Hannah Arendt s Political Aesthetics: How is her concept of human plurality to be the condition for it?

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1 Hannah Arendt s Political Aesthetics: How is her concept of human plurality to be the condition for it? SUH, You-Kyung (sykphil@khcu.ac.kr) (Professor of Political Philosophy, Kyung Hee Cyber University, Seoul) I. Introduction Hannah Arendt in her acceptance speech for the Sonning Prize for her outstanding contribution to the European culture in 1975 disclosed that she had a few different masks through which her political thought was spoken for itself clear and loud. Indeed, Arendt earned several titles for her reputed but usually controversial authorship. Thus she has been recognized as a political theorist based on her self-identificaion in the 1964 Gaus interview (Arendt 1979; Villa 2012: 80, 98); a political thinker because many appear to be fond of depicting her in such a truism as Hannah Arendt was one of the [most important etc.] seminal political thinkers of the twentieth century (d Entrѐves 1994: 1; McCarthy 2014: vii; Villa 2012: 104); a political philosopher because more political philosophers want to be friends with her nowadays (Calhoun & McGowan 1997; Beiner 2014 et al.); or, can she by any chance be called a political aesthetician for her theory of political aesthetics? To be sure, her views of the political and political philosophy have gradually and incrementally been shaped through her entire life span, starting with her philosophy training in several German universities in the 1920s, her personal political experiences in Europe during the 1930s, and her civilian life as an American citizen in New York since 1941 when she decided to acquire a new national identity for herself. To be more precise, the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt is a mixed outcome of her study on the Greek classics and in its extension the civic republicanism of both Athenian and Roman politics, on German existentialism and phenomenology, her personal confrontation with the harsh political realities in Hitler s Germany and the rest of Europe and the modern republicanism and representative democracy of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s (Young-Bruehl 1982; Villa 1996; Suh 1999). Being a Jew Arendt was always conscious of her status as a stateless person because she had been deprived of her feeling of being at home in the world (Young-Bruehl 1982: 57). It follows that this existential limit condition could inevitably form its problematic for her political philosophy; that is, a quest for the ways to overcome such feeling of groundlessness or in her own terms worldlessness. Yet, it has not just been her problem but the general problem for all modern masses who would more or less take the fact of world alienation for granted in their everyday life. In her view, however, living without having a world to which one genuinely belongs never allows anybody to live like a human being. This is why she thinks that the political concern is exclusively with having a world in which people interact with one another in a specific humanly manner (RJ: 93). As we can see later, this insight has become the foundation stone for her political philosophy as a whole. In fact, the very concept of world as a manifestation of human plurality for Hannah Arendt indicates many different things but they come together to constitute one important central axis around which her theory of political philosophy revolves. Considering the fundamental fact that not an 'I' but a we is "not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam," Arendt following Aristotle who defined human beings as zoon politikon living 1

2 together in a political community regards human plurality as a most overarching factor of our existence itself. It is simply because that Power for human beings who are not omnipotent can only reside in one of the many forms of human plurality, whereas every mode of human singularity is impotent by definition. (RJ: 106) Hence, there appear many forms of human plurality in her politico-theoretical contexts. First of all, it is a physical world, a natural habitat for all human beings, as we commonly and literally understand the word; secondly, it means the public realm like the Agora in ancient Greece where people deliberate over the things of common concern from their respective standpoints representing their different social positions; thirdly, it can refer to the linguistic epistemological space of common taste or opinion based on a specific network of human relations like a literary circle or an issue public; or, lastly, it can even mean an inner space of thinking where everything is desensed, de-temporalized, and thereby de-contextualized for the silent operation of reflection or, put differently, the Socratic dialogue between me and myself. Despite of their apparent differences between them, however, they have one thing in common; that is, a world come into existence on the condition of human plurality, actual or fictional. Ironically enough, this same condition does not disappear even from the inner space of thinking. Hence, from my theoretical vantage point, she has made human plurality a categorical concept into her theories of both political action and political aesthetics as she claimed that it be the central concern for a new political philosophy per se. Many of the prerequisites for a new political philosophy which in all likelihood will consist in the reformulation of the philosopher's attitude toward the political realm, or of the connection between man as a philosophical and as a political being, or of the relationship between thought and action already exist,... Crucial for a new political philosophy will be an inquiry into the political significance of thought; that is, into the meaningfulness and the conditions of thinking for a being that never exists in the singular and whose essential plurality is far from explored when an I-Thou relationship is added to the traditional understanding of human nature. (EU: 445. My italics) On the other hand, if we can concede that the raison d être of political philosophy is to confront human beings with a range of the most intellectually ambitious accounts of the standard by which to judge what makes a human life consummately human (Beiner 2014: xxi-xxii), the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt appears to fit for it perfectly well with its unique standard for judgment. Moreover, it is second to none in giving account of what is like to live authentically as a human being in a common world with others. Yet, a vital question to ask is what kind of standard has she offered in this connection. And, I hope, we will find it out in this paper later. Just to give you a little clue, she appears to have devised a unique aesthetic regime concerning the transcendental beauty or meaningfulness of the bios politikos when it is combined with the vita comtemplativa. Even for this good reason alone, I think, her political philosophy can afford to have the title political aesthetics. Moreover, no lack of evidence in support of my characterization of her political aesthetics. First of all, Arendt has clearly dealt with political action or praxis (doing) in terms of theatrical performance with unmistakable reference to the Athenian polis in her theory of political action. Accordingly, she has given us a distinct account of political action and its most desirable standard. Secondly, she has drawn some useful insights from Kant s Critique of Judgment widely known as the Kantian aesthetics and incorporated them into her own theory later. For example, some important concepts from his theory of aesthetic judgment such as enlarged mentality, representative thinking, sensus communis, reflective judgment and the like appear to have moved into her reformulation of the theory of political judgment based on her phenomenological analysis of thinking. This is how we understand of her political aesthetics, which, as it were, may be seen as a political rendition of Kant s aesthetics. Now, my discussion will be divided it into the following five sections. In the next section, I shall give account of the backbone of her political aesthetics which is her in-depth, original, and yet allegedly somewhat biased reading of Kant s third Critique and her subsequent rendition of it. Here, I will be able show how her political philosophy 2

3 can take on the character of political aesthetics in particular. The section III will be a discussion of Arendt s methodology of thinking, which in this paper is identified as the Archimedean point metaphor. This will be followed by the sections IV and V where I will be closely examining her concept of human plurality in many different aspects so that we can have some idea as to how it would be able serve as the condition for her political aesthetics and then move on to explicate its five types each of which we should deal with one by one. Finally, in the conclusion I will present a brief summary of the previous discussion and then draw out some meaningful implications that Hannah Arendt political aesthetics have for our bios politikos oday. Of which, I shall stress in particular that the missing link in her political thought to social justice has been recovered from the deep sea and brought into the sun at last. II. Understanding the Theory of Aesthetic Judgment 1. Arendt s Reading of Kant s Aesthetic Judgment Aesthetics, according to Ranciѐre (2000; 2009), is not an ism of any philosophical school but a way or, if you like, a method of thinking by which to identify and reflect on the objects of arts. So the word aesthetics primarily refers to the aesthetic regime of art and can in turn be understood as a way of thinking about the things of artistic nature. Not surprisingly, his regime seems to remind us of the standard required of a political philosophy by which to judge what makes a human life consummately human because the aesthetic regime, roughly speaking, seems to function in the same way. This naturally leads us to ask the following two important questions: Does the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt have the kind of aesthetic regime typical of an aesthetics? and, if so, secondly, how does it effectuate that specific regime in reality? Let us try to find ways to answer these two questions. It has been an open secret for some time now that had Hannah Arendt lived long enough to finish up the third part, Judging, of The Life of the Mind, it would have been, so to speak, her version of Critique of Judgment. From this, have so far emerged a variety of conjectured theories regarding what the last magnum opus would be like, and here goes yet another to the already crowded discursive community. In my view, it could just as well be a theory of political aesthetics putting a special emphasis on the art of human judgment with its specific aesthetic regime at hand. Nevertheless, it cannot offer a political doctrine because it is, practically speaking, an approach to the bios politikos or a methodology of being at home in the common world with others. In this respect, Arendt s political aesthetics has quite a few commonalities with the philosophy branch aesthetics apart from its direct theoretical appropriation from Kant s aesthetics. Allegedly, the term aesthetics originated from the Greek word aisthẽsis, which often refers to sense perception and not necessarily to thought, knowledge, and reason (Tanke & McQullan 2012: 1). 1 Later, aesthetics as a branch of philosophy has gradually formed as a discourse for example, a dialogue on knowledge 2 ever since the eighteenth century and then begun to articulate its own regime or standard by which to explain the phenomena perceived by our senses. Kant among those eighteenth century aesthetic thinkers was an outstanding example who theoretically embraced the notion of taste to explain his aesthetic judgment. Thus, Arendt informs 1 As sense perception was practically out of the philosophy s concern, such notion of the aesthetic did not appeal to the western philosophers until the eighteenth century when a sudden interest in taste gained currency among the learned people in Europe at large. As the concept of the aesthetic has been added to the philosophical lexicon, its derivative term aesthetics has been recognized little by little as a branch of philosophy. For more information about the concept of the aesthetic, go to the following websites: and 2 Socrates in Theaetetus explains that the Greek word dianoeisthai, which means discourse, refers to a dialogue on knowledge required in making up one s mind and forming an opinion (See Arendt 2003: 91-3). 3

4 us that Kant was conscious of the spirit of the eighteenth century, with its enormous interest in aesthetics, in art and art criticism, the goal of which was to lay down rules for taste, to establish standards in the arts (LKPP: 32). A judgment in art is exercised specific to each particular art piece whose beauty or worth is determined by the spectators who see it from a distance in an open space where it is on display. Since the spectators are not the artist himself they are thought to be capable of judging with disinterestedness and impartiality and in turn exchange opinions about it with its other spectators. Indeed, such withdrawal from direct involvement to a standpoint outside the game is a condition sine qua non of all judgment, 3 and the criterion, then, is communicability, and the standard of deciding about it is common sense (LKPP: 55, 69). As such, the objective validity for the particular artwork can be secured and it is possible on the grounds that spectators exist only in the plural and they of course have the faculty of judgment in common (LKPP: 63). In sum, aesthetic judgment presupposes a public space to display art pieces, an appropriate aesthetic distance to grasp them in their entirety, and the presence of spectators in the plural. Such a public setting can in fact be likened to the Athenian Agora, the much-talked-about scene of Pythagorean Olympic games or even to a theater where a play is being performed. What really matters in forming people s judgment in those places is the communicative network of significant others with whom one makes things as well as himself intelligible to the world in words and deeds ideally from the perspective of the common world and its community sense. Suppose there is a speaker (i. e. Pericles) making a public speech (i. e. his famous funeral oration) in front of a group of people (the Athenians). Such an actor cannot be entirely autonomous or sovereign, speaking from his innate voice of reason alone but has to take account of what spectators would expect of him if he really wants to win them over (LKPP: 55). Understood in this way, then, judgment tends to be made based on opinions whose nature is fundamentally different from reason or rationality. On this basis, the common sense is defined as the standard of judgment in Kant s aesthetics. According to Arendt, the common sense or differently sensus communis first appeared in Kant s Anthropology 4 where he argued that the loss of common sense would mean insanity. It was then redefined as an extra sense that fits us into a community and thereby interpreted as the community sense. This sense should be able to work the same for everyone in his very privacy like conscience being hidden in the inner space of the mind. And then, it was eventually elevated to be called the sixth sense to make it an addition to the already existing five senses (LKPP: 64, 70). Now the sixth sense is supposed to engage with the inner operation of reflection and we will find the reason below. For now, we need to further understand the nature of taste so that we can make a necessary link between the taste which is a most particular feeling and the sensus communis that is universal enough to fit us into a community. Basically, judging is an act of discriminating between beautiful and ugly or right and wrong which involves one s taste. Our three senses sight, hearing, and touch can identify objects of the external world and in turn share the sensed objects with other people by means of representation (and in Kant s terms imagination ), which makes present something that is absent; I can, for example, recall a building, a melody, the touch of velvet. (LKPP: 64). In this context, Arendt gives an account of Kant s concept of imagination as follows: Imagination, the ability to make present what is absent, transforms the objects of the objective senses into sensed objects, as thought they were objects of an inner sense. This happens by reflecting not on an object but on its representation. The represented object now arouses one s pleasure or displeasure, not direct perception of the object. Kant calls this the operation of reflection (LKPP: 65. My italics). 3 Let me draw your attention to this particular expression, a standpoint outside the game, here because I am going to discuss the Archimedean point in this very context later. 4 E. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. by Gregor. 4

5 By contrast, according to Arendt s explanation, taste and smell cannot have the function of representation because they tend to operate in a very different way from those three senses. In fact, taste and smell give inner sensations that are entirely private and incommunicable and unlike other senses cannot withhold judgment because in matters of taste or smell, the it-pleases-or-displeases-me is immediate and overwhelming (LKPP: 64). Here let us focus on the point that taste gives inner sensations and also that it is a faculty of discriminating pleasure and displeasure of me, the self. Next on the person who is in his operation of reflection and has to confront the represented or sensed objects which his imagination or enlarged thought has been able to collect from its limitless representation. In this situation, however, we are told that the taste as the giver of inner sensations begins to judge not according to its pleasure principle but to the community sense. Why is that? First of all, Arendt replies by reminding us of Kant s initial definition of sensus communis or the common sense the loss of common sense means insanity and again using Kant s own expression that the only general symptom of insanity is the loss of the sensus communis in insisting on one s own sense. And then implies that it is probably because of the maxim of enlightenment which demands everybody think in the place of everyone else through the enlarged mentality. To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one s imagination to go visiting (LKPP: 43). To paraphrase, it means that the more often one s imagination goes visiting, the bigger its stock of represented objects becomes and consequently the richer, more balanced judgment it comes out of it, in principle. Put it in simplest terms, the more you communicate with people the closer you come to the common sense of your community. This becomes all possible because there exists one and the same community sense by which people make their judgment. In other words, the only standard of judging right or wrong and pleasing or displeasing is the community sense in Kant s aesthetics. Thus Arendt s reading of it comes down to the summary that: [C]ommon sense in its very special Kantian meaning, according to which common sense is community sense, sensus communis, as distinguished from sensus privatus. This sensus communis is what judgment appeals to in everyone, and it is this possible appeal that gives judgments their special validity. The it-pleases-or-displeases-me, which as a feeling seems so utterly private and noncommunicative, is actually rooted in this community sense and is therefore open to communication once it has been transformed by reflection, which takes all others and their feelings into account when one judges, one judges as a member of a community. (LKPP: 72) 2. Some Concerns for Arendt s Aesthetic Regime So far we have closely followed Arendt s reading of Kant s theory of aesthetic judgement. In so doing, we have come across some concerns which could just as well be the starting point for Arendt s own theory of political aesthetics if had written it herself. First, there exists a striking structural resemblance between the actual political scene where the actor and the spectator(s) appear at the same space in time as in the case of Pericles funeral oration and the thinking process or the scene of the Kantian operation of reflection where one s self puts himself in other people s places with the help of the faculty of imagination and compares his sensus privatus with the sensus communis before making up his mind. (For this reason, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl once called the latter the interior public space as opposed to the former which Arendt formally named the public realm. ) Second, not just the structural resemblance, but the criteria for judgment in both realms is also the same thing, that is the standpoint of the world or the community sense. Arendt herself introduced a concept, Amor Mundi, in this connection. (However, this turns out to be her theoretical fallacy that she publicly but somewhat inconspicuously admitted in I shall explain the reason in due course.) From our point of view, this creates at least three serious theoretical problems; (1) the age-old Aristotelian common good problem usually associated 5

6 with and criticized for civic republicanism; (2) the mediocrity problem that is likely to occur when everybody takes account of everybody else s opinions even though it is not necessarily to go as far as the level of conformism; and (3) the selectivity problem involving representation due to one s selective retrieval of events and people from his memory. In Kant s terms, without schema representation is impossible, and in Arendt s terms, one who has not known freedom in reality cannot know the freedom of the mind. The common good problem arises from the sheer fact that the sensus communis (or common sense) was in effect declared as a universal standard of judgment to replace the nous from his other two books of Critique. Even if we agree to Kant s assumption that one always judges as a member of a community putting its common good or common interest before his, but then this person could still be regarded as a parochial or biased person from the standpoint of view of someone outside his community. In this vein, his judgment based on his community sense could not possibly be regarded as just or risen above one s private concerns. Unlike Kant s view, there exists not one but many a sensus communis. Apart from this problem, Kant s aesthetic regime is not free from the criticism that it tends to reduce human beings to serving the common good of the community one is a member. From Arendt s point of view, this situation appears to be a repetition of the telos of the polis problem of Aristotle whose concept of praxis she famously renewed (as Habermas put it) to obtain her purest concept of action for the sake of itself by stripping the former of its instrumentalism. Besides, her Augustinian notion of natality does not approve of such situation as Kant s in which man is seen to lose his inherent freedom, i. e. initium as a new beginning and his particularity as freest man. Let us listen to this: It is only when they participate with their fellow citizens in political life, in the reciprocal exchange of words and deeds that they exist and act purely as men. Political existence is the properly human form of life to which neither the beasts nor the gods have access (HC: 24. My italics) In the case of the polis, the political man, given the characteristic excellence that distinguished him, was at the same time the freest man (PP: 169) [In political life] man s dignity demands that he is seen, every single one in his particularity, reflecting as such, but without any comparison and independent of time, mankind in general. (LM II: 272) From Arendt s point of view, however, his theory of aesthetic judgment must have something to do with politics, for politics has often been defined as an art (BPF: 153). Hence she must have wanted to identify an aesthetic regime from Kant s third Critique by which to explain the nature of aesthetic judgment. Among them included are imagination, enlarged mentality, representative thinking, common sense, and of course his ingenious notion of reflective judgment. In particular, the communicability of taste, according to Arendt, makes taste an element of politics because the it-pleases-or-displeases-me is almost identical with an it-agrees-or-disagrees-with-me (LKPP: 66). In this sense, Arendt stresses that Kant, although he did not realize it, authored a genuine political philosophy by writing the Critique of Judgment because there he tried to reconcile his political insights with his moral philosophy (LKPP: 19). Obviously, Arendt thought the Kantian situation described above as a kind of tyranny of morality (of the sensus communis) under which condition men would be liable to lose their freedom, autonomy, as well as dignity. Accordingly, Arendt leaves the Kantian vita contemplativa and takes sides with the Rousseavian vita activa representing the maxim that man can be a good citizen even if s/he is not a morally good person (LKPP: 17). And this amoral remark taken from Rousseau basically epitomizes her theoretical stance for the works of her last period and that of The Life of the Mind in particular. In other words, the moral laws outside human beings cannot be the standard for their actions as Kant wished, but there must be something else inside human beings that facilitates them to be good citizens. This insight brought Arendt to embark on her new book. 6

7 The main flaw and mistake of The Human Condition is the following: I still look at what is called in the traditions the vita activa from the viewpoint of the vita contemplativa, without ever saying anything real about the vita contemplativa. Now I think that to look at it from the vita contemplativa is already the first fallacy (Arendt 1979: 305-6). This statement came out in 1972 when she was about to embark on her last and unfinished book, The Life of the Mind. In retrospective, The Human Condition of 1958 for which she had once considered giving Vita Activa for its title provided us with an idealized theory of political action based on her strong conviction of civic republicanism. 5 In it political action was described as a means to disclose oneself in the public realm so as to acquire his public identity and meaning for his life. As such, it certainly looked like an idealized or fictional theory to not a small number of political scientists who tend to share a common belief in the instrumental reason or causal rationality. Is this the fallacy that she mentioned above? I do not think that is the case. Then, what does it exactly mean that she looked at the vita activa from the perspective of the vita contemplativa without ever saying anything real about the vita contemplativa? There she did not say a word that any of the contents in The Human Condition was wrong and therefore needed correction. On the contrary, what she simply wanted to do was to give fuller account of the vita contemplativa so that one can have a better understanding of the vita activa described in her earlier book. It follows that her next book would be written for this specific purpose and therefore its nature could very well be a sequel to The Human Condition whose focus was sorely on the vita activa. Granted this is true, we need to look at her theory of political action more closely and thereby figure out what the nature of her fallacy might be. In search for an answer, we find this intriguing proposition at the heart of Arendt s theory political action; The raison d être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action (BPF: 146). No wonder, her concept of political action is far from realizing specific goals or motives but means of seeking to substantiate human freedom which will concurrently arise in the process of delivering speech and action. Arendt argues, Men are free as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same (BPF: 152). And, one may be tempted to think that Arendt s theoretical mistake with The Human Condition might be related to the politico-existential proposition of equating freedom with political action. This suspicion seems not groundless at all, but before jumping into a conclusion let us first listen to her explanation about the relationship between freedom and action. Action insofar it is free is neither under the guidance of the intellect nor under the dictate of the will although it needs both for the execution of any particular goal but springs from something altogether different which (following Montesquieu s famous analysis of forms of government) I shall call a principle.. In distinction from its goal, the principle of an action can be repeated time and again, it is inexhaustible, and in distinction from its motive, the validity of a principle is universal, it is not bound to any particular person or to any particular group. The appearance of freedom, like the manifestation of principles, coincides with the performing act. Men are free as distinguished from their possessing the gift for freedom as long as they act, neither before nor after; for to be free and to act are the same. (BPF: 152-3) To paraphrase, Arendt s argument concerning the relationship between action and freedom unfolds in the following order: first, saying that the freedom of action resides in the fact that it is neither under guidance of the intellect nor the dictate of the will; second, also confirming that man s action is executed under neither any outside 5 According to Honohan (2002: 7), there are two important political theorists who made a great contribution to the rediscovery of civic republicanism in the late 1970s; one is Hannah Arendt and the other is J. G. A. Pocock. What is particularly noteworthy from our point of view is his remark that Pocock drew on the themes from Arendt and has outlined a continuing thread, from Athens and Aristotle, through Machiavelli and Harrington, to the American revolution, following the same footsteps of Hannah Arendt. 7

8 goal nor inside motive but under a principle; and lastly, asserting that if one wants to be free he must act because the appearance of freedom coincide with the performing act upon a principle which manifest in the world as long as the action lasts (BPF: 152). From this, we can sense at least three would-be differences between Kant and Arendt in approaching their respective theory of aesthetic judgment. First of all, Kant s sensus communis can now be replaced by a principle or its equivalent in the inner space of thinking of Arendt. Secondly, this principle must be universal in character so that it can transcend parochialism or prejudice which is an inalienable element of any political community. Lastly, since Arendt takes the notion of principle from Montesquieu she must have taken together with it its characteristics such as changeability and multiplicity; for example, in ancient Greek glory or greatness is the most cherished principle whereas in modern democracy equality is the cardinal principle according to which people act. For Arendt, the Kantian sensus communis or the community sense can be very wrong so that it should not be the standard for judgment. The three famous trials in the history of mankind for example prove this: that is, the trials of both Socrates and Jesus Christ of Nazareth. On top of this, Adolf Eichmann was an ordinary citizen of the Nazi era and faithfully followed the then community sense, i. e. anti-semitism, even though he confessed that he was not an anti-semite. Hence the community sense is not trustworthy and calls for examination at all times. It this connection, we can recall the 1961 Eichmann trials in Jerusalem which Arendt covered on the scene for The New Yorker and then published those reportages two years later as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. No doubt, this extraordinary personal experience and the discovery of the banal character of evil in particular facilitated her to go over her thoughts about the human faculties of the mind and their possible linkage with human action. As Arendt herself implied in the above citation, she went back to reexamine the vita contemplativa, for she desperately needed to track down what had gone wrong with the mind of Eichmann. Apart from this ostensible redirection of her quest, however, she at the same time discreetly tried to grasp the possible relationship between those two modes of human life, that is, the relationship between politics and philosophy. And, as we are told, she came up with a conclusion that thinking and acting are to be linked together and acting irrespective of this link can be very dangerous to both humans and their world. As we have discussed, she delved into Kant s Critique trilogy with an emphasis on the third in particular while running various university lecture series starting with the Chicago lectures in 1964 just one year after the Eichmann book publication and continued until early 1970s. 6 This Kantian turn, however, had to be stopped by her sudden death, but one thing is clear to her that Kant needed to take counsel of Socrates on his operation of reflection. Likewise, she returned to Socrates in search of the standard for her theory of aesthetic judgment. We will see how she has managed to do so. But first I suggest we stop and go over her methodology of thinking, the metaphor of the Archimedean point, which will extend our understanding of her political thought. PS: Dear Panelists, this is about half of my discussion and I shall have to update it with the full manuscript as soon as possible. And I shall be most grateful if you keep it in mind. I will be on the plane this evening of July 19, 2016 but will make myself available for you on line. (sykphil@icloud.com, also sykphil@khcu.ac.kr). 6 Of course, those lecture notes were compiled later by Mary McCarthy under the title of Lectures on Kant s Political Philosophy and more importantly they were going to be rendered into the third part of her posthumously published work, The Life of the Mind, which presently have only two parts; Thinking and Willing. 8