This article attempts to show that Heidegger's phenomenology may shed light on political phenomena. It pursues this project by arguing that Heidegger's phenomenology is an appropriation of Aristotle's practical philosophy and his conceptualization of phronesis. I argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger's 'circumspection', which is a capacity for making sense of practical situations, is a translation of phronesis. Heidegger argues, though, that the sight of circumspection is foreshortened by the rules and norms of 'the one'. In division 2, 'conscience' becomes a sharpening of the vision of phronesis, which sees through the one. I then defend Heidegger's appropriation of phronesis and argue that Heidegger's concept of conscience, which takes up a critical stance toward plurality, may actually be a proper vision of practical wisdom under modern conditions. I substantiate this claim by turning to an unlikely source to bolster Heidegger's reading of phronesis and the modern public, Hannah Arendt.
Hannah Arendt’s conceptualization of judgment may only drive political theorists further from the phenomenon. Throughout her life, Arendt’s work on judgment was guided by Kant’s thought. Arendt’s reading of Kant’s work raises two difficulties to which contemporary political scientists should attend. First, Arendt’s reading of Kant is a systematic misreading of his texts. Second, Arendt’s misreading of Kant pushes her toward a misreading of the phenomenon of judgment. More important, Arendt’s misreading has led political theorists to assume a divide between the points of view of the actor and of the spectator, which cannot be reconciled given the resources of Arendt’s thought.
and attention to the details of Goldman's habitus, in its sensitivity to the novel challenges of recording the kind of political thinking that arises from oppositional political movements, and in its evident passion for the recovery of Goldman herself as a political thinker who becomes intelligible only when she is placed in this context above all. The final and finest two chapters in the book, "Emma Goldman's Women" and "Political Thinking in the Streets," return the reader to the deeper roots of Ferguson's project in conjuring Goldman as a political prophet whose enormous investment of time and energy in the conduct of her relationships with others, in the public performance of anarchism in speeches, in the letters and articles that she composed for a general audience-all to the detriment of her development as a traditional theorist presiding over a formal body of work-was aimed at nothing less than bringing the anarchist movement into being. Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets vividly conveys the too often unrecognized daily lifework from which such political possibilities are born.
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