Is Philosophy Politics

• In Event: Ancient Concepts in Contemporary Political Thought

Abstract

This paper looks to identify the position of the philosopher in politics. It begins with the relationship between the political realm and the philosophical realm in Hannah Arendt’s lecture “Philosophy and Politics”. In her lecture, Arendt shows how philosophy was founded on Plato’s attempt to dominate politics. Platonic philosophy looked to build ideal models and then simply apply them, rather than respect the internal logic and sovereignty of the political realm. Yet, the lecture suggests a need to return to necessity. Maintaining Arendtian concepts, the political realm should be conceptualized as appearance, sensibilities, speech, and action; but this paper demonstrates their relation to necessity. Jacques Rancière’s political thought is argued to be the expansion and actualization of the Arendtian political realm. Rancière maintains that politics is about appearance, speech, action, and aesthetics (i.e., sensibilities), but notes that such abilities the use of the fact of pre-social access to speech and action, rather than the exclusive access to those who overcome necessity as it is for Arendt. As for the philosophical realm, this paper argues for philosophy, and academia at large, to perform a self-peripheralization. The role of the philosopher is discussed through their position on Plato’s ship of fools. Opposed to the allegory of the cave, Plato’s allegory of the ship is a strong image of politics due to, not despite, Plato dismissal of it. The role of the philosopher is multiplied into a typology, arriving at five political positions of the philosopher: the stargazer, observer, scholar, gadfly, and partisan.

Author

• Gabriel Garber, CUNY Graduate Center