un-
acceptable in itself, but what really disturbs many of them is not that some people
have less than some others, rather, they worry that a given group of individuals has
too little and lives below a sufficiency threshold38.
But what does it mean to reach a sufficiency threshold? This threshold, Frankfurt
says, should be interpreted as a standard rather than a limit. In the sense that the
person who meets the standard would surely prefer to have more money than she
has, but she has no ‘active interest’ in getting more. This condition may arise under
two circumstances: when the person has enough money not to be dissatisfied with
her life, or when she is dissatisfied but this does not depend on economic reasons39.
Therefore, Frankfurt proposed a single and subjective utility threshold to delimit
the field of action of justice. The only thing that matters is to lead every individual
above the sufficiency threshold, and obviously the farther a person is from the suf-
ficiency threshold the stronger will be the urgency of driving resources toward her.
Meanwhile, all the benefits accruing to people above the threshold have no value
for the distributive calculation. Hence, they cannot be traded with the benefits going
to people below the threshold40.
However, the idea of the sufficiency threshold can be interpreted—and in fact, it
has been subsequently interpreted—in many different ways41. A sufficiency threshold
can be either subjective or objective, single or multiple, and when we have multiple
thresholds, they can be laid in a vertical or horizontal order. Regarding the first
distinction, an example of a threshold that we might define as objective, because it
is not based on a self-evaluation—as in the work of Frankfurt—but rather relies on a
37
We might say that the sufficientarian threshold re-amends prioritarian-amended utilitarianism.
38
See Frankfurt, ‘Equality’, 34.
39
Frankfurt, ‘Equality’, 39–43.
40
Differently from prioritarianism.
41
For an analysis of the non-instrumental reasons that might support a sufficiency threshold, see
Liam Shields, ‘The Prospects for Sufficientarianism’, Utilitas 24, no. 2 (2012): 112–114.
540 FAUSTO CORVINO
42
Roger Crisp, ‘Equality, Priority and Compassion’, Ethics 113, no. 4 (2003): 755–757.
43
Crisp, ‘Equality, Priority’, 758.
44
Huseby, ‘Sufficiency’, 180.
45
Huseby, ‘Sufficiency’, 181. However, talking about contentment with individual welfare opens
up a huge problem with regard to those people who have expensive tastes. So, Huseby says that one
solution to this conundrum consists in replacing ‘contentment’ with ‘a reasonable chance of being
content’. Huseby, ‘Sufficiency’, 182.
Moreover, Huseby’s maximal sufficiency threshold is also influenced by relative deprivation, be-
cause relativities have a psychological impact on individual contentedness. Huseby, ‘Sufficiency’, 183.
46
Huseby, ‘Sufficiency’, 184–185.
541 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
capabilities that go from the classical basic needs—such as food, health, and educa-
tion—to more complex ones—such as political freedom, social respect, and so on.
A person reaches sufficiency, in their view, when she is free from pressure against
succeeding in each central capability47. So, no matter how positive the self-evaluation
of wellbeing of the happy wife of my example could be, she would never be consid-
ered above sufficiency unless she meets all the separate sufficiency thresholds that
Axelsen and Nielsen indicate as basic48.
For the various reasons expressed so far, I would tend to consider an impartial
version of sufficiency, either based on a third-person prospective or referring to
some capabilities that enshrine basic interests, as preferable to subjective thresholds
that, being based on personal contentment, run the risk to falling prey to adaptive
preferences or to expensive tastes – as exemplified in the cases of Francesca-Claudia
and Giulio-Marco, respectively.
4. QUIESCENT SUFFICIENCY
Up until this point, I have discussed why by first applying either the income-
prioritarian or the capability-prioritarian clause to utilitarianism and by later intro-
ducing one or more impartial sufficiency thresholds, we obtain a distributive princi-
ple that preserves the advantages of both utilitarianism and prioritarianism, while
correcting for some of their most severe drawbacks that penalize poorer persons.
The advantages of both utilitarianism and prioritarianism are clarity in moral pre-
scription, consequentialism and impartiality in moral aggregation, while the disad-
vantages are, respectively, to point toward an unequal distribution of resources when
utility does not decrease at the margin (in the case of utilitarianism) and the inability
to prevent dramatic trade-offs between the top and the bottom of society (which is
more evident in utilitarianism but can also characterise prioritarianism when there
is a large numerical disparity between the better off and the worse off).
Nonetheless, one might still object that an important difference exists between
simple prioritarianism and sufficiency-amended prioritarianism with regards to the
way we conceive of priority among those who are below the sufficiency threshold.
For while prioritarians would hold that we ought to allocate resources to the worse
47
They use the expression ‘freedom from duress’. David V. Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen, ‘Suffi-
ciency as Freedom from Duress’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 23, no. 4 (2015): 406–409.
Moreover, Axelsen and Nielsen also argue that while certain thresholds only require an evaluation
of absolute positions, for some others we should also look at relativities. The vote, for example, is a
‘positional good’, whose absolute relevance is dependent on the absolute number of votes that all the
other people are allowed to express. Axelsen and Nielsen, ‘Freedom from Duress’, 419-421. See also
the more recent Lasse Nielsen and David V. Axelsen, ‘Capabilitarian Sufficiency: Capabilities and
Social Justice’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 18, no. 1 (2017): 46-59.
48
See Axelsen and Nielsen, ‘Freedom from Duress’, 410-411.
542 FAUSTO CORVINO
off in every case, sufficientarians might maintain that when resources are scarce—
and hence we cannot lead everyone above the threshold in the short run—it might
be more important to lead closer to sufficiency those individuals who are not far
from it rather than those others who are so poor that we have less reason to expect
that they will manage to reach sufficiency on their own.
Consider, for example, a case in which A controls 20 units of resources, B owns
28, C owns 65, and the sufficiency threshold is fixed at 70 units of resources. As-
sume that you have only three units to allocate and you have to decide where to
place them. Prioritarians would have no doubts that A should be given priority.
With sufficientarians, the discourse is more complex. In those cases in which the
process of redistribution is constant, I think that the great majority of sufficientarians
would agree with prioritarians on the urgency of giving extra resources to those who
fare worse. Whereas, if we can reasonably expect that no other additional resources
will be available for redistribution in the near future, and that the recipients are not
likely to substantially ameliorate their conditions without external intervention49, suf-
ficientarians might deem it more urgent to bring C very close to the sufficiency
threshold rather than give priority to the worse off, as prioritarians would recom-
mend50.
I recognize that this difference can exist and hence that sufficiency-amended pri-
oritarianism might entail a modification of the prioritarian logic below the threshold.
Nonetheless, I believe that we would not incur any theoretical contradiction if we
hold that sufficientarianism remains open to the two different normative strategies
in those cases in which resources are limited—that is, either the maximization of
value at all costs or the priority to those who are more likely to reach the sufficiency
threshold.
However, the irreconcilable difference between prioritarianism and sufficientar-
ianism, the one that many identify as being the biggest limit of the latter, is the indif-
ference to inequalities occurring above the threshold. For if up to a certain threshold
49
Imagine, for example, the case of aid intervention with very limited resources, in an area lashed
by dire poverty.
50
See, for example, Edward Page, ‘Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian
Approach’, Journal of Global Ethics 3, no. 1 (2007): 9. See also the ‘headcount claim’ discussed by
Shields with regards to some sufficientarian theories, and according to which ‘benefits to those who
do not reach the threshold do not improve the assessment of the distribution’. Shields, ‘The Pro-
spects’, 102–103.
A different case would be that in which you are dealing with a life-or-death situation and you have
limited resources. Hence, you have to decide whether to ameliorate the condition of the worse off,
without saving their lives, or guarantee the survival of the better off. Consider a re-elaboration of my
previous example, in which you have five rather than three resources to give, and 70 is the minimum
for staying alive. Here I believe sufficientarians would want to give five resources to C (see Frankfurt,
‘Equality’, 30–31), and prioritarians would do the same, because even though C has a lower weighting
factor than both A and B, the marginal increase of utility yielded by five additional resources is much
higher on C’s utility function than on those of A or B.
543 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
individual weighting factors become equal to zero, we lose any axiological leverage.
Various solutions can be proposed to the problem of how we regulate the distribu-
tion above sufficiency. One solution, as postulated by Crisp, might consist in apply-
ing a separate distributive principle above the threshold. Crisp, for example, sug-
gested using utilitarianism51.
Another possible solution might be to employ negative weighting factors above
the threshold52, that are closer to zero the lower the income level of the persons they
refer to, and vice versa. In this way, we would have a form of positive priority below
the threshold and a form of negative priority above it. Also above the threshold the
value of a benefit would be given by the utility weighted on a weighting factor that is
inversely proportional to the income level of the recipient, but given that all the
weighting factors above the threshold would be lower than zero, there could never
be a trade-off between a person above sufficiency and a person below it.
I believe that both strategies can result in workable principles of justice, but they
would contradict the core of the sufficientarian doctrine—initially developed in an-
tithesis to egalitarianism—according to which justice only requires that everyone has
enough53. Yet, I maintain that a possibility exists for rescuing sufficientarianism from
the allegation of indifference to all inequalities occurring above sufficiency—let’s call
it “the indifference objection” —without contradicting the original sufficientarian
54
spirit. It consists in holding that justice only requires that everyone has enough as
long as everyone has obtained enough. According to this view, absolute priority
would be granted to those below sufficiency, with capability-prioritarianism regulat-
ing the priority in the below-sufficiency group, and any inequality in the above-suf-
ficiency group would remain outside the scope of justice. But when no one is left
below the threshold, the sufficiency principle will become dormant and we could
shift to whatever other principle of justice we deem correct for regulating society
under the new contingencies.
51
Crisp, ‘Equality, Priority’, 758. Consider also the hybrid formulation of sufficientarian egalitari-
anism proposed by Andrew Williams. Within this doctrine, luck egalitarianism holds as the general
principle of justice, with the restriction that any form of option luck can justify any person being left
below a minimum level of welfare. See Andrew Williams, ‘Liberty, Equality, and Property”, in The
Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, eds. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig and Anne Phillips (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 501–503.
52
While sufficientarians do usually hold that weighting factors are equal to zero, here I refer to
weighting factors preceded by the minus sign.
53
In the sense that we can technically introduce an additional distributive principle, but in so doing
we would end up outside the sufficientarian field. Whereas, Philipp Kanschik has defended the idea
that sufficientarianism is reconcilable with progressive taxation by appealing to the risk of falling below
the threshold. Accordingly, it would not be incoherent, from a sufficientarian prospective, to tax less
those who are closer to the sufficiency threshold. Yet, I am not sure that the proponents of the suffi-
cientarian view on justice would accept the normative relevance of being at risk of insufficiency. See
Philipp Kanschik, ‘Why Sufficientarianism is not Indifferent to Taxation’, Kriterion – Journal of Phi-
losophy 29, no. 2 (2015): 89–98.
54
Shields, ‘The Prospects’, 106.
544 FAUSTO CORVINO
55
This latter case can occur if A cannot consume the resources we are distributing—for medical
reasons for example—and she cannot convert them into cash on the market either.
545 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
2 (A 23, B 40, C 50) and Outcome 3 (A 23, B 40, C 53). This is true. As long as
the sufficiency regime holds, a sacrifice from a person barely above sufficiency
might be considered at par with an equal sacrifice from another person who is well
above the threshold. Nonetheless, three things can be said to partially defend this
sufficientarian radicality. The first one is that such horizontality in the responsibility
to help persons in dire need might render the transfer of resources more fluid and
efficient. So, in our example, B could not appeal to C’s reluctance to redistribute to
A as an excuse for inaction. In some way, this feature of sufficientarianism could
oblige the person who could quickly direct resources below the threshold to do it.
The second point, which is also connected to the first one, is that even if B re-
nounces something in order to let A reach the threshold, while C maintains her
position unaltered, when sufficiency will become dormant B will be poorer than C
than she was earlier, and this can count for the non-emergency principle of justice,
hence we might expect B to reduce the gap with C in the post-sufficiency scenario.
Consider, for example, Outcome 1 (A 23, B 37, C 50) and Outcome 3 (A 23, B
40, C 53). Even though C can increase her gap with B in the pre-sufficiency scenario
without incurring in injustice, once the sufficiency principle will go into abeyance
the post-sufficiency principle of justice may require a redistribution from C to B. In
this sense, we might say that Outcome 1 and Outcome 3 are on a par only as long
as A will control less than 25 resources.
Lastly, a clause could be added, so that after the adoption of the quiescent-suffi-
ciency paradigm, no one can be asked to renounce something she had earlier if the
pace of economic growth is high enough to achieve the sufficiency goal in the short
run. So, under this clause, if we start from the Status quo (A 20, B 40, C 50), Out-
come 1 (A 23, B 37, C 50) can no longer be considered at par with Outcome 2 (A
23, B 40, C 50), but the latter, if achievable, should be preferred.
As we can see, the great difference between quiescent sufficiency and classical
sufficiency is that in the former the negative thesis, according to which inequalities
occurring among people above sufficiency are irrelevant from the point of view of
justice, holds true only as long as someone is still below the sufficiency threshold.
When everyone has finally met the threshold, it will go into abeyance, ready to be
reactivated in case even just one person once again falls below sufficiency. Another
way to figure out the difference between quiescent sufficiency and classic sufficiency
is to imagine what would happen if with a magic wand we were able to carry every-
one above sufficiency. As followers of classic sufficiency, we would have to remain
indifferent, from the prospective of justice, about everything that occurs in this hy-
pothetical world. Accordingly, we could not even sanction a possible social evolu-
tion in which one single individual accumulates most of existing wealth, while all the
other human beings remain just above sufficiency – in this scenario, it might be in
the interest of the richest individual to redistribute to all the others just enough re-
sources to keep them above the threshold, so as to neutralise any sufficientarian
546 FAUSTO CORVINO
56
Consider that this hypotetical situation is not so different from the case of small elites ruling in
oil-rich countries and redistributing wealth to the population through financing welfare state provi-
sions. This is also in order to guarantee stability to their own regime. See, for example, Laura El-
Katiri, Bassam Fattouh and Paul Segal, ‘Anatomy of an Oil-Based Welfare State: Rent Distribution
in Kuwait’, in The Transformation Of the Gulf: Politics, Economics And the Global Order, eds.
David Held and Kristian C. Ulrichsen (Abingdon – UK: Routledge, 2011).
57
Axelsen and Nielsen, ‘Freedom from Duress’, 406.
547 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
democracy through which small communities may happen to tackle collective prob-
lems . 58
58
It is not a case that an addition was recently made to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights to recognise the importance of sharing information through the web. See Catherine
Howell and Darrell M. West, ‘The Internet as a human right’, The Brookings Institution (November
7, 2016), retrievable from: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/11/07/the-internet-as-a-hu-
man-right/.
59
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for articulating such an objection, specifically referring
to the case of the Internet.
548 FAUSTO CORVINO
internet access to get it will become our unique concern, meaning that any resource
that will be employed for something different will give rise to an injustice. Here we
can make sense of the radicality of quiescent sufficiency (in comparison to other
non-sufficientarian accounts of justice that eschew the ‘indifference objection’), be-
cause it will temporarily establish a state of emergency that would not allow for any
trade-off between those who are above and those who are below the threshold that
is in force in the period t1-t2.
There remains to consider one last issue. In this article, and in particular in the
last part of it, I have mainly centred my analysis on what is supposed to occur above
the threshold, given that my main target has been to rescue sufficientarianism from
the ‘indifference objection’. In doing this, I have considered some possible theoret-
ical evolutions, in the interests of the worst off, firstly from utilitarianism to welfare-
prioritarianism, secondly from welfare-prioritarianism to either income- or capabil-
ity-prioritarianism, thirdly from income- or capability-prioritarianism to classic suf-
ficientarianism, and lastly from classic sufficientariansim to quiescent sufficientari-
ansim.
My final argument is that the most effective way to guarantee priority to the worst
off, preventing trade-offs between the top and the bottom and at the same time
retaining axiological leverage above the threshold, is to uphold a temporary suffi-
ciency threshold (or multiple thresholds) and to guarantee absolute priority to those
people who are below it while letting capability-prioritarianism regulate the interac-
tions between them. Yet, it might be wondered why I am proposing capability-pri-
oritarianism to regulate the interactions among the worst off if in my discussion I
have presented the evolution from prioritarianism – in any of its variants – to suffi-
cientarianism as a positive advance for the same worst off.
As discussed in the example of the child miners, the reason why none of the
prioritarian variants can unconditionally guarantee priority to the worst off is that it
will always remain possible for a large group of the best off obtaining huge benefits
to outweigh a restricted group of the worst off achieving small increases in wellbeing.
The sufficiency threshold neutralises these trade-offs by imposing a zero weighting
factor to the utilities accruing at the top. Below the threshold we can have several
options: we could employ the utility principle, any of the prioritarian variants or
radical sufficiency. The latter is the view according to which sufficiency has intrinsic
significance, hence when we have few resources to allocate, our guiding maxim
should consist in leading above sufficiency as much individuals as possible.
Reformulating an example I was doing before in pure numerical terms, let us
imagine that three persons are in urgent need of a medicine to stop feeling pain.
None of them is at risk of dying, but if they do not receive the medicine they will
fell pain for the next week, until rescuers will be able to reach them. Adrian is very
sick and needs seven doses of medicine to stop his suffering, Julian is sick and needs
five doses, Elisabeth is only starting to feel bad now and would need only one dose
549 Utility, Priorities, and Quiescent Sufficiency
not to get worse. We have only two doses at our disposal and we do not know
anything about these three persons. We can assume that we are only aware of their
specific conditions and we are unable to communicate with them. Who should be
given the two doses?
From a strict sufficientarian prospective, Elisabeth should be given at least one
dose, so as to lead her above the sufficiency threshold. Whereas, the other dose
should be given to Julian, even though this will only lead him closer to sufficiency
but not above it, and we know that it is very unlikely that he may find elsewhere the
remaining four doses he would necessitates. From a capability-prioritarian prospec-
tive, the two doses should instead be given to Adrian in order to make the person
who is worst off fell a little better , even though this entails renouncing to carry at
60
CONCLUSION
I have claimed that utilitarianism could penalize those who are worse off in cases
in which utility does not decline at the margin and that the prioritarian clause could
solve this problem. Nonetheless, in weighting individual utilities we should not focus
on welfare levels, as prioritarian philosophers usually maintain. Rather, we should
refer to a scale of weighting factors that is realized in inverse proportion either to
social income or to capabilities, because in doing so we can avoid the risk of inegali-
tarian drifts due to adaptive preferences, to which both utilitarianism and welfare
prioritarianism may fall prey.
Then, I have dealt with the issue of trade-offs between the top and the bottom of
society that are allowed within prioritarianism. As claimed, the sufficientarian
60
The same holds true in the case of welfare-prioritarianism.
61
I am extremely grateful to two anonymous reviewers for helping me formulate this version of
quiescent sufficientarism, by raising, among other things, many of the objections that I have addressed
in this paragraph.
550 FAUSTO CORVINO
threshold can guarantee an absolute priority to the worse off, but this comes at the
price of the negative thesis of sufficientarianism, which can make the whole distrib-
utive principle vulnerable to the indifference objection. Therefore, I have posited
to interpret sufficientarianism as a temporary principle of distributive justice that
remains active as long as insufficiency exists and that becomes dormant once every
member of society has crossed the sufficiency threshold. From this perspective, suf-
ficientarianism can be seen as a transformative project for society, aimed at building
up the institutions that should safeguard sufficiency over time.
I have sought to argue that we can envision a positive theoretical evolution from
utilitarianism to income- or capability-prioritarianism and from income- or capabil-
ity-prioritarianism to quiescent sufficiency. At each step, we maintain the advantages
of the previous theory while correcting for its most explicit drawbacks. In the final
analysis, quiescent sufficiency coupled with capability-prioritariansim below the
threshold can guarantee absolute priority to the poorest persons under all circum-
stances, without renouncing the sufficientarian positive thesis and without remaining
indifferent to the inequalities that occur among the better off.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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553 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 553-570
ISSN: 1825-5167
BARBARA DE MORI
Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science, University of Padua, Italy
barbara.demori@unipd.it
ABSTRACT
The ethical Principle of the 3Rs, known above all to the scientific world for its relevance in the
field of animal experimentation, has seen in recent decades an exponential increase in its
application in research in which animals are involved. Nonetheless, the application of the 3rs
Principle to other animals, in addition to animals traditionally used for experimentation, and
not only in laboratories, but also in the field, has been little explored. This contribution, against
the background of an unresolved comparison between animal ethics and environmental ethics
regarding the relationship between individuals and species or ecosystems, focuses attention on
the importance of applying the 3Rs Principle also to ‘field’ research with wild animals. In the
context of biodiversity conservation, the debate on the ethical use of animals is increasingly
urgent and the Principle of the 3Rs seems to be able to promote a practical way to address the
conflict of values about animals in conservation actions. It seems to be able to support those
who must make decisions ethically and scientifically consistent in their daily work and to give
some "voice" to the individual animals in a context in which often the "good" of the species
represents the ultimate value.
KEYWORDS
Animal experimentation; ethics; 3Rs; wild animals; conservation; animal welfare.
The ethical principle of the 3Rs, known above all to the scientific world for its
relevance in the field of animal experimentation, has seen in recent decades an
exponential increase in its application in research in which animals are involved.
In general, as a reference principle for the new European legislation on animal
experimentation1, the 3Rs have seen a significant deepening of their application,
especially by expanding the original meaning and scope.
1
See European Directive, 2010: The European Parliament and the Council Directive
2010/63/EU of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific
purposes. [Online]. [Accessed 28 September 2019]. Available from: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/
554 BARBARA DE MORI
Moreover, the 3Rs principle can be applied not only in the laboratory, but also
in field research, for example with farm or pet animals and wild animals.
However, precisely because traditionally the 3Rs are applied in the laboratory, the
importance of applying them in these contexts is overlooked.
In this contribution, against the background of an unresolved comparison
between animal ethics and environmental ethics regarding the relationship
between individuals and species or ecosystems, I will focus attention on the field
of wild animals and on the importance of applying the Principle of the 3Rs also in
this context.
There is no doubt that, in the context of research with wild animals and, more
generally, with biodiversity conservation, the debate on the ethical use of animals
is increasingly urgent.6 However, it is spoiled on several levels.
First, it is spoiled by the contrast between abolitionist and reformist
perspectives on the ethical acceptability of experimentation (a contrast stigmatized
by the distinction between deontological theories centered on rights and
consequential theories centered on the welfare of animals)7.
Secondly, the debate is further spoiled by a fundamental conflict between
animal ethics and environmental ethics regarding priorities of value: on the one
hand, the priority given to individual animals8, on the other hand, the priority
given to species, the environment and ecosystems9.
Today The Principle of the 3Rs unquestionably represents the starting point, in
the context of a reformist approach to animal experimentation, for discussing the
ethical use of experimental animals, especially for professionals.
Of course, a discussion in general terms about the acceptability of animal
experimentation calls into question other principles besides that of the 3Rs and
the dominant attitude: animal ethics tends to be zoocentric and individualistic, while environmental
ethics biocentric and holistic.
9
See traditional perspectives in environmental ethics: deep ecology of A. Naess (“The Shallow
and the Deep. Long-range Ecology Movement”, Inquiry, 16 1973), land ethics of J.B. Callicott (In
Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, SUNY Press, New York 1989),
the perspective of H. Rolston III (Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural
World, Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1988). A great influence, as it is well known, on
these positions, was exerted by A. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press,
Oxford 1949.
10
See, for example, E.J. Farnsworth, J. Rosovsky, “The ethics of ecological field
experimentation”, Conservation Biology, 7 (1993), 463–472; B.A. Minteer, J.P. Collins, “From
environmental to ecological ethics: toward a practical ethics for ecologists and conservationists”,
Science and Engineering Ethics, 14 (2008), pp. 483–501.
557 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
welfare and living conditions in every step of the experimental process (from birth
to transport to housing, up to the experimental procedure itself for laboratory
animals, or from capture to handling to possible rehabilitation and release for wild
animals and so on) is just as decisive to be able to claim to have applied the 3Rs
correctly.
Today, an ethically acceptable use of animals in research requires direct
attention to all the welfare needs of the individuals involved. The 3Rs make it
possible to effectively incorporate this attention into practice, starting from the
assumption that science and ethics, in this as in many other areas, must dialogue
closely and consistently.14
Moreover, the 3Rs seem to effectively embody our moral psychology,
inasmuch as for the majority of people animals count and are worthy of moral
protection, nevertheless it is considered necessary to use them for the progress of
medicine. Take into account moral psychology, as pointed out by B. Rollin15, is
important to make theoretical work in ethics of some importance for practice: the
ethical approach to animal experimentation proposed by the 3Rs seems to be able
to translate a theoretical framework such as the utilitarian one into practice,
incorporating it directly into the daily work of the "insiders".
must be carefully evaluated and justified in this context, for each individual
protocol.16
Regarding animal health and biology, field research can involve both domestic
animals, pets or farm animals, and wild animals in a controlled or free-living
environment. Farm pets, for example, can be used for research in order to
optimize specific production or breeding strategies or to improve nutritional and
management aspects in farming realities and so on.17
The 3Rs, if applied in a study context of this kind, may suggest, for example, to
pay adequate attention to the housing conditions and the number of animals
involved, as well as to health aspects, veterinary care, training of care staff and so
on.
Pets may also be involved in animal health and biology research outside the
laboratory. When, for example, they are involved in clinical studies directly in
veterinary hospitals, on the management of acute and chronic pain, or in studies
on vaccination protocols or oncological pathologies and the like, a high number of
animal 'patients' can be studied in real life conditions.18
In these cases, the research is conducted under very different conditions from
those encountered in the laboratory and involves many additional variables that
also require a careful application of the 3Rs. Studies of this kind, however,
contribute directly to making the 3Rs principle effective, promoting the reduction
of the number of animals. The studies, in fact, are not carried out in the
laboratory with experimental subjects in which diseases and other problems alike
are induced for the purposes of research, but directly involve owned pet animals,
where the problems studied are found as real cases and where the owner signs an
informed consent and participates in the studies with his animal on a voluntary
basis19.
16
See L.M. Russow, P. Theran, “Ethical issues concerning animal research outside the laboratory”,
ILAR, 44 (2003), pp. 187-190.
17
See D.E. Granstrom, “Agricultural (nonbiomedical) animal research outside the laboratory: A
review of guidelines for institutional animal care and use committees”, ILAR, 44 (2003), pp. 206-210.
18
See V.A. Hampshire, “Regulatory issues surrounding the use of companion animals in clinical
investigations, trials, and studies”, ILAR, 44 (2003), pp. 191-196.
19
Pets can also be involved in assisted interventions, the so-called pet therapy and can be used in
various interventions for therapeutic assistance to people or for recreational or educational care
activities involving interaction with animals. Also in this area it has been proposed to apply the
Principle of the 3Rs, not only when research studies are carried out on interventions, but also to
define, in general, the methods of intervention, assessing the number of animals involved, the
number of sessions planned, the methods of interaction, the incidence of stress factors for the
animal that are related to the interaction with people with disabilities and so on. See M. Simonato,
M. De Santis, L. Contalbrigo, B. de Mori, L. Ravarotto, L. Farina, "The 3Rs as a framework for
considering the ethics of animal assisted interventions", Society and Animals, accepted 2018.
560 BARBARA DE MORI
Another field of experimental research that takes place mostly outside the
laboratories is that involving wild animals, whether they are in a controlled
environment, such as zoos and protected areas, or free-living20. A large number of
wild animals are involved in scientific research, with the aim of collecting useful
data on the biology, ecology or health of the species which they belong to, or as an
indicator of environmental health and the like21.
In this context, researchers, in addition to dealing with aspects related to the
peculiarity of the research conditions that are determined outside the laboratories,
must also deal with the difficulties associated with the conflict of values regarding
the justification of research that are carried out: what has greater value for the
conservation of wildlife, individual animals or species and populations to which
they belong to? What justifies the use of animals in research in this area, the
survival of species or individual animals?
In 2016, Biological Conservation, a leading journal in the field, published a
significant contribution entitled Ethics in Field Work in Biological Research, in
which the members of the journal's scientific committee argued about the refusal
to publish some contributions which, in their opinion, had not adequately taken
into account ethical issues related to the use of animals in field research. That's
how the contribution opens up:
“Biological Conservation recently refused to publish a contribution because we
considered the killing of thousands of vertebrates in a protected area to be
inappropriate and unnecessary [...] Since then, another of us has refused to review
another contribution, again on the basis of ethical evaluations. This second study, in
a similar way, involved the indiscriminate use of methods to kill hundreds of
vertebrates in a protected area. In a third case, a contribution was rejected because
data on capture and release practices showed high mortality in the vertebrates
selected for the study. These studies as a whole were intended to demonstrate
20
For the purposes of this contribution, no account will be taken of the differences between the two
fields of research. Although it is important to be aware of the different ways in which research is carried
out in a controlled environment, such as a zoo, or directly in nature, the application of the 3Rs principle
applies to both areas, especially with regard to broader issues of value, which involve the meaning of
conservation actions. To learn more about the peculiarities and differences, see, for example, H.M.
Hutchins, S.D. Thompson, "Zoo and aquarium research: priority setting for the coming decades", Zoo
Biology, 27 (2008), pp. 488-497; B. Minteer, J. Collins, "Ecological ethics in captivity: Balancing values
and responsibilities in zoo and aquarium research under rapid global change", ILAR, 54 (2013), pp. 41-
51.
21
Scientific research with wild animals has been taking place mainly since the end of the nineteenth
century, under the pressure of interest and social sensitivity about the great episodes of extinction of
animal species, such as bison in North America, decimated by hunting or, more generally, about the
growing number of animal species extinct or in danger of extinction, which today leads us to define our
as the era of the sixth mass extinction (cf. A.D. Barnosky, N. Matzke, S. Tomiya, G. O.U. Wogan, B.
Swartz, T. B. Quental, C. Marshall, J. McGuire, E. Lindsley, K.C. Maguire, B. Mersey, E. Ferrer, "Has
the Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?" Nature, 7336 (2011), 471, pp. 51-57).
561 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
phenomena already known from other studies in different places. In our opinion,
these studies have provided little justification for causing damage to the species
involved, in the context of research that has simply confirmed well-known
phenomena”.
The issue of the traditional conflict of values between animal ethics and
environmental ethics, which is the basis of the priority given, in the field of
conservation, to the protection of species over the protection of individual
animals, is well documented here. Is it justifiable to take little account of the
animals involved in individual studies in the name of species conservation? Is it
really necessary to establish in advance whether the welfare of the specimens or
the welfare of the populations to which they belong to is more important?23
Introduction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005; J. MacLaurin & K. Sterelny, What is
Biodiversity?, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2008.
25
See e.g. C. Gamborg, C. Palmer, P. Sandøe, "Ethics of wildife management and conservation: what
should we try to protect?", cit; A. Minteer, J.P. Collins, "From environmental to ecological ethics: towards
a practical ethics for ecologists and conservationists", Science and Engineering Ethics, 14 (2008), cit.
Conservation ethics is sometimes understood in a broader sense, as synonymous with environmental
ethics, but it seems more appropriate to understand it in the narrowest sense as an area of applied ethics
that specifically deals with issues related to the conservation of biodiversity (especially wildlife), based on
the underlying regulatory framework developed within the framework of environmental ethics (but, in
part, also animal ethics). For a reflection on the values underlying the ethics of conservation, see P.
Biasetti, B. de Mori, "A framework of values: reasons for conserving biodiversity and natural
environments", Etica&Politica/Ethics& Politics, 18 (2016), 3, pp. 527-545.
26
See M.E. Soulé, “What is Conservation Biology?”, Bioscience, (1985), pp. 11- 35, ristampato
in M.E. Soulé, Collected Papers of Michael Soulé. Early Years in Modern Conservation Biology,
Island Press, Washington DC 2014.
27
See, for example, L.A. Harrington, A. Moehrenschlager, M. Gelling, R.P.D. Atkinson, J.
Hughes, D.W. Macdonald, “Conflicting and complementary ethics of animal welfare considerations
in reintroductions, Conservation Biology, 27 (2013), 3, pp. 486-500.
28
See M.E. Soulé, "What is Conservation Biology?", cit. p. 11.
563 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
their good. It is in this sense that the conflict between the welfare of individuals
and the conservation of species is, first of all, a conflict of values between ethics of
animal welfare and ethics of conservation and, therefore, finds a counterpart in the
traditional conflict of values between animal ethics and environmental ethics
regarding the moral status of animals. What has intrinsic value: the animals or
ecosystems to which they belong to?29 And if species have intrinsic moral value,
what species? Some more than others?
The conflict between individuals and species, but also between 'species and
species', is at the root of conservation ethics and determines many of the intrinsic
difficulties encountered by researchers and other professionals in their daily work.
Priority choices cannot be determined either on a technical level, referring only to
scientific competence and practical details, or only on a theoretical-conceptual
level, embracing one theoretical perspective or another.
The case of the red squirrels of Northern Italy has been exemplary, in this
sense: between the choice to preserve the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), a native
species, eradicating the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), an alien species, not
native, imported from the United States (which seemed to threaten the survival of
the red squirrel in their environment), and the choice to let free course to the
competition on the territory between the two species, the comparison between
animal ethics and environmental ethics has been more evident than ever30. On the
one hand, those who, inspired by animal rights movements in the field of animal
ethics, opposed the killing of thousands of individuals guilty only of having 'the
cloak gray' instead of red, on the other hand the environmental ethics and
conservationists in support of the protection of an indigenous species. How to
solve the conflict of values on a practical level?
Without a doubt, it can be said that cases such as these raise particular ethical
questions, which are difficult to resolve by referring to a single theoretical
framework in the field of environmental ethics and conservation ethics. The
treatment of the individuals involved, even accepting the value priority of species
and ecosystems, nevertheless involves considerations pertinent to animal ethics
(from a reformist, as in the traditional context of animal experimentation in the
29
In this regard, the very use of the concept of intrinsic value, which has undoubtedly
characterized, at least, classical reflection in the field of environmental ethics, has been progressively
questioned. See on this, for example, B.G. Norton, Toward Unity Among Environmentalists,
Oxford University Press, Oxford 1991; J. O'Neill, The Varieties of Intrinsic Value, "The Monist"
75-2 1992; B. Morito, "Intrinsic Value: A Modern Albatross for the Ecological Approach",
Environmental Values, 12 (2003), pp. 317-336; K. McShane, "Why Environmental Ethics Shouldn't
Give Up on Intrinsic Value", Environmental Ethics, 29 (2007), pp. 43-61.
30
Cfr. S. Bertolino, P. Genovesi, “Spread and attempted eradication of the grey squirrel (Sciurus
carolinensis) in Italy, and consequences for the red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) in Eurasia”, Biological
Conservation, 109 (2003), pp. 351–358.
564 BARBARA DE MORI
Until now, it can be said for sure that the use of the 3Rs has been decidedly less
significant in research with wild animals (and generally in field research) than in
research with laboratory animals.32
Ethics committees that deal directly with issues related to wildlife testing are still
sporadic and there is little involvement of competent people. Guidelines that
specifically address issues involved in conservation research are also sporadic, and
Guidelines on Experimentation, focused mostly on laboratory animals, are often
inadequate or insufficient when applied to wildlife, whether in the wild or in a
controlled environment.33
31
The concept of species, such as that of biodiversity, is also the subject of wide debate. See, for
example, Q. D. Wheeler and R Meier (edited by), Species concept and phylogenetic theory: A debate,
Columbia University Press, New York 2000.
32
It began to be talked about mainly in the late Nineties of the last century, in Australia and then in
Canada: see e.g., V. Monamy, M. Gott, "Practical and ethical considerations for students conducting
ecological research involving wildlife", Australian Ecology, 26 (2001), pp. 293-300; G. Griffin, C.
Gauthier, "Incorporation of the principles of the 3Rs in wildlife research", ATLA, 32 (2004), suppl. 1,
pp. 215-219. But the suggestion has not had the desired effect and, to date, the involvement of
researchers in this regard is, for the most part, absent or sporadic. See J. Lindsjö, A. Fahlman, E.
Törnqvist, "Animal welfare from mouse to moose: implementing the principles of the 3rs in wildlife
research", Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 52 (2016), pp. 65-77. A special issue dedicated to this topic
appeared in 2013 in the journal ILAR: see M.C. Wallace, H.J. Curzer, "Moral Problems and
Perspectives for Ecological Field Research", ILAR, 54 (2013), n.1, pp. 1-4.
33
See M.C. Wallace, H.J. Curzer, “Moral Problems and Perspectives for Ecological Field
Research”, cit.
565 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
There are, in any case, centers dedicated to the promotion of the 3Rs that are
slowly, but gradually expanding the focus on research with wild animals.34 There
are also some ethical committees that have developed forms to apply for
experimental protocols involving wild animals.35 In general, however, these are
few cases and, for the most part, the ethics committees and guidelines, in Europe
and elsewhere, hardly consider in detail the various aspects involved in the
application of the principle of the 3Rs to research with wild animals.
Of course, the differences between the biomedical field and the field of
conservation are significant.36 First of all, unlike laboratory research, conservation
research tends to have direct effects on the environment and ecosystems
(especially when it comes to free-living animal research), which must be taken into
account when designing a study. Moreover, there may be many more stakeholders
involved than in biomedical research, since, in addition to the specimens used and
researchers, the research also involves the species and populations to which they
belong to, the ecosystem, local human populations (which, for example, may be
damaged by research in the territories in which they live) and so on. Conflicts
between stakeholders are an intrinsic element of the dynamics that involve
conservation research.
Whether basic or applied research, the two areas also differ significantly in the
role played by the use of animals. If in the biomedical field, as mentioned, animals
are used, mostly, as models for human health and biology, in the field of
conservation the animals involved are models for their own species, with the aim
of collecting useful data about their biology, ecology, health, or as indicators of
environmental health, and so on. They are therefore the recipients and, almost
always, also the beneficiaries of the research, at least as far as the species of
belonging is concerned.
Biomedical research, then, involves the routine manipulation of animals, while
research with wild animals tends to be observational. Where handling of animals
is necessary, for example to mark and collect samples, this is a very significant
source of discomfort, as these are animals that are not used to human contact,
compared to laboratory animals, with which it is also possible to apply targeted
training programs for handling.37
34
See J. Lindsjö, A. Fahlman, E. Törnqvist, “Animal welfare from mouse to moose: implementing
the principles of the 3rs in wildlife research”, Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 52 (2016), cit.
35
See V. Monamy, M. Gott, “Practical and ethical considerations for students conducting ecological
research involving wildlife”, Australian Ecology, 26 (2001), cit. J. Lindsjö, A. Fahlman, E. Törnqvist,
“Animal welfare from mouse to moose: implementing the principles of the 3rs in wildlife research”, cit.
36
See, for instance, R.S. Sikes, E. Paul, “Fundamental differences between wildlife and biomedical
research”, ILAR, 54 (2013), n.1, pp. 5-13.
37
The training in the field of laboratory animals was first carried out on primates (see E.G. Laule,
M.A. Bloomsmith, S.J. Schapiro, "The Use of Positive Reinforcement Training Techniques to Enhance
the Care, Management and Welfare of Primates in the Laboratory", Journal of Applied Animal Welfare
566 BARBARA DE MORI
In general, research conditions are quite different, one in the laboratory, the
other in the natural environment or, if in a controlled environment, with very
different characteristics compared to the laboratory environment. Standardized
laboratory conditions, with animals specifically selected to reduce variability, are
generally very different from wild animal research, where the genetic variability of
individual animals is accompanied by high variability in physiological conditions,
behavioural responses, study environment and so on38.
Of course, to date, there remains a certain distrust among professionals that it
does not seem easy to apply the 3Rs outside the laboratories, or that the indicators
of well-being are more difficult to identify in the natural environment.
Furthermore, from an ethical point of view, it is still believed that the protection of
species and populations is an objective in itself justified, which does not require
further justification for the use of a certain number of individuals for research. But
the protection of species can also be promoted through the protection of the
welfare of the animals involved, without sacrificing conservation objectives: case by
case, through the application of the principle of the 3Rs, it is possible to
overcome, on a practical level, the conflict between the individual and the species,
paying attention, at the same time, to both the welfare of individuals and the
welfare of populations and species.
Although the conflict between the individual and the species can be considered
as constitutive of conservation ethics, each single case requires further detailed
justification for the use of individual animals and the way in which studies are
designed and carried out. It requires that the welfare of individuals be considered
and included in the issues to be addressed in the design of a study, and that
therefore be adequately justified if and how it should be sacrificed, not that it be
assumed a priori as a modus operandi. Giving priority to the good of the species39,
Science, 6 (2003), 3, pp.163-73) and then gradually extended to all other types of animals used,
according to a process still in progress. Training is also increasingly being carried out with wild animals in
zoos in order to accustom them to veterinary practices, but these are specific conditions that do not apply
to wild animals in the wild (see, for example, G. Hosey, V. Melfi, S. Pankhurst, Zoo Animals: Behavior,
Management and Welfare, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011). In the natural environment, it is
necessary, above all, to train the personnel who carry out the research. See, for example, J. Lane, V.
Jackson, "Human-wildlife interactions: The importance and benefits of effective training", Animal
Welfare, 22 (2013), pp. 149-150.
38
The conditions for research are also very different for the people involved: compared to
standard laboratory conditions, field research (but, in part, also in a controlled environment)
presents a whole series of risks, from zoonoses to environmental risks and those related to the
capture and interaction with animals not predisposed to contact with humans. See S. Sikes, E. Paul,
"Fundamental differences between wildlife and biomedical research", ILAR, 54 (2013), cit.
39
See, for instance, J.B. Callicott, In Defense of the Land Ethic: Essays in Environmental
Philosophy, cit.; H. Rolston III, “Duties to endangered species”, Bioscience, 35 (1985), 11, pp. 718-
726 e ID., “Ethical responsibilities towards wildlife”, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical
Association, 200 (1992), pp. 618-622.
567 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
even causing discomfort and suffering to individuals, must be reconciled with the
need to protect their welfare: the Principle of the 3Rs is a way to make this
conciliation realistic, showing how to ensure that ethics of animal welfare and
ethics of conservation build a more effective dialogue.
Whenever a study foresees to cause damage to individuals for the protection of
the species (also considering, as mentioned, that harm to individuals is a way to
harm species), it will have to adequately justify this choice, on the basis of a
prudent cost-benefit analysis (comparing adequately the benefits for the species
with the costs for the individual animals). It will then have to commit itself to apply
the 3Rs Principle in a comprehensive manner, in order to "minimize the damage
to species and ecosystems" and maximize the protection of the welfare of the
animals involved.
From the choice of sampling methods, for example, to the release techniques,
to the number of animals involved and sites investigated, to the replacement of a
procedure with a less invasive one and so on, while maintaining the focus on
species conservation, through the 3Rs the individuals involved can have a "voice"
and find a practical way to be protected and considered as stakeholders in the
decision-making process that is involved in single cases.
close attention to this aspect too, applying a correct statistical analysis to the design
of the study, to avoid unnecessarily involving animals only because the focus is on
the population and on the data extractable from the sample collection.
The reduction, then, is not only that of the number of animals, but of
everything that can be reduced: as is also the case in the biomedical research, the
reduction today concerns every aspect of the procedures involved that can be
reduced in its negative impact on the welfare of animals involved in the research
protocol. Thus, research with wild animals in the field can range from reducing
the discomfort for possible capture and manipulation to collect samples, adopting
appropriate techniques, to reducing the recovery time before release and so on.41
The reduction along this path intersects, also here as in the biomedical field,
with the Refinement of techniques and procedures, in order to improve the
welfare conditions of the specimens involved and to intervene on the invasiveness
of the experimental design. Improvement in the field of wildlife research will
apply both in a controlled environment, for example by improving environmental
enrichment42 and training with animals, and in the natural environment. In this
case, for example, it can be used to improve possible capture and handling
procedures, while avoiding damage to other species that may be caught in traps
that were not intended for them.
Further training also involves improving skills and cooperation in the context of
interdisciplinary research: cooperation between biologists and veterinarians in
particular can make a significant contribution to improving the welfare of the
animals.43
And so on: the application of the principle of the 3Rs in the field of research
with wild animals, however peculiar, is nevertheless very wide and must take into
account both the immediate and the long term effects of the research.
In this sense, training education in the application and evaluation of the 3Rs
principle for the professionals involved and for the members of the ethical
41
See J. Lindsjö, A. Fahlman, E. Törnqvist, “Animal welfare from mouse to moose:
implementing the principles of the 3rs in wildlife research”, Journal of Wildlife Diseases, 52 (2016),
cit.
42
Environmental enrichment is now a common practice in a controlled environment and represents
the set of interventions that are implemented to provide animals with the necessary stimuli to ensure
psychological and physiological well-being. See J. Mellen, M. S. MacPhee, "Philosophy of environmental
enrichment: past, present, and future", Zoo Biology, 20 (2001), pp. 211-226.
43
It is important, for example, that biologists refer to veterinary medicine to properly assess the
consequences of methods of sedation, or marking and handling, for animals that are then released,
or to properly plan housing conditions, or enrichment and training programs, for animals kept in
human care. See M.R.L. Cattet, "Falling through the Cracks: Shortcomings in the collaboration
between biologists and veterinarians and their consequences for wildlife", ILAR, 54 (2013), no. 1,
pp. 33-40. The use of chemicals employed for sedation or suppression can also be improved and
should be handled with care and caution, as it can interfere with other animals or, even with local
human populations, for example, feeding on wild animals.
569 Animal Testing: The Ethical Principle of the 3Rs from Laboratories to “Field” Research …
6. CONCLUSION
Fortunately, harming, without "good" reasons, individuals for the "good" of the
species or considering individuals as worthless in themselves and important only
as "parts" of a species, is increasingly under discussion within the conservationists
community45. Researchers and other professionals involved are increasingly
inclined to take into account both "sides of the coin".46 Both endangered species
and individual animals, as sentient beings, have an ethical value in themselves, one
of which is no greater than the other, but should be balanced against each other
on a case-by-case basis.47 The application of the 3Rs Principle in research with wild
animals is able to give voice to this inclination, promoting the need to respect both
species and individuals.
There were also those who proposed to extend the principle of the 3Rs directly
to the protection of the environment and ecosystems, formulating the
corresponding Rs.48 Replacement, Reduction and ecological Refinement: replace
one research with another that does not damage a delicate environment or
portions of it, taking into account the degree of resilience of that environment and
of the species living in, choosing for example to involve in the research a species
that has less impact on the ecosystem balance; reducing the number of
44
See H.J. Curzer, M. Wallace, G. Perry, P. Muhlberger, D.Perry, “Teaching wildlife research ethics:
A progress report”, Teaching Ethics, 11 (2011), pp. 95–112; V. Monamy, M. Gott, “Practical and ethical
considerations for students conducting ecological research involving wildlife”, cit.
45
See, for example, D. Ramp, M. Bekoff, "Compassion as a practical and evolved ethic for
conservation", BioScience, 65 (2015), pp. 323-327. The virtue of compassion, considered by
Rolston (cf. H. Rolston III, "Duties to endangered species", Bioscience, 35 (1985), cit.) as
inadequate to deal with the conservation of biodiversity, is here taken up as crucial to overcome
contrasts.
46
See P.C. Paquet, C.T. Darimont, “Wildlife conservation and animal welfare: two sides of the same
coin?”, Animal Welfare, 19 (2010), pp. 177-190; D. Fraser, “Toward a synthesis of conservation and
animal welfare science”, Animal Welfare, 19 (2010), pp. 121–124.
47
See M. Bekoff, D. Ramp, “Compassion in conservation: don’t be cruel to be kind”, New Scientist,
2974 (2013), pp. 26−27.
48
See H. J. Curzer, M.C. Wallace, G. Perry, P.J. Muhlberger, D. Perry, “The Ethics of Wildlife
Research: A Nine R Theory”, ILAR, 54 (2013), n. 1, pp. 52-57.
570 BARBARA DE MORI
VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic
konradovaveronika@seznam.cz
ABSTRACT
The paper focuses on Plato´s concept of punishment from the perspective of the eschatological
myths in the Gorgias, the Phaedo and the Republic. The fundamental message of all three myth-
ical accounts is found in the attempt to visualize the unseen life of the soul, with special attention
to the conditions of its proper activity. The special issue of its rewards and punishments is not
restricted to the afterlife experience of the soul but is primarily related to the here-and-now per-
spective of the incarnated life. Instead of the consequentialist vision of a post mortem destiny
punishing past wrongdoing, the proposed interpretation stresses the actual concern with our pre-
sent situation. Given the intrinsic value of virtue (and the corresponding badness of vice), the
platonic images of the afterlife could be read as an intensification of human experience during
this life. Closely related topics – the process of judgement and the method and effect of punish-
ment – are outlined in further detail. Here, the paper points out Plato´s transformative approach
to the function of punishment. Against the background of the contemporary Athenian legal sys-
tem, Plato offers a philosophic alternative of cultivating the soul through the power of dialectical
examination and Socratic elenchos.
KEYWORDS
Plato, eschatological myths, punishment, judgement, soul.
The introductory note should be devoted to the very presence of the mythical
element in Plato´s writing. Using mythical imagery is one of the characteristic strat-
1
egies of Plato´s literary communication drawing on, and at the same time critically
responding to, predominant literary genres of contemporary Greek culture. Plato´s
authorial approach typically includes selective use of traditional motifs and their
transformation in the new context led by his philosophical insight. Adopting tradi-
tional elements permits Plato to convey complex ideas effectively in a very dense
and compact form: the names of traditional figures and places that he mentions can
resonate in the mind of a listener or a reader and evoke a range of appropriate
associations. What Plato does is restructuring these associations and filling them
with new meaning that fits with his overall vision. 2
myths is primarily the life and dispositions of the soul, as I will try to show.
In the course of the dialogue, a vivid and comprehensible image can serve as a
shortcut that complements the laborious process of argumentation. As regards the
eschatological myths, I suppose that they are designed to amplify the arguments of
the discussion, not to present ideas ungraspable by reason, nor to supplement sup-
posedly deficient arguments with threats of punishments or promises of rewards in
the hereafter. This is why my analysis will be based on the assumption that the nar-
rative structure of each myth corresponds to the previous argumentation developed
in the course of the dialogue and that its characteristic tone resonates with the overall
philosophic concern expressed in the discursive parts of the Platonic text.
1
A broad overview of scholarly discussion on the status of myth in Plato´s dialogues is offered by
R. G. Edmonds III, The Myth of the Underworld, Cambridge 2004, p. 162 ff. Cf. C. Collobert – P.
Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato and Myth. Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths,
Leiden – Boston 2012.
2
Cf. R. G. Edmonds III, Whip Scars on the Naked Souls: Myth and Elenchos in Plato’s Gorgias,
in: C. Collobert – P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato and Myth, pp. 165-185, p. 183: “The
support of the most authoritative voice in the tradition, whose tellings are familiar to nearly all of
Plato’s intended audience, shows that Plato’s ideas fit within the framework of Greek culture, making
them more acceptable and persuasive to his audience even as he engages in shifting their values and
ideals.”
3
C. Collobert, The Platonic Art of Myth-Making: Myth as Informative Phantasma, in: C. Collobert
– P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato and Myth, pp. 87-108, p. 102. The same can be stated
about Plato´s famous images of the soul in the Phaedrus and in Book IX of the Republic. Character-
izing these philosophical images as “informative phantasmata”, Catherine Collobert makes this dis-
tinction: “a doxastic phantasma is an image of a sensible object, which is shaped out of a belief about
what the object is, that is, an appearance, while an informative phantasma is an image of an intelligible
object that is shaped out of knowledge about what the object is, that is, a sketch of the truth” (ibid.).
573 The Concept of Punishment in Plato’s Eschatological Myths
The correspondence between the argumentative and the figurative part of the
dialogue can be first observed in the Gorgias. Here, the topic of punishment is
worked out within a fundamental debate on whether it is better to be punished for
injustice or to escape punishment, the debate that draws attention to the process of
judgement itself and the subsequent effects of the punishment. In the concluding
myth Plato develops this topic with reference to the post-mortem destiny and elab-
orates a vivid scenery of judgement of a person´s whole life, centred around a pic-
ture of judicial reform, distinguishing the eras of the mythical reign of Cronus and
Zeus. The impulse to the reform lies in recognizing the defects of the former system
of judging leading to inadequate distribution of the deceased either to the Isles of
the Blessed or to the Tartarus:
“The cases are now indeed judged ill and it is because they who are on trial are tried
in their clothing, for they are tried alive. Now many … who have wicked souls are clad
in fair bodies and ancestry and wealth, and at their judgement appear many witnesses
to testify that their lives have been just. Now, the judges are confounded not only by
their evidence but at the same time by being clothed themselves while they sit in judge-
ment, having their own soul muffled in the veil of eyes and ears and the whole body.
Thus all these are a hindrance to them, their own habiliments no less than those of
4
the judged.” (Gorg. 523c-d).
The core of the reform depicted in the myth lies in these radical changes made
by Zeus:
“we must put a stop to their foreknowledge of their death; for this they at pre-
sent foreknow … Next they must be stripped bare of all those things before
they are tried; for they must stand their trial dead. Their judge also must be
naked, dead, beholding with very soul the very soul of each immediately upon
his death, bereft of all his kin and having left behind on earth all that fine array,
to the end that the judgement may be just.” (Gorg. 523d-e).
Thus Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus are appointed judges over human
deeds, thoroughly examining each and every soul. At first sight, by this narrative the
problem of judgement and punishment is transferred to the afterlife. But we
shouldn´t miss an important sign of doubling the perspective and drawing a parallel
between the afterlife judgement and the contemporary situation of the interlocutors:
“Those who are benefited by the punishment they get from gods and men are they
who have committed remediable offences; but still it is through bitter throes of pain
4
Translations from the Gorgias are by W. R. M. Lamb (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3 translated
by W. R. M. Lamb. Cambridge (MA) – London 1967).
574 VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
that they receive their benefit both here and in the nether world; for in no other way
5
can there be riddance of iniquity” (Gorg. 525b).
The myth concisely represents the characteristics of both types of speeches: like
judging under Cronus, the contemporary law-court rhetoric manifests itself in estab-
lishing the most positive outer appearance of the defendant, it relies on witnesses
and elaborate speeches, it appeals to the masses, and by creating a good impression
it promises to protect the defendant against impeding punishment; on the contrary,
Socratic dialogical practice, similar to the face-to-face examination of mythical
judges under Zeus, appeals to individuals and calls only the interlocutor himself as
a witness. It disregards status, reputation and external appearance and concentrates
only on the examination of the soul itself.
In such multiplied perspective, the mechanism of judgement emerges both in its
defective and in its due form. At the same time the proper effects of punishment
begin to take shape. In accordance with the conviction stated firmly by Socrates in
the dialogue about beneficial effects of punishment, the positive impact of punish-
7
ment is stressed both on the argumentative and the figurative level of the dialogue.
A close link between these two levels is provided by the medical metaphor of the
diagnosis and healing of the soul that underlies both the demonstration of Socrates´
elenchic dialogical practice and the mythical image.
The medical metaphor is applied in Socrates’ debate with Polus on whether it is
better to suffer or to commit injustice and whether it is better to be punished for
injustice or to escape punishment. The working of the metaphor is underlined by
an elaborate analogy between soul and body, namely between the constitutive and
restorative arts responsible for a good condition of the soul and the body
5
εἰσὶν δὲ οἱ μὲν ὠφελούμενοί τε καὶ δίκην διδόντες ὑπὸ θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπων οὗτοι οἳ
ἂν ἰάσιμα ἁμαρτήματα ἁμάρτωσιν: ὅμως δὲ δι᾽ἀλγηδόνων καὶ ὀδυνῶν γίγνεται αὐτοῖς ἡ
ὠφελία καὶ ἐνθάδε καὶ ἐν Ἅιδου: οὐ γὰρ οἷόν τε ἄλλως ἀδικίας ἀπαλλάττεσθαι (Plato‐
nis Opera, ed. J. Burnet, Oxford 1903).
6
Cf. R. G. Edmonds III, Whip Scars on the Naked Souls: Myth and Elenchos in Plato’s Gorgias,
p. 170 nn.; Ch. Rowe, The Status of the Myth of the Gorgias, or: Taking Plato Seriously, in: C.
Collobert – P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato and Myth, pp. 187-198, p. 189 nn.
7
Gorg. 472e, 473b, 476a, 478e-479d.
575 The Concept of Punishment in Plato’s Eschatological Myths
8
Cf. Gorg. 479b-c.
9
Ch. Rowe, The Status of the Myth of the Gorgias, or: Taking Plato Seriously, p. 189 nn.
10
A similar assumption of coincidence between punishment and instruction through speech may
be observed in the Euthyphro. Here, Socrates claims that if he gains knowledge of piety, he should
be able to secure his acquittal on charges of impiety. How is it meant? G. F. Edwards proposes a
reading according to which Socrates believes that this knowledge will make him pious henceforth and
576 VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
The method of Socratic elenchus has the same double effect as the penalties
imposed on the wrongdoers according to the reformed judgement in the myth:
“And it is fitting that every one under punishment rightly inflicted on him by another
should either be made better and profit thereby, or serve as an example to the rest,
that others seeing the sufferings he endures may in fear amend themselves. Those
who are benefited by the punishment they get from gods and men are they who have
committed remediable offences; but still it is through bitter throes of pain that they
receive their benefit both here and in the nether world; for in no other way can there
be riddance of iniquity. But of those who have done extreme wrong and, as a result
of such crimes, have become incurable, of those are the examples made; no longer
are they profited at all themselves, since they are incurable, but others are profited
who behold them undergoing for their transgressions the greatest, sharpest, and most
fearful sufferings evermore, actually hung up as examples there in the infernal dun-
geon, a spectacle and a lesson to such of the wrongdoers as arrive from time to time.”
(Gorg. 525b-d).
distinguishing the curable and incurable ones. This applies both to the level of this
world and the other world: like the destiny of the curable ones illustrates how one
can profit in the here-and-now perspective from philosophic examination, the fate
of the incurable ones demonstrates the un-philosophic way of life of those who in a
Calliclean manner avoid any kind of outside restraint. As Radcliffe Edmonds puts
it: “Their inconsistent and irrational lifestyle actually inflicts continuous suffering
upon them, and their souls are so deformed from the way they have lived that they
can only continue, in the afterlife, the kind of life they lived when alive.” 12
Only then does Socrates´ remark that sounds so provocative to Callicles become
intelligible:
13
“And so again conversely, supposing it is our duty to injure somebody … we must
make every exertion of act and word to prevent him from being punished or coming
to trial, or if he does, we must contrive that our enemy shall escape and not be pun-
ished … or if he has committed crimes that deserve death, that he shall not die; if
that his instruction in piety is itself a suitable punishment for any past impiety. In such an innovative
sense, the process of reforming a wrongdoer through successful teaching – in the form of a philo-
sophical dialogue - constitutes punishment. G. F. Edwards, How to Escape Indictment for Impiety:
Teaching as Punishment in the Euthyphro, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 54, 1, 2016, pp.
1-19.
11
Cf. Prot. 324a-b, 325a; Leg. 854d-855a.
12
R. G. Edmonds III, Whip Scars on the Naked Souls: Myth and Elenchos in Plato’s Gorgias, p.
179.
13
This is a hypothetical suggestion that complements previous appeal for avoiding injustice and
accusing oneself and anyone of one’s friends who may be guilty of committing injustice. (Gorg. 480c-
d).
577 The Concept of Punishment in Plato’s Eschatological Myths
possible, never die, but be deathless in his villainy, or failing that, live as long a time
as may be in that condition.” (Gorg. 480e-481a).
The image of the deathless wrongdoer strengthens the conviction that the worst
evil is to remain in a permanent state of inner psychic disorder and be deprived of
any kind of remedy.
A similar tone can be recognized in the myth in the Phaedo. Here, Plato does
not elaborate on the process of judgement itself, but focuses instead on detailed
14
description of various places assigned to the souls as a result of their judgement and
creates a complex geography providing an impressive scene corresponding to a va-
riety of conditions of the soul. Considering the mythical setting, Kenneth Dorter
suggests that the myth presents an image of our embodied existence, thereby pre-
senting “the timeless in temporal form, or the implicit present in an explicit future”. 15
On this point I rather agree with Sara Brill´s refinement that the myth´s presenta-
tion occurs “not primarily through discussion of time but through an account of
place”. In this sense the myth offers a kind of taxonomy of souls manifested in
16 17
ing living place for incarnated souls, i.e. ourselves as human beings, there is a bright-
coloured earth with pure aitheric climate, and beyond this earth lies the uttermost
place of ineffable beauty. And conversely, continuing inwards from our living place,
there are vast underground regions interconnected by a rich watercourse system,
14
The act of judgement is only mentioned in Phd. 107d and 113d3, and its results are revealed
in Phd. 113d-114c.
15
K. Dorter, Plato´s Phaedo: An Interpretation, Toronto 1982, p. 165.
16
S. Brill, The Geography of Finitude: Myth and Earth in Plato´s Phaedo, in: International
Philosophical Quarterly 49, 1, 2009, pp. 5-23, p. 16.
17
Another kind of such a taxonomy could be found in the frequent images of transmigration
of souls within different kinds of human and animal lives.
18
It should be noted that the description given in the myth does not adopt this human per-
spective but offers an external supra-human view of the earth from above.
578 VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
including mythical rivers and lakes. Finally, the innermost core of this physical struc-
ture is dominated by the most turbulent environment of the permanent up-and-
down flux of the Tartarus.
This is the physical scheme into which the destinies of souls are inscribed. The
whole universe is ensouled, because its various regions provide dwelling places for
different souls according to their various dispositions. Opening the perspective of
the afterlife, the myth depicts possible relocations of souls, now occupying one of
the earth’s hollows, and their possible move upwards or downwards. The language 19
of the myth speaks again about an assessment of the inner disposition of the soul,
which is decisive for its further lot:
“For the soul takes with it to the other world nothing but its education and nurture,
and these are said to benefit or injure the departed greatly from the very beginning of
his journey thither.” (Phd. 107d)
The soul’s judgement, concerning its virtue and vice, results in an appropriate
distribution of the souls to corresponding places within the hierarchy of the world
structure, presented in the mythical articulation as places of punishments and re-
wards. The myth contrasts the destinies of the good and the wicked and offers rich
taxonomy of possible conditions of souls ranging from the best condition of the
purest philosophic souls to the worst condition of incurably unjust souls. Between
these extreme poles there are other subtly differentiated classes of souls including
pious and truly virtuous souls, a wide category of souls of “middle” moral qualities,
and finally wicked, but curable souls. The illustrative overview of the adequate lo-
cation of each soul within the world system, where the pure and impure environ-
ments match the moral condition of the souls living within them, at the same time
reveals that the overall arrangement of the universe manifests a principle of order
and justice, assigning each thing its appropriate place. Here, a strong connection
appears with the search for a cause in the sense of “the power which causes things to
be now placed as it is best for them to be placed” (Phd. 99c) – a search undertaken
in the argumentative part of the dialogue.
Turning to the concept of punishment itself, we may focus on specific description
of the fates connected with the restless environment of the underground regions.
Three categories of souls are allocated there: the “middling” souls occupy the area
of Acherusian Lake, the souls of curable offenders undergo temporary punishment
in Tartarus followed by a cruise in the streams of the rivers Kokytos or Pyriflege-
thon, with the risk of repeated circulation between the area of Tartarus and these
mythical rivers, unless they beg their victims successfully and are allowed to relocate
to the Acherusian Lake. Most impressive is the penalty imposed on those who have
19
Cf. the striking resemblance of “marine” imagery adopted in the description of the life of the
embodied soul in Resp. 611c-e.
579 The Concept of Punishment in Plato’s Eschatological Myths
committed the worst crimes against humans and gods and are considered incurable.
They are cast in the lowest pits of Tartarus with no return.
Now the physical conditions of Tartarus are significant. With clear Hesiodic
reminiscence, they are described as follows:
20
“… this liquid matter has no bottom or foundation. So it oscillates and waves up and
down, and the air and wind about it do the same; for they follow the liquid both when
it moves toward the other side of the earth and when it moves toward this side, and
just as the breath of those who breathe blows in and out, so the wind there oscillates
with the liquid and causes terrible and irresistible blasts as it rushes in and out.” (Phd.
112b)
20
Cf. Hesiod, Theog. 736-743.
580 VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
THE REPUBLIC
Some of the foregoing motives also reappear in the Republic. The topic of Hades
and the afterlife punishments and rewards is foreshadowed from the very beginning,
both in the introductory talk with Cephalus (Resp. 330d-331a) and in Adeimantus’
critical response to the poetic rendering of the afterlife with its colourful portrayal
of rewards for the good and just and punishments for the wicked and unjust (Resp.
362e-363e). Instead of such a consequentialist conception of justice, viewed in the
light of its further benefits and compensations, the interlocutors demand an assess-
ment of the intrinsic value of justice and an adequate praise of its internal impact.
What is then the place of the concluding myth within the overall structure of the
Republic, if its purpose is not simply to offer comforting reassurance that justice
pays in the end and that past wrongdoings will finally be punished? It is exactly the
response to the introductory demand to praise justice in order to motivate the lis-
tener to act virtuously. In this way, the myth complements previous intellectual ar-
gumentation: the preceding discussion was designed to stress an internal foundation
of justice and build a rational understanding of its value; now the myth prepares the
ground for its emotional acceptance. Here, the myth touches on an important issue
of human motivation, and it could be read as emotionally loaded communication
carrying a protreptic message designed to motivate the audience to pursue justice
and adopt a philosophical way of life. 21
Let’s have a closer look at the treatment of punishment in this context. Plato
employs an image of upward and downward paths of the souls enjoying rewards
and suffering punishments according to their deeds, and again he pays special at-
tention to the figure of the incurably wicked, destined to permanent suffering in
Tartarus (Resp. 615c-616a). Besides this impressive visual accent on the wretched-
ness of the life of a tyrant, concentrating in itself the characteristics of an unjust and
disordered lifestyle, the myth newly draws attention to more delicate risks. The last
section of the myth offers an interesting shift of emphasis and, among other things,
focuses on a category of souls which have gone unnoticed so far. The myth culmi-
nates with a scene of souls choosing their new lives. These choices are made with
very diverse results. The exemplary case is the first choice blindly preferring the life
of a tyrant full of terrible deeds. Paradoxically, this foolish choice is made by a soul
returning from a heavenly sojourn, a soul supposedly good. Two reasons are given
22
21
Cf. C. Collobert, The Platonic Art of Myth-Making: Myth as Informative Phantasma, p. 101;
P. Destreé, Spectacles of Hades. On Plato’s Myths and Allegories in the Republic, in: C. Collobert –
P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato and Myth, pp. 109-124, p. 112; A. Larivée, Choice of Life
and Self-Transformation in the Myth of Er, in: C. Collobert – P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales (eds.), Plato
and Myth, pp. 235-257, p. 249-252.
22
The question may be raised whether such a disastrous choice does not mean a failure of the
apparatus of cosmic justice. An elaborate analysis of the extent of human responsibility, with special
attention to the element of irreducible uncertainty and opaqueness of the human condition, offers S.
581 The Concept of Punishment in Plato’s Eschatological Myths
for such an alarming outcome: a lack of suffering – which suggests positive evalua-
tion of the experience of pain and suffering – and a lack of deeper understanding:
23
“He was one of those who had come down from heaven, a man who had lived in a
well-ordered polity in his former existence, participating in virtue by habit and not by
philosophy.” (Resp. 619c-d)
The emphasis on the habitual basis of the virtue of this apparently decent fellow,
stressing at the same time the insufficiency and inability to foresee possible conse-
quences in ethically complicated situations, warns us of the risks endangering every
soul, no less the souls of the majority of average people who conform to established
habits and lead – at least at first glance – a decent and orderly life. Highlighting the
extremely problematic and dangerous potential of their implicit ethical weakness,
the appeal to seek philosophical understanding becomes highly urgent.
The whole arrangement of the narrative indicates again that the distinction be-
tween a this-life and an afterlife perspective is somewhat blurred. The notion of
disembodied souls is constantly mixed not only with the very physical language de-
scribing their experiences in Hades but also with the language implying their per-
24
sonal continuity through this life and the afterlife. The souls in the narrative keep a
quasi-personal identity based on memory and personal history, and it seems that 25
Halliwell, The Life-and-Death Journey of the Soul: Interpreting the Myth of Er, in: G. R. F. Ferrari
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, Cambridge 2007, pp. 445-473, see especially
p. 452 and 467 ff.; on this issue, see in particular F. J. Gonzales, Combating Oblivion: The Myth of
Er as Both Philosophy’s Challenge and Inspiration, in: C. Collobert – P. Destreé – F. J. Gonzales
(eds.), Plato and Myth, pp. 259-278.
23
This point is generalized: “one may perhaps say that a majority of those who were thus caught
were of the company that had come from heaven, inasmuch as they were unexercised in suffering”
(Resp. 619d).
24
The souls bear the signs of their judgement “in front” (prosthen) or “behind” (opisthen), talk to
each other, feast, rejoice and cry, are beaten, bound on hands and feet and dragged through thorns
(Resp. 614c-615c).
25
Stephen Halliwell distinguishes two models of the soul: that of a “notionally disembodied set of
capacities for ethical reasoning, desire, and emotion and that of self-conscious identity of a person,
built around memory of, and continuity with, a personal history.” S. Halliwell, The Life-and-Death
Journey of the Soul: Interpreting the Myth of Er, p. 462.
582 VERONIKA KONRÁDOVÁ
distinguish the life that is good from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to
choose the best that the conditions allow…” (Resp. 618b-c)
This appeal is repeated at the end of the dialogue, where the mythical story is
related to the interlocutors themselves as something that can provide guidance for
their own lives. The emphasis clearly shifts to the here-and-now perspective and
26
accentuates the utmost gravity of the burden lying on human life. The most im-
portant decisions moulding human life to a certain shape are made at present, and
they should be guided by a fundamental understanding of good and bad. Let’s no-
tice that the figure of a teacher, probably a discussion partner, who is mentioned
here, again evokes the above-mentioned idea that this understanding can be
achieved through mutual contact and interpersonal communication. This, however,
is the task of our present existence.
***
26
“And so, Glaucon, the tale was saved, as the saying is, and was not lost. And it will save
us if we believe it…” (Resp. 621b-c).
27
This paper was written as a part of the project Interpretation of Plato’s Thought in the Context
of Contemporary International Research financed by the institutional research of the J. E. Purkyně
University.
583 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 583-608
ISSN: 1825-5167
LUCA MANDARA
Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Dipartimento di Filosofia
luca93.1926@hotmail.it
ABSTRACT
Has leisure a function in the capitalistic society? Are we really free when we are not on duty?
Does free-time really exist anymore? Next pages will try to answer these questions from a
Marxist point of view, namely: social production determines the entire social relations – not
only the productive relation but also personal ones. Through a historical and philosophical
analysis of leisure, I would demonstrate that capitalism is not anymore just a way of production,
but it has become a special kind of society. Indeed, its immanent contradictions have spread all
over social space and time. Nowadays, social networks are just a part of the same process which
has already involved social institutions like schools, prisons, hospitals, churches and so on in
the past, viz. the tendency of capitalism to become totalitarian, embracing all social dimensions
beyond working time. Then, it reproduces a practical and daily, as well as unconscious,
consensus on the capitalistic “way of life”. It spurts the motto “yes, I like it”.
KEYWORDS
Marxism, leisure, capitalism, consumerism, social network.
1. INTRODUZIONE
Le seguenti pagine sono dedicate alla funzione svolta dal cosiddetto tempo
libero o di non-lavoro nella società capitalistica. Nella teoria marxiana il tempo
libero compare come tempo di non-lavoro, meta spontanea dell’accumulazione
capitalistica nonché manifestazione della sua dinamica contraddittoria: il
capitalismo non può non liberare dal tempo di lavoro e generare potenzialmente
tempo libero, ma allo stesso tempo non può non tornare ad occuparlo
direttamente, riconvertendolo in nuovo tempo di lavoro, o indirettamente,
generando il fenomeno dell’“ozio forzoso” del disoccupato. Si intende dimostrare
che col diventare società del modo di produzione capitalistico, tale logica
contraddittoria si è imposta prima nelle istituzioni sociali dominanti (famiglia,
scuola, chiesa, partito etc.) legate allo Stato-nazione, poi, con la recente diffusione
dei social networks, in altrettanto potenti strumenti di condizionamento sociale, la
584 LUCA MANDARA
Prima di analizzare il posto che il tempo libero assume nella teoria di Marx e,
con questa e al di là di essa, quale ruolo e funzione abbia esercitato e stia
esercitando tutt’ora nel concreto processo storico, è necessario affrontare
brevemente le nozioni di modo di produzione e rapporto di produzione con
particolare riferimento alla contemporaneità, cioè al processo di produzione
capitalistico e alla corrispettiva società capitalistica.
1
Il seguente articolo utilizzerà metodologicamente le principali categorie elaborate da Marx, da
quelle “economiche”, quali quelle di “produzione di valore” o di “lavoro eccedente”, a quelle
“filosofiche”, quali quelle di “ideologia”, “struttura”, “sovrastruttura”. Come si potrà constatare nel
corso dell’articolo, si tenterà anche di contaminare queste categorie, in particolare quelle filosofiche,
con apporti di altri critici della contemporaneità, per poter spiegare le forme e le modalità di
“interiorizzazione” nella struttura dei bisogni e delle coscienze degli individui delle logiche
capitalistiche attraverso la penetrazione degli ambiti extra-lavorativi, riguardanti quindi la vita al di là
del lavoro. Il che mette in questione l’annoso problema del se e dell’eventuale come il metodo del
materialismo storico-dialettico possa ambire ad essere non solo “critica dell’economia politica” ma
anche teoria generale della società. Tale contaminazione e tale pretesa estensione del materialismo
storico-dialettico, fonda sul presupposto assolutamente marxiano della società quale organismo,
essere vivente da analizzare nella sua complessità, scindendolo nelle sue parti semplici senza
separarle l’una dall’altra, bensì cogliendo i nessi dialettici e quindi le reciproche influenze che
intercorrono tra i diversi momenti della vita sociale così da ricostruire l’intero. Quest’uso dell’opera
di Marx e degli autori qui citati, affronta in particolare il problema del rapporto tra struttura e
sovrastruttura discutendone l’unilateralità a favore di una possibile e limitata retroazione della
seconda sulla prima, che rimane “in ultima istanza” decisiva nel decidere i processi di lungo
periodo. In ciò è possibile trovare supporto nelle indicazioni che Engels fornì in una lettera a Ernst
Bloch del 21 settembre 1890: «la situazione economica è la base, ma i diversi momenti della
sovrastruttura – le forme politiche della lotta di classe e i risultati di questa – costituzioni stabilite
dalla classe vittoriosa dopo una battaglia vinta, ecc. – le forme giuridiche, anzi persino i riflessi di
tutte queste lotte reali nel cervello di coloro che vi prendono parte, le teorie politiche, giuridiche,
filosofiche, le visioni religiose e il loro successivo sviluppo in sistemi dogmatici, esercitano altresì la
loro influenza sul decorso delle lotte storiche e in molti casi ne determinano in modo
preponderante la forma» (K. Marx, F. Engels, La concezione materialistica della storia, a cura di N.
Merker, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 2016, p. 185).
585 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
Nel celebre Frammento sulle macchine, una simile contraddizione tra forze
produttive e rapporti sociali di produzione viene esaminata da Marx nei termini
del rapporto tra tempo di lavoro e tempo libero (o di non-lavoro). È proprio la
dialettica contraddittoria tra questi ambiti dell’esistenza umana che porta Marx ad
affermare che «il capitale è esso stesso la contraddizione in processo»3. Il
fondamento del capitalismo, infatti, è lo sfruttamento della forza lavoro dell’uomo
2
K. Marx, Per la critica dell’economia politica, tr. it. di E. Cantimori Mezzomonti, introduzione
di M. Dobb, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1957, p. 5 (corsivo mio).
3
Id., Lineamenti fondamentali di critica dell’economia politica («Grundrisse»), a cura di G.
Backhaus; apparato critico, indice dei nomi e delle opere a cura dell’Istituto Marx-Engels-Lenin;
indice analitico a cura di P. Collo, 2 voll., Einaudi, Torino, 1976, vol. I, p. 718.
586 LUCA MANDARA
(lavoro vivo). Per estorcere più tempo possibile senza scontrarsi col limite naturale
dell’estensione della giornata lavorativa “normale” (plusvalore assoluto), il
capitalismo aumenta la produttività del lavoro impiegando le macchine (lavoro
morto) nella produzione (plusvalore relativo). Al contempo, però, l’innovazione
tecnologica necessaria ad aumentare la produttività del lavoro umano (processo
lavorativo) e quindi la quantità di valore generato ma non ripagato al lavoratore
secondo le esigenze del processo di valorizzazione, rende quest’ultimo sempre
meno necessario, erodendo la fonte della ricchezza del capitale, cioè della
produzione di valore. Con la progressiva sostituzione della macchina al lavoro
umano, il capitalismo distrugge il suo fondamento: la divisione tra lavoro manuale
e lavoro intellettuale a sua volta fondamento storico della divisione di classe e
pone all’ordine del giorno la possibilità di uno sviluppo libero delle facoltà umane
sulla base della liberazione dalle necessità del lavoro in vista dei bisogni, in
particolare di quelli legati all’autoconservazione.
La riduzione crescente della necessità del lavoro grazie allo sviluppo produttivo
è la precondizione “oggettiva”, ossia immanente alla struttura produttiva, per la
riduzione sociale del tempo di lavoro. Una possibilità che si è realizzata
limitatamente soprattutto dal dopoguerra fino agli anni ’80, sotto la pressione
“soggettiva” dei lavoratori uniti nella lotta. Ma visto che il capitale è processo di
valorizzazione che trae la sua linfa solo dal sudore della forza lavoro umana, quel
tempo di lavoro liberato non può essere lasciato libero:
«La creazione di molto tempo disponibile per la società in generale e per ogni
membro di essa (ossia di spazio per il pieno sviluppo delle forze produttive dei
singoli, e quindi anche della società) oltre il tempo di lavoro necessario, questa
creazione di tempo di non-lavoro si presenta, al livello del capitale, come di tutti
quelli precedenti, come tempo di non-lavoro, tempo libero per alcuni. Il capitale vi
aggiunge il fatto che esso aumenta il tempo di lavoro eccedente dalla massa con il
ricorso a tutti i mezzi dell’arte e della scienza, perché la sua ricchezza consiste
direttamente nell’appropriazione di tempo di lavoro eccedente; giacché il suo scopo
è direttamente il valore, e non il valore d’uso. Esso è quindi, senza volerlo,
strumento di creazione delle possibilità di tempo sociale disponibile, [strumento]
per la riduzione del tempo di lavoro dell’intera società a un minimo decrescente, sì
da rendere il tempo di tutti libero per lo sviluppo personale. Ma la sua tendenza è
sempre, da un lato, quella di creare tempo disponibile, dall’altro di convertirlo in
lavoro eccedente»4.
587 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
3. PRODUZIONE E RIPRODUZIONE
588 LUCA MANDARA
589 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
Sulla scia delle rivolte studentesche e operaie del maggio francese, nel saggio
Ideologia e apparati ideologici di Stato, Louis Althusser ha approfondito il tema
dell’assoggettamento al rapporto di classe nella dimensione extra-lavorativa
affermando che la riproduzione della classi-ficazione degli individui – e quindi del
rapporto sociale di classe alla base della produzione capitalistica – avviene
attraverso le principali istituzioni sociali divisi genericamente in apparati repressivi
(polizia, esercito, giustizia) e ideologici (scuola, famiglia, Chiesa, partiti, mass-
critica delle istituzioni sociali come marxista o di eredità marxista. Quest’ultima, cioè, viene
condotta dal punto di vista della lotta di classe, partendo dall’assunto che l’intero spazio sociale
diventa un campo di lotta laddove le istituzioni che innervano la società sono istituzioni legate al
rapporto di produzione esistente e lo devono riprodurre.
7
A. Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (1929-1935), edizione critica a cura dell’Istituto Gramsci, a
cura di V. Gerratana, 4 voll., Einaudi, Torino, 2001, p. 1567.
590 LUCA MANDARA
8
L’ideologia è la rappresentazione sotto forma di rapporti universali ed eterni che gli individui
(in primis la classe dominante che ne detiene i mezzi di produzione e distribuzione) producono
delle loro relazioni storiche reali (K. Marx, F. Engels, Opere complete (1845-1846), vol. V, a cura
di F. Codino, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1972, in part. pp. 44-48). Se l’ideologia mistifica e capovolge il
rapporto reale tra gli individui, non si nega che le pratiche quotidiane – del tutto imbevute di tale
coscienza ideologica – non abbiano un indice di efficacia sulla vita sociale e sull’esperienza
individuale.
591 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
La tensione all’occupazione totale del tempo di vita degli individui alla luce
dell’impossibilità di non liberarli dal tempo di lavoro da parte del capitalismo, è, a
9
L. Althusser, Lo Stato e i suoi Apparati, a cura di R. Finelli, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1997, pp.
118-119.
10
«Soltanto allora la democrazia comincia a estinguersi, per la semplice ragione che, liberati dalla
schiavitù capitalistica, dagli innumerevoli orrori, barbarie, assurdità, ignominie dello sfruttamento
capitalistico, gli uomini si abituano a poco a poco a osservare le regole elementari della convivenza
sociale, da tutti conosciute da secoli, ripetute da millenni in tutti i comandamenti, a osservarle senza
violenza, senza costrizione, senza sottomissione, senza quello speciale apparato di costrizione che si
chiama Stato» (V. I. Lenin, Stato e rivoluzione, cit., p. 164).
592 LUCA MANDARA
mio modo di vedere, uno dei fili conduttori che unisce le riflessioni della Scuola
di Francoforte con quelle di Jean Baudrillard e Guy Debord. In particolare,
comune al loro pensiero era che quella che abbiamo visto essere
l’assoggettamento degli individui alle logiche dominanti potesse avvenire non solo
entro le mura delle istituzioni sociali ma ovunque attraverso la “cellula” del
capitalismo: la merce, con particolare riferimento alla nuova merce “cultura”.
Attenti critici delle società occidentali, secondo questi autori non era solo il
lavoro ad essere alienato, ma anche il consumo diventava alienato una volta che lo
sviluppo quantitativo delle forze produttive del capitalismo avanzato non portava
alla trasformazione qualitativa dei rapporti sociali di produzione e di vita in
generale. La “democratizzazione del consumo”, infatti, era il principale strumento
nelle società occidentali per integrare soggettivamente la classe dei lavoratori, cioè
impedirne l’atto di coscienza di essere soggetto storico, attore della trasformazione
e non piuttosto passivo consumatore di merci o di “spettacoli”11, una condizione
che rendeva il proletariato adeguato e consenziente al sistema di classe che una
produzione di merci presuppone.
In alcuni casi, tale integrazione non è stata analizzata solo o tanto nei termini
althusseriani dell’assoggettamento ideologico, quanto, attraverso un’accorta
contaminazione con la psicoanalisi freudiana, nella costruzione di un plesso di
bisogni adeguato alle esigenze riproduttive del sistema stesso. Secondo Marcuse,
ad esempio, la sensibilità umana, intesa come sistema di bisogni e desideri, si è
storicamente differenziata da quella animale attraverso il disciplinamento al lavoro
necessario alla sopravvivenza della specie. Conseguenza di questo processo è la
storicizzazione della sensibilità umana, cioè la sua modificazione e recettività
rispetto alle norme sociali, che non vengono interiorizzate solo nella forma di
“falsa coscienza” ma penetrano nell’“infrastruttura” biologica fino a costituirsi
come comportamento organico:
«Una volta che una specifica moralità sia saldamente stabilita come norma di
comportamento sociale, essa non soltanto viene introiettata, ma finisce anche per
operare come una norma di comportamento “organico”: l’organismo riceve e
reagisce a certi stimoli e ne “ignora” e respinge altri in accordo alla moralità
introiettata, che in tal modo promuove o impedisce la funzione dell’organismo
11
Con “spettacolo” mi riferisco al concetto elaborato da Guy Debord in La società dello
spettacolo. Commentari sulla società dello spettacolo, tr. it. di P. Salvadori, con introduzione di C.
Freccero e D. Strumia, Baldini & Castoldi, Milano, 2013. Secondo l’autore francese, per
“spettacolo” non bisogna intendere lo show televisivo, che ne è solo una manifestazione
particolarmente rappresentativa, bensì, in termini più generali, «il capitale a un tal grado di
accumulazione da divenire immagine» (ivi, p. 64), ossia da mediare ogni relazione sociale (da quelle
economiche e politiche fino a quelle private) attraverso le immagini, che possono essere merci
(immagine “sensibile” del rapporto sociale capitalistico), immagini di merci (pubblicità) o del potere
di Stato (immagini della separazione del potere economico e politico dai lavoratori), e ideologie,
cioè immagini capovolte della realtà sociale.
593 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
come una cellula viva nella società cui appartiene. In tal modo, una società ricrea
costantemente, a monte della coscienza e dell’ideologica, modelli di
comportamento e di aspirazione come parte della “natura” degli uomini che la
compongono»12.
594 LUCA MANDARA
595 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
18
M. Tronti, Operai e capitale, DeriveApprodi, Roma, 2012, p. 242.
19
K. Marx., Il capitale, Libro I, 3, a cura di E. Sbardella, Newton Compton, Roma, 2010, p. 207.
20
G. Debord, La società dello spettacolo, cit., p. 143.
21
Ibid.
22
Nel Capitale, Marx distingue tra valore d’uso e valore di scambio. Il valore d’uso riguarda le
qualità concrete e intrinseche del bene che lo rendono oggetto di bisogno in società. Essendo ogni
oggetto assolutamente individuale, solo la riduzione di prodotti diversi a una misura comune ne
596 LUCA MANDARA
permette lo scambio e trasforma il bene in merce. In tal senso, risulta necessario ricondurre tutti i
prodotti alla loro origine comune, cioè il lavoro umano. Ma visto che anche ogni processo
lavorativo è peculiare, individuale, è necessario astrarre la molteplicità dei lavori “utili” a una misura
comune e astratta, cioè alla quantità di tempo di lavoro socialmente necessario per produrre quel
bene: un lavoro astratto, che ha ormai perduto ogni qualità e conta esclusivamente per la sua
quantità. Il “bene” più importante della società è, poi, la forza lavoro. La sua qualità utile è di poter
produrre più beni di quanti siano necessari per riprodurla. Nel capitalismo essa viene ridotta a
merce al pari degli altri oggetti riducendo le capacità individuali di ogni singolo lavoratore vivente a
mero valore astratto, tempo di lavoro necessario socialmente a riprodurlo, corrispondente al suo
salario.
23
M. Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno, Dialettica dell’illuminismo, tr. it. di R. Solmi, introduzione di
C. Galli, Einaudi, Torino, 2010, p. 145.
24
H. Marcuse, Eros e civiltà, cit., p. 90.
597 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
598 LUCA MANDARA
tempo produttivo e riproduttivo e tanto formativo quanto ludico: non solo gli
individui si divertono nel mentre cooperano alla produzione dei beni digitali, ma
acquisiscono quelle competenze informatiche assolutamente necessarie nei
processi lavorativi contemporanei, realizzando attraverso il “gioco” una vera e
propria alfabetizzazione tecno-sociale . Spontaneamente la società si adegua alla
29
nuova produzione informatizzata ma, a differenza che nella società fordista, tale
processo sembra avvenire al di là e al di fuori dell’azione dello Stato, dunque del
dominio di classe.
È assolutamente lecito supporre che si stiano realizzando, insieme, tanto le
prospettive marxiane della piena integrazione e continuità tra tempo di lavoro e
tempo libero, in cui l’individuo si forma per tornare ancora più produttivo nel
tempo di lavoro, quanto quelle marcusiane del diventare gioco anche dell’attività
produttiva, finalmente divenuta attività creativa, spontaneamente ricercata,
autonoma e foriera di socialità, prospettive ritenute fino ad ora inconciliabili . 30
27
Queste le tesi, ad esempio, di R. Barbrook, The Hi-Tech Gift Economy, in “First Monday”,
III, 12 (dicembre 1998) e M. Castells, Comunicazione e potere, tr. it. di B. Amato e P. Conversano,
Egea, Milano, 2014.
28
In generale, una rete “peer-to-peer” mette in collegamento due individui per la fruizione di un
bene abbattendo i costi di ingresso sul mercato da parte di un venditore. Uno dei casi più famosi e
riusciti è quello di AIR BNB. Per ulteriori informazioni, cfr.
https://www.futurimagazine.it/articoli/in_evidenza/sharing-economy-nuove-forme-precarieta/.
29
Di “alfabetizzazione tecno-sociale” parla, ad esempio, Tiziana Terranova in Id., Red stack
attack!, in AA.VV., Gli algoritmi del capitale. Accelerazionismo, macchine della conoscenza e
autonomia del comune, a cura di M. Pasquinelli, Ombre Corte, Verona, 2014, p. 139.
30
La possibilità di un innestarsi del regno della libertà nel regno della necessità, cioè di attività
spontanee nel campo delle attività socialmente richieste, è una delle prospettive dell’ultima
produzione di Herbert Marcuse alla luce dei nuovi sviluppi produttivi verso l’“immateriale”. Si veda
sul tema L. Scafoglio, Forme della dialettica. Herbert Marcuse e l’idea di teoria critica,
Manifestolibri, Roma, 2009, in part. pp. 113-141.
599 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
più formidabili macchine per accumulare denaro mai create . Tale risultato lo si è
31
31
Tra gli autori che fanno coincidere, difendendoli, gli interessi capitalistici con il Web, è
possibile annoverare Kevin Kelly e Chris Anderson, succedutisi alla direzione della rivista “Wired”;
i teorici della Wikinomics Don Tapscott e Anthony D. Williams; il teorico dell’“economia
dell’informazione in rete” e della peer production Yochai Benkler e quello del “surplus cognitivo”,
Clay Shirky. L’atteggiamento critico verso le nuove compagnie 2.0, al contrario, si suddivide in due
macro-correnti (cfr. G. Lovink, L’abisso dei social media. Nuove reti oltre l’economia dei like, tr. it.
di B. Parrella, Università Bocconi, Milano, 2016, pp. XIV-XVII). Da un lato, l’approccio europeo,
che mira ad inserire il fenomeno all’interno del contesto economico, politico e culturale del
capitalismo, cercando anche di individuare possibili risposte di natura economico-politica. Si fa
riferimento ad autori vicini all’Autonomia italiana quali Matteo Pasquinelli, Tiziana Terranova,
Franco Berardi o alla visione neo-classista di Carlo Formenti; ad altri di matrice anarcoide quali il
Collettivo Ippolita; al più variegato Institute of Network Cultures fondato e diretto dallo stesso
Lovink, per finire con il filosofo francese Bernard Stiegler. Dall’altro lato, l’approccio americano,
che si limita a individuare gli effetti dannosi dell’uso eccessivo dei social (le amputazioni celebrali,
l’isolamento, la perdita di creatività, il tecno-determinismo del cyber-utopismo) senza però riuscire
ad elaborare progetti concreti di risposta. Nicholas Carr, Andrew Keen, Sherry Turkle, Jaron
Lanier, Evgeny Morozov sono accomunati da simile taglio teorico, ma le loro opere offrono
comunque ottimi spunti di riflessione e di descrizione del fenomeno dei social media e del Web
2.0 in generale.
32
G. Lovink, Ossessioni collettive. Critiche dei social media, tr. it. B. Parrella, con prefazione di
V. Campanelli, Milano, Università Bocconi Editore, 2012, p. 15.
33
Per Web 2.0 si intende l’insieme di applicazioni che permettono un elevato livello di
interazione tra il sito web e l’utente, da YouTube ai motori di ricerca come Google, passando per i
social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.), le chat, i blog, ma anche i dispositivi
hardware e software (ad es., smartphone e app) che ne facilitano l’uso e l’accesso (cfr. C. Rosati, I
nuovi media e la formazione del consenso, in «Tempi Post-moderni», 21 maggio 2017).
34
Nel suo Network Culture. Politics for the Information Age, Pluto Press, London, 2004,
Tiziana Terranova ha anticipato i tempi applicando il concetto di lavoro libero – lavoro non
retribuito e non comandato – alla rete, riuscendo ad intercettare prima della nascita dei social
networks le forme di sfruttamento della cooperazione spontanea degli utenti online in attività
quotidiane e “di massa” come leggere, scrivere, partecipare alle chat, alle ML, ai siti etc., e non solo
nelle forme di e-commerce o dei movimenti open software che, ad esempio, ha bisogno di
lavoratori “liberi” qualificati.
600 LUCA MANDARA
35
Per una descrizione particolareggiate di queste pratiche social, rimando a Ippolita,
Nell’acquario di Facebook, Ledizioni, 2012, in part. pp. 29-75.
36
Rispetto alle merci, in Per una critica dell’economia politica del segno, a cura di P. dalla Vigna,
Mimesis, Milano, 2010, in part. pp. 15-49, Jean Baudrillard distingue tra pratica oggettiva-razionale
riferita a un contenuto determinato (senso) e pratica rituale riferita al mero segno. Da un lato, la
soddisfazione di un bisogno; dall’altro lato, la pratica consumistica che, come rito, diventa essa
stessa bisogno.
601 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
dell’interfaccia dei social (“A cosa stai pensando”; “Aggiungi un amico”; “Tagga”;
“Re-tweet”; “Mi piace”, “Metti in evidenza il tuo post” etc.) non sono perciò
indifferenti, o comunque non lo possono essere entro in questa società
conflittuale: il loro effetto è di incanalare gli individui a sentire e pensare sé stessi
allo stesso modo di come le imprese progettano e promuovono il proprio brand,
ossia di come il capitale pensa e pubblicizza se stesso, di come si rispecchia nello
spettacolo di sé. Mentre diffondono competenze tecniche adeguate alle nuove
forme di produzione “flessibile”, essi servono a catturare ogni informazione
possibile sul singolo e la collettività per una successiva commercializzazione e, allo
37
Controprova di quanto questo feticismo del numero appartenga al mondo che ruota intorno
alla Silicon Valley, è l’iniziativa di due giornalisti di Wired, Gary Wolf e Kevin Kelly che hanno
fondato un movimento dal titolo Quantified Self. Lo scopo è quello di «quantificare, grazie a
sofisticati software progettati con la consulenza di psicologi e altri scienziati, una serie di attività,
esperienze ed emozioni che finora erano sfuggite alla filosofia dei tempi e metodi. In questo modo
sarà possibile analizzare come mangiamo, dormiamo, ci muoviamo e lavoriamo per rendere la
nostra vita più “produttiva” in ogni momento» (C. Formenti, Felicità e sfruttati. Capitalismo digitale
ed eclissi del lavoro, Egea, Milano, 2011, p. 57). Come Horkheimer e Adorno hanno spiegato nel
loro Dialettica dell’illuminismo, cit., il pensiero razionale e astratto poteva emergere solo in una
società in cui una classe si separava dalla produzione manuale e, disponendo dei mezzi di quella
intellettuale, poteva strutturare coscienza e linguaggio. Come anche gli autori rilevano, però, la
strumentalità della ragione – massimo sviluppo dell’astrazione oramai oggettivata nel sistema
automatico di macchine – significa dialetticamente che essa può diventare oggetto strumentale di
tutti in funzione dell’emancipazione generale. Solo in una società di classe come quella capitalistica
la quantità domina la qualità individuale e ne impedisce lo sviluppo, mentre questo non è intrinseco
alla razionalità matematico-quantitativa, per quando sia sorta in una società di classe.
602 LUCA MANDARA
della merce alle cui forme e logiche si tratta di omologarsi nella pratica del self-
branding, «quasi come se fosse sempre meno possibile un pensiero di sé a
prescindere da come la marca permetta di pensare il soggetto»39.
Condividendo se stesso fino al minimo gesto, come postare la foto del piatto
appena cucinato (ma, ancor meglio, se lo si sta consumando fuori casa), si dà così
prova spontanea di aver corrisposto al “comando” introiettato da decenni di
dominio spettacolare di reality show, talent show, talk show etc. dove individui
senza alcuna qualità specifica sono messi a profitto per offrire a tutti un finto
tempo libero di passività. Il successo così immediato dei social sarebbe infatti
inspiegabile senza il fatto «che il dominio spettacolare abbia potuto allevare una
generazione sottomessa alle sue leggi»40; senza che «l’occupazione totale della vita
sociale da parte dei risultati accumulati dell’economia conduce a uno slittamento
generalizzato dell’avere nell’apparire, da cui ogni “avere” effettivo deve trarre il
suo prestigio immediato e la sua funzione ultima»41; senza che, cioè, la classe
dominante abbia potuto imporre le sue logiche e i suoi valori per decenni.
Certo, da un lato, questo significa che il capitalismo, grazie alla crescente
automazione, tende progressivamente ad abbattere in ogni settore (persino quello
dell’intrattenimento) la divisione del lavoro fondata sulla differenza di capacità e
con ciò annuncia una società in cui le differenze tra gli individui non dipendono
più dalle rispettive classi di appartenenza e dai rispettivi ruoli sociali, ma dal loro
libero sviluppo (lato progressivo del capitalismo); dall’altro lato, però, in questa
massificazione dello spettacolo non c’è alcun individualità, bensì la piatta e
38
Quando si parla di soggettività e soggettivazione non si può non fare riferimento all’opera di
Michel Foucault. Anche il Collettivo Ippolita utilizza l’opera di Foucault per analizzare le pratiche
social, così come diversi autori di AA.VV., Web 2.0. Un nuovo racconto e i suoi dispositivi, a cura
di C. Formenti, “aut-aut”, n. 347 (luglio-settembre 2010), a cui pure ho fatto riferimento nel corso
di questi studi sul Web 2.0.
39
C. Scibilia, Profilo di marca. Figure del brand tra il supermercato e Facebook, in AA.VV.,
Web 2.0. Un nuovo racconto e i suoi dispositivi, cit., p. 113. L’autore associa la costruzione del
profilo Facebook, cioè dell’identità virtuale, alla costruzione dell’identità del brand da lanciare o
promuovere da parte del marketing contemporaneo. Facebook impone dei percorsi di costruzione
dell’identità che richiamano quelli aziendali: 1) stabilendo un’etica, un’identità fissa, stabile,
inequivocabile, priva di contraddizioni nonostante i vari luoghi e i vari prodotti cui si associa, ciò
che su Facebook equivale al nome e alla foto del profilo, cioè al nome e al logo della marca; 2)
comunicando la propria identità immediatamente, chiarendo subito chi si è e come si intende
essere percepito dovendo catturare l’attenzione labilissima del consumatore, il che corrisponde
all’aggiornamento continuo della propria pagina; 3) costruendo il profilo nell’interrelazione tra il
progettatore, spesso soggetto a volubilità notevoli ma che deve sempre tenere conto delle aspettative
dei target di riferimento, e il momento della ricezione, il feedback che determina la popolarità della
marca-individuo.
40
G. Debord, La società dello spettacolo, cit., p. 193.
41
Ivi, p. 57.
603 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
42
Su questo cfr. H. Horkheimer, T. W. Adorno, La dialettica dell’illuminismo, cit., e G.
Debord, La società dello spettacolo, cit.
43
Sull’importanza dello spazio pubblico e del reciproco riconoscimento per lo sviluppo della
libertà dell’individuo nello spazio sociale, cfr. A.Honneth, Riconoscimento e disprezzo. Sui
fondamenti di un’etica post-tradizionale, trad. it A. Ferrara, Rubbettino, Milano, 1993.
44
Questo nesso tra “pratiche” e “ideologia” è stato recentemente sviluppato da Rahel Jaeggi che,
partendo proprio da una revisione di una visione unilaterale del rapporto tra struttura e
sovrastruttura, ha affermato come il concetto di “realtà” sia intrinsecamente legato alle pratiche che
la compongono e alle norme che esse producono, norme che a loro volta delimitano le possibilità
di azione degli attori sociali secondo una circolarità dialettica più che deterministica. In questo
senso, un modo di produzione come il capitalismo diventa vera e propria forma di vita, ben al di là
della produzione di beni volti alla soddisfazione dei bisogni. L’autrice sviluppa su questa base una
forma di “critica immanente delle forme di vita” in cui ci si appella a norme che, pur sviluppate
entro una certa cornice sociale, hanno perso significato ed efficacia fino a trasformarsi nel loro
contrario (es. libertà e uguaglianza in illibertà e disuguaglianza), un capovolgimento che potrebbe
trovare soluzione solo entro una nuova realtà che trasformi entrambi i poli di “norma” e “realtà”
costituendosi su, e costituendo a sua volta, nuove norme. Cfr. Rahel Jaeggi, Forme di vita e
capitalismo, a cura di Marco Solinas, Rosenberg&Sellier, Torino 2016.
45
D’obbligo ricordare il recente scandalo che ha coinvolto Facebook e Cambridge Analytica in
riferimento alla recente campagna elettorale di Donald Trump. Meno noto, invece, il
comportamento della Cina rispetto al Web, da sempre all’avanguardia nella nazionalizzazione di
Internet per evitare interferenze nel proprio sistema socio-politico. Già nel 2011, era noto che il
604 LUCA MANDARA
quella di creare un archivio digitale dei gusti e dei piaceri degli individui per
personalizzare al meglio la vendita . I programmi che vengono lanciati sul Web
46
governo cinese, con l’aiuto del complesso militare-industriale statunitense (in particolare la Cisco,
finanziata dalla CIA e in ambigua collaborazione con Google), aveva il progetto di creare uno «stato
di polizia hi-tech» (Ippolita, Nell’acquario di Facebook, cit., p. 175) dotando ogni cittadino di una
casella email, di un profilo sui social network governativi, di un account per fare spese sui siti
autorizzati, di una sorta di Cloud per condividere i propri dati sui server controllati dal governo. Il
che dimostra che i monopoli che necessitano di una profilazione sempre più accurata per
aumentare i loro profitti (Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon etc.) e che vivono delle libertà dei
propri utenti, «sono perfettamente compatibili con i sistemi di controllo autoritari e sono anzi
tecnologie auspicabili per le dittature moderne» (ibid.).
46
È oramai noto che Google studia i dati generati dai comportamenti degli utenti per affinare
l’efficienza dei suoi algoritmi e produrne uno capace di automatizzare totalmente la ricerca,
rendendola indipendente da giudizi soggettivi, desideri, emozioni e intenzioni degli utenti. Il che fa
dubitare fortemente che ciò abbia scopi non-economici. Il 1 maggio 2017, il Corriere della Sera ha
pubblicato una notizia dal The Australian: dei ricercatori australiani lavorano al servizio di
Facebook per studiare l’umore degli utenti (per lo più ragazzini) e elaborare algoritmi capaci di
prevedere quando ciascuno di loro è più vulnerabile ai messaggi pubblicitari. Disponibile in:
http://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/social/17_maggio_01/facebook-studia-l-umore-ragazzini-vendere-
pubblicita-9f826f16-2e64-11e7-8176-4e0249fd95d5.shtml.
47
Indicativa in tal senso una lettera di Mark Zuckerberg del febbraio 2017 e indirizzata “alla
nostra community” in cui il fondatore di Facebook propone la propria piattaforma come istituzione
sociale globale capace di, tra le varie cose, mediare il rapporto tra locale e globale salvando e
rinforzando le istituzioni tradizionali, aiutare ad affrontare le crisi terroristiche e i disastri ambientali
attivando servizi per la ricerca dei dispersi, favorire l’interazione tra culture diverse e la costituzione
di idee condivise. L’importante è che tutto venga mediato da Facebook, ossia concentrato nella sua
proprietà. Apogeo di questa presa a carico sulle spalle del buon Pastore Zuckerberg della sicurezza
e della sensibilità di ogni individuo, è il progetto, annunciato nella suddetta lettera, di sviluppare
degli standard personali per la censura dei contenuti ritenuti offensivi. Vista la difficoltà e i costi di
tarare standard a seconda delle culture locali e delle sensibilità individuali, Facebook si propone di
chiedere periodicamente “entro quali limiti accetti la nudità, la violenza, il profano etc.”, mentre per
chi non risponde verranno imposti i criteri stabiliti dalla maggioranza della popolazione della
regione selezionata, “come un referendum”. Un modo rassicurante per specificare meglio quali
sono i propri standard di vita e, quindi, personalizzare in maniera ancora più accurata la vendita: sia
mai che ad bigotto venga pubblicizzato un libro hard! La lettera completa è disponibile in lingua
originale su: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-
community/10154544292806634/.
605 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
morte, tr. it. di G. Mancuso, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2015. Il principio è dialettico: quanto più la
soddisfazione del desiderio è rapida e illimitata, tanto più esso scompare e, con esso, i turbamenti
emotivi. Secondo l’analisi di Lacan ripresa da Marisa Fiumanò in L’inconscio è il sociale. Desiderio
e godimento della contemporaneità, Mondadori, Milano, 2012, il godimento senza limiti non è
affatto espressione di un’individualità libera che orienta coscientemente la propria vita alla
soddisfazione dei propri desideri, ma, al contrario, di un’individualità omologata al “discorso del
capitalista” che promette di soddisfare ogni desiderio attraverso gli oggetti eliminando ogni forma di
mancanza e, quindi, ogni desiderio (che fonda solo sulla mancanza). Il godimento si emancipa dal
desiderio e, paradossalmente, la soddisfazione viene rimandata continuamente.
49
Lo psicologo John M. Grohol, parla di una vera e propria sindrome dell’abbandono e della
perdita di ciò che avviene in rete che chiama FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) per descrivere il
comportamento paradossale degli utenti social, il cui bisogno di rassicurazione è continuamente
frustrato data la compulsione del controllo del proprio profilo o, in generale, del proprio device.
Disponibile in: https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addiction-the-fear-of-
missing-out/.
606 LUCA MANDARA
comandata, perché è comandata dalla logica del riciclaggio e dello spettacolo che
oramai si è interiorizzata a livello pulsionale e ideologico . 50
50
Da un punto di vista marxiano, ogni essere individuale è sempre determinato dal proprio
essere sociale, cioè dai rapporti sociali entro cui l’individuo è inserito. Il concetto di libertà, quindi,
ha poco a che fare col concetto morale di persona quanto innanzitutto con la possibilità di
soddisfare i bisogni e di sviluppare le capacità di ciascun individuo, il che, secondo questa
tradizione, presuppone una coscienza e una volontà comune che (auto)determini che cosa
produrre, come produrre, a che fine produrre unicamente in base alle proprie possibilità oggettive e
ad interessi comunemente stabiliti. Cfr., ad esempio, H. Marcuse, Per la critica dell’edonismo, in
Id., Cultura e società. Saggi di teoria critica 1933-1965, tr it. di C. Ascheri, H. A. Osterlow e F.
Cerutti, Einaudi, Torino, 1965, che sviluppa alcune tesi capitali di K. Marx, F. Engels, L’ideologia
tedesca, in Id., Opere complete (1845-1846), vol. V, a cura di Fausto Codino, Roma, Editori
Riuniti, 1972 e in K. Marx, Critica del programma di Gotha e testi sulla transizione democratica al
socialismo, a cura di U. Cerroni, Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1976. Recentemente, il tema ha trovato
sviluppo nel concetto di riconoscimento di Axel Honneth, secondo cui «siamo tanto più liberi
quanto più attivamente prendiamo parte a forme di cooperazione sociale perché riusciamo a
realizzare in modo tanto più libero i nostri fini e i nostri desideri quanto più numerose e variegate
sono le interazioni che ci consentono di contare sull’adesione e la collaborazione di altri» (A.
Honneth, La libertà negli altri. Saggi di filosofia sociale, a cura di B. Carnevali, Il Mulino, Bologna,
2017, p. 289). In una società classista, dove non esiste una comunità bensì gruppi sociali
antagonistici, non si può parlare di libertà. Criticare perciò il concetto di volontà “libera”, non
significa che non possano emergere volontà opposte a quelle integrate nei fini del capitale, poiché la
volontà sociale non è unica essendo il capitalismo un sistema contraddittorio basato sulla divisione
degli interessi individuali e sociali. Non che la volontà conflittuale sia più autentica di quella
connivente (anche inconsciamente) agli interessi del capitale, semplicemente dimostra la presenza
di un conflitto di origine sociale e la possibilità della sua trasformazione. Nondimeno, è da mettere
in evidenza l’associazione tra i concetti di “lavoro”, “libertà” e “piacere” che, secondo gli autori a cui
ci si è per lo più riferito in questo saggio, sarebbe uno dei motivi portanti le (poche) indicazioni di
Marx sulla società “umana”. Si tratta di marxisti spesso considerati eterodossi o dissidenti quali
Herbert Marcuse – che li connette nel concetto di “gioco”, cfr. H. Marcuse, Eros e civiltà, cit. – o
Ágnes Heller – che, sviluppando i lati più antropologici dei Manoscritti economico-filosofici del
1844 di Marx, fa del lavoro libero un vero e proprio “bisogno”, cfr. Ágnes Heller, La teoria dei
bisogni in Marx, trad. it. di Annamaria Morazzoni, prefazione di Pier Aldo Rovatti, Milano,
Feltrinelli, 1977. Cfr. sul tema anche F. Andolfi, Lavoro e libertà. Marx, Marcuse, Arendt, Reggio
Emilia, Diabasis, 2004, che accentua l’oscillazione in Marx tra una vera e propria critica scientifica
della società borghese legata alla scoperta di leggi tendenziali, oggettive e immanenti al processo
capitalistico di produzione che lo porterebbero verso un’altra società e un’antropologia umanista
fondata sul lavoro quale differentia specifica tra l’uomo e l’animale come termine per avanzare la
medesima critica e la posizione affermativa di una nuova società. Anche in questo caso, comunque,
emerge la tipica contraddizione del capitalismo tra la spontanea liberazione delle attività
socialmente utili dai loro tratti più faticosi, routinari e snervanti, e la sottomissione delle medesime
alle logiche omologanti della società capitalistica.
51
Nei Grundrisse, Marx distinse tra “sussunzione formale” e “sussunzione reale” del lavoro al
capitale. Nel primo caso, il capitale si limita a sussumere la forza lavoro (lavoro vivo) alla forma
607 “I like it”: tempo libero e società capitalistica
dello spettacolo partecipato” unifica tutti i media non tanto nel trasmettere
direttamente contenuti politici, quanto nel veicolare «stereotipi comportamentali
in realtà a sfondo ultra-politicizzato, tesi alla alienazione dei propri fruitori dal
proprio contesto e ruolo reale attraverso una sorta di continua ginnastica emotiva
che traccia un solco emozionale reattivo funzionale alla cancellazione di
qualsivoglia capacità di autonomia critica sull’esistente» . In particolare, i social
53
salario senza modificarne qualitativamente il processo lavorativo. Nel secondo caso, esso trasforma
la qualità del processo lavorativo sussumendolo al sistema scientifico e automatico di macchine
(lavoro morto) posseduto dal capitalista. Il che rende le macchine realmente adeguate al rapporto di
classe, perché costringono l’operaio alla passività. Che però abbiano quest’effetto di dominio
dipende solo dal rapporto sociale entro cui sono inserite: usate non ai fini della valorizzazione di
capitale ma della soddisfazione dei bisogni dei lavoratori, esse sarebbero il principale strumento
della loro emancipazione dai vincoli della natura. L’ipotesi è che si possa parlare in termini di
sussunzione formale e reale anche per la riproduzione del rapporto sociale capitalistico ottenuta
attraverso le istituzioni sociali formali che il capitale eredita (divisione del lavoro, proprietà privata,
Chiese, Stato, scuola) e/o quelle reali che produce da sé. Le imprese monopolistiche del Web 2.0,
insieme all’industria culturale tradizionale, costituirebbero un’unica istituzione reale del capitale,
che, pur falcidiata dai conflitti interni, trova unità nel comune effetto di disciplinamento e
costruzione del consenso delle masse al rapporto di produzione capitalistico. Al contempo, esse
mettono a disposizione della società strumenti che, se prodotti e utilizzati a scopi non di dominio
ma di liberazione, potrebbero minare la base del rapporto sociale di classe.
52
C. Rosati, I nuovi media e la formazione del consenso, cit.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
608 LUCA MANDARA
stessa capovolta, in cui l’umanità non lavora per soddisfare e sviluppare le proprie
facoltà e i propri bisogni bensì unicamente per accumulare denaro altrui,
reprimendo le possibilità immanenti di unificare l’intera società verso fini
realmente comuni quali, ad esempio, la piena soddisfazione e il pieno sviluppo
delle facoltà individuali in una società altrettanto libera.
609 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 609-628
ISSN: 1825-5167
MARIA RUSSO
(IRCECP), Facoltà di Filosofia, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele
russo.maria@hsr.it
ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to analyse changes and evolutions within the relationship between
Existentialism and Marxism in Sartre’s works. During the 50s and later, Sartre tried to make his
account of radical and absolute freedom compatible with Marxist’s philosophy of history and
its views on class struggle and revolution. This attempt was particularly evident in the Critique
of Dialectical Reason, Marxism and Subjectivity, Existentialism and Marxism and several
articles published in Les Temps Modernes. Nevertheless, this was not the only perspective
Sartre developed during his life. In his last interview he implicitly referred to his project to
elaborate an Existentialist Ethics based on the moral value of authenticity as sketched in
Notebooks for an Ethics. Therefore, this paper will examine Sartre’s early critiques with
regards to Marxism and try to evaluate the importance of a Post-Marxist Existentialism.
KEYWORDS
Sartre; Existentialism; Marxism; revolution; class struggle; subjectivity; fraternity.
La filosofia di Sartre è difficile da vivere. (…) Ciò che dobbiamo fare, ha detto
[Sartre] è impegnarci senza sosta. (…) Nessuno scrittore può accettare il
totalitarismo implicito dall’espressione ‘natura umana’. Se scrive, lo fa perché
vuole cambiare il mondo – e se stesso. Scrivere è un atto. È impegno. Sartre si è
impegnato tutta la vita.1
Così John Gerassi, figlio di Fernando Gerassi, pittore che tentò di difendere la
Repubblica nella guerra civile spagnola, saluta Jean-Paul Sartre sul quotidiano
Newsday il 17 Aprile 1980. Per l’intellettuale americano, “siamo tutti figli di Jean-
J. Gerassi, Talking with Sartre, Yale University, 2009; tr. it. a cura di R. Kirchmayr, Parlando
1
Paul Sartre”. Padre delle nostre idee e del nostro linguaggio, avrebbe influenzato
anche coloro che abbandonarono le sue battaglie, dando vita alle filosofie
strutturaliste e post-strutturaliste che dichiararono la morte del soggetto e dei
valori, etichettando come ideologia o, peggio, metafisica, ogni filosofia che avanzi
pretese normative. Dopo un lungo periodo di notorietà, dagli anni Ottanta in poi
il padre dell’esistenzialismo ha attraversato un duraturo oblio. Eppure, Sartre ha
inventato una filosofia, l’esistenzialismo, una lucida riflessione sulla condizione
umana e sul senso dell’esistenza, le cui domande non possono che essere
riconosciute come attuali. Qual è il fondamento di ogni scelta individuale? Come
è possibile trascendere con la propria praxis una realtà oggettiva, opaca e abitata
dalle contro-finalità del pratico-inerte? Come conciliare una libertà individuale
assoluta che non riconosce alcun dovere con il fine dell’emancipazione e della
liberazione concrete degli oppressi? Come orientarsi al di fuori del sistema
capitalistico quando l’alternativa – il fantasma di Stalin – produce nuovi
serializzazioni2 e un Terrore che non fonda una fraternità etica3?
Sartre che usa Husserl contro Heidegger, Freud contro Marx, Marx contro il
marxismo, Kierkegaard contro Hegel4. E che si scaglia contro Kant conservando
di Kant molto più di quello che vorrebbe conservare5. Glielo fanno notare dopo
la celebre conferenza del 1945: la sua è ancora un’etica borghese, che non riesce a
interpretare i bisogni e le lotte del suo tempo. E così, il filosofo si convince:
2
In Critica della ragione dialettica, la serialità è quella condizione che caratterizza la società
contemporanea in cui vige una sorta di molteplicità di solitudini. Gli individui non hanno un vero
legame tra loro, se non conflittuale, perché ognuno ripete la propria mansione che è stata affidata
dall’esterno, invischiato nelle dinamiche della penuria e della passività. A questa fase si contrappone
quella del gruppo in fusione, dove invece si configura una molteplicità caratterizzata e motivata da
un fine comune. Esso è però sempre in pericolo di ricadere nella serialità, perché una volta
conseguito il fine il gruppo è soggetto a una fase di istituzionalizzazione e burocratizzazione e si
scioglie.
3
Sartre avanza due concezioni della Fraternità: una è quella contenuta in Critica della ragione
dialettica, la cosiddetta Fraternità-Terrore che si genera dal patto del gruppo in fusione, che non
può essere sciolto finché non si è conseguito il fine prefissato pena perfino la morte di uno dei
componenti, e l’altra è invece la Fraternità senza Terrore che viene accennata nell’ultima intervista
del 1980. Se la Fraternità-Terrore si fonda sul fine comune, che deve essere realizzato a ogni costo,
la Fraternità senza Terrore presuppone, piuttosto, un’origine comune. È in questo senso che Sartre
si riferisce in L’espoir maintenant a un riconoscimento basato sul fatto di essere “figli della stessa
madre”.
4
“Kierkegaard ha ragione contro Hegel come Hegel ha ragione contro Kierkegaard.” J.-P.
Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, Gallimard, Parigi 1960; tr. it. a cura di P. Caruso, Critica
della ragione dialettica (in 2 volumi). Teoria degli Insiemi Pratici preceduto da Questioni di
Metodo, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1963, p. 22.
5
L’espressione è di F. Scanzio: “(…) la critica sartriana appare, a una seconda analisi, non priva
di ambiguità in quanto, delle esigenze di Kant, Sartre pare conservare forse più di quanto non
sembrerebbe a prima vista.” F. Scanzio, Jean-Paul Sartre: la morale introvabile, IPOC, Milano
2014, p. 64.
611 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
l’esistenzialismo non può che porsi al servizio del marxismo, integrarlo laddove
quello rischia il dogmatismo e si lascia sfuggire alcuni aspetti fenomenologici e
antropologici della realtà. Per poi concludere, alla fine della sua vita, che la sinistra
è morta, anche se non bisogna disperare di fronte allo scacco ma mantenere la
speranza nei confronti di un futuro nel quale si possa riscoprire il valore della
fraternità.
Tracciare un bilancio complessivo del rapporto tra Sartre e il marxismo, sia
come teoria filosofica, economica e politica, sia nelle sue incarnazioni storiche, è
perciò un arduo compito, che rischia di disegnare un ritratto indebito di un
filosofo che non può mai vantare una coerenza tra le sue idee (anche se, almeno,
può farlo tra le sue idee e le sue azioni). Come l’esistenza umana, il Per-Sé
dell’Essere e il nulla, come la “Storia forata” del secondo tomo incompiuto della
Critica della ragione dialettica, come Flaubert nel suo percorso di
interiorizzazione-esteriorizzazione, anche Sartre non si lascia facilmente ridurre.
In questo contributo, cercheremo quindi di rendere giustizia all’avventura
filosofica di Sartre nel suo fertile dialogo con il marxismo, evidenziando gli snodi
critici e il suo tentativo di progettare un esistenzialismo marxista (e non, come
spesso si propone egli stesso, un marxismo esistenzialista).
Nel 1949, Sartre elabora il lutto del suo tentativo di trovare una terza via tra il
modello statunitense e l’Unione Sovietica, tra il capitalismo e il Partito Comunista.
Temendo di risultare eccessivamente tiepido nel suo antiamericanismo (ma, al
contempo, sostenendo di non sapere neppure cosa significhi la parola
antiamericano), egli abbandona il progetto di costituire il Rassemblement
Démocratique Rèvolutionnaire e decide di avvicinarsi al Partito Comunista
Francese. Come accadrà anche per quanto riguarda la stesura della Prefazione ai
Dannati della Terra di Franz Fanon, Sartre è qui preoccupato di non essere
abbastanza incisivo, brutale e schierato, e di poter essere identificato come un
intellettuale borghese che gioca a parlare di lotta di classe. L’intellettuale engagé
vuole contribuire ai movimenti di liberazione della Storia a tutti i costi. Scrive, nel
luglio del 1952, su Les Temps Modernes, I comunisti e la pace, testo che
criticherà nel Fantasma di Stalin (nel novembre 1956) e che costituisce il suo
tentativo più credibile (ma forse in malafede) di difendere le politiche del blocco
sovietico.
Sono stato per poco tempo un compagno di strada, lo sono stato nel 1951-1952,
sono andato in Unione Sovietica verso il 1954, e quasi immediatamente dopo, con
612 MARIA RUSSO
chioserà sulla vicenda Sartre nella sua ultima intervista. In effetti, dopo la
Rivoluzione Ungherese del 1956 e, ancora di più, dopo la Primavera di Praga del
1968, egli si scaglia violentemente contro la stessa idea di “partito”, recuperando
dubbi e perplessità già esposti negli appunti su una possibile morale esistenzialista
scritti intorno al 1947-1948.
Ne I comunisti e la pace troviamo un intellettuale che prova a mettere a tacere
il suo stesso spirito critico, sperando così di servire la giusta causa. Sartre sa
perfettamente di doversi appoggiare a delle forze storiche che agiscono
collettivamente con un fine che sembra, almeno per il momento, essere comune.
Il partito non è il gruppo in fusione della Critica della ragione dialettica, anzi;
tuttavia, all’inizio degli anni Cinquanta, sembra lecito chiedersi “come è possibile
credere alla missione storica del proletariato e nello stesso tempo al tradimento
del partito comunista?”7 Non vi possono essere per Sartre vie di mezzo, vie, cioè,
socialdemocratiche. Le masse godono, almeno da un punto di vista formale, delle
libertà garantite dalla democrazia: sono i vantaggi derivati dal fatto che il governo
francese ha firmato il Patto Atlantico. Tuttavia, per Sartre la libertà promossa dalla
borghesia non è altro che un mero palliativo che non può che condurre alla
rassegnazione del proletariato. Contro il direttore del Franc Tireur Georges
Altman, che esprimeva un punto di vista socialdemocratico, e contro il conte
Monry della Revue des deux mondes, Sartre tuona: “il discorso è vecchio: da
centossessantadue anni a questa parte né il rimedio, né il male sono cambiati”8 e
“a furia di cercare le pulci al partito comunista siete diventati miopi.” 9 Certo,
Aleksandr Solž enicyn era confinato in un gulag già dal febbraio del 1945; non
bisogna stupirsi del fatto che Sartre venne definito “un solido stalinista.”10 Egli
infatti riconosce che anche se l’URSS non ha ancora realizzato le sue promesse,
ossia un socialismo reale,
il rivoluzionario che vive nella nostra epoca e il cui compito è quello di preparare
la rivoluzione con i mezzi che ha a disposizione e nella situazione storica in cui si è
venuto a trovare, senza perdersi in speranze apocalittiche che finirebbero per
6
J.-P Sartre, B. Lévy, L’espoir maintenant, Les entretiens de 1980, Verdier, Lagrasse 1991, p. 29
(nostra traduzione).
7
J.-P. Sartre, Les communistes et la paix in Les Temps Modernes, n. 81, Luglio 1952; tr. it. I
comunisti e la pace in Il filosofo e la politica. Scritti politici 1945-1965, IDUNA, Milano 2018, p.
16.
8
Ibid., p. 19.
9
Ibid., p. 20.
10
L’espressione è di Raymond Rosenthal, in particolare nell’articolo Master of all he explains, in
New York Times, 1 Marzo 1987.
613 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
È questo un Sartre che pensa contro se stesso, dato che accetta ciò che nel suo
progetto etico era inaccettabile: la massima secondo cui “il fine giustifica i mezzi”.
Ci ritorneremo quando affronteremo quella che è, dal nostro punto di vista, la sua
rielaborazione più autentica del marxismo. Nel testo del 1952, gli stessi
presupposti dell’esistenzialismo si devono piegare alle urgenze del tempo; se
l’intellettuale di Che cos’è la letteratura? ambiva a instaurare un patto di generosità
con il suo lettore, adesso egli deve anzitutto occuparsi concretamente dei bisogni
di un operaio che non ha alcun contatto diretto con il mondo della cultura. E
Sartre sostiene qualcosa di estremamente discutibile quando afferma che
un’operaia addetta agli stampi
rinuncerebbe volentieri alla libertà di parola di cui si fa un così bell’uso alla sala
Gaveau, se venisse liberata dal ritmo lancinante delle macchine, dall’eteronomia dei
lavori, dal freddo, dalla triste architettura delle fabbriche.12
Che valore può avere la libertà di parola se la propria esistenza viene sacrificata
nella ripetizione di un lavoro disumano e alienante? Secondo Sartre, nelle
democrazie occidentali ci si accontenta di godere delle libertà politiche e dei diritti
universali senza mettere in discussione le leggi del mercato, che vengono
presentate dai padroni come necessarie. Come rimarcherà anche in futuro, egli
ritiene che perfino il suffragio universale sia solamente un diversivo13 (nel 1973
arriverà addirittura a scrivere un articolo intitolato “Elezioni, trappola per gonzi”)
per deviare l’attenzione dei cittadini dallo sfruttamento economico.
Come accennato, Sartre rinnegherà quanto scritto in questo testo, soprattutto
per quanto riguarda la positività del legame tra il proletariato e il partito
comunista; in generale, non difenderà più con tanto vigore l’operato dell’Unione
Sovietica (una sorta di totalizzazione deviata ma in movimento e non un
11
J.-P. Sartre, I comunisti e la pace, cit., pp. 25-26.
12
Ibid., pp. 42-43.
13
Ne I comunisti e la pace ma anche nei Quaderni per una morale Sartre ci offre alcune
esemplificazioni della finzione che sta dietro al suffragio universale. “Il suffragio universale non
veniva soppresso, no; si chiedeva solo che l’elettore fosse domiciliato nel comune da tre anni.
Siccome gli operai si erano spostati di continuo, in cerca di lavoro, durante gli anni di crisi ’47-’49,
questa misura, in ultima analisi, privava il proletariato industriale del suo diritto di voto.” Ibid., p.
59. E, nei Quaderni, “l’ipocrisia dell’oppressione moderna si vede nel caso degli afroamericani
dell’America del Nord, i quali hanno diritto di votare ma dovendo pagare delle pool-taxes troppo
alte di fatto non votano. L’oppressore tratta l’oppresso come persona morale astratta e
contemporaneamente come oggetto a titolo concreto.” J.-P. Sartre, Cahiers pour une morale,
Gallimard, Parigi 1983; tr. it. a cura di F. Scanzio, Quaderni per una morale (1947-1948), Edizioni
Associate, Roma 1991, p. 141.
614 MARIA RUSSO
Per non parlare di quanto scriverà in Il socialismo venuto dal freddo dove
giudicherà duramente la repressione cecoslovacca del 1968. Ciò che però Sartre
non rinnegherà de I comunisti e la pace sarà il suo tentativo di sottolineare,
seppur a malincuore, che non è possibile ricusare la violenza in una condizione
disumana: la morale, una filosofia della libertà, sarà possibile solo quando si uscirà
dalla condizione di sub-umanità, che riguarda contemporaneamente le
discriminazioni basate sulla razza, che si riproducono nello sfruttamento del
Terzo Mondo, quelle basate sul genere e sulla classe.
Seppur con un approccio più marcatamente critico, anche negli anni Sessanta il
marxismo per Sartre si qualifica come filosofia insuperabile del proprio tempo. I
testi più importanti di questo ripensamento del rapporto tra esistenzialismo e
marxismo sono le Questioni di metodo (1957), la Conferenza di Araquara in
Brasile, dal titolo Esistenzialismo e marxismo (1960) e la Conferenza di Roma
all’Istituto Gramsci Marxismo e soggettività (1961). Anzitutto, ciò che accomuna
tutte queste riflessioni è il fatto che per Sartre la filosofia sia inevitabilmente
pratica, lungi dall’essere uno studio teoretico o un’analisi contemplativa: essa è un
pensiero sulla realtà che non solo la interpreta ma anche la trasforma. D’altronde,
già ne L’essere e il nulla, la libertà era la continua e inevitabile possibilità di negare
uno stato di cose presente in vista della realizzazione di uno stato di cose futuro:
un potere di trasformazione. Nella conferenza in Brasile Sartre sostiene:
14
J.-P. Sartre, I comunisti e la pace, cit., p. 94.
15
J.-P. Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique (Tome II – L’intelligibilté de l’Historie),
Gallimard, Parigi 1985; tr. it. a cura di F. Cambria, L’intelligibilità della Storia. Critica della ragione
dialettica Tomo II, Christian Marinotti Edizioni, Milano 2006, p. 148.
615 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
Nel momento in cui Sartre decide di mettere da parte l’interesse per l’esistenza
individuale (ciò che veniva criticato come esistenzialismo borghese), la sua
filosofia della libertà diventa una filosofia della liberazione, tutta focalizzata sulle
concrete possibilità di emancipazione collettiva. Come correttamente ricostruisce
Luca Basso,
il punto di continuità [con L’essere e il nulla] consiste nel riconoscimento della
crucialità del concetto di libertà, con le sue radici complesse, stoiche, cartesiane, ma,
ancora di più, illuministiche. La libertà viene interpretata come liberazione, sulla
base di una dinamica espansiva, che coinvolge una molteplicità di soggetti. Ma,
rispetto ai primi testi sartriani, la libertà viene circoscritta e articolata, anche tenendo
presente che il pratico-inerte non scompare mai completamente: permane, quindi,
un ‘fondo oscuro’.17
L’esistenzialismo, così come era stato formulato nel 1943, non prendeva
abbastanza sul serio lo spessore della situazione. Ora, “la filosofia è la
totalizzazione del sapere, delle rivendicazioni e dei rapporti di forza di una data
epoca.” 18 Infatti, nelle Questioni di metodo, Sartre non ha dubbi: c’è stato il
momento di Cartesio e di Locke, contro le sintesi dell’aristocrazia feudale, c’è
stato il momento di Kant e di Hegel, come nuova forma di borghesia, ma ora è
quello, ancora insuperato, di Marx. Non è possibile sfuggire alle sue categorie
pena diventare inattuale o perché non è ancora il tempo di una filosofia della
libertà (non è, cioè, ancora il tempo dell’esistenzialismo, ora solamente
un’ideologia) o perché si ricade in modo retrogrado nel passato: “un argomento
antimarxista è solo il ringiovanimento apparente di un’idea premarxista.”19
Solo il marxismo è in grado di cogliere il primato del lavoro e della praxis e di
raggiungere l’uomo concreto nei suoi bisogni. Come sostiene anche in Brasile,
16
J.-P. Sartre, Esistenzialismo e Marxismo, Abramo, Roma 1991, p. 47.
17
L. Basso, Inventare il nuovo. Storia e politica in Jean-Paul Sartre, Ombre Corte, Verona 2016,
pp. 69-70.
18
J.-P. Sartre, Esistenzialismo e Marxismo, cit., p. 52.
19
J.-P. Sartre, Critica della ragione dialettica. Teoria degli Insiemi Pratici preceduto da Questioni
di Metodo, cit., p. 19. Similmente, nella Conferenza di Araquara: “(…) l’insuperabilità fa sì che ogni
uomo che pensi contro corrente, lungo una direzione che giudica migliore, più avanzata, ricada al di
qua di essa e ritrovi una vecchia filosofia, una filosofia morta, proprio quando avrebbe voluto
andare più avanti. Ogni qualvolta, in nome del liberalismo, si vuol trovare una nuova dottrina
dell’uomo contro Marx, si ricade immediatamente nell’uomo liberale, quello definito, nel secolo
XVIII, dai filosofi francesi, per esempio, da Diderot, Helvétius e altri.” J.-P. Sartre, Esistenzialismo
e Marxismo, cit., p. 53.
616 MARIA RUSSO
20
Almeno, non conosciamo una diversa condizione: “il rapporto univoco tra la materialità
circostante e gli individui si manifesta nella nostra Storia in una forma particolare e contingente,
perché tutta l’avventura umana –almeno sinora- è una lotta accanita contro la penuria. (…) I tre
quarti della popolazione sono sotto-alimentati, dopo millenni di storia; così, malgrado la sua
contingenza, la penuria è una relazione umana fondamentale (con la Natura e con gli uomini).” J.-P.
Sartre, Critica della ragione dialettica. Teoria degli Insiemi Pratici preceduto da Questioni di
Metodo, cit., pp. 440-441.
21
Ibid., p. 152.
22
Ibid., p. 28.
23
“In riferimento allo sviluppo dell’Unione Sovietica, risulta operante una serialità organizzata,
disciplinante, e che quindi tende a neutralizzare ogni conatus verso il superamento dello ‘stato di
cose presente’. Questa nuova serialità comporta una netta separazione tra dirigenti e diretti. Molto
stretto appare così il nesso fra serialità e burocratizzazione.” L. Basso, Inventare il nuovo. Storia e
politica in Jean-Paul Sartre, cit., p. 176.
617 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
una nuova serialità, quella che Basso definisce “una situazione disciplinata e
disciplinante” 24 , avvicinando Sartre alle riflessioni foucaultiane. Non abbiamo
quindi in Sartre una dialettica “positiva” (non è nemmeno propriamente una legge
interna alla Storia), ma un movimento circolare di ripetizione e invenzione,
meglio, a spirale, dove ciclicamente esplodono le contraddizioni interne a un
sistema, senza però poter essere definitivamente superate in un’assenza finale di
inquietudini. Come giustamente evidenzia Basso, “la circolarità [della storia] non
viene a configurarsi in termini di ‘eterno ritorno dell’uguale’: piuttosto, tale
riferimento fa emergere la precarietà del percorso.”25 La dialettica si gioca nella
relazione tra le varie praxeis, e tra queste e le contro-finalità del pratico-inerte.
Nell’introduzione a Marxismo e soggettività, Giacomo Marramao giustamente
sottolinea: “rompere con la scolastica marxista significa assumere non solo il
soggetto, ma la stessa dialettica ‘in situazione’.” 26 Nella conferenza in Brasile,
Sartre dice: “la vera dialettica può apparire come una relazione degli uomini tra
loro”27 e, ancora,
L’origine della dialettica è la praxis e non altro. Essa è l’origine vivente della
dialettica, non c’è nessuna legge piovuta dal cielo che dice che ci sarà una tesi,
un’antitesi e una sintesi. Ciò non esiste e quel che è reale sta nel fatto che noi siamo
perpetuamente in rapporti o univoci o reciproci con esseri che sono oggetti o
uomini e che proprio l’insieme di questi rapporti, mostrandosi sempre sotto forma
di contraddizione, di lotta e di loro soluzione, dà origine, infine, alla storia.28
24
Ibid., p. 90.
25
Ibid., p. 164.
26
J.-P. Sartre, La conférence de Rome 1961. Marxisme et subjectivité in Les Temps Modernes,
n. 560, 1993; tr. it. a cura di R. Kirchmayr, Marxismo e soggettività. La conferenza di Roma del
1961 con ampio resoconto del dibattito che ne seguì, Christian Marinotti, Milano 2015, p. 8.
27
J.-P. Sartre, Esistenzialismo e marxismo, cit., p. 87.
28
Ibid., pp. 94-95.
29
“Esistenzialismo e marxismo mirano allo stesso oggetto, ma, mentre il secondo ha riassorbito
l’uomo nell’idea, il primo lo cerca dovunque esso si trovi, al lavoro, a casa, per strada.” J.-P. Sartre,
Critica della ragione dialettica, cit., p. 32.
30
Ibid., p. 25.
618 MARIA RUSSO
per essere ancora più preciso, noi aderiamo senza riserve alla formula del Capitale
con cui Marx intende definire il suo ‘materialismo’ (…). Non appena esisterà per
tutti un margine di libertà reale oltre la produzione della vita, il marxismo avrà fatto
il suo tempo; una filosofia della libertà ne prenderà il posto. Ma non abbiamo
alcuna maniera, alcuno strumento intellettuale, alcuna esperienza concreta che ci
permetta di concepire questa libertà, né questa filosofia.31
Nessuno può curarsi della propria libertà individuale se prima tutte le libertà
alienate non riescono a emanciparsi dal circolo vizioso dell’oppressione e dalla
materialità del pratico-inerte (forse, mai del tutto eliminabile, anche al di là del
capitalismo).
Tuttavia, questo non significa disfarsi della soggettività, una volta e per tutte, se
non nel senso in cui è possibile andare oltre alla stessa contrapposizione tra
soggetto e oggetto, ma in una modalità diversa dal superamento hegeliano. In
apertura a Marxismo e soggettività, Sartre critica la dialettica idealistica “che
esclude il soggetto” 33 di Lukács: secondo il filosofo francese, non è
un’interpretazione fedele dello stesso Marx, che avrebbe connesso bisogno, lavoro
e godimento a una trascendenza, ossia “un’esplosione di sé verso”34, espressione
già utilizzata da Sartre in un articolo del 1939 per riferirsi all’intenzionalità
husserliana. Questi tre termini attestano per Sartre la presenza della nozione di
soggettività nel marxismo35; si riferisce addirittura a una soggettività pura quando
l’interiorità funge da “mediazione tra due momenti dell’essere trascendente.”36
31
Ibid., pp. 33-34. È opportuno confrontare questa posizione con quella di Materialismo e
rivoluzione, saggio del 1947, scritto prima della “svolta marxista”, dove addirittura il materialismo
viene definito come una “metafisica dissimulata sotto una forma di positivismo”. J.-P. Sartre,
Matérialisme et Révolution in Situations III, Gallimard, Parigi 1949 (pubblicato per la prima volta
nel 1946 su Les Temps Modernes); tr. it. a cura di F. Fergnani e P. A. Rovatti, Materialismo e
Rivoluzione, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1977, p. 57.
32
J.-P. Sartre, Quaderni per una morale, cit., p. 51.
33
J.-P. Sartre, Marxismo e soggettività, cit., p. 17.
34
Ibid., p. 22.
35
“Dunque, attualmente non si tratta per noi di introdurre dal di fuori una nozione come quella
di soggettività, che non comparirebbe nel marxismo, ma si tratta al contrario di esplicitare e di
ritrovare una nozione che nel marxismo stesso è già data come bisogno, lavoro, godimento, e che è
stata misconosciuta dal alcuni oggettivisti idealisti come Lukács.” Ibid., p. 26.
36
Ibid., p. 26.
619 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
37
Ibid., p. 33.
38
Ibid., p. 33.
39
“C’è soggettività quando un sistema in interiorità, mediazione tra l’essere e l’essere,
interiorizza, nella forma del dover essere una qualunque modificazione esterna, e la re-esteriorizza
nella forma di una singolarità esterna.” Ibid., pp. 41-42.
40
Presentato da Fredric Jameson nella Postfazione come “una specie di rivincita definitiva del
suo punto di partenza, cioè del cogito individuale e della descrizione dell’esperienza
fenomenologica.” Ibid., p. 63.
41
Ibid., p. 49.
620 MARIA RUSSO
621 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
48
J.-P. Sartre, L’universel singulier in Av.V., Kierkegaard vivant, Gallimard, Parigi 1966; tr. it. a
cura di R. Kirchmayr, L’Universale Singolare in L’universale singolare. Saggi politici 1965-1973,
Mimesis, Milano 2009, p. 144.
49
Si veda lo speciale dedicato a Merleau-Ponty di Les Temps Modernes, nn. 184-185, 1961.
50
J.-P. Sartre, L’Universale Singolare, cit., p. 151.
51
Ibid., p. 153.
622 MARIA RUSSO
[esse] non sono mai, in nessun caso e in nessun luogo accidenti della storia umana.
Esse rappresentano la maniera stessa in cui gli uomini vivono la loro penuria nel
loro continuo movimento di superarla.52
Una disalienazione è quindi possibile, anche se Sartre non riesce mai a indicare
un processo realmente vincente nella Storia, al di là delle sue breve fascinazioni,
come nel caso della rivoluzione cubana. Laddove però nei testi citati la
disalienazione si caratterizza come conseguimento storico, risultato delle lotte dei
gruppi in fusione per l’emancipazione, negli appunti in cui Sartre tentò di
costruire un’etica questa possibilità assumeva i tratti di una conversione
esistenziale e radicale.
52
J.-P. Sartre, L’intelligibilità della storia, cit., p. 36.
623 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
dialettico); 3) una concezione più critica rispetto alla contro-violenza degli oppressi
(forse l’aspetto che nelle opere successive subirà le modificazioni più evidenti).
Anzitutto, Sartre contrappone la nozione di totalità detotalizzata alla totalità
hegeliana. Al mito hegeliano di un progresso già contenuto nelle sue premesse,
Sartre oppone un progresso ristagnante:
In altri termini: la Storia ha un senso se lo Spirito è uno. Nella misura in cui lo
Spirito è totalità questo senso esiste, c’è direzione e quindi progresso; nella misura
in cui esso è alienato a se stesso dal nulla che lo penetra (detotalizzazione), non c’è
né direzione né progresso: ristagno. La situazione è perciò quella di una Storia che
non è Storia, di un progresso ristagnante (…).53
Questa concezione assomiglia molto a quella della “Storia forata” del secondo
tomo della Critica: anche qui l’elemento che viene sottolineato è la perdita
continua della totalità, la sua incessante emorragia, il suo ricambio senza recupero.
Proprio come il nulla penetrava nell’Essere, secondo i processi di nullificazione
della libertà de L’essere e il nulla, qui la negazione penetra nella Storia, negazione
che dipende anzitutto dalla finitezza dell’essere umano. L’eventuale progresso,
poi, non è certamente inscritto in una legge dialettica interna alla storia stessa:
“affinché il progresso possa essere uno dei sensi della Storia è necessario che esso
si incarni nella Storia come progresso voluto, vissuto e sofferto.” 54 L’unica
evoluzione oggettiva che Sartre è disposto a riconoscere è quella tecnica, che non
ha peraltro condotto a un miglioramento del benessere in termini di giustizia
sociale; anzi, molto spesso, questo presunto progresso scientifico ha portato a un
ulteriore ampliamento della forbice sociale e delle differenze tra le classi o con le
popolazioni del Terzo Mondo. Per Sartre, la Storia non ha un lieto fine
precostituito, sia esso il dispiegarsi dello Spirito Assoluto o il paradiso dei
lavoratori al di là della preistoria. Ecco perché egli, nella sua breve rilettura del
Medioevo, del sistema feudale e dell’avvento della borghesia, evidenzia soprattutto
le linee di frattura tra un’epoca e l’altra, laddove le contraddizioni non sono
progressivi superamenti dello Spirito, ma tensioni presenti in ogni tempo: “in
nessuna epoca storica noi abbiamo semplicemente a che fare con un momento
universale della Storia. Tutto è in ogni epoca.”55 Le contraddizioni, allora, non
sono nei movimenti di passaggio da uno stadio all’altro, ma sono compresenti
sempre, anche se si manifestano diversamente a seconda delle opportunità sociali,
politiche, economiche e tecnologiche di un determinato periodo.
Nella pseudo-storia, caratterizzata da una quasi-dialettica 56 (questi sono i
termini che utilizza Sartre per distinguersi da Hegel e da Marx) la storia stessa
53
J.-P. Sartre, Quaderni per una morale, cit., p. 25.
54
Ibid., p. 44.
55
Ibid., p. 92.
56
“Si tratta di una quasi-dialettica senza sintesi, quindi senza senso.” Ibid., p. 49.
624 MARIA RUSSO
Questa è un’idea che abbiamo visto svilupparsi nella Critica: la dialettica è tra le
praxeis, non all’interno del dispiegamento storico.
Infine, contrapporsi alla dialettica hegeliana e marxista ha per Sartre una
ricaduta morale immediata: se la storia non è altro che lo svolgersi necessario
delle tappe dello Spirito, o della lotta di classe, allora ogni evento sarà già da
sempre giustificato. Ma allora,
(…) la sofferenza, come momento dello sviluppo globale, sarebbe giustificata e fusa
nel tutto. Ma la separazione delle coscienze implica necessariamente che la
sofferenza di chi è stato sacrificato non sia recuperabile. Così il nulla che separa
l’una dall’altra le coscienze fa di ogni determinazione di queste coscienze un
assoluto.58
57
A. Montano, Dialettica e storia nei Cahiers, in Gli scritti postumi di Sartre, Marietti, Genova
1993, p. 36.
58
J.-P. Sartre, Quaderni per una morale, cit., p. 29.
625 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
59
Ibid., p. 37.
60
Ibid., p. 52.
61
Ibid., p. 316.
62
Ibid., p. 367.
63
Ibid., p. 339.
626 MARIA RUSSO
che Sartre dedica a questo tema nei Quaderni sono tra le più controverse
dell’opera, e sono difficilmente conciliabili con le idee espresse in opere
successive come la Critica o la Prefazione ai Dannati della terra. Realizzare una
società umana con mezzi disumani (quale è, chiaramente, la violenza) rischia di
perpetrare l’atmosfera violenta che si voleva superare. Il fine non corrisponde alla
totalità dei mezzi impiegati; il fine non può, in questo senso, giustificare i mezzi.
Sartre è inoltre piuttosto obbiettivo: l’oppresso che si ribella spinto dalla fame,
dalla miseria e dal bisogno “non ha né la cultura né l’efficacia del pensiero, né la
preparazione necessaria per immaginare un altro ordine.” 64 Una libertà che
semplicemente nullifica il presente senza poter concretamente immaginare uno
stato di cose possibile e migliore è pura violenza. Gli oppressi che si ribellano
spesso non hanno gli strumenti per realizzare una concreta trasformazione della
situazione. Allora,
non bisogna vedere nella violenza, alla maniera hegeliana, un passaggio verso la
liberazione, ma piuttosto una strada senza uscita. (…) E poiché essa non sopprime la
schiavitù e l’alienazione come fenomeni collettivi, noi la descriviamo qui come una
delle strutture della servitù, allo stesso titolo della rassegnazione.65
Infatti, nei Quaderni Sartre sembra rivolgersi più a coloro che hanno le
disponibilità culturali, economiche e sociali per poter produrre un cambiamento
nel mondo piuttosto che alla classe operaia o ai popoli colonizzati. Chi devono
essere i protagonisti della rivoluzione? Una Fraternità-Terrore del proletariato
oppure un patto di generosità, come immaginava in Che cos’è la Letteratura?66 tra
intellettuale e lettore, che significa, qualcuno che può comprendere l’intellettuale?
Se durante gli anni successivi, come abbiamo visto, Sartre non ha alcun dubbio a
fare degli oppressi i protagonisti della sua ragione dialettica, è proprio nell’ultima
intervista che ritorna, con un rimpianto, a pensare a un’etica della fraternità al di là
della contro-violenza. Forse, la violenza e l’oppressione che caratterizzano la
storia, lungi dal sancire definitivamente l’assurdità della morale, esigono proprio il
suo intervento correttivo.
64
Ibid., p. 385.
65
Ibid., p. 392.
66
“Così gli affetti del lettore non sono mai dominati dall’oggetto e, dato che nessuna realtà
esterna può condizionarli, hanno la loro fonte permanente nella libertà, ossia sono tutti generosi –
poiché io chiamo generoso un affetto per il quale la libertà sia l’origine e il fine. La lettura è dunque
un esercizio di generosità (…).” J.-P. Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? in Les Temps Modernes,
nn. 17-22, 1947; tr. it. a cura di L. Arano-Cogliati, Che cos’è la letteratura? Lo scrittore e i suoi
lettori secondo il padre dell’Esistenzialismo, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1960, p. 40.
627 Una fede che fu combattuta. Il rapporto tra esistenzialismo e marxismo in Jean-Paul Sartre
Ecco ciò che non aveva avuto il coraggio di fare alla fine degli anni Quaranta:
connettere l’etica esistenzialista con un pensiero politico di sinistra che non fosse
tout court il marxismo imperante69. Una strada sartriana, terza, alternativa per la
sinistra. Da qui, la sfiducia dell’ultimo Sartre nei confronti di ogni partito, che
porta avanti il proprio interesse, la propria lotta per il potere. Da qui, la credenza
che nel giro di venti o trent’anni non sarebbero nemmeno più esistiti dei partiti,
ma solo dei movimenti di massa, in una sorta di previsione dell’affermarsi del
populismo contemporaneo. “C’è un partito che si chiama partito comunista, e si
vota per quello come si voterebbe normalmente per un altro partito.”70
67
Come evidenzia G. E. Linsenbard: “(…) la terza etica alla quale egli ha lavorato alla fine della
sua vita non dovrebbe essere considerata come un totale ripudio dell’etica che aveva sviluppato nei
Quaderni per una morale, bensì, piuttosto, come un suo ‘arricchimento’.” G.E. Linsenbard, An
investigation of Jean-Paul Sartre’s posthumously published Notebooks for an Ethics, The Edwin
Mellen Press Ltd. Lewinston 2000, p. 2 (nostra traduzione).
68
J.-P. Sartre, L’espoir maintenant, cit., p. 25 (nostra traduzione).
69
“Il marxismo si presenta come una teoria, una teoria rigorosa, o che voleva esserlo, come un
tentativo di studiare i fatti con la deduzione e l’analisi. Ma, oltre a ciò, esso si collocava in un
ambiente, in un’atmosfera intellettuale e sentimentale, che era più ampio della teoria stessa e che,
per certi versi, era deluso da quella teoria. Questo ambiente era la sinistra. Quando Marx andava a
parlare con i rivoluzionari tedeschi delle sue dottrine, discuteva con loro, essi prendevano delle
decisioni in comune. Ciò che presiedeva al loro accordo, senza che lo dicessero né gli uni né gli
altri, era proprio la sinistra, era proprio l’idea di essere insieme per un qualche tentativo di
compiere un’azione di sinistra.” Ibid., p. 43 (nostra traduzione).
70
Ibid., p. 41 (nostra traduzione).
628 MARIA RUSSO
La sinistra, per Sartre, è morta. Per farla rivivere, il suo principio, quello della
fraternità, deve incarnarsi secondo modalità distinte dal Terrore, pena il
riprodurre una situazione violenta e non l’avvento morale di un’umanità oltre la
sub-umanità. Una speranza che non è assolutamente affidata al dispiegamento
della storia (già allora la destra trionfava pressoché dappertutto e dalla seconda
guerra mondiale alla sua morte Sartre ha conosciuto il volto più violento e
oppressivo del Novecento), ma all’azione dei singoli individui, che possono
riconoscersi come “figli della stessa madre” 71 e non più, come nel caso della
guerra d’Algeria, “figli della violenza”. Infatti,
Il rapporto più profondo tra gli uomini è quello che li unisce al di là dei rapporti di
produzione. È quello che fa in modo che essi siano gli uni per gli altri un’altra cosa
dall’essere produttori. Sono uomini. È questo che bisogna tentare di studiare. (…)
Tutta la distinzione delle sovrastrutture di Marx è un buon lavoro, ma è interamente
sbagliato, perché il rapporto primario di un uomo con un altro uomo è un’altra
cosa.72
La vera sfida, che è anche l’ultima sfida di Sartre, è di trovare un equilibrio tra
la lotta in opposizione alla penuria, una lotta contro-violenta di classe e
anticolonialista, e lo sforzo, finalmente costruttivo, al di là della rivoluzione e del
cosiddetto movimento apocalittico, di realizzare l’umanità, nella propria e
nell’altrui persona. La rivoluzione resta inevitabile, ma di certo non può che
essere un momento: si tratta di comprendere come concepire una fase post-
rivoluzionaria dove non si ripetono le stesse strutture oppressive attraverso
l’invenzione di una nuova istituzionalizzazione gerarchica e burocratica.
Poco prima della sua morte, l’atteggiamento di Sartre non è quello di un’attesa:
che i tempi maturino, che il capitalismo esasperi le sue modalità produttive e
relazionali fino al suo superamento. La sua non un’attesa passiva, bensì una
speranza attiva. Esercitando, ancora una volta, un pensiero critico, pensando, per
l’ultima volta, a una nuova modalità relazionale con l’altro. Per un esistenzialismo
post-marxista.
71
Ibid., p. 53 (nostra traduzione).
72
Ibid., p. 52 (nostra traduzione).
629 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 629-645
ISSN: 1825-5167
PAOLO SLONGO
EHESS - Paris
Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d’études sur les réflexivités – Fonds Yan Thomas (LIER-
FYT)
paolo.slongo@tiscali.it
ABSTRACT
This paper will examine the Agambenian thesis of ‘naked life’ in relation to sovereign power. In
particular, the article aims to compare the central thesis of Agamben’s “Homo sacer” project with
the notions of Biopolitics and Biopower proposed by Michel Foucault. In “Homo sacer” (the
project and the book of Agamben) the exclusion/inclusion of bare life in politics represents, ac-
cording to Agamben, a “correction” of Foucault. However, its development goes in the direction
of an Ontology.
KEYWORDS
Agamben, Foucault, Bare Life, Homo Sacer, Biopolitics, Sovereign Power.
Una singolare coincidenza ha fatto sì che nello stesso anno 2015 fossero pubbli-
cati l’ultimo volume della serie dei Corsi di Michel Foucault al Collège de France
(Théories et institutions pénales. Cours au Collège de France. 1971-19721), e Stasis.
La guerra civile come paradigma politico. Homo sacer, II, 2, il libro che conclude
l’opera filosofica maggiore di Giorgio Agamben. Con L'uso dei corpi, uscito nel
2014, Giorgio Agamben aveva in realtà già concluso il ventennale progetto «Homo
sacer»2, e con Stasis aggiunge a quell’opera i due seminari sulla guerra civile tenuti a
Princeton nel 2001. Ora che i nove libri che lo compongono sono stati raccolti in
un unico volume risulta visibile nel modo più chiaro la coerenza interna dell’intera
1
M. Foucault, Théories et instituions pénales. Cours au Collège de France. 1971-1972. Édition
établie sous la direction de F. Ewald et A. Fontana par B. Harcourt, Gallimard/Seuil, Paris 2015; trad.
it. Teorie e istituzioni penali. Corso al Collège de France [1971-1972], a cura di D. Borca e P. A.
Rovatti, Feltrinelli, Milano 2019).
2
G. Agamben, L’uso dei corpi. Homo sacer, IV,2, Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2014, p. 9.
630 PAOLO SLONGO
sequenza della sua opera monumentale3. Agamben apre l’ultimo libro del progetto
avvertendo il lettore con le parole di Giacometti (citate senza virgolette): questo libro
non è una conclusione o un nuovo inizio, ma il punto in cui il filosofo, tirando le
somme di una ricerca che lo ha occupato per due decenni, decide di abbandonarla,
perché, eventualmente, altri la continuino4. Quel progetto aveva avuto inizio nel
1995 con il libro omonimo5, che ha goduto di una straordinaria fortuna in Italia e
all’estero. Continua negli anni successivi con diversi volumi6 che riprendono o che
comunque si dichiarano in linea di continuità con l’indagine sulla «nuda vita» e, con
l’uscita di Altissima povertà, L’uso dei corpi e Stasis. La guerra civile come para-
digma politico7, è arrivato alla fine con la svolta che Agamben a un certo punto ha
impresso al suo progetto filosofico. Se infatti nei primi volumi l’accento cadeva sulla
«nuda vita», il suo rapporto con la politica, con la legge, o con l’oikonomia del gov-
erno moderno ne Il Regno e la Gloria8, nei volumi più recenti l’attenzione di Agam-
ben si rivolge sempre di più alla «costruzione della vita» in quanto forma etica, ciò
per cui l’uomo si sforza di sottrarre la propria vita a ogni governamentalità. Di qui
l’importanza accordata via via alle tradizioni monastiche, e poi ai due concetti di
corpo e di uso in rapporto alla forma di vita, la nozione che sta al centro di Altissima
povertà. L’uso dei corpi conclude la parte propriamente propositiva del progetto
Homo sacer e deve presentare una proposta ontologica alternativa, definendo col
3
G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Edizione integrale. 1995-2015, Quodlibet, Macerata 2018: I Sezione
(Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita), II Sezione (II, 1. Iustitium. Stato di eccezione; II,2. Stasis. La guerra
civile come paradigma politico; II, 3. Horkos. Il sacramento del linguaggio; II, 4. Oikonomia. Il Re-
gno e la Gloria; II, 5. Opus Dei. Archeologia dell’ufficio), III Sezione (Auschwitz. L’archivio e il
testimone), IV Sezione (IV, 1. Altissima povertà; IV, 2. L’uso dei corpi). Un intero capitolo qui, la
Nota sulla guerra, il gioco e il nemico (pp. 296-310), è stato aggiunto a Stasis, così come la pagina
finale de L’uso dei corpi (p. 1279), che chiude l’intera opera istituendo un legame interno, articolato
sulla coppia concettuale auctoritas e potestas, con il terzo libro. Il volume è arricchito da una biblio-
grafia completa rivista da Diego Ianiro (pp. 1281-1341).
4
L’uso dei corpi, cit., p. 9.
5
G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. I, Einaudi, Torino 1995 (d’ora in
poi HS I, con il numero della pagina).
6
Quel che resta di Auschwitz (Homo sacer III), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1998; Stato di ecce-
zione. Homo sacer II,1, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2003; Il Regno e la Gloria. Homo sacer II,2,
Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2007; Il sacramento del linguaggio. Homo sacer II,3, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2008,
e i più recenti Opus dei. Homo sacer II,5, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2012.
7
G. Agamben, Altissima povertà. Homo sacer IV,1, Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2011; Stasis. La guerra
civile come paradigma politico. Homo sacer, II, 2, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2015 (due seminari
tenuti nel 2001 a Princeton).
8
B. Karsenti, Di una genealogia incerta: l’economia e la politica, in Id., Da una filosofia all’altra.
Le scienze sociali e la politica dei moderni (2013), a cura di S. Ferrando, Orthotes, Napoli-Salerno
2017, pp. 43-64. Su questo, ci permettiamo di rinviare anche al nostro Il paradigma dell'«oikonomia»,
in «Filosofia politica», 3, 2009, pp. 477-487.
631 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
sintagma ormai celebre forma-di-vita un modo dell’essere che si sottrae al gesto sov-
rano, quindi alle relative distinzioni fra zoe e bios, appunto perché la vita è in esso
inscindibile dalla sua forma, dunque tout court impossibile da separare e catturare9.
Fin dall’inizio del libro che inaugurava il progetto Homo sacer Agamben, come
si leggeva fin dal sottotitolo del volume (Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita), riprende
il pensiero di un rapporto tra vita e potere che era stato avviato da Foucault nelle
sue ricerche sulla biopolitica10. L’ipotesi di un certo rapporto tra il potere e la vita
(un bio-potere), formulata da Foucault ne La volontà di sapere e nei Corsi al
Collège de France dal 1976 al 1979, presuppone un nuovo approccio al problema
nel momento stesso in cui identifica un modo specifico di esercizio del potere a
partire dal momento in cui la vita entra a far parte delle sue attenzioni11, ed è da
questo presa in carico nelle pratiche che, a partire dal XVIII secolo, investono
specificamente la vita, vale a dire i corpi degli individui che diventano l’oggetto di
una tecnologia governamentale, la cui cifra specifica è l’incardinarsi al governo come
«condotta delle condotte». Così facendo, Foucault si collocava in continuità con le
sue analisi sulle discipline. E sottolineava come, a partire dalla seconda metà del
XVIII secolo, la vita della specie umana diventa la posta in gioco delle strategie
politiche che segnano la «soglia di modernità biologica» di una società12. Si vedono
apparire delle tecniche di potere, dei meccanismi regolatori o assicuratori, che in-
quadrano la vita dei corpi-specie e controllano i processi biologici che concernono
le popolazioni. Si tratta di ciò che Foucault chiama la biopolitica13 nell’ultimo capi-
tolo della Volonté de savoir. Cercherò di leggere in Homo sacer un certo «uso» di
questa categoria che permette di pensare il carattere di «completamento» che Agam-
ben intende operare della nozione foucaultiana di potere produttivo attraverso il
concetto di esclusione, o di inclusione escludente – «un’eccezione in cui ciò che è
catturato è, insieme, escluso»14 – centrale in Homo sacer.
9
Su questo si veda V. Bonacci, Forma-di-vita e uso in «Homo sacer», in Giorgio Agamben. On-
tologia e politica, a cura di V. Bonacci, Quodlibet, Macerata 2019, pp. 481-511.
10
Su questo, ci permettiamo di rinviare al nostro Tra potere pastorale e teologia economica, in
«Filosofia politica», 3, 2013, 431-446. Cfr. S. Chignola, Regola, Legge, Forma-di-vita. Attorno ad
Agamben: un seminario, in Id., Da dentro. Biopolitica, bioeconomia, Italian Theory, DeriveApprodi,
Roma 2018, pp. 154-172.
11
Cfr. B. Karsenti, La politica del «fuori». Una lettura dei corsi di Foucault al Collège de France
(1977-1979), in S. Chignola, a cura di, Governare la vita. Un seminario sui Corsi di Michel Foucault
(1977-1979), Ombre corte, Verona 2006, pp. 71-90.
12
M. Foucault, La Volontà di sapere (1976), Feltrinelli, Milano 1978, p. 127.
13
Si vedano i saggi raccolti in S. Chignola, a cura di, Governare la vita, cit.; e Id., Foucault oltre
Foucault. Una politica della filosofia, DeriveApprodi, Roma 2014.
14
HS I,101. In generale, su Agamben e la filosofia politica, si veda Th. Zartaloudis, Giorgio Agam-
ben. Power, Law and the Uses of Criticism, Routledge, London-New York 2010; M. Calarco e S.
DeCaroli, Giorgio Agamben. Sovereignty and Life, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2007; A.G.
Hervas, Politica y mesianismo: Giorgio Agamben, Biblioteca nueva, Madrid 2005; D. Loick, a cura
632 PAOLO SLONGO
«Protagonista di questo libro è la nuda vita, la ‘vita naturale’, cioè la vita uccidibile
e insacrificabile dell’homo sacer», scriveva Agamben nell’Introduzione a Homo sa-
cer I15. Al centro del progetto avviato nel libro era infatti la struttura originaria del
potere come relazione specifica alla vita, una «relazione di eccezione». Agamben
partiva da Schmitt: sovrano è colui che decide sullo stato di eccezione. La sovranità
non si rivolge, però, ai soggetti di diritto, ma in modo più profondo e meno visibile
a una «nuda vita», che è catturata a partire dalle forme di vita alle quali questa ordi-
nariamente si associa. Sovrano, qui, non è tuttavia chi, sospendendo la normalità
delle procedure del diritto, decide sullo stato di eccezione, com’era nella teologia
politica di Schmitt, ma l’eccezione stessa in cui viene riassorbita l’eccedenza stessa
del sovrano e in cui si disvela la topologia specifica del potere sovrano e del suo
rovescio: l’«essere fuori» e «tuttavia appartenere». La vita si trova così esposta alla
violenza e alla potenza di morte del potere sovrano. Essa è oggetto di una decisione
che la qualifica e ne determina il valore16. La vita, presa in questa logica dell’«ec-
cezione», alimenta il funzionamento del potere che si istituisce e si mantiene pro-
ducendo il «corpo biopolitico» sul quale si esercita. In Foucault, l’ipotesi del bi-
opotere implicava una ridefinizione del potere, ma soprattutto un modo di coglierlo
per individuarne gli effetti là dove esso non si dà come tale. Essa ha dunque un
di, Der Nomos der Moderne: Die politische Philosophie Giorgio Agambens, Nomos Verlagsgesell-
schaft, Baden-Baden 2011.
15
HS I, 11. Lars Östman afferma che la nuda vita è una «traduzione» o una «versione secolarizzata»
dell’homo sacer di Sesto Pompeo Festo (L. Östman, Agamben. Naked Life and Nudity, in «Danish
Yearbook of Philosophy» 45, 2009, p. 73).
16
Oggi, in una critica serrata del celebre saggio di Carl Schmitt, Il concetto di politico (1932), ov-
vero dell’opposizione «classica» amico/nemico, Agamben, nel capitolo Nota sulla guerra, il gioco e il
nemico aggiunto a Stasis nell’edizione integrale di Homo sacer, scrive che in Schmitt «il carattere
‘politico’ della vita umana deriva dalla possibilità della guerra e l’inimicizia non ha altro contenuto
che questa possibilità» (Homo sacer. Edizione integrale, cit., p. 298). Mostrando che essa si basa su
una relazione circolare fra inimicizia e guerra, ma soprattutto svelando come quella circolarità effi-
ciente, che afferma la «serietà» del politico e pretende di assegnare pari dignità ai due contendenti,
presupponga a sua volta e dissimuli l’esclusione dell’aspetto agonale del conflitto, cioè di quell’antico
combattimento regolato e fittizio nel quale Vernant ha riconosciuto il modello originario della guerra
(J.-P. Vernant, Introduction a Id., sous la direction de, Problèmes de la guerre en Grèce ancienne,
Éditions de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris 1985², pp. 9-30). Definendo il
politico attraverso la possibilità di provocare la morte fisica, dice Agamben, Schmitt non faceva che
riprendere una tradizione che, per lui, riconduceva direttamente a Hobbes e al mutual fear che deriva
dal fatto che tutti gli uomini «sono uguali» quanto alla possibilità di uccidere (T. Hobbes, De Cive.
Elementi filosofici sul cittadino, I, 3, a cura di T. Magri, Editori Riuniti, Roma 2018², p. 83). «Le mie
ricerche hanno però mostrato – dice Agamben in questa integrazione recente – che la produzione di
una vita uccidibile – una vita ‘sacra’ - costituisce fin dall’inizio la soglia dell’edificio giuridico-politico
dell’Occidente. La strategia di Schmitt si differenzia, in questa prospettiva, solo per la volontà di su-
bordinare questo fatto primario a un concetto di inimicizia, che pure riceve da quello il suo contenuto
essenziale.» (G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Edizione integrale, cit., p. 301)
633 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
17
M. Foucault, La Volontà di sapere, cit., p. 122 e Id., Sicurezza, territorio, popolazione. Corso al
Collège de France (1977-1978), ed. stabilita sotto la direzione di F. Ewald e A. Fontana da M. Senel-
lart, Feltrinelli, Milano 2005, p. 88.
18
Sulla storia del moderno concetto di sovranità si veda G. Duso, a cura di, Il Potere. Per la storia
della filosofia politica moderna, Carocci, Roma 1999; e Id., a cura di, Il contratto sociale nella filosofia
politica moderna, il Mulino, Bologna 1987.
19
HS I, 16.
20
«È evidente quanto si sia lontani dalla matrice foucaultiana del discorso sul biopotere. Non
soltanto Agamben parla di biopolitica per portare alla luce il nucleo rimosso del diritto, l’indetermi-
narsi di bios e zoê nell’operatività ordinaria della sovranità, ma la stessa nozione di ‘soglia biologica
della modernità’, alla quale Foucault riferisce lo specifico del biopotere, viene di fatto fatta sfumare»
(S. Chignola, Da dentro, cit., p. 41). Su Foucault e Agamben si vedano C. Mc Quillan, Philosophical
Archeology in Kant, Foucault and Agamben, in «Parrhesia», 10, 2010, pp. 39-49; Id., Agamben’s
Fictions, in «Philosophical Compass», 6/7, 2012, pp. 376-387; K. Genel, The Question of Biopower:
Foucault and Agamben, «Rethinking Marxism», 18, 1, 2006, pp. 43-62; M. Okajangas, Impossible
Dialogue of Biopower, in «Foucault Studies», 2, 2005, pp. 5-28.
634 PAOLO SLONGO
l’esito di questo «destino» inscritto nella sua stessa origine e nella crisi che vi è con-
nessa21, che dunque è ciò che la filosofia ha da pensare.
Il nuovo contenuto dato alla nozione foucaultiana di biopotere attraverso questo
spostamento concettuale, questa «correzione» e questa estensione semantica,
richiede però una trasformazione di ciò che si intende per politica. Se si ammette,
con Foucault, che la vita è la posta in gioco privilegiata del potere, e che «l’uomo
moderno è un animale nella cui politica è in questione la sua vita di essere vivente» , 22
Agamben ne deduce che noi siamo anche «dei cittadini nel cui corpo naturale è in
questione la loro stessa politica» . Si tratta di qualcosa che Foucault non era mai
23
definire la specificità della politica, o della bio-politica moderna, a partire dal con-
21
I meccanismi moderni del potere, democratici o totalitari che siano, saranno pensabili come
nuovi legami stabiliti tra vita – che si tratta di eccepire (ex-cipere) e, insieme, di includere nella città –
, e potere, quando l’ordine politico entra in crisi. Vale a dire quando la struttura nascosta del potere
diviene lo spazio politico. La crisi che permette di concepire la modernità politica è resa possibile da
un doppio processo di «politicizzazione della vita» che consiste nell’iscrizione crescente della vita
nell’ordine politico, e in tal modo nella sua esposizione sempre più radicale al potere. Sulla crisi della
modernità politica si veda R. Koselleck, ‘Krise’, in Geschichtiche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexi-
kon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, a cura di O. Brunner, W. Conze, R. Koselleck,
vol. 3, Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 617-50 (trad. it. Crisi. Per un lessico della modernità, ombre
corte, Verona 2012).
22
Foucault, La Volontà di sapere, cit., p. 127.
23
HS I, 210.
24
HS I, 6.
25
HS I, 12.
635 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
cetto di «nuda vita» su cui cade l’accento e che identifica non tanto con la vita natu-
rale, la vita biologica, quindi con la zoê, in opposizione a bios , quanto con un resto,
26
ciò che resta di uno spogliamento che il potere produce scindendo zoê e bios. Pro-
prio questa specificità non sarebbe stata colta da Foucault. Prosegue Agamben: «ma,
in ogni caso, l’ingresso della zoê nella sfera della polis, la politicizzazione della nuda
vita come tale costituisce l’evento decisivo della modernità, che segna una trasforma-
zione radicale delle categorie politico-filosofiche del pensiero classico. È probabile,
anzi, che, se la politica sembra oggi attraversare una durevole eclisse, ciò è precis-
amente perché essa ha omesso di misurarsi con questo evento fondativo della mo-
dernità» . Abbiamo dunque a che fare con due differenti modalità di comprensione
27
del rapporto tra il potere e la vita proprio della modernità, con due differenti sig-
nificati della nozione di “biopotere” o meglio con una torsione consapevole di
quella categoria foucaultiana in Agamben. La difficoltà deriva dall’indeterminazione
delle nozioni di vita e di potere. Se la vita dell’essere vivente è la posta in gioco
delle analisi di Foucault, il concetto di nuda vita di Agamben ne è ad un tempo una
ripresa e una “riconsiderazione”, pur collocandosi nel solco di Foucault: una ri-
presa, precisamente poiché implica una vita presa in un rapporto col potere e con
la decisione sovrana, però più orientata in una direzione ontologica, poiché qui la
nuda vita sarebbe il fondamento dimenticato della storia della politica. Le analisi
proposte in Homo sacer costituiscono una “correzione”, così dice Agamben,
dell’ipotesi foucaultiana del biopotere, una ripresa che però è innanzitutto uno
spostamento della questione sul terreno della «sovranità». Per misurare questo
spostamento conviene richiamare la posta in gioco del concetto di biopotere in Fou-
cault. La formulazione del concetto del biopotere era in Foucault solidale con una
ridefinizione del concetto stesso di potere, che però non sarà condotta a termine
lungo questa via, ma che porterà Foucault a porre negli ultimi corsi ‘greci’ al Collège
de France la problematizzazione etica della soggettività . 28
26
Per una critica serrata delle nozioni di zoê e bios in Agamben, si veda J. Derrida, Séminaire. La
bête et le souverain. Volume I (2001-2002), Galilée, Paris 2008, pp. 419-443. Cfr. S. Colatrella, Noth-
ing Exceptional: Against Agamben, in «Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies», 9, 1, 2011, pp.
96-125.
27
HS I, 6-7.
28
Si veda J. Revel, Passeggiate, piccoli excursus e regimi di storicità, in La forza del vero. Un
seminario sui Corsi di Michel Foucault al Collège de France (1981-1984), a cura di P. Cesaroni e S.
Chignola, Ombre corte, Verona 2013, pp. 161-179; P. Cesaroni, Verità e vita. La filosofia in Il corag-
gio della verità, ivi, pp. 132-160. Cfr. S. Ferrando, Michel Foucault: la politica presa a rovescio. La
pratica antica della verità nei Corsi al Collège de France, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2012, pp.177-190.
636 PAOLO SLONGO
II
L’analisi che conduce alla ridefinizione del potere è portata avanti, in Foucault,
sempre su due piani tra loro articolati, quello del modo di esercizio del potere e
quello del modo di coglierlo, poiché ciò che impedisce di comprendere il potere
nel gioco complesso delle sue procedure è proprio il fatto che esso si presenta per
lo più nel codice del diritto e della sovranità: cogliere la trasformazione del modo
di esercizio del potere, vuol dire leggerlo con un approccio nuovo. In questo senso,
l’ipotesi del biopotere implica in Foucault una critica dei modi tradizionali di ap-
proccio del potere come potere sovrano. Quella del biopotere è una delle compo-
nenti fondamentali della modernità, una soglia attraversata da ogni società partico-
lare proprio in riferimento al momento in cui la “specie” in quanto tale diventa
l’obiettivo di strategie politiche dedicate e dove la vita è presa in carico direttamente
dal potere, e non tanto succede alla sovranità , ma piuttosto si compone con questa
29
del sovrano è ormai relativo. Questo diritto asimmetrico che si esercitava come
diritto dello scettro, non è più la forma principale del potere, ma uno strumento tra
gli altri. Esso è ordinato a un potere di gestione della vita, da intendersi non più
come mera forza-lavoro , una assiomatica ancora necessaria al capitalismo, ma
31
come elemento di una storia nella quale si acquisisce la possibilità tecnica e scien-
tifica di trasformare la vita: «Un potere che ha il compito di occuparsi della vita avrà
bisogno di meccanismi continui, regolatori e correttivi. [,,,] Una società normal-
izzatrice è l’effetto storico di una tecnologia di potere centrata sulla vita» . Il modello
32
istituzionale e il modello biopolitico del potere. Ciò che essa ha dovuto registrare
fra i suoi probabili risultati è precisamente che le due analisi non possono essere
separate e che l’implicazione della nuda vita nella sfera politica costituisce il nucleo
originario – anche se occulto – del potere sovrano.» . Si tratta di tenere insieme le
34
dalla distinzione asimmetrica tra la vita dell’essere vivente e il modo di vita politico.
L’ingresso nella sfera politica avviene per mezzo di un’esclusione della vita naturale,
o zoê, che resta confinata – presso i Greci - nella sfera domestica dell’oikos. Il fine
dell’uomo, e soprattutto della comunità, in Aristotele non è il semplice fatto di
vivere ma la vita politicamente qualificata, il bios. Foucault aveva ripreso questa idea
scrivendo che l’uomo era rimasto per dei millenni «un animal vivant et, de plus,
capable d’une existence politique.» Aggiungendo, ed ecco la trasformazione
prodotta dal biopotere, che l’uomo è oggi «un animal dans la politique duquel sa
vie d’être vivant est en question». Agamben non vede in questa soglia il segno di
una trasformazione del modo di esercizio del potere. Secondo lui, infatti, la vita
naturale, che diventa la posta in gioco delle tecniche specifiche che Foucault mette
in evidenza per mezzo del biopotere, è in realtà il fondamento della sfera politica
fin dalla sua origine sotto forma di «nuda vita» e nella modalità particolare dell’ec-
cezione. La vita naturale è esclusa dalla sfera politica, che si costituisce così at-
traverso la sua stessa esclusione o la sua trasformazione in vita politica. Questa esclu-
sione era ciò che Agamben chiamava la «politicizzazione» della vita naturale . 36
Il sintagma «nuda vita» era presentato così ne La comunità che viene: «Un es-
37
sere che fosse radicalmente privo di ogni identità rappresentabile sarebbe per lo
34
HS I, p. 9.
35
T. Frost, Agamben’s Sovereign Legalization of Foucault, in «Oxford Legal Studies», 30, 3, 2010,
pp. 545-577.
36
«La stasis non proviene dall’oikos, non è una ‘guerra in famiglia’, ma è parte di un dispositivo
che funziona in modo simile allo stato di eccezione. Come, nello stato di eccezione, la zoe, la vita
naturale, è inclusa nell’ordine giuridico-politico attraverso la sua esclusione, in modo analogo attra-
verso la stasis l’oikos è politicizzato e incluso nella polis.» (G. Agamben, Stasis. La guerra civile come
paradigma politico, cit., p. 30). Questo è vero in Grecia, anche se, come leggiamo in Stasis: «Nel corso
della storia politica successiva dell’Occidente, la tendenza a depoliticizzare la città trasformandola in
una casa o in una famiglia, retta da rapporti di sangue e da operazioni meramente economiche, si
alternerà invece a fasi simmetricamente opposte, in cui tutto l’impolitico deve essere mobilitato e
politicizzato.» (ivi, p. 31)
37
La “nudità” della vita non viene però mai definita, ma, come ha notato Andrew Norris, la nuda
vita viene di norma presentata attraverso esempi: in Homo sacer, per esempio, questi erano l’experi-
mental life del biologo Wilson, Karen Quinlan, in attesa del prelievo di organi, le persone in oltre-
coma, i rifiugiati, il Muselmann. Essa è nondimeno definita come il «protagonista» di Homo sacer
(come libro e come progetto), la cui implicazione nella sfera politica, nella forma dell’esclusione in-
clusiva, costituisce il nucleo originario – seppur celato – del potere sovrano (A. Norris, The Exem-
plary Exception: Philosophical and Political Decisions in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, in Poli-
tics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, a cura di A. Norris, Duke
638 PAOLO SLONGO
sacer. «La vita nutritiva, ribadirà Agamben ne L’uso dei corpi, diventa così ciò che
deve essere escluso dalla città – e, insieme, incluso in essa – come il semplice vivere
dal vivere politicamente qualificato.» . L’esclusione della “vita naturale” che rende
39
possibile la vita politica era ridefinita da Agamben come ex-ceptio, eccezione, nel
senso etimologico, «presa fuori» (ex-capere) e non semplicemente esclusa . 40
L’operazione che fonda la sfera politica non è dunque una semplice trasformazione
della vita naturale, ma la costituzione di una nuda vita – vale a dire una vita che non
è solo “naturale” ma presa in un rapporto col potere e mantenuta sotto la sua po-
tenza. I due termini, potere sovrano e nuda vita, emergono in questa relazione di
eccezione e secondo la sua logica. La nuda vita è il punto di ancoraggio del potere;
essa rende possibile l’esercizio del potere. È proprio perché la vita è “originari-
amente” a fondamento della sfera politica che le tecnologie politiche descritte da
Foucault possono agire su di essa. Agamben guardava la sovranità dall’angolo vis-
uale della relazione di eccezione, dunque. La vita non è semplicemente esclusa ma
catturata da questa stessa esclusione: «Chiamiamo relazione di eccezione questa
forma estrema della relazione che include qualcosa unicamente attraverso la sua
esclusione» . Ne L’uso dei corpi Agamben chiamerà ancora questa «la logica
41
dell’eccezione» . Questa relazione mette l’accento sul carattere potenziale del rap-
42
porto del potere con la vita. La potenza del sovrano è dunque nella “presa” che si
esercita nell’atto stesso di escludere. Lo schema del “bando” richiamato da Agam-
ben alla fine della seconda parte del primo libro di Homo sacer, esprimeva questa
potenza: la nuda vita è ciò che è bandito nel duplice senso di colui che è messo al
bando, escluso dalla comunità, ma che in questo modo è messo sotto il segno del
University Press, Durham & London 2005, p. 270). Si veda C. Salzani, Nudità: Agamben e la vita, in
Giorgio Agamben. Ontologia e politica, cit., pp. 461-479.
38
G. Agamben, La comunità che viene, Einaudi, Torino 1990, p. 59. Il sintagma “nuda vita” com-
pare una prima volta già nel 1982 in Il linguaggio e la morte, seppure proprio in quel caso esso sia
descritto come vita naturale in contraddizione con quanto lo stesso Agamben chiarirà negli anni suc-
cessivi: «Anche la sacralizzazione della vita deriva, infatti, dal sacrificio: essa non fa, da questo punto
di vista, che abbandonare la nuda vita naturale alla propria violenza e alla propria indicibilità, per
fondare poi su queste ogni regolamentazione culturale e ogni linguaggio» (G. Agamben, Il linguaggio
e la morte. Un seminario sul luogo della negatività, Einaudi, Torino 1982, p. 133).
39
G. Agamben, L’uso dei corpi, cit., p. 173.
40
HS I, 22.
41
HS I, 22.
42
L’uso dei corpi, p. 190.
639 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
sovrano. La vita è l’oggetto fondamentale del potere sovrano, e cioè il vero soggetto
sovrano. Essa non è un dato, ma la «prestazione originaria» del potere sovrano:
«Sacra, cioè uccidibile e insacrificabile, è originariamente la vita nel bando sovrano
e la produzione della nuda vita è, in questo senso, la prestazione originaria della
sovranità. La sacertà della vita, che si vorrebbe oggi far valere contro il potere sov-
rano come uno diritto umano in ogni senso fondamentale, esprime, invece, in
origine proprio la soggezione della vita a un potere di morte, la sua irreparabile
esposizione nella relazione di abbandono» . Ricostruendone la genealogia Agam-
43
ben intendeva rovesciare il «dogma della sacralità della vita» di cui parlava Benjamin
in Per la critica della violenza, il saggio del 1921 in cui appare per la prima volta il
lemma bloßes Leben , la vita pura e semplice, a proposito del portatore del nesso
44
tra violenza e diritto . Lungi dall’essere oggetto di una qualsiasi protezione per il
45
suo carattere sacro, la «nuda vita» è produzione del potere indicizzata al suo stesso
esercizio.
Non in Homo sacer I, ma nel suo seguito, Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L’ar-
chivio e il testimone , Agamben si confronta con l’analisi foucaultiana del razzismo.
46
Nella prospettiva della biopolitica quel potere, ridefinito come rapporto originario
della «sovranità» e della «vita», bio-potere dunque, è il paradigma che permette di
pensare il nazismo. Ora, il nazismo, una volta analizzato in termini biopolitici, con-
duce a un paradosso che era indicato da Foucault nel suo corso Il faut défendre la
société, quello cioè della contraddizione tra la funzione di intensificazione della vita
per mezzo del potere e i mezzi che sono messi in opera, l’esercizio dell’antico po-
tere di uccidere, e implica quindi «l’accavallarsi diacronico dei dispositivi di po-
tere» . Infatti, se la funzione del nuovo potere è essenzialmente la gestione e la
47
moltiplicazione della vita, resta operante l’esercizio della funzione di uccidere nel
cuore di questo potere. Ciò che è da pensare è il modo in cui il nuovo potere si lega
43
HS I, 93, corsivo nostro.
44
Questo concetto appare in una serie di scritti composti da Benjamin negli anni attorno al 1920,
ed è uno dei cardini di Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Per la critica della violenza, 1921), il saggio che costi-
tuisce uno dei principali riferimenti di Agamben. Nuda significa dunque «bloß», che in tedesco può
significare ‘nudo’, ma nel senso di ‘nient’altro che’, ‘mero’. Si veda W. Benjamin, Per la critica della
violenza (1921), in Id., Il concetto di critica nel Romanticismo tedesco. Scritti 1919-1922, Opere di
Walter Benjamin II, a cura di G. Agamben, Einaudi, Torino 1982, pp. 133-156. Si veda Th.
Zartaloudis, Violence Without Law? On Pure Violence as a Destituent Power, in B. Moran and C.
Salzani (ed.), Toward the Critique of Violence: Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, Blooms-
bury, London 2015, spec. pp. 174-178.
45
HS I,75.
46
Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone in G. Agamben, Homo sacer. Edizione integrale, cit., III
Sezione.
47
«È questa polifonia genealogica o questo accavallarsi diacronico dei dispositivi che permette a
Foucault di sfuggire a una periodizzazione storica in cui gli assemblaggi normativi si sostituirebbero
gli uni agli altri sulla medesima scena» (B. Karsenti, Governare la società, in Id., Da una filosofia
all’altra, cit., p. 172).
640 PAOLO SLONGO
frammentazione del campo del biologico facendo apparire le razze, il che permette
di «introdurre uno squilibrio tra i gruppi, gli uni rispetto agli altri, all’interno di una
popolazione» . In secondo luogo, il razzismo stabilisce una relazione che non è –
49
iscono il pericolo biologico. Il razzismo viene inteso così da Foucault – in una soci-
età di normalizzazione – come «la condizione d’accettabilità della messa a morte».
Esso è la condizione attraverso cui il nuovo potere deve passare per esercitare il
vecchio diritto sovrano di uccidere. Un potere che ha diritto di vita e di morte, se
vuole funzionare con gli strumenti della normalizzazione «occorre che passi at-
traverso il razzismo» . Ne La volontà di sapere Foucault ritorna sul genocidio come
51
«sogno dei poteri moderni» , e lo spiega per mezzo di quel potere che si colloca e
52
si esercita a livello della vita e non «per una riattivazione del vecchio diritto di uc-
cidere». Quest’ultima inflessione mostra ulteriormente la difficoltà di stabilire un
nesso tra la «sovranità» e quel nuovo «sovra-potere» che emerge nelle sue ricerche
sulla biopolitica. Per Agamben, invece, il nazismo è specificamente analizzato come
rapporto diretto alla nuda vita. Per il fatto che investe sempre più direttamente la
vita, che diviene immediatamente politica, il totalitarismo è una risposta alla crisi
dello spazio politico, e all’assenza di regolazione del sistema. Un processo continuo
e senza resto porta dalla decadenza dei diritti alla produzione di una nuda vita e poi
al suo sterminio. Lo sterminio deve essere dunque compreso nell’ordine giuridico-
politico dell’uccisione di una nuda vita e non nel quadro della violenza religiosa di
un olocausto : da una parte, il potere diviene decisione immediata sulla vita, vale a
53
dire decisione sul suo valore o il suo non valore, per questo il nazismo opera la
produzione di un popolo a partire dalla discriminazione e dall’esclusione di una
popolazione, o di una certa vita; dall’altra parte il dato biologico diventa ora scopo
politico.
48
M. Foucault, “Bisogna difendere la società”. Corso al Collège de France del 1976/77,. , cit., p.
220.
49
Ibidem.
50
Ibidem, p. 221.
51
Ibidem, pp. 221-222.
52
M. Foucault, La Volontà di sapere, cit., p. 121. Su questo punto decisivo si vedano le pagine
illuminanti di J.-C. Milner, Les penchants criminels de l’Europe démocatique, Verdier, Paris 2003,
in particolare pp. 42-46.
53
HS I, 127.
641 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
III
quella del 3 gennaio 1973, che veniamo a scoprire come Foucault evochi improv-
visamente pur senza nominarla, in un breve passaggio, proprio quella figura arcaica
dell’homo sacer di cui parlerà Agamben, e precisamente nel contesto di una messa
in discussione della nozione di esclusione in rapporto alle tattiche del potere. Fou-
cault sta parlando delle penalità, dell’esclusione, del riscatto, della marchiatura e
della reclusione, e dei modi concreti e determinati di dare la morte nel diritto an-
tico, e dice: «nel quadro delle procedure con cui il potere reagisce a qualcosa che
lo contesta, ci sono effettivamente diversi modi di morire. In una tattica di esclu-
sione come quella della Grecia arcaica, l’esecuzione pura e semplice, la morte
diretta, in fondo era rara e riservata a colpe molto particolari. Vi erano infatti pro-
cedure speciali che consistevano non nel mettere a morte – dice –, ma semmai
nell’esporre qualcuno alla morte, spingendolo fuori dal territorio, abbandonandolo
senza beni, lasciandolo esposto alla reazione pubblica, ponendolo per così dire
fuori dalla legge in modo che non avesse importanza chi lo uccidesse, sebbene
nessuno venisse effettivamente designato per compiere l’esecuzione» . Come si 55
vede qui, anche Foucault conosceva la figura dell’homo sacer nel diritto arcaico,
soprattutto grazie agli studi di Louis Gernet , e l’aveva situata esattamente in questo
56
M. Foucault, La société punitive. Cours au Collège de France (1972-1973), édition établie sous
54
la direction de F. Ewald et A. Fontana par B. E. Harcourt, EHESS, Gallimard/Seuil, Paris 2013; trad.
it. La società punitiva. Corso al Collège de France (1972-73), a cura di D. Borca e P. A. Rovatti,
Feltrinelli, Milano 2016, p. 227.
55
M. Foucault, La società punitiva, cit., p. 22. In realtà qui il testo francese dice: «de manière que
n’importe qui pouvait le tuer» (La société punitive, cit., p. 11). Dove il riferimento all’homo sacer
appare piuttosto evidente.
56
Nei seminari dei primi anni Settanta Foucault ricorre spesso alle analisi sul «pre-diritto» di Louis
Gernet. L’homo sacer è equiparato da Gernet al pharmakos nella sua Anthropologie de la Grèce
antique: «la pena di morte funziona come mezzo di eliminazione di una macchia […]. In seguito,
l’espulsione violenta, l’espulsione nella morte del membro indegno e maledetto si accompagna a
un’idea di devotio. Infatti, da una parte la messa a morte appare come un atto pio; basta ricordare
quelle disposizioni del diritto antico in cui è specificato che l’uccisione del fuorilegge non fa torto alla
purezza, o quella prescrizione del diritto germanico che fa di una simile uccisione un dovere […]
dall’altra, lo stesso giustiziato adempie, in simili casi, a una vera e propria funzione religiosa; funzione
che non è senza analogia con quella dei re sacerdoti che vengono del pari giustiziati, e che si manifesta
642 PAOLO SLONGO
ben, sarebbe rimasto in Foucault «singolarmente in ombra», «un punto cieco nel
suo campo visivo» . In questo passo della lezione – cioè nell’analisi del modo in cui
58
nella designazione del criminale come homo sacer a Roma, come pharmakos in Grecia» (L. Gernet,
Diritto e prediritto, in Id., Antropologia della Grecia antica (1968), prefazione di J. P. Vernant, a cura
di R. Di Donato, Mondadori, Milano 1983, p. 270 sgg.) Foucault ne parla qui nell’ambito dell’analisi
di quelle che chiama «le sottili tattiche della sanzione» (La società punitiva, cit., p. 18). Su questo
passo di Gernet si vedano le osservazioni di René Girard, La violenza e il sacro (1972), Adelphi,
Milano 1980, pp. 388-389. Più di un interprete ha rilevato una singolare assonanza tra la tesi di Homo
sacer e l’ipotesi della violenza fondatrice sostenuta da Girard (La Violenza e il sacro esce nel 1972,
l’anno del corso di Foucault sulla Società punitiva). Si veda F. Depoortere, Reading Giorgio Agam-
ben’s Homo Sacer with René Girard, in «Philosopy Today», 56, n. 2, 2012, pp. 108-117.
57
HS I, 9.
58
HS I, 8-9.
59
In Che cos’è un dispositivo? Agamben espone il piano ontologico in cui egli – a differenza di
Foucault - svolge il suo discorso sui dispositivi e la loro oikonomia. Generalizzando ulteriormente,
scrive Agamben, «la già amplissima classe dei dispositivi foucaldiani, chiamerò dispositivo letteral-
mente qualunque cosa abbia in qualche modo la capacità di catturare, orientare, determinare, inter-
cettare, modellare, controllare e assicurare i gesti, le condotte, le opinioni e i discorsi degli esseri
viventi» (G. Agamben, Che cos’è un dispositivo? Nottetempo, Roma 2006, pp. 21-22).
60
R. Girard, La violenza e il sacro, cit., p. 387. Vi è un’affinità originaria, secondo Girard, fra
giustizia e vendetta, violenza e diritto, in cui la legge si mantiene stabilendo una «via regia della vio-
lenza», ovvero forza capace di spezzare l’infinita spirale della vendetta, «polarizzando sulla vittima i
germi di dissenso sparsi ovunque» (ivi, p. 21). Per un interessante confronto tra la posizione di Girard
643 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
quale l’eccezione rivela la regola, fino a diventare la storia di una maschera nella
quale si rappresenta ancora e sempre «la sovranità» e, dunque, la sua «finzione orig-
inaria» . Si conferma così il carattere eccezionale di questa iscrizione della vita
61
nell’ordine del diritto che aveva mostrato Yan Thomas nel suo articolo fondamen-
tale sull’homo sacer nel diritto romano arcaico : che la vita compaia nel diritto solo
62
attraverso la possibilità della morte violenta è, per Agamben, una conferma della
63
tesi che viene svolgendo in tutto il progetto Homo sacer della analogia strutturale
fra eccezione sovrana e sacratio . Insomma, l’eccezione come struttura dell’inclu-
64
sione della vita per mezzo di un’esclusione è la struttura della sovranità stessa, che
non è allora «né un concetto esclusivamente politico, né una categoria esclusiva-
mente giuridica […]; essa è la struttura originaria in cui il diritto si riferisce alla vita e
la include in sé attraverso la propria sospensione.» . Nella nuda vita risiede allora la
65
e quella di Carl Schmitt sulla formazione del sistema giudiziario moderno, cfr. M. Cacciari, Diritto e
giustizia. Saggio sulle dimensioni teologica e mistica del moderno Politico, in «Il Centauro. Rivista di
filosofia e teoria politica», 2, 1981, pp. 58-81, qui p. 66-67.
61
«Se, nel nostro tempo, in un senso particolare ma realissimo, tutti i cittadini si presentano vir-
tualmente come homines sacri, ciò è possibile solo perché la relazione di bando costituiva fin dall’ori-
gine la struttura propria del potere sovrano» (HS I, 123). Sandro Chignola coglie qui, nella struttura
del bando come la forma del rapporto giuridico-politico originario in Agamben, lo sviluppo di un’in-
tuizione decisiva di Alain Badiou, il quale scrive: «L’État ne se fonde pas sur le lien social, mais sur
la de-liaison, qu’il interdit» (A. Badiou, L’être et l’événement, Seuil, Paris 1988, p. 125).«Per Badiou
– osserva Chignola – lo Stato non si fonda su un legame sociale che lo preceda – fosse anche soltanto
il legame paradossale, ma fondativo, dei soggetti che stringono il patto si autorizzazione per mezzo
del quale delegano a un terzo, persona fisica o assemblea, come scrive Hobbes, il potere di dare le
leggi e di farle rispettare; meccanismo istituzionale, quest’ultimo, in cui si rivela la continuità logica
tra assolutismo e democrazia e l’univocità fondamentale di una forma sovrana, e cioè irresistibile,
della decisione – ma sull’impossibilità del suo scioglimento, sul divieto di dissolverlo» (S. Chignola,
Regola, Legge, forma-di-vita. Attorno ad Agamben: un seminario, cit., p. 157).
62
Y. Thomas, Vitae necisque potestas. Le père, la cité, la mort, in Id., a cura di, Du châtiment
dans la cité, table ronde 9-11 nov. 1982, Ecole Française de Rome, Rome-Paris 1985, pp. 499-548,
qui p. 544.
63
Il sistema giudiziario razionalizza la vendetta, per Girard, cioè «riesce a suddividerla e a limitarla
come meglio crede; la manipola senza pericolo; ne fa una tecnica estremamente efficace di guarigione
e, secondariamente, di prevenzione della violenza» (La violenza e il sacro, cit., pp. 40-41). Si veda in
proposito L. Alfieri, Dal conflitto dei doppi alla trascendenza giudiziaria. Il problema giuridico e
politico in René Girard, in L. Alfieri, C.M. Bellei, D.S. Scalzo, a cura di, Figure e simboli dell’ordine
violento. Percorsi fra antropologia e filosofia politica, Giappichelli, Torino 2003, pp. 17-51 e U. Curi,
Il colore dell’inferno. La pena tra vendetta e giustizia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2019.
64
Sulla sacratio, si veda G. Agamben, Il sacramento del linguaggio. Archeologia del giuramento
(Homo sacer II, 3), Laterza, Roma-Bari 2008, in particolare pp. 40-58. Cfr. L. Gernet, Diritto e pre-
diritto, cit., pp. 270-274.
65
HS I, p. 34. Cfr. G. Agamben, La vie et le droit, in Aux origines des cultures juridiques euro-
péennes. Yan Thomas entre droit et sciences sociales, études réunies par P. Napoli, École française
de Rome, Rome 2013, pp. 249-258.
644 PAOLO SLONGO
escludente intorno a cui ruota il dispositivo bipolare della teologia politica . Questo 66
concepita lungo tutto il progetto Homo sacer come fondamento dimenticato della
storia del potere. Si tratta di una “vita” che è presentata come analoga all’essere
“puro” (on haplôs) «nella sua separazione dalle molteplici forme di vita concrete».
La biopolitica è ciò che prende per proprio oggetto questa nuda vita, “pura” in
quanto vita «altrettanto indeterminata e impenetrabile dell’essere haplôs» . La vita 68
che domina – obliato – il suo divenire, ciò che per Agamben si tratta oggi di ritrovare
e di assumere come compito . Ciò che aveva sin da Homo sacer I messo in luce,
71
definendo col sintagma ormai celebre forma-di-vita un modo dell’essere che si sot-
trae a quel gesto sovrano, quindi alle relative distinzioni fra zoê e bios, appunto
perché la vita è in esso inscindibile dalla sua forma, dunque tout court impossibile
da separare e catturare . Il significato di quella storia, o meglio «l’intreccio» che la
72
66
Sul dispositivo logico della ‘macchima bipolare’ in Agamben, si veda B. Neilson, Politics without
Action, Economy without Labour, in «Thory & Event», 2010, 13, n. 1.
67
C. Mc Quillan, Philosophical Archeology in Kant, Foucault and Agamben, cit., pp. 45-47.
68
HS I, 210-211.
69
Il problema della ‘storicità’ della vita è stato sottolineato da diversi interpreti. Cfr. N. Levi e M.
Rothberg, Auschwitz and the Remains of Theory: Towards an Ethics of the Borderland, in «Sym-
ploke», 11, 1-2, 2004, pp. 23-38; B. Neilson, Potenza Nuda? Sovereignty, Biopolitics, Capitalism, in
«Contretemps» 5, 2004, pp. 63-78.
70
La visione agambeniana di questa sorta di invalicabilità della dimensione del potere sovrano e
della sua vocazione ad imporsi alla vita in modo tendenzialmente mortifero può essere spiegata risa-
lendo all'interrogazione radicalmente critica che, fin dagli inizi della sua esperienza filosofica, Agam-
ben rivolge alla tradizione metafisica dell'Occidente. In questa interrogazione svolgerebbe un ruolo
fondamentale il confronto con Aristotele: nel pensiero di quest'ultimo, infatti, sarebbe chiaramente
riconoscibile il funzionamento dell’ «ontologia antropogenetica» che consente di porre l’uomo, in
quanto essere capace di parola, al di sopra della natura vivente priva di logos e, al tempo stesso, di
attivare un meccanismo di inclusione escludente nei confronti della stessa vita umana sottoponendola
alla supremazia di un ‘vivere bene’ qualificato come tale dalla politica (C. Crosato, Critica della sovra-
nità, cit., pp. 461 sgg.)
71
Eva Geulen sostiene che il concetto di forma-di-vita affonda le radici in una sorta di nostalgia
romantica per una perduta ‘untà’ (E. Geulen, Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung, Junius Verlag, Ham-
burg 2009², pp. 119-122).
72
Si veda A. Cavalletti, Uso e anarchia (lettura di Homo sacer, iv, 2), in Giorgio Agamben. Onto-
logia e politica, cit., pp. 531-548, qui. p. 540. Interessanti qui anche le osservazioni sul rapporto
Agamben-Foucault in merito alla cura di sé.
645 Homo sacer e la produzione della nuda vita. Agamben e la “correzione” di Foucault
costituisce, quello fra zoê e bios (ri-trovato nella sua origine in Aristotele), è ribadito
ancora una volta alla fine de L’uso dei corpi, e quindi alla fine dell’intero progetto
Homo sacer: «La celebre definizione della polis come “nata in vista del vivere [tou
zen], ma esistente in vista del vivere bene [tou eu zen]” (Pol. 1252b 28-30) ha dato
forma canonica a quell’intreccio fra vita e vita politicamente qualificata, fra zoê e
bios, che doveva restare decisivo nella storia della politica occidentale. È la struttura
di quell’intreccio che abbiamo cercato di definire in Homo sacer I.» 73
73
G. Agamben, L’uso dei corpi, cit., pp. 250-251. Ma anche in Stasis: «Questa opposizione di
«vivere» e di «vivere bene» è, però, nello stesso tempo una implicazione del primo nel secondo, della
famiglia nella città e della zoê nella vita politica. Uno degli scopi di Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e
la nuda vita era appunto quello di analizzare le ragioni e le conseguenze di questa esclusione – che è
nello stesso tempo un’inclusione – della vita naturale nella politica. Che relazioni dobbiamo supporre
fra la zoê e l’oikos da una parte e la polis e il bios politico dall’altra, se i primi devono essere inclusi
nei secondi attraverso una esclusione?» (Stasis, cit., p. 20).
647 Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, XXI, 2019, 3, pp. 647-663
ISSN: 1825-5167
MARIO VERGANI
Department of human sciences for education, University of Milan “Bicocca”
mario.vergani@unimib.it
ABSTRACT
The concept of the person, which is central to ethical reflection, has been critiqued and seriously
challenged on multiple grounds in contemporary philosophy. The phenomenological ap-
proach, as distinct from an anthropological perspective, understands personalism not as a doc-
trine but rather as an attitude. Accessing the person via the phenomenological route leads to
the emergence of a pluralist and open personalistic perspective, both in terms of determining
who or what may be defined as a person (a human being, an animal, or persons of a higher
order), and at the ethical level, where it suggests a non-formal and anti-hierarchical ethics. In
light of these considerations, the phenomenological approach and specifically the line of inquiry
developed by Husserl offer the contemporary ethical debate scope for appealing to the concept
of the person, while making a minimum or residual use of it that is not weighed down by exces-
sively demanding anthropological or metaphysical assumptions.
KEYWORDS
Husserl, Phenomenology, Person, Ethics, Animal, Social Person.
In this paper, I put forward two hypotheses: 1. that to inquire into the person
in the work of Husserl, we need to take the notion of personalistic attitude as our
starting point, asking ourselves how personalism may be phenomenologically de-
rived and in what sense we may define it as an attitude still before defining it as a
doctrine. In other words, what is meant by attitude and what differentiates this
particular stance from other attitudes? This is a tricky question, because if we in-
troduce the concept of attitude as a precondition for speaking about the person,
then we must also inquire whether attitude is not perhaps a prerequisite for the
person itself; 2. that consequently Husserl’s approach to the person - which is phe-
nomenological rather than anthropological - yields a pluralistic and open model of
648 MARIO VERGANI
the person that we may analyse in two regards. First in relation to the problem of
determining the person: who and what is the person, what types of person are
there, and how do they relate to one another? And second with respect to the
ethical implications of Husserl’s thinking about the person, and their progressive
shift towards a non-formal and antihierarchical ethics.
My aim in this reading of Husserl, given the genealogical deconstruction and
critiques of the concept of the person produced by a number of twentieth-century
theoretical and philosophical approaches,1 is to argue that, in light of such - largely
reasonable - objections to the notion of the person, phenomenology allows us to
retain this concept, albeit making minimal or residual use of it.
Historically, the concept of the person has come to the fore in specific contexts
that nonetheless share some identifiable characteristics: from theological and legal-
political fields, usually with ontological or metaphysical underpinnings, to their im-
plications for anthropological studies. One of the most marked distinctions drawn
by Husserl is surely that between the anthropological and phenomenological per-
spectives on the theme of the person. Indeed, the question of the divergence be-
tween anthropology and phenomenology arises precisely when he broaches the
notion of the person. In the second part of Philosopie als strenge Wissenschaft, in
the context of his critique of historicism, Husserl on the one hand recognises
Dilthey’s outstanding contribution to the study of the sciences of the spirit or hu-
man sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), but on the other emphasizes that, precisely
in terms of attitude, worldview (Weltanschauungen) philosophies tend to address
the theme of the person by transferring a naturalistic attitude to the sciences of the
spirit, thus practicing anthropology rather than phenomenology. The latter point
is reiterated in multiple appendices to the Ideen II.2 Husserl’s observations do not
escape Heidegger, who comments positively on them, specifically as they are stated
in Ideen II, in § 10 of Sein und Zeit. This establishes the distinction between a
phenomenological and an anthropological approach to the person. Leaving aside
the fact that Husserl and Heidegger never agree to respectively define one an-
other’s work as purely phenomenological or purely anthropological, it is clear that
1
These critiques have ranged from ethno-anthropological discussions - notably the seminal work
of Mauss (1980, pp. 331-362) - to twentieth-century antipersonalist objections, such as the radical
theories put forward by Weil (1957, pp. 11-44) and current criticisms from the field of biopolitics,
including lines of inquiry into the ‘impersonal' as an ethical resource, cf. Esposito (2007, pp. 80-
126).
2
Cf. Hua IV, pp. 377-393. Unless otherwise specified in the reference list, the English transla-
tions of citations from foreign-language sources are my own.
649 Husserl’s Approach to the Theme of the Person
3
On this theme, Husserl’s key reference authors from the history of ideas appear to be Dilthey and
Leibniz. Dilthey is mentioned more frequently, for example in the Einleitung in Ethik of 1920/1921 (Hua
XXXVII, p. 104), while Leibniz (Nouveaux Essais II, 27 §9) is cited in Zur Phänomenologie der Inter-
subjektivität (Hua XIV, p. 48), in relation to the concept of person. On his relationship with Heidegger,
see Husserl Nachwort zu den Ideen I (Hua V, pp. 138-162). Heidegger was certainly familiar with Ideen
II, and consequently with the theme of the person in Husserl and the specifics of the personalist attitude.
Comparing Husserl with Scheler, he preferred Scheler’s approach, but ultimately criticized both authors’
notions of the person, arguing that they similarly failed to address "the question of the ‘personal Being’",
cf. Heidegger (1977, p. 73). As earlier stated, the concept of person in Husserl first appeared in Philoso-
phie als strenge Wissenschaft (Hua XXV, pp. 3-62), while the monad was introduced for the first time
in the 1908-1911 papers on intersubjectivity. In his 1932 lecture on Phänomenologie und Anthropologie,
Husserl set out to dispel a series of misunderstandings: anthropologism and psychologism stand in op-
position to the other school of modern subjectivism, represented by transcendentalism, and later by phe-
nomenology itself. Yet, at the end of the lecture, he himself pondered "why psychology and, if you will,
anthropology, is not in reality one positive discipline among others [..], among the natural science disci-
plines, but has an internal affinity with transcendental philosophy" (Hua XXVII, p. 181).
4
For broader introductory background, see: Moran, D. and Cohen, J. (2012, pp. 309-312), Semerari
(1996, pp. 305-324). Even internally to Husserl’s own thinking, if we look for example at the second part
of Ideen II which deals with the spirit, the topic is organized according to a relatively traditional schema:
1. the sense of the opposition between nature and spirit; 2. the sense of the fundamental law of motivation;
3. the sense of the ontological priority of the spiritual world with respect to the natural world.
.
650 MARIO VERGANI
personal attitude" (Ricoeur 1992, p. 199). Attitude is both the French and English
translation of Einstellung. In Krisis, Husserl himself states that “attitude, generally
speaking, means a habitually fixed style of willing life comprising directions of the
will or interests that are prescribed by this style, comprising the ultimate ends, the
cultural accomplishments whose total style is thereby determined. The individual
life determined by it runs its course with this persisting style as its norm" (Hua VI,
p. 280). Broadly speaking, we might say that an attitude is almost a point of view,
a disposing of oneself or being disposed that defines and multiplies one’s points of
view, a prism that refracts the light. But this immediately raises key theoretical
questions: Is this Einstellung, this point of view with the power to open or close
different spheres of experience, passively given or actively acquired? Is it not the
case, as the above citation suggests, that in order to define attitude at a more general
level we must already have assumed certain components of the personalist attitude,
corresponding to the notions of style of life, will, and interest? So, which of the
various attitudes precedes all the others? Again, the problem to be resolved is one
of interwoven and refracted perspectives. It appears that we are always already in
an attitude, always already making a distinction.
The basic distinction drawn by Husserl is between the naive or natural attitude
(also referred to as the doxastic attitude, indicating belief in the existence of a nat-
ural reality that is simply there for us, or “on hand”) and the transcendental or
phenomenological attitude. In the transcendental attitude, via the practice of the
epoche, the world is only suspended, temporarily “put out of action”, and thus
phenomenologically investigated by bringing to bear the different attitudes. The
naturalistic attitude on the other hand is the Einstellung of the natural sciences,
which engage in naturalization (also the basis for anthropological personalism, ac-
cording to Husserl). But the natural attitude is not equivalent to the naturalistic
one: the former is practical, a primordial doxa, while the latter reduces to objectiv-
ism. We are forced to acknowledge that phenomenological rationality has to do
with attitude, and it is not difficult to work out that this is a paradoxical statement:
first, can well-founded reason be tied up with something as subjective as an atti-
tude? We might say that an attitude is very similar to a posture, despite the multiple
theoretical problems associated with the latter term. Attitude refers to a global
mode, or way, of acting, a complex of acts. This concept is clearer in the French
and English translations of Einstellung, attitude, and even clearer in the Italian
translation, atteggiamento, which has the same root as the Italian word for act: atto.
Einstellung contains the notions of placing-in, situating ourselves, and actively be-
ing in a given way in a given context; therefore, we may reasonably argue that it
includes an active component, but on the other hand also the contextual dimen-
sion of being situated-in.
This leads us to the personalistic attitude: the attitude we are always in “when
we live one another, talk to one another, shake hands with one another in greeting,
652 MARIO VERGANI
or are related to one another in love and aversion, in disposition and action, in
discourse and discussion. Likewise, we are in this attitude when we consider the
things surrounding us precisely as our surroundings and not as ‘Objective’ nature,
the way it is for natural science" (Hua IV, p. 192). Herein lies the difference be-
tween this attitude and the naturalistic attitude, which views the human being as an
empirical or psychophysical ego. To reflectively access the personalistic attitude,
we must position ourselves at the constitutive level, that is to say, the specific level
at which meaning is produced via acts that are characteristic and constitutive of the
spiritual sphere. Thus, we are looking at eidetically different Auffassungweisen or
modes of apprehension. Specifically, acts of the ego come into contact with other
acts of the ego, constituting a Personenverband, a “community of persons” or a
personal bond, which is governed by the fundamental law of motivation and orga-
nized around a key term, that of the person.5 Hence the personalistic attitude - we
do well to remind ourselves - is oriented towards that which is already there and is
available to description following a guiding thread (Leitfaden): in other words, it is
available to static phenomenological analysis. The person therefore serves as a
transcendental guide, offering the possibility, at the descriptive level, to distinguish
“between the ‘I that I am’ on the subject side and the ‘I that I am’ as Object for
myself, and Object, which is, in the existing ‘I am’, represented, constituted, and
perhaps intended in the specific sense: the me [das Mich]. What is intended here
is ‘the person’ constituted for me, the Ego which has consciousness as a self" (Hua
IV, p. 265). If this holds at the level of the constitution of the ego-person, it will be
even more strongly the case when it comes to the distinction between the person
and his or her deposit of cultural and collective accomplishments.
It is clear that the spirit is not an add-on to a presumed first constitutive level of
experience, but rather corresponds to a specific dimension of experience. In this
regard, Husserl does not hesitate to claim that the personalistic attitude is not nat-
uralistic but natural: that is to say, we are already in it, and it is, ultimately, practical.
This is why his description of the constitution of meaning in the spiritual world
represents a fresh start, a new beginning. However, once he has separated and
distinguished between the two attitudes, he is faced with the need to define how
they are related to one another, and in this respect, Husserl speaks of "contamina-
tion" and "priority", ultimately arguing that the naturalistic attitude is subordinate to
the personalistic one. The last remaining question, then, is how we move from one
attitude to the other: “A change in attitude means nothing else but a thematic tran-
sition from one direction of apprehension to another, to which correspond, cor-
relatively, different objectivities. We are dealing here with radical changes of such
5
See also Hua I, pp. 156-163. Note the difference between Husserl’s approach here and his line
of reasoning in Ideen II which was still largely framed in terms of static rather than genetic constitu-
tion.
653 Husserl’s Approach to the Theme of the Person
6
Importantly, while discussing the theme of the Einstellung in the Abhandlungen of Krisis, Husserl
points out the following paradox: “For yet a third form of universal attitude is possible (as opposed to
both the religious-mythical attitude [...] and the theoretical attitude), namely, the synthesis of the two
interests accomplished in the transition from the theoretical to the practical attitude, such that the theoria
(universal science) [...] is called (and in theoretical insight itself exhibits its calling) to serve mankind in a
new way, mankind which in its concrete existence, lives first and always in the natural sphere” (Hua VI,
p. 283). We fall into the natural attitude as a matter of course, while maintaining the theoretical attitude
requires effort. Ultimately, the epoche, or critical stance must constantly be renewed, in line with the
strange attitude that in Krisis Husserl presented as follows: given the practical natural attitude, philosophy
introduces a theoretical attitude; while the first is applied to specific fields of experience, the second is a
universalizing style. Alongside these however, Husserl adds, there is also a new type of practice, which is
a synthesis of praxis and theory: it is an attitude of the third kind that might perhaps be summed up as a
critical monitoring of our own existential involvement in experience.
7
Cf. Ricoeur 1986, pp. 87-140 and Housset 1997, pp. 179-205. For a diachronic treatment of the
concept in Husserl, see Hiroshi (2004).
654 MARIO VERGANI
Husserl’s thinking about the person is dynamic and grows increasingly richer
over time. Central to his line of reasoning is the notion of the pluralization of atti-
655 Husserl’s Approach to the Theme of the Person
8
Husserl developed the two concepts of the person and the monad in parallel throughout his
work, shifting increasingly towards the theorization of an open dynamic of constitution that is similar
to refraction through perspective-altering prisms: thus, the Monadenall respresents a dynamic of
pluralization rather than recognition of a pre-given plurality.
9
Cf. also Hua XV, pp. 174-185.
656 MARIO VERGANI
be observed to derive from a passive tendency, but this tendency is taken up and
developed through a constellation of specific person-to-person acts11. Thus, peo-
ple identify with social roles, becoming socially recognisable figures and progres-
sively constituting themselves as personal unities of a higher order, or social per-
sons [Gemeinschaftpersonen] at increasingly wider levels: elective communities,
families, peoples, and states.
These personalities of a higher order are constituted and maintained by means
of mutual exchange. Again Husserl’s description becomes more refined, differen-
tiating between the acts and forms in which social persons are constituted, from
the dual perspective (similar to his earlier noted distinction concerning the singular
but not plural person) of the person in the nominative and the person in the accu-
sative: “On the other hand, it is a sole and unique world that is constituted in the
intersubjective association, a world in which there are levels. The subjects in com-
munication with one another constitute personal unities of a higher level, the sum
total of which, extending as far as actual and possible personal ties do, makes up
the world of social subjectivities. To be distinguished from this world of social sub-
jectivities is the world correlative to it and inseparable from it, the world for these
subjectivities, the world of social Objectivities, as one might say” (Hua IV, p. 205)12.
Produced by a teeming multiplicity of intentional acts, the person is neither a
stable deposit nor a substantial substrate, nor, in the case in hand, a sort of spiritual
objectivity; rather, it is the social acts themselves that constitute in increasingly solid
form these social persons, which like all other types of person, bear the character-
istics of the historical-cultural and generative dimension, in this case, the handing
on of a legacy. For this to happen, acts of cognition, desire and will must be flanked
by specifically social acts, which in practice are acts of communication. Once again,
as we can see, describing a person means pluralizing and refracting identity: on the
one hand, we have the opening up of identities to an ever-wider community di-
mension that is cultural and historical-generative; on the other hand, we have the
plurality of communicative acts that feed this dimension and keep it alive: "expres-
sion" [Ausdruck] is a form of communication, which however is interwoven with
"mutual understanding" [Wechselverständnis] and finally "concordance" [Überein-
stimmung].
In a text that is one of Husserl’s broader-ranging explorations of the theme,
along with the Essays on Renewal published in Kaizo between 1922 and 1924, we
find an attempt to order this constitutive interweaving of the concept of person. In
Gemeingeist II. Personal unities of a higher order and their correlates, written be-
tween 1919 and 1921 (Hua XIV, pp. 192-204), Husserl further elucidates aspects
of his thinking that lay the ground for the concept of collective intentionality and
11
For a detailed discussion of various forms of social constitution in Husserl, see Moran (2017).
12
See also Hua XXVII, pp. 3-94.
658 MARIO VERGANI
his subsequent inquiry into the phenomenology of the social world: first, the dis-
tinction concerning collective beliefs and actions; but this is not sufficient: along-
side operations involving a shared will (beliefs and actions), we have other opera-
tions that do not feature any common will - for example, drawing on the deposit
of language can be an individual act (and in this sense, it is evident that communi-
cative relations may be both unilateral and reciprocal).
This line of reasoning yields a sort of analogy between the social person and the
individual person, emphasizing even more strongly however that social phenom-
ena may be assigned personal status because they entail a communicative con-
sciousness, albeit one that is independent of its bodily substrate: “The common
personality, within the plurality of wills distributed in individual persons has a will
that is constituted in a unitary way for all, which has no other place and no other
substrate than that of the communicative plurality of persons” (Hua XIV, p. 108).
A communicative plurality becomes a social person insofar as it is a communica-
tive unity, a uni-plurality, a distribution of meaning.
lectures - which precede those based on historical inquiry – in which he sets out to
provide preliminary and systematic definitions of ethics: “The unity of assigning
an end, which permeates the unity of a human life in the form of the absolute
pretension of duty, is crucially related to the unity of personality, to the extent that
personality is that which wills in willing and acts in acting, and to the extent that the
qualities of its character, in a way that is evident and coherent with experience,
together condition the direction of the will” (Hua XXXVII, p. 8). From this new
perspective, the formal component of Husserl’s ethical framework diminishes in
importance, along with the axiological approach, while the taking on of self-respon-
sibility and consequently appropriation of one’s life choices come to the fore in an
intertwining of individual and social ethics; ultimately, Husserl’s second perspec-
tive on ethics is based on the model of self-regulation: “Let us focus once more on
the peculiar quality of specifically personal acts. That which contradistinguishes the
essence of man is the possibility, rather than being prey in a passive and con-
strained manner to one’s own drives, inclinations and emotions, to act […] in au-
thentically ‘personal’ and ‘free’ activity” (Hua XXVII, p. 24). This sheds light on
Husserl’s choice of the expression renewal to sum up his ethical perspective of the
1920s, a renewal that he conceptualized as concurrently individual and su-
prapersonal.14
The fourth group of texts in Hua XLII concerning the ethics of Husserl’s later
Freiburg period is focused far more on the person - even more than on the per-
sonality - and on the plurality of persons. Within such a framework, individuals’
preferences, vocational leanings, and choices exerts a decisive influence on how
they orient their lives. Husserl’s introduction of the issue of love accentuates the
individual and subjective dimension of his ethics even further: we have different
values and make different choices as a function of what we love: “The original
phenomenon of specifically personal values of personal love and specifically per-
sonal desires, of wills and then choice that freely distinguishes between that which
is loved and that which is desired or between that which is loved and that which is
loved […] the particular hesitation, the particular concrete choice of one and the
concrete rejection of the other, but always within love […] As a personal individu-
ality, in [making] such a choice, I am in conflict with myself. In sacrificing a good,
I sacrifice myself and the pain of the sacrifice is insuperable” (Hua XLII, p. 415).
The critical dilemma is at the heart of this latest version of Husserl’s ethics, in
which the individual and the universal can no longer be put back together. When
the universe of values becomes a constellation of perspectives, ethics become con-
flictual and the ethics of reconciliation via rational solutions is flanked by an ethics
of crisis, vocation, and sacrifice.
The critical and pluralistic outlook characterizing these texts sheds light on the
notion of personalism in Husserl’s work more generally: his ethics of personal
14
Cf. Letter from Husserl to Roman Ingarden, 8 July 1917 (Hua Dok. III.III, pp. 178-179).
660 MARIO VERGANI
values and plural choices - albeit no longer anchored to a stable axiology, as in the
initial phase of his ethical inquiry, nor to the development of social ethics and thus
of personalities of a higher order or the renewal that he advocated for in the early
1920s - bears witness to a pluralist and constitutive understanding of personalism
that is consistent with his underlying personalistic perspective, as earlier defined.
animal – which indeed is on his list of ultimate problems, "Birth, death, generation,
animal Dasein [tierisches Dasein], drive, instinct" (Hua XLII, p. 561) – on the basis
of rigid metaphysical divisions. In play here is the fundamental distinction between
the normal and the abnormal or in a broader sense between the familiar and the
unfamiliar, which corresponds to the distinction between that which is “own” and
that which is “alien”. The person in the specific sense is unavoidably the starting
point from which Husserl initiates his inquiry into the person more generally; how-
ever, he did not frame these distinctions as rigid - as in the case of historical-cultural
otherness - but on the contrary as pluralized, so as to identify differences via thresh-
old-phenomena, and specifically via those that give rise to contaminations.
2. At the end of Ideen II, Husserl no longer frams the individual as equivalent
to the person, viewing the latter as richer than the former, given that the individual
is reached by a process of “stripping down”. But, at the same time, he claims that
the richness of the person is tied up with its uniqueness. This uniqueness is more
than the individual, in that it given as difference and plurality that are open to the
world in specific forms and ways that may be described phenomenologically. Per-
sonality [Persönlichkeit] and person [Person] do not coincide: the greater richness
of the person with respect to the individual does not depend on the fact that the
person has a recognizable personality, a store of qualities and properties: “This-
ness [Diesheit] is a form. What distinguishes this 'something' from another 'some-
thing' precisely as 'something'? ‘Nothing’, insofar as there are no qualities, no sub-
stantial contents, which would allow a distinction. The form of the this is not a
what-ness [Washeit], and in that sense is not an essence. It is universal in the sense
of the form […] Spirits are [...] not unities of appearances but are instead unities of
absolute nexuses of consciousness; more exactly, they are egological-unities”. (Hua
IV, pp. 300-301). To put this another way, the Diesheit is not a genus that appears
in a this [Dies]. On the contrary, its richness lies in the specific form of its unique-
ness. Such a view prompts us to recognize complexity in uniqueness, we might say
its pluralization. Perhaps Husserl is suggesting to us that the residual use of the
term person as hecceitas consists in thinking of the person as a never given place,
around which are given the infinite refractions of our human experience, which is
ever-different and ever unique.
REFERENCES
662 MARIO VERGANI
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