`Who' is the spectator?

Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil on Thinkingand Judging

by Joke J. Hermsen

Tilburg University

1.

`Le jugement est la faculté essentielle de l'esprit. Onpeut dire que toute pensée est un jugement.' Contraryto possible expectations, these words were not writtenby Hannah Arendt, to whom the relation between thinkingand judging was indeed so important that she wanted todedicate the third and concluding part of her work TheLife of the Mind to it. In fact, it would have been rathersurprising if she did write these words, since Arendtallways insisted upon a certain distinction between thesolitary act of thinking and the political act ofjudging. She wanted to show that her `own mainassumption in singling out judgment as a distinctcapacity of our minds has been that judgments are notarrived at by either deduction or induction; in short,they have nothing in common with the logicaloperations' of abstract reasoning nor do they compeluniversal validity 1. The main difficulty in judgmentis, according to Arendt, `that it is the faculty ofthinking the particular, but to think means togeneralize, hence it is the faculty of mysteriouslycombining the particular and the general' (1982:76). Itdoes so, not by unfolding a logical argument orientedtowards absolute truth or unum verum, but rather byforming an opinion that is based upon differentperspectives. Arendt introduces at this point the

11. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, University ofChicago Press 1982:4. This includes also Ronald Beiners essay`Hannah Arendt on Judging'. ?

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Kantian notion of `enlarged mentality', which is thecapacity to represent the perspectives of others:The power of judgment rests on a potential agreement

with others and the thinking process which isactive in judging is not, like the thought processof pure reasoning, a dialogue between me andmyself, but finds itself always and primarily,even if I'm quite alone in making up my mind, inan anticipated communication with others with whomI know I must finally come to some agreement.(Between Past and Future 1977:220-221).

Since establishing a common world with others - whereplurality is the most important political fact andjudging `one of the most important activities in whichthis sharing-the-world-with-others comes to pass' - is,for Arendt, the main characteristic of politicalthinking, she continues to insist upon the distinctionwith philosophical thought, which is always a solitaryactivity, withdrawn from the world. Arendt believedthat the trial and death of Socrates - who sheconsidered to be one of the few real politicalthinkers, for his thinking was not opposed to politics,but was itself a matter of moving amongst others in theworld and exploring their opinions - drove Plato andlater the whole tradition of western philosophy intoenmity to politics. Apart from Lessing, Kant and maybeJaspers, Arendt could not find another thinker likeSocrates, who seemed `to have believed that thepolitical function of the philosopher is to helpestablish a kind of common world', as she wrote in heronly recently published essay Philosophy and Politics, from1954.

However, as Ronald Beiner points out in his essay`Hannah Arendt on Judging', there seems to be `a subtlebut important reorientation' in Arendt's later work,where `she is no longer concerned with judging as afeature of political life as such' (Beiner 1982:92).From the early seventies, her emphasis shifts from theact of judging by political actors in the public spaceto the critical contemplation of the individualspectator, `who only weighs the possible judgments of

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an imagined Other' (idem). In her Lectures on Kant's PoliticalPhilosophy (1982), Arendt no longer stresses thedistinction between philosophy and politics or thinkingand judging, but transforms it into the distinctionbetween traditional philosophical thinking and what shecalls `critical thinking', based on the technè dia kritikè ofSocrates. Socrates taught nothing; he never knew the answers to

the questions he asked. He did the examining forexamining's sake, not for the sake of knowledge.(...) Socrates' uniqueness lies in thisconcentration on thinking itself, regardless ofresults. (...) What he actually did was to makepublic, in discourse, the thinking process - thatdialogue that soundlessly goes on within me,between me and myself. (1982:37)

This making public or `general communicability' of thesolitary thinking process is an importantcharacteristic of critical thinking; it exposes itselfto `the test of free and open communciation' and thismeans that `the more people participate in it, thebetter (..). Without it, no thinking and no opinionformation are possible' (1982:38). Also, the art of critical thinking always haspolitical implications, because it is in principleanti-authoritarian: `the trouble with men of criticalthought is that "they make the pillars of the best-known truths shake wherever they let their eyes fall"(Lessing)', remarks Arendt. This certainly was the casefor Socrates as it was for Kant; but it was also thecase of Hannah Arendt herself, who had to face suchenmity after the publication of her book on theEichmann-trial.

But most of all, `critical thinking means to applycritical standards to one's own thought (...) and thisapplication one cannot learn without publicity, withoutthe testing that arises from contact with other'speople thinking' (1982:42). This will lead to a thirdfeature of critical thought, that is impartiality.Impartiality, according to Kant and to Arendt, is onlyobtained by taking the viewpoints of others into

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account. One can `enlarge' one's own thought, `bycomparing our judgment with the possible rather thanthe actual judgments of others, and by puttingourselves in the place of any other man'(1982:43).Although Arendt admits now that critical thinking is inprinciple a solitary activity, it does not cut itselfof from all others. It is our force of imagination`that makes the others present and thus moves ourthinking in a space that is potentially public, open toall sides' (idem). And Arendt concludes: `to think withan enlarged mentality means that one trains one'simagination to go visiting'.

We now clearly see the shift in emphasis Arendt made inher later reflections on judging. It is no longer astrictly political activity of the actors present in apublic space, but it is a solitary activity of animpartial mind, that takes the viewpoints of othersinto account. However, because of her critical analysisof western, philosophical thought, she probably stillwould not have agreed with the French quotation at thebeginning of this paper that says that `every thoughtis a judgment'. She persisted in seperatingphilosophical thought and political or critical thoughtand although these two spheres approached each other inher Kant Lectures, we do know why Arendt felt so muchobliged to hold on to her distinctions. She has toldthe story more than once, for instance in thetelevision interview with Gunter Gaus in 1964:Hitler's electoral victory was, of course, terrible.

But it was political, it was not personal... Theproblem, the personal problem, was not what ourenemies might be doing, but what our friends weredoing. This wave of cooperation - which was quitevoluntary, or at least not compelled in the way itis during a reign of terror, made you feelsurrounded by an empty space, isolated. I lived inan intellectual milieu, but I also knew manypeople who did not, and I came to the conclusionthat cooperation was, so to speak, the rule amongintellectuals but not among others. And I have never

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forgotten that. I left Germany guided by theresolution - a very exaggerated one - that `Neveragain!' I will never have anything to do with the`history of ideas' again.' (quoted in: Disch1994:16)

Since that time Arendt refused to call herself aphilosopher;2 she became what she called a politicaltheorist, who nevertheless could not help talking aboutphilosophical ideas all the time. However, until hervery last works, The Life of the Mind and her posthumouslypublished Lectures on Kant, her dilemma about the relationbetween philosophy and politics persisted. My purposeis not to clear away this Arendtian opposition ordilemma - because that would mean tearing the veryheart out of her work - but to find, with the help ofanother political thinker, another perspective on thematter, which will enable us to clarify Arendtsposition.

2.

If it was not Hannah Arendt, who was it then that wroteso suggestively that `every thought is a judgment'? Itwas surely someone for whom the same political andphilosophical issues were at stake, someone who wantedphilosophy to be `exclusively an affair of action andpractice', and who dedicated her life to both thinkingand action. Someone who did not have the ambition tobecome an academic philosopher, but chose to become afactory worker and to experience the exhaustion ofagricultural work, for otherwise, the `left'sunderstanding of alienated labour would never becomplete' (quoted in A. Nye 1994:57). Someone whovisited the front of the Spanish Civil War to seefirsthand the effects of revolutionary violence and whoorganized so many demonstrations for better pay andworking conditions that the French started calling her`the red virgin'.

22.However, she admitted to Hans Jonas a short time before her death that maybe she

was not such a political animal after all and that she wanted to stick tophilosophy right now. (Canovan 1992: 253).

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It was indeed the French-Jewish writer andphilosopher Simone Weil, who also wrote more than athousand pages on historical, political, theological,and philosophical matters. In these texts, which werealmost all published after her early death in 1943 byfriends, including Albert Camus, Weil showed anenormous interest in a variety of subjects. In Lacondition ouvrière she writes about the oppression ofcapitalist and Marxist political systems. Weil's essayThe Origins of nazism (1931) reminds us, not only because ofthe title, of Arendt's work on the Origins of Totalitarianism3.In Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks (1957) shestudies early greek myths and philosophy. Her Lessons inPhilosophy (1978) shows us how she teached philosophy toyoung women students. But her most famous book remainsGravity and Grace (1952), which is a collection of shortessays and aphorismes from all of her work.

Despite these publications, her work has not reallybeen integrated into western philosophy. There are, ofcourse, a few exceptions: Hannah Arendt is one of them.Maurice Blanchot, Simone de Beauvoir and EmmanuelLevinas are other examples.4 Weil died too young to have

33. ? See for instance David McLellan's study of Weil,Utopian Pessimist, New York: Posseidon Press 1990: `This firmanchorage in economic and social reality rather than politicalideology enabled her (Weil) to produce analyses of statesocialism of the Soviet model and of Nazism that were to be thekeystone of Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism, as well as of the morecontemporary reflections of such writers as Castoriadis'(p.269).More comparisons of Simone Weil's and Hannah Arendt's thoughtare to be find in: Andrea Nye, Philosophia, The Thought of RosaLuxemburg, Simone Weil and Hannah Arendt, London:Routledge 1994, andin Reiner Wimmer, Vier jüdische Philosophinnen (Luxemburg, Weil, Stein& Arendt), Tübingen: Attempto Verlag 1990.

44. ?In the Human Condition, Arendt makes the following comment on one of her works:

`It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Simone Weil's La condition ouvrière isthe only book in the huge literature on the labour question which deals with

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read any of the works of Hannah Arendt. What she shareswith Arendt - despite the many differences between hermore mystical thinking and the political thinking ofArendt - is not only her interest in the work andlabour question and her criticism of totalitarianregimes, but also the importance of political praxisand the search for a way of thinking that couldtranscend the tension between philosophy and politics.In her essay on Descartes, Weil had already proposedchanging his ergo cogito sum into je puis donc je suis, `I can,therefore I am'. And in addition to all herphilosophical reflections and writings, she dedicatedher life to political action.

Simone Weil, born only two years after HannahArendt, in 1909, emigrated with her family almost atthe same time as Arendt, in early 1942, to the UnitedStates. Weil did not stay there for very long; sheasked for a visa for London, hoping to be able to jointhe French resistance movement, and got it only a fewmonths later. In London, she worked as an editor at theradio station France libre of de Gaulle, still begginghim in several letters to let her join the real`action' of the resistance in France. She was neverallowed to do so. She looked too `Jewish' and her ideasand projects were considered to be too radical anddangerous. She died in complete loneliness on August24, 1943, at the age of 34, more than thirty yearsbefore Arendt, having succumbed to starvation,exhaustion, and tuberculosis in a hospital near London.

Weil's philosophical work, we could say, belongs moreto the category of `thought' than to that of`cognition' or `philosophical system', to use thedistinction Hannah Arendt made in the Human Condition andto which she returned in The Life of the Mind:

the problem without prejudice or sentimentality. She chose as the motto forthe diary in which she relates her day-to-day experiences in a factory aline from Homer: ‘much against your own will, since necessity lies moremightily upon you. She concludes that the hope for an eventual liberationfrom labour and necessity is both the only utopian element of Marxism and,at the same time, the actual motor of all Marx-inspired revolutionarymovements. It is the opium of the people’ which Marx had believed religionto be'. (HC, 131).

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Thought and cognition are not the same. Cognitionalways pursues a definite aim (...) while thought,on the contrary, never has an end or an aimoutside itself. (...) The great philosophicalsystems can hardly be called the results of purethinking. (HC, 170)

Most of Weil's philosophical reflections and aphorismsare written down in notebooks, diaries, letters, andessays, without any logical or systematic structure. Itis, to say the least, a very fragmented work.

Like Arendt, Weil characterizes thinking as asolitary activity. `A group or a collectivity cannotthink', remarks Weil in an essay called `On HumanPersonality (reprinted in McLellan 1990), written just afew months before her death. A group can only reproducestatements that have already been made before and thesewill necessarily become dogmas or idées fixes. A groupcannot think something new. It `cannot even make anaddition sum together'. For thinking, you have towithdraw yourself from the group; you have to be alone.Furthermore, Weil believed thinking requires not only arenonciation of the group, but also a depersonalizationof the `I'.

Thinking cannot be done through the perspective ofpersonal identity, because it would then exclude otherperspectives and repeat only the clichés andstereotypes of the collectivities which determine ouridentity. Thinking, on the contrary, requires thepassage between what Weil calls the personal and theimpersonal:`Impersonality is only reached by the practice of a

form of attention which is rare in itself andimpossible except in solitude. This is neverachieved by a man who thinks of himself as amember of a collectivity' (In: McLellan 1990:276).

For Weil, to transcend the limitations of one's ownidentity is only possible if the subject stopsconcentrating on the factual characteristics of his/heridentity - race, class, gender, age a.s.o. - and triesto disclose an `impersonal' dimension, over which noneof the collectivities have any power.

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`The human being can only escape from the collective byraising himself above the personal and enteringinto the impersonal. The moment he does this,there is something in him, a small portion of hissoul, upon which nothing of the collective can geta hold' (in Mc Lellan 1990:277)

Thinking is, in Weil's view, some kind of dialoguebetween these two dimensions of subjectivity, betweenthe personal `given' aspects of our factual existence,which Weil calls `necessity', and the hidden,unarticulated and impersonal part of our being, whichshe calls the `sacred aspect' of human being. `So farfrom its being his person, what is sacred in a humanbeing is the impersonal in him' (in: MacLellan1990:275).

In her commentary on the Iliad, later published inthe book La source grecque5, Weil describes thinking as aninterval of hesitation: `This interval is thinking, this inbetween the impulse and the act, this tiny interval iscalled reflection'. Thinking as an interval, no longerconcentrates on identity, but empties itself of alldeterminations, idées fixes and prejudices: `Thoughtmust be empty, waiting, not searching for anything, butready to receive in its naked truth the object whichwill penetrate there'(WG, 92-93). Thinking as anendless process that has no aim and produces noresults; it reminds us of Penelope's web: `it undoesevery morning what it had finished the night before',as Hannah Arendt says in The Life of the Mind, I (p.88).

At this point we find some interesting similaritieswith Arendts conception of critical thinking. In herKant Lectures Arendt notes that a valuable judgment canonly be the result of `disregarding its subjectiveprivate conditions' (1982:43): we have to transcend ourown individual limitations, our mind has to become`impartial' by representing the perspectives of otherswho are absent. This is what Arendt calls `thinking in

55. ? This text was translated into English in 1956 by MaryMcCarthy, a very close friend of Arendt, so Arendt might haveknown this text, although I did not find any reference.

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my own identity where actually I am not.' Impartialityand disinterestedness are important characteristics ofArendt's critical judging subject. In her later workshe will therefore consider, with Kant, the spectator -and not the actor - to be the only possible judge. `Thespectator is impartial by definition - no part isassigned to him'. In her last lecture on Kant, Arendtrepeats that the impartial spectator has to be able toabstract from private conditions, because: `privateconditions condition us: imagination and reflectionenable us to liberate ourselves from them and to attainthat relative impartialiality that is the specificvirtue of judgment' (1982:73).

Weils notion of thinking as an interval reminds usof Arendt's thinking "in the gap between past andfuture" - the `untimely' space between the infinitepast and the infinite future, in which the thinker hasto learn how to move. But also Weil's notion ofthinking as the passage between the personal and theimpersoanl brings to mind the fundamentally destructiveactivity of the thinking process, Arendt often refersto: `the fact that you remain in a way empty afterthinking'. Only if one is able, in Weil's words, to`deny oneself and renounce being the centre of theworld' (Attente de Dieu, 148) thinking may become a way ofgiving birth to new insights, new perspectives.According to Weil, `impersonal thinking' also revealsour fundamental responsibility towards the other:`Every man who has once touched the level of theimpersonal is charged with a responsability towards allhuman beings' (In MacLellan 1990:277). For Weil, thephilosophical quest for truth, justice and beauty dwellon this level of the impersonal. She calls it the`realm of the sacred' in every human being. What issacred in every human being is not the contingentperson, but his impersonal desire for truth and beauty.Why is this impersonal aspect of our subjectivity soimportant to Weil and in what way might this becompared to the `who' found in Arendt's concept ofsubjectivity?

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3.

In order to understand Weil's concept of the`impersonal other in the I', we have to pay someattention to the more mystical aspects of her work.Weil's God concept does not refer to the Old TestamentJewish God nor to a `backloving' Christian deity, butsimply represents a principle: the good or the principiumbonum: However, this God does not `exist' as such, isnot in this world, and can therefore only be known as adesire for the good.6 In Weil's view, the good hasvanished from the world, or rather, only exists as anabsence, because the world is the place from which thedivine has had to withdrawn, in order to be able tocreate the world. Therefore, `God can in this worldonly be present as an absence.' (1947:126).7

The Jewish doctrine of the creation, andespecially the Zim-zum theme from the cabbalism of thechassidim, has a similar narrative structure. Zim-zumsignifies contraction, a withdrawal of one thing tomake way for the birth of something else. There wasactually another beginning that preceded this beginningof the world. In this beginning, there was only God,and he was everything and in everything. The world thatwas then created by him was not a world he producedfrom himself, but a world that arose the moment hewithdrew himself from it.8 The world is therefore notthe result of God's urge for expansion, but a remainder

66. ? Cf. Wittgenstein's statement: `What is good, is alsodivine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics,' quoted inWinch, Simone Weil: The just balance (1987), who also compares Weil'sview of language with that of Wittgenstein.

77. ? See also Peter Winch: `Weil insists on the need for arepresentation of the world including a void...We must wantthis void, for the good which we can neither visualize nordefine represents for us a void' (1989:131).

88 ?. `We can only know the withdrawal of God; Godmanifests himself as the one who withdraws himself' (Weil1947:126).

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that is left over after God has abandoned it. Rightfrom the start, what remains, the world, has thereforebeen deprived of God and hence of the good.`God and humanity are like two lovers who have missed

their rendez-vous. Each is there before the time,but each at a different place, and they wait andwait and wait' (FLN, 141).

In the world, we are faced with this absence of thegood, that is, with evil. For Weil, evil is not so muchthe opposite of the good, as in traditionalmetaphysics, but a privatio boni, the absence of the good.Whatever evil happens in the world does therefore notprove that God does not `exist' but only `proves' thatthe divine is lacking. The question whether God existsor not is of no importance to Weil. She will even gobeyond that: `Thinking that God exists still meansthinking that he is present. The atheist who says thatGod does not exist is closer to God than the believer.'9

What is good is also divine and is also absent fromthis world. However, God did leave us a signature ofhis absence, since `he has printed on this world themark of the good in the form of beauty'. And even moreimportantly, he placed the responsability for the worldin the hands of the human being. Therefore, it is onlythrough a real attention and love for the world, thatwe will be able to look for the trace the divine leftin the world. `The world is the closed gate, but at thesame time, the world is the entrance'.

As Andrea Nye notes correctly, Simone Weil doestake some elements from Plato - the Good is absent fromthis world - and also Plato's notion of the to kalos,identified in the Symposium as the highest object of

99. ? See also Frits de Lange's study Totale beschikbaarheid: hetethos van Simone Weil: `It is important to realize how the Good asabsence also feeds thought and only manifests itself as anempty spot, around which thoughts come into being. Weil's ethoscircles ceaselessly around the emptiness of the hidden Good.Her mysticism encompasses the experience of that which cannotbe experienced, the speaking of the unspeakable: "The Goodalways seems to flee," writes Weil (1990:88).

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thought and inspiration, which means both beautiful andgood. But, as Nye puts it, `her differences with Platocome out clearly in her critical discussion of hisfamous `Allegory of the Cave' (1994:99). Platoencouraged his followers to move away from the physicaland human world to contemplate the eternal world ofideal forms. Weil's approach to the absent Good is nota turning away from the world but a different kind ofattention - an `impersonal' attention to the beauty ofthe world: `Beauty is the supreme mystery of this world. It is a

gleam which attracts attention and yet doesnothing to sustain it. Beauty always promises, butnever gives anything. While exciting desire, itmakes clear that there is nothing in it to bedesired, because the one thing we want is that itshould not change. If one does not seek to evadethe exquisite anguish it inflicts, then desire isgradually transformed into love; and one begins toacquire the faculty of pure and disinterestedattention' (in MacLellan, 285).

This impersonal or disinterested attention can only beseen through eyes that have `decreated' themselves,`just as God renounced himself when he created theworld'. This decreation in itself has the structure ofpure desire; a desire desiring the good. `Whereas allother desires are sometimes effective and sometimesnot, according to circumstances, this one desire isalways effective. The reason is that, whereas thedesire for gold is not the same thing as gold, thedesire for good is itself a good' (FLN, p.316).

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But where does all this leave us in regard to HannahArendt's thought? Arendt never really conceptualized anotion of the divine, nor did she compare the good withthe divine explicitly. However, she did remark morethen once that the good is absent from the world. `Theworld is not what it ought to be and has never beenwhat it ought to be. And who knows, or has ever known,

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what this `ought' should be? The `ought' is utopian; ithas no proper topos or place in the world.' (Life of theMind)

`One of the most controversial claims of HannahArendt', remarks Andrea Nye, `is that goodness plays norole in public affairs'(1994:191). Like Weil, Arendtbelieved there is no such thing as good action, forgoodness is, according to her, an `absolute principle'and beyond compromises and discussion. `Its place is inthe privacy of the heart where it should remain, sinceit cannot appear as a quality.' (Nye 1994:196).

Nevertheless, Weil and Arendt both considered thedesire and the striving for justice to be a motivatingforce for human activities. `The problem, as Weildescribes it', remarks Andrea Nye, `is not that somedesire evil, but that only few know how to pursue goodand beauty. Most are deflected to a striving for wealthor power' (1996:197). The desire for beauty andgoodness is an impersonal one, while the desire forwealth and power is merely an affirmation of thepersonal stature. It is at this point where we mightcompare Weil's distinction between personal andimpersonal, with the distinction Arendt makes in TheHuman Condition (1958) between `what-ness' and `who-ness'. What-ness (quid) is the sum of the factualcharacteristics of one's identity , while `who-ness'(qui) is the appearance of one's specific uniqueness anddistinctness before others. For Arendt, it is throughspeech and action that men reveal this uniquedistictness. `The disclosure of this who incontradiction to what somebody is, is implicit ineverything somebody says and does' (1958:179).

`What-ness' might be compared with the notion of the`personal' of Weil, since it describes all features ofour socio-historic being, as for instance our`memberships' to different kind of collectivities, suchas race, colour, sex etc. As Susan Bickford (1995)remarks: `My `who-ness' is not captured by thequalities I possess, the interests I have, or thesociological categories I belong to. These are all

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characteristics of others, too, and so they do not helplocate or point to the unique identity that is `me''.10

Like Weil, Arendt calls these `oppressiveelements', because they obstruct the appearance of thequality of who-ness. Her position is quite similar tothat of Weil, who wrote: `If my membership in a groupis the only lens through which I am perceived, then Ican not appear as a person with a unique story' (in:MacLellan 1990:277). If a person is nothing more than aquid, his or her `specific uniqueness escapes us',writes Arendt (1958:181). Moreover, the appearance as aqui, `is an initiative from which no human being canrefrain and still be human' (1958:176). It is, in otherwords, the conditio sine qua non of humanness. Theappearance as a who means that we have `insertedourselves into the human world, and this insertion islike a second birth; (..) its impulse springs from thebeginning which came into the world when we were bornand to which we respond by beginning something new onour own initiative' (Arendt 1958:176-177).11

In order to appear as a qui, the individualidiosyncrasies that determine our what-ness have to betransgressed. This reminds us, of course, of Arendt'sdescription of the Latin persona, which originally`signified the mask ancient Roman actors use to wear inplays. It had to hide, or rather to replace, theactor's own face and countenance, but in a way thatwould make it possible for the voice to sound through'(On Revolution, 106). The mask, as Susan Bickfordobserves, has to `avoid that I am only able to appearas a stereotype of one's group identity' (1995:318). Itoperates as a `neutralizing device'. For Arendt,

1010 ?. Susan Bickford, `In the Presence of Others' inFeminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt (ed. B. Honig, 1995: 316)

1111 ?. `If action as a beginning corresponds to the fact ofbirth, if it is the actualization of the human condition ofnatality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctnessand is the actualization of the human condition of plurality,that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals'(Arendt 1958:178).

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appearing as a qui requires, as did the thinking processfor Weil, a de-collectivization or transgression of thewhat-ness of the actor. This transgression is firstsymbolized by the wearing of a mask in the publicdomain of speech and action. Later, Arendt will usemore `spatial' metaphors: as the `I' we have to learnto go visiting the perspectives of others. For Weil thetransgression is made through desire: it's the humandesire for impersonality - i.e for goodness, justiceand beauty - that enables the transgression of thepersonal.

This neutralizing moment that preceeds theappearance of who-ness raises the classical feministquestion whether it is still possible to `testify' toone's own embodied existence, since, as Linda Zerilliremarks correctly, `the who exceeds the symboliccategories as man or woman' (in: Honig 1995, o.c.p.181). However, as I will try to show later, who-nessdoesn't imply a complete disapearance of what-ness; wecould consider it as the product of a certain distance(Erstreckung in the Heideggerian sense) between our givenwhat-ness on the one hand and the impartiality of ageneral standpoint on the other. This distance makespossible a `unique' re-interpretation of our factualbeing. Or, as Bickford remarks: `Where we come from hasan effect on how we see our destination' (1995:322). Inspeech and action, we reveal these different routes andinterpretations, and together they form what Arendtcalls `the unique life-story of the newcomer'(1958:184).12

`The disclosure of this who-ness, remarks Arendt, `canalmost never be achieved as a wil-ful purpose. (...) Onthe contrary, it is more than likely that the who which

12 ?12. See for an overview article on the `Feministreceptions of Hannah Arendt', Mary G. Dietz, in Bonnie Honig1995. Some `feminist readings blur the very distinction betweena `what' and a `who' upon which Arendtian politics rests. Indoing so, they miss the emancipatory point: for Arent locatesfreedom in the `whoness' of acting, not the `whatness' ofBeing' (1995:34.

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appears so unmistakably to others remains hidden fromthe person himself, like the daimon in Greek religionwhich accompanies each man throughout his life, alwayslooking over his shoulder and thus visible only tothose he encounters' (1958:179-180). We cannot describeour who-ness not that of others, we can neither possessor dispose of it freely, like we may dispose of certainqualities of our what-ness13: `The moment we want to saysomebody is, our very vocubulary leads us astray intosaying what he is; we get entangled in a description ofqualities he necessarlily shares with others likehim ... with the result that his specific uniquenessescapes us', writes Arendt in The Human Condition(1958:181). And Simone Weil agrees: `It is impossibleto describe this impersonal and sacred dignity of thehuman being' (in: MacLellan 1990:276).

So far, it seems that the `impersonal' aspect ofsubjectivity in Weil and the `who' quality of Arendt'spublic actor show some similarities: they do not belongto any collective identity; they are both`disinterested, i.e. they have been `neutralized' fromtheir specific private conditions; they are unsayableand they both have an untimely character and bringabout new perspectives. For Weil however, theimpersonal may be revealed in the solitary process ofthinking and in the quest for beauty and justice, whileArendt seems to relate her concept of who-ness to theappearance of the speaking actor in the politicaldomain only. But she does make one exception: `For love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences

in human lives, indeed possesses an unequaledpower of self-revelation, and an unequaled clarityof vision for the disclosure of who, preciselybecause it is unconcerned to the point of totalunworldliness with what the loved person may be,with his qualities and shortcomings no less than

13 ?13. See also Bonnie Honig's `Toward an AgonisticFeminism': `Arendt's actors are never self-sovereign; (...)they do not act because of what they already are, their actionsdo not express a prior stable identity' (Honig 1995:140-141).

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with his achievements, failings andtransgressions. Love, by its very nature, isunworldly, and it is for this reason rather thanits rarity that it is not only apolitical butantipolitical, perhaps the most powerful of allantipolitical human forces' (1958:242).

Love, like thinking, is characterized by Arendt asessentially unworldly and anti-political; neverthelessit possesses an `unequalled power of self-revelationand an unequalled clarity of vision for the disclosureof who' - which is, for Arendt, the most importantcharacteristic of the political. How are we tounderstand such a contradiction? What we see here,already in The Human Condition, is that the private andthe public are not that sharply distinguished afterall. If loving can disclose a qui, then why shouldn'tthinking hold the same possibility?

The difference between Weil and Arendt on thispoint might be that Weil places the momentaryworldlessness of thinking at the same level as thewithdrawal from the personal identity; both make adisclosure of the impersonal possible. This`impersonal' dimension enables to rediscover the traceof human dignity in the other as well as the traces ofthe absent good or divine. Both aspects are, for Weil,the foundations of her ethico-political attitude. Inother words, Weil does not see a contradiction betweentemporary worldlessness on the one hand and justice orpolitics on the other. On the contrary, the one isnecessarily a preparation for the other. However, because of its unworldliness, Arendtkeeps calling the thinking process an a-politicalactivity. She believed that philosophy cannot betrusted with politics, because withdrawal from theworld and solitude are the necessary conditions forthinking. But at the same time, she puts Cato'sstatement about the ambivalent character of action andsolitude at the end of the Human Condition as well as atthe beginning of The Life of the Mind: `Never is he moreactive than when he does nothing, never is he lessalone than when he is by himself.' We have to wait

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until her late works, where Arendt reconnects thepolitical activity of judging with the solitaryactivity of thinking, to really understand thecomplexity of her position.

This `reconnection' raises a number of questions.In what way may the concept of who-ness that Arendtdeveloped in The Human Condition - and which was strictlyreserved for the political actor - be compared with the`critical' spectator of her Kant Lectures? And does thisimpartial judge still show any similarities with thenotion of the impersonal found in the work of SimoneWeil?

5.

If the solitary aspect of the thinking process meansthat philosophy can not be trusted with politics, thenwe may ask ourselves how solitary is thinking as anactivity? Thinking implies a certain withdrawal fromthe presence and visibility of things and from our ownprivate conditions, but it is not an absolute retreatfrom the world, as Arendt herself admits in the Life of theMind. Thinking is only temporarily placed outside theworld; it is not above or out of time, but it situatesitself in an untimely interval, an `in-between' twotimes, that of the past and that of the future.

For Weil, it is precisely in this interval `wherelies all our consideration for our brothers inhumanity'. Thinking, according to Weil, doesn't onlycome from a sense of wonder and awe, nor from the Romanexperience of disunity, as described by Arendt in The Lifeof the Mind. Even the answer Socrates gives - to be inharmony, in agreement with oneself - does not really dofor Weil. She stresses the fact that thinking itselfalways and necessarily implies the other(s). The otherdiscloses the interval of thinking, because he or shehas, as Weil calls it, a power to refuse; he or she can say`no' to our projects, our ideas or plans by throwingsome kind of obstacle on our way:`Anything within the field of action which does not

constitute an obstacle is transparent for thought

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in the way completely clear glasses are for sight.It has no power to stop, just as our eyes have nopower to see the glass' (Weil 1956: 57).

If it is the other who by interrupting our actions andprojects opens the interval of thinking, in what way isthis `other' then still present in our thoughts? Couldthe inner dialogue that Arendt describes in the Life of theMind as the real activity of thinking - this innersplit between one `I' and an other `I' - have somethingto do with this power to refuse of the other?

The thinking consciousness is, according toArendt, always a `two-in-one', a dialogue between meand myself, but what is the precise status of these twodifferent `selves' ? It cannot be just a doubling ofidentity, for why would two similar `I's have aconversation with each other? What would there be tosay, to think, to judge, to `put in harmony' for? In TheLife of the Mind, Arendt distinguishes dialogic thought fromthe philosopher's consciousness (LM, 187). Thinking isnot the philosopher's reflective doubling of self-consciousness, in which a person is aware of himself asthe same. This view would lead to `the fallacy ofsolipsism' (Nye 1994:212). Thinking always andnecessarily causes a split, a difference, which Arendt- halfway through section 18 of The Life of the Mind,literally calls the principle of otherness, and she evengives us the Latin concept between brackets: alteritas.Despite its withdrawal from the world, thinking,therefore, is not only related to itself - kath' auto - butalways anticipates the other or otherness, even if weare `all alone by ourselves'.’

This otherness could be related to what SimoneWeil calls the power to refuse of the other as well asto her concept of the impersonal. The `other in the I'refers to an alteritas within subjectivity, which doesn'tcoincide with the specific characteristics of the `I',but with its impersonal dimension: an `impersonality'which the subject shares with all others. Thinking thenbecomes `the faculty of mysteriously combining theparticular and the general (Arendt 1982:76); a dialoguebetween two different selves, which precisely reveals

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the possibility of expressing singularity, or, inArendt's terms, whoness.

Thinking as an interval between the personal and theimpersonal doesn't mean that we forget or dismiss ourhistory or private conditions. It remains a dialogue, a`two in one', or, as Susan Bickford remarks: `Allthoughmy travelling self may be liberated from privateinterests, those interests are still present as a sortof comparativ self' (1994:317). It is precisely becauseof the dialogical structure of thought between a givenI and an `other in the I' that makes it possible to re-interpret the story of our given what-ness and preventsus of being determined by that `what-ness' only. It is,in other words, the distance or Erstreckung between thesetwo different `selves' that inaugurates difference andplurality, because it permits us to re-interprete orretell the story of our being a woman, a man, a jew, ablack etc. This dialogical structure of subjectivity isnever a closed entity, but, in Heideggers words, anentschlossen, unclosed Dasein, since it can not be reducedto the facticity of what-ness only. It is also this`two in one' which makes it impossible to speak anylonger of for instance the essence of woman, sinceevery woman constantly creates and recreates her ownwoman-hood. Some Arendt studies have pointed out theimportance of Arendt's concept of who-ness for feministthought. Bonnie Honig for instance calls it a`performative politics', that, instead of `reproducingand re-presenting `what' we are, agonisticallygenerates `who' we are, by episodically producing newidentities' (1995:149). However, she rarely stressesthe dialogical structure between a `given' factual `I'and an other, impersonal or `enlarged' `I', which isalready inherent of the Arendtian thinking processitself. 14

14 ?14. Linda Zerilli shows in her article `The Arendtianbody' that Arendt in a short essay, `Karl Jaspers: Citizen ofthe World' quotes a passage from Genisis: `Male and femalecreated He them' to defend her conception of human plurality.But, as Zerilli asks herzelf, `If the categories `male' and

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In The Human Condition Arendt writes: `Is this thinkingnot an innovative action, where the thinking actor isreborn through innovative thinking; he/she shows whothey really are, reveal their uniqueness first tothemselves and then to the other' (1958:179). Here,thinking itself seems to be a political action, becauseit reveals the thinker as a unique qui, which is forArendt the condition for plurality. This somehow seemsto be in contradiction with the distinctions Arendtmade elsewhere between thinking and political action,as for instance in one of her letters to Karl Jaspers:`The internal dialogue of thought cannot provide aparadigm for politics, because it can never reach theWe, the true plural of action'(in: Canovan 1992:263).

Even if it is true that Arendt characterized thepolitical by the notion of plurality and accusedthinking of being a solitary quest for the unum verum,we should not forget that, almost at the same time, shedescribed thinking as the disclosure of difference byunderlining the dialogical aspect of thought.

6.

So far it seems that the thinking `actor' who revealshis who-ness to others in the public space, shows morethan a little ressemblance to the figure of theimpartial judge in Arendt's Kant Lectures. However, themost striking difference is that Arendt, in thefootsteps of Kant, no longer speaks of the thinkingactor, who is capable of expressing new opinions andjudgments, rather it is only the impartial spectator whoreally `could discover a meaning in the course taken byevents, a meaning the actors ignored' (1982:54).

The existential ground for the spectator's insightis, once more, `his disinterestedness' and `non-involvement' (1982:54). The spectator, contrary to the

`female' correspond to the `what' rather than to the `who' ofour being, as Arendt herself argues, how could they possiblysupport Arendt's plural subject of action?'. In this essay Ihope to give an answer to that specific question.

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actor, is impartial by definition, while the actor isnot only partial by definition, but also concerned withdoxa, the opinions of others, and is therefore notautonomous. The spectator has given up the standpointthat determines his factual existence, `with all itscircumstantial, contingent conditions' (1982:56).

In Arendt's description of the Kantian spectator,disinterestedness seems to be the decisive criterionfor judgment. She no longer stresses the dialogicalstructure of thinking, i.e. the oscillation between twoselves: the personal and impersonal one. What remainsis the absolute impartiality of the spectator, who, asa consequence, doesn't express any longer his or herown opinion or dokei moi, but what Kant calls a `generalstandpoint'. `Kant would have said: I have reached a general

standpoint, the impartiality the Judge is supposedto exercise when he lays down his verdict. Thegreeks would have said: we have given up the dokeimoi, the it-seems-to-me, and the desire to seem toothers' (idem).

We would have expected Arendt to criticise this generalstandpoint of the impartial spectator, but she does notdo so. We could wonder with Ronald Beiner `to whatextent judgment still participates in the vita activa'(1982:138) or is it now confined exclusively to thevita contemplativa? In her early work Arendtinterpreted judgment as a function of therepresentative thinking of political actors, exchangingtheir opinions in public. In her Kant Lectures, Arendt`emphasizes the contemplative and desinteresteddimension of judgment, which operates retrospectively,like aesthetic judgment', as Beiner (1982:138) pointsout. In the Kant Lectures, judging - `the most politicalof all human faculties' - is indeed removed from thescene of action and confined to the realm of criticalthinking, to the domain of the judging spectators whohave withdrawn themselves from the scene of action.Although her tone is ironic here and there, Arendtfollows Kant's thinking in an almost uncritical way,

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leaving behind the importance of her concept ofpolitical action and plurality, which is the expressionin public of our unique who-ness. She even goes as faras to say that `the public realm is constituted by thecritics and spectators, not by the actors or themakers' (1982:63).

Unfortunatly Arendt wasn't given the time to finish andrewrite her lectures of Kant for the third part of TheLife of the Mind. What we have is Arendt's close readings ofKant's ideas on taste and judgment, but she failed toreally relate these to some important concepts of herearlier work. Nor did she explain the rather surprisingshift in emphasis she makes between the actor and thespectator. Perhaps Arendt would have deconstructed thisnew opposition herself, by suggesting that thespectator becomes an actor again, at the very moment heexpresses his judgment in public.

However, what remains is the question whether thispublicly expressed judgment still contains something ofthe dokei moi, or the who-ness of the spectator, twoconcepts so important for Arendt in The Human Condition.It seems to me that Arendt's affirmative description ofthe Kantian taste as a model for judgment of an`impartial' spectator could play an important rolehere. I would like to end this essay by making somefinal remarks on the precise nature of the taste-judgement, in order to reconnect the general standpointof the spectator from Arendt's later works with theexpression of who-ness of the actor in The HumanCondition.

We have seen that the spectator, on the one hand, is`impartial' and `disinterested' because he has leftbehind all `the circumstantial, contingent conditions'of his own perspective and exchanged this for thepossible perspectives of all others, which gave him his`general standpoint'. On the other hand, however,Arendt chooses precisely the Kantian tastejudgment -which, together with the sense of smell, is the most`partial', that is `the most subjective and most

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particular of our five senses' (1982:64) - as the modelfor her concept of critical judgment. Smell and tastegive `inner sensations that are entirely private andincommunicable' (idem), Arendt writes, `they seem to beprivate senses by definition'. They are `entirelyideosyncratic', because in matters of taste or smell,`the it-pleases-or-displeases-me is immediate andoverwhelming' (idem). Now why should taste - as `themost private sense' (1982:65) become the `vehicle of themental faculty of judgment, which is supposed toexpress a non-private, general opinion?

Arendt gives us several answers to this question. Oneis that I am directly affected by taste: taste isimmediate, that is unmediated by any thought orreflection. Another, even more important characteristicof taste is that it is a completely subjective andinner sense: `No argument can persuade me to likeoysters if I do not like them'. Also, taste relates tothe particular qua particular: it senses not an objectbut a sensation which can not be represented. However,taste itself is not a judgment yet. It needs twooperations of the mind to become one: imagination andreflection. The faculty of imagination `transforms anobject into something I do not have to be directlyconfronted with but what I have in some senseinternalized' (1982:66). The operation of reflection is`the actual activity of judging something' (1982:68).We then speak of judgment and no longer of taste,because:`though it still affects one like a matter of taste,

one now has, by means of representation,established the proper distance, the remoteness oruninvolvedness or disinterestedness, that isrequisite for approbation and disapprobation, forevaluating something as its proper worth'.(1982:67).

The operations of imagination and reflection are guidedby a so called extra sense, the sensus communis, that`fits us into a community'. It is according to Kant,`the idea of a sense common to all, i.e. of a faculty

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of judgment which takes account (a priori) of the modeof representation of all other men in thought, inorder, as it were, to compare its judgment with thecollective reason of humanity' (1982:71). The sensuscommunis is, for both Kant and Arendt, something weshare with every other human being, it is `whatjudgment appeals to in everyone'. We now see howArendt's concept of critical judgment as a Kantiantaste judgment tries to connect two appearantlycompletely opposed things: the `absolute ideosyncraticnature of taste' - this most inner and subjective sense- with the `basic other-directedness' (1982:68) ofjudgment - the sensus communis.

It seems to me that with this description ofcritical judgment as a taste-judgment, Arendtreinstaures the dialogic nature of thought, which isthe passage or equilibrium between the particular, privateconditions and a general or impersonal perspective. Theexpression of a taste-judgment will bring forward someaspects of the most `subjective state of mind', whilelooking at the same time for agreement with others.This necessarily means that the taste judgment doesn'texpress a `general standpoint' as a result from mysensus communis only, but that it always, and at the sametime, reveals a story of my most particular `mostprivate' (1982:64) self. Judgment in that sense isneither partial nor impartial, but something inbetween. An in-between that reminds us of the untimelyinterval of thought, which discloses also thepossibility to reveal one's who-ness; to communicate toanother what is most singular to me.

Judging, then, doesn't only express a judgment ona socio-historic phenomenon, but it always bringsforward the uniqueness of the judge's perspective. Ifthis wasn't the case, all the judgments wouldconsequently be the same. If I for instance - a`disinterested', but nevertheless female spectator -would publish an article on the French Revolution, Iprobably would focus on the position of women in thisperiod of European history. It is only because Iintegrate my own - in time and place - transgressed

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partiality, that I will express a unique judgment,which, with all the other possible judgments,guarantees plurality.

If Arendt, because of her distinction betweenphilosophical and critical thinking - would not, in theend, have agreed with Weil's statement that `everythought is a judgment', she surely would have agreedwith the first part of the quotation: that `judgment isthe most important faculty of the mind'. There is aremarkable similarity between Weil's notion of the`impersonal' - which is the desire for goodness andsolidarity with others - and Arendt's reinterpretationof the Kantian notion of sensus communis. Apparantly, wecan reconcile Weil's far more mystical way of thinkingwith Arendt's concept of critical thinking or judging.The internal dialogue between two different `selves'that for both authors represent the thinking process,is, in the end, a political dialogue between myself andthe impersonal, imagined other(s). Or, to put it inother words: in the thinking - and judging - process,the personal is always passionatly trying to becomepolitical, that is to reach out for others.

`The world and the people who live in it are not thesame. The world lies between people and thisin-between is our greatest concern' (HannahArendt)