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The Political Relevance of Existential Phenomenology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Extract

Existentialism, for some of its severe critics, represents a temporary outburst of the dark side of man which is indicative of a passing phenomenon of our age and particularly of the postwar angry generation living on the morbid edges of death, anxiety and the absurdity of human existence. They contend that existentialism is not a philosophy or at least not a serious and disciplined philosophy. Professor Henry S. Kariel characterized existential psychology as “negativism,” and its counterpart, behavioral psychology, as “positivism”; and similarly Professor Eugene J. Meehan describes the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl as having sought to find philosophical certainty “in feeling rather than in thought,” an assessment that falsely indicts phenomenology as an irrationalism. I have singled out these two political theorists as representatives of a widespread misconception of existential philosophy and phenomenology, held as well, I suspect, by many American political theorists. This article is not designed as a direct rebuttal to these misunderstandings and criticisms; it is rather an attempt to show what I consider to be the significant and positive contributions of existential philosophy and phenomenology to the foundation of political theory.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1971

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References

* I wish to thank particularly Professor William T. Bluhm of the University of Rochester for his helpful comments on the earlier version of this paper.

1 Kariel, , “The Political Relevance of Behavioral and Existential Psychology,” American Political Science Review, 61 (06, 1967), 334–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Meehan, , Contemporary Political Thought (Homewood, 1967), p. 383Google Scholar. Also cf. Brecht, Arnold, Political Theory (Princeton, 1959), p. 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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8 Husserl, trs. Ballard, Edward G. and Embree, Lester E. (Evanston, 1967), p. 212Google Scholar.

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10 In his Presidential Address delivered to the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in September, 1969, David Easton emphasized the idea of unity between political knowledge and action in what he called the “post-behavioral revolution.” See “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, 63 (12, 1969), 1051–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In recent literature the theme of theory and practice is discussed in Lobkowicz, Nicholas, Theory and Practice (Notre Dame, 1967)Google Scholar and Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie und Praxis (3rd ed.; Neuwied, 1969)Google Scholar.

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12 Op. cit., p. 59. Cf. Merleau-Ponty, , Phenomenology of Perception, pp. viii and ixGoogle Scholar: “The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the secondorder expression. … To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the country-side in which we have learnt before-hand what a forest, a prairie or a river is.”

13 The “empiricist” Dahl, Robert A. criticizes many “trans-empiricists” for using “an unnatural vocabulary far removed from the ordinary language of politics.” Modern Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, 1963), p. 105Google Scholar. In turn, the “trans-empiricist” Leo Strauss charges that while “the language of Aristotelian political science is identical with the language of political man” and “it hardly uses a term that did not originate in the market place and is not in common use there,” “the new political science cannot begin to speak without having elaborated an extensive technical vocabulary.” “An Epilogue,” in Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Storing, Herbert J. (New York, 1962), p. 310Google Scholar. It is important to note that both Dahl and Strauss recognize the significance of the ordinary language of political man. Strauss recognizes the dependence of conceptual knowledge on preconceptual understanding. However, I have argued elsewhere that his intellectualism is guilty of self-contradiction while positivism takes the preconceptual life-world for granted and may be charged with negligence. See author's article, Leo Strauss's Conception of Political Philosophy: A Critique,” The Review of Politics, 29 (10, 1967), 492517CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 An example of this approach is Weldon's, T. D.The Vocabulary of Politics (Baltimore, 1953)Google Scholar. Following the logical positivist criteria of meaning, Weldon views the function of political philosophy as a linguistic therapeutic of political words. According to Felix E. Oppenheim, analytic political philosophy —both philosophy of political science and philosophy of political ethics— is concerned with the logical and linguistic analysis of factual and ethical statements about political phenomena (that is, with what is meta-factual and meta-ethical). Moral Principles in Political Philosophy (New York, 1968), pp. 319Google Scholar. Similarly Richard S. Rudner juxtaposes “substantive” and “methodological” issues in the study of social phenomena. For him “social philosophy” and “philosophy of social science” deal with the former and the latter respectively: “The philosopher of social science is engaged not with the substance of any social theory nor with a view of what makes a good society but with the logic of any theory construction in social science and with the logic of justification of (any) social-science theory.” Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, 1966), p. 3Google Scholar. For some incisive criticisms of the analytic conception of political philosophy for being too narrow and restrictive, see Winch, Peter, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (London, 1958), p. 3ffGoogle Scholar and Wollheim, Richard, “Philosophie Analytique et Pensée Politique,” Revue Française de Science Politique, 9 (06, 1961), 295308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Austin, J. L. emphasizes that “ordinary language is notthe last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.” Philosophical Papers, eds. Urmson, J. O. and Warnock, G. J. (Oxford, 1961), p. 133Google Scholar. Moreover, Austin's exposition of “performative utterance” is significant for the understanding of political words in relation to political action. A “performative utterance” is not a report on what someone else says but it is the very execution of the act itself when a person says “I promise that…” (that is, the act of promising). It is then “doing” rather than “reporting” something. The spoken words of political actors are of this nature in many instances. See “Performative Utterances,” ibid., pp. 22–39 and How To Do Things with Words (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

17 Op. cit., p. 59. For the relationship between phenomenology and the sociology of Max Weber, see Schutz, Alfred, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trs. Walsh, George and Lehnert, Frederick (Evanston, 1967), pp. 344Google Scholar.

18 The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics (New York, 1963)Google Scholar. See further Micro-Macro Political Analysis (Chicago, 1969), pp. 148–65 and 370–90Google Scholar.

19 Compare Eulau's views of scientific technology with those of the phenomenologist Dreyfus, Hubert L. in Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence (RAND Paper, P–3244; Santa Monica, 12, 1965)Google Scholar.

20 For a phenomenology of human action, see Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The Structure of Behavior, tr. Fisher, Alden L. (Boston, 1963)Google Scholar; Sartre, Jean-Paul, Critique de la Raison Dialectique (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar; Pfänder, Alexander, Phenomenology of Willing and Motivation, tr. Spiegelberg, Herbert (Evanston, 1967)Google Scholar; Schutz, , Collected Papers, I, 6796Google Scholar, and The Phenomenology of the Social World; Ricoeur, , Freedom and Nature and “Philosophy of Will and Action,” in Phenomenology of Will and Action, eds. Straus, Edwin W. and Griffith, Richard M. (Pittsburgh, 1966), pp. 733Google Scholar.

21 Freedom and Nature, p. 46.

22 Op. cit., p. 34.

23 Cf. Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor, 1965), p. 27Google Scholar. Although William H. Riker is “eager to create specifically political theories of behavior to serve as a base for a future political science,” there is nonetheless an economic overtone in his game theory. For him “most of the decisions in economics and political life are made by persons acting in a fiduciary relation”; and “rational” behavior is “winning” behavior when he says that “politically rational man is the man who would rather win than lose, regardless of the particular stakes.” The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, 1962), p. ixGoogle Scholar. Yet, as Bluhm, William T. points out, “‘winning’ as the political value par excellence is not for Riker an entirely selfish object, as the political object is for Downs.” Theories of the Political System (Englewood Cliffs, 1965), p. 292Google Scholar.

24 For a discussion of diverse forms of rationality in social science, see Diesing, Paul, Reason in Society (Urbana, 1962)Google Scholar. Sheldon S. Wolin argues that Locke and his successors hastened the decline of political theory. The decline of political theory is attributed to their “conviction that economics formed the proper study of mankind and economic activity the proper end encouraged the imposition of economic categories onto political thought with the result that the role and status of political theory came to be usurped by economic theory.” Politics and Vision (Boston, 1960), pp. 286351Google Scholar. Also C. B. Macpherson critically examined Hobbes and Locke, who based their political theory on the assumption that man is the infinite proprietor of his own interests, which is an economic claim. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar.

25 Human Nature and Conduct (New York, 1922), p. 115Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of some philosophical presuppositions of analytic models, see Bluhm, William T., “Metaphysics, Ethics, and Political Science,” The Review of Politics, 31 (01, 1969), pp. 6687CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 For a phenomenological theory of the human body, see Zaner, Richard M., The Problem of Embodiment (The Hague, 1964)Google Scholar.

27 “Foreword,” in Merleau-Ponty, , The Structure of Behavior, pp. xivxvGoogle Scholar.

28 Laing, R. D., The Divided Self (Baltimore, 1965), p. 82Google Scholar.

29 Tiryakian, Edward A., Sociologism and Existentialism (Englewood Cliffs, 1962)Google Scholar and Odajnyk, Walter, Marxism and Existentialism (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

30 The Present Age, tr. Dru, Alexander (New York, 1962)Google Scholar. See also author's article, Confucianism and Existentialism: Intersubjectivity as the Way of Man,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30 (12, 1969), 195–98Google Scholar. Among prolific existentialist writings on the subject of mass man in modern society, see particularly Jaspers, Karl, Man in the Modern Age, trs. , Eden and Paul, Cedar (New York, 1957)Google Scholar and Marcel, Gabriel, Man Against Mass Society, tr. Fraser, G. S. (Chicago, 1952)Google Scholar.

31 Sense and Non-Sense, trs. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Dreyfus, Patricia Allen (Evanston, 1964), p. 152Google Scholar. For a phenomenological exposition of the “other,” see Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity, tr. Lingis, Alphonso (Pittsburgh, 1969)Google Scholar.

32 Op. cit., p. 73. Truman, David B. also says that “the activities of political interest groups imply controversy and conflict, the essence of politics. For those who abhor conflict in any form, who long for some past or future golden age of perfect harmony, these consequences of group activity are alone sufficient to provoke denunciation.” The Government Process (New York, 1958), pp. 502503Google Scholar. A balanced view of the political system as the concomitant processes of conflict and integration is found in Duverger, Maurice, The Idea of Politics, trs. North, Robert and Murphy, Ruth (Indianapolis, 1966)Google Scholar.

33 The Semi-Sovereign People (New York, 1960)Google Scholar.