Human Studies 14: 23-31, 1991. 9 1991 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

A response to m y critics FRED DALLMAYR Department o f Government, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556

It is my pleasant task here to respond to the thoughtful and challenging papers of Dieter Misgeld and Peter Kivisto. I feel honored by the attention they have given to my book, Critical Encounters, and to my other writings. Actually, the customary title for my endeavor - "A Response to My Critics" seems unduly harsh or adversary in this case. Both papers are friendly and engaging in spirit and their criticisms are of the helpful kind; thus both display amply the "intellectual civility" and "exegetical generosity" which Kivisto kindly attributes to me in his comments. Given this character, the two papers afford me the opportunity of another "critical encounter" where encounter means neither consensual harmony nor combative dissonance but the possibility of a learning process. Although converging on some issues, the two papers are significantly different in their focus and central concerns - a fact making it desirable to respond to their arguments consecutively rather than in a piecemeal fashion. While Misgeld's concerns are those of a philosopher and political theorist, Kivisto's queries are mainly those of a sociologist and social scientist (or social theorist). In light of this divergence, the subtitle of my book "Between Philosophy and Politics" - now seems a bit elliptical or perhaps synecdochal, in the sense that the phrase stands in for a greater variety of crossings or intersections: including the intersections between political theory and sociology, between polis and society, as well as those between reflection and lived experience, between ontology and "ontological praxis." Kivisto begins his paper by commenting on the development of my writings up to Critical Encounters, raising questions about the latter's general design and intended purpose. This prompts me to say a few words about the book's background and character (recognizing all the while that the author's interpretation is not necessarily or in all respects the most authoritative one). Several of my previous writings - including Beyond Dogma and Despair and Twilight of Subjectivity, and to a lesser extent Polis and Praxis and Language and Politics - had been strongly exegetical -

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in style, seeking to render recent trends in Continental thought accessible to English-speaking readers (and also to myself). While this effort was often appreciated, I was also frequently taken to task for hiding excessively behind chosen texts and for failing to show my own hand resolutely enough. Critical Encounters was meant, at least in part, to remedy this perceived deficiency and to profile my own thinking more clearly against the backdrop of contemporary intellectual debates. To this extent, a parallel exists with the development of Anthony Giddens whose early reputation, as Kivisto notes, rested on his exegetical work and who "only during the past decade or so" has, in Lewis Coser's phrase, come to "speak more clearly his own voice." A similar tribute was paid me by William Connolly who noted (on the book's jacket) that my own voice "reaches a new level of definition in this text," and also by Richard Bemstein who saw my own journey becoming "more sharply defined in and through these critical encounters." The direction of this journey was toward post-subjectivism or, more specifically, toward a "practical ontology" (a theme to which I shall return). In any event, the sketched background should guard against misconstruing the general aim of the book - especially against expecting in it a fullfledged or "systematic" political theory (or even a prolegomenon to a comprehensive theoretical "synthesis"). Although guided in part by the preceding motives, the book's point nonetheless was not simply biographical in c h a r a c t e r - which would run counter to its post-subjectivist bent. Kivisto's comments on this score are disconcerting, to the extent that he finds in the book an effort on my part to come to terms or "settle accounts" with various authors in a "very personal way," such that the settling of accounts remains "a rather private matter." Seen in this light, the book would be not so much a series of "encounters" as rather an exercise in vanity - an impression I have tried to forestall by engaging arguments of others in a sustained fashion or by treating them (as the paper says) "with utmost seriousness." Kivisto is also puzzled by the structure of the book, wondering why a "particular group of thinkers was selected for consideration" and why not others? While prompted also by contingent circumstances, the selection (I trust) was not merely idiosyncratic. Basically, I was trying to find my bearings in prominent contemporary debates: debates about the status and future of Western modernity, about freedom, reason, dialogue and community - themes which are hardly my invention. Perhaps I am permitted here to cite a few lines from the book's Preface (p. 8): "In my view, the intellectual agonies of our time are unintelligible without attention to phenomenology, hermeneutics, linguistics, critical theory, deconstruction, and various forms of pragmatism that is, without attention to the subtle rifts between 'modernity' or modem metaphysics and incipient 'post-modem' modes of thinking and acting.

25 This means: whoever wishes to find his way in the thicket of contemporary debates must somehow come to terms with these perspectives... In terms of authors a required reading list today would have to include some works by Nietzsche, some works by Heidegger (chiefly Being and Time), by Wittgenstein (chiefly Philosophical Investigations), by Adomo (chiefly Negative Dialectics), by Habermas (chiefly The Theory of Communicative Action), by Apel (chiefly Transformation of Philosophy), by Gadamer (chiefly Truth and Method), as well as by Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Foucault." The Preface also gives reasons for the inclusion of some neopragmatists and practical philosophers like Bemstein and Maclntyre, and of some sociological theorists like Giddens and Luhmann. Critical Encounters contains discussions of most of the mentioned authors or texts. In terms of the general orientation of the book - in the direction of a practical ontology - Kivisto notes a distinct departure from some of my earlier writings. As he correctly observes, Twilight of Subjectivity and Beyond Dogma and Despair were wedded to what I then called a "critical phenomenology," that is, a merger of Habermasian critical theory and existential phenomenology (as articulated chiefly by the early MerleauPonty). It was mainly the synthetic quality of this merger, and also the lingering Husserlian overtones of existential phenomenology, which prompted me subsequently to abandon the descriptive phrase in favor of practical ontology. As part and parcel of this intellectual development, Kivisto points to my "growing disenchantment" with the rationalist bent of Habermas's work and my increasing "enthusiasm for Derrida" and deconstruction. What he does not notice or at least not mention at this point is the steady emergence during these years of Heidegger on my intellectual horizon - an emergence to which Derrida's influence was at best ancillary or supplementary. Although Critical Encounters does not contain a chapter specifically devoted to Heidegger, his impact is present throughout, even where his name is not invoked. Moreover, explicit references are by no means lacking. Kivisto points to the chapter juxtaposing or confronting Gadamer and Derrida, adding that the remaining chapters "treat authors in relative mutual exclusivity." This neglects or bypasses at least two extensive discussions: the confrontation in the Nietzsche-chapter of the respective readings of Heidegger and Derrida; and the emphasis in the Adomochapter on the latter's ambivalent relation to Heidegger. Despite deep resonances, my own attitude is not free of ambivalence. One reason for a certain distance or ambivalence derives from my chosen "life-world" in America - a fact which forces me to translate Heidegger's German idiom into English (and thus to read him, in a way, "against the grain"). Another reason has to do with my occupation as a political theorist and the obvious linkage of politics with praxis or action; this aspect accounts for the label

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"practical ontology" in contradistinction from a purely speculative-theoretical ontology (which occasionally surfaces in literature on Heidegger). In view of the broad scope of Critical Encounters, Kivisto sensibly and justifiably limits himself to a few central themes and ultimately to one major author. One of the themes singled out in his paper concerns the "political vision" animating the book and the prospects of achieving "a just and humane social order." In this context he objects to my treatment of Maclntyre. As he writes: "I would have liked to see him go beyond his altogether-too-brief critique of Maclntyre's neo-Aristotelian vision of an ethics grounded in particular communal contexts by offering a greatly expanded defense of liberalism's commitment to protecting and advancing the autonomy of the individual." The concluding part of this sentence is puzzling given Kivisto's acknowledgement of the problems I have with "contemporary liberalism and a political universe defined in terms of the proprietary individual" and with "an individualism stripped of notions of communal obligation or responsibility." My critique of Maclntyre's confining communalism or communitarianism, coupled with this indictment of liberalism, apparently lands me on the proverbial horns of a dilemma, with no exit in sight; at least Kivisto urges me to indicate in outline form "the route he would take to preserve both individual freedom and an ethic grounded in community." This is a tall order which I cannot properly fill at this point - except to note that I do not consider the alternatives of communalism and liberalism exhaustive. Some steps toward another possibility I have sketched in Twilight of Subjectivity (in the chapters on "Intersubjectivity and Political Community" and on "Ordinary Language and Ideal Speech") where I pointed to an interactive mode of "letting be" and an ethics of "recollection." Further steps were undertaken in the chapters on Foucault and on Heidegger in Polls and Praxis. Finally, I may refer again to the Preface to Critical Encounters which, after citing a number of political theorists, states (p. xi): "Together with these individuals ... I share a broad vision of political life as combining human freedom with social justice or a genuine concern for the 'common good' - a vision which, in my view, must be articulated today less on a proprietary or deontological basis than in ontological (and post-structuralist) terms." The author singled out in the paper is Anthony Giddens, and I largely share Kivisto's favorable assessment of that writer's opus. Thus, I basically concur with his appreciation of the "monumental nature of Giddens' recent work," including the latter's effort to overcome the division between "micro- and macro-level analyses" and to develop a "non-teleological, antievolutionary view of large-scale patterns of change"; in these respects and also regarding the correlation of "social integration" and "system integration" I actually find Giddens' formulations more persuasive than those of

27 Habermas. What Kivisto finds troubling is both my choice of texts and the charge of an incipient or occasional "domestication" of innovative insights. The former issue is easily resolved: in the space of one essay or chapter it seemed preferable to focus on Central Problems in Social Theory, given that this text presents Giddens' approach often in a more concise and poignant manner than does the sprawling and more diffuse Constitution of Society. Regarding the point of vacillation or an occasional "half-heartedness," Kivisto's own argument tends to strengthen my case. As he points out, Giddens' perspective delineates "three realms of consciousness" - the unconscious, practical consciousness, and discursive consiousness - with the main focus being placed on the "arena of practical consciousness" or on the "situated character of social practices in time and space." This stress on realms of consciousness is somewhat puzzling or disconcerting given the general thrust of the "linguistic turn" (or the turn to linguistic practices), namely, the intended exit from the traditional "philosophy of consciousness." Over long stretches, I believe, Giddens' discussion of the arena of practical consciousness resembles Weberian action theory (especially the category of traditional action) or else Schutz's subjective-mundane phenomenology. More importantly, his treatment of "structure" and of the "situated character" of practices tends to downplay the interplay of presence and absence in the process of structuration (beyond a positive "time-space" framework) and also the interplay of intentional action and non-action (or "passion") on the level of practices. Giddens' vacillation in these respects forms, in a sense, the counterpoint of Derrida's occasional "willfulness" or "leaping gesture" - for which Kivisto demands more "citational evidence." This evidence is found in the occasional privileging of nihilation over being (as developed in the Nietzsche-chapter) or in the foregrounding of rupture over dialogue (as shown in the chapter on hermeneutics and deconstruction). In Derrida's case, I grant, leaping tends to be counterbalanced by tentativeness and an awareness of hazards - which is not always the case with "Derrideans" who often treat deconstruction as a warrant for being "done" with philosophy or past texts. While generally sympathetic to deconstruction, Critical Encounters obviously is not done with philosophy. This leads me to the probing philosophical comments of Dieter Misgeld. His paper subtly and sensitively explores the broader contours and ramifications of my book. As he correctly notes, the book is animated by a "post-liberal moral and political thinking" and has among its themes a "post-individualist theory of politics" as well as a theory of "embodied intersubjectivity." Misgeld also explicitly addresses the theme of (practical) "ontology" and offers thoughtful interpretations of the term - with which I largely agree. Ontology, he writes at one point, is "the opposite of merely practical or technical dispositions, of

28 the inclination to entrust our collective future to social engineering and problem-solving measures." On a specifically political plane, he adds, ontology designates "a mode of reflection which makes us face the absence of a true public space, the absence of the relevant forms of community," given that our historical situation is marked by "the play of absence and presence, the presence which is brought forth in absence and the absence embedded in presence." The best description of the term, in my view, occurs a bit later when Misgeld states that ontology is "no more, no less than reflection on the relation between reflective and prereflective experience, on the insertedness of human subjects and their endeavors, including their speech, into an intersubjectively, bodily constituted world." In this sense, far from being a representational or objectifying type of thought, ontology denotes a mode of recollection or anamnesis, that is, a mode recollecting the "always already" present background of the "world" preceding conscious reflection. Misgeld is also correct when he notes that, seen in this light, ontology is far from constituting "a systematic or foundational discipline underlying philosophy and the quest for certainty in human knowledge." (In view of this statement, one wonders, of course, why I should consider discourse as "foundational for the polis" or embodied intersubjectivity as "foundational for a theory of politics.") In pursuing the implications or ramifications of such an ontology, Misgeld's paper offers a number of perceptive comments with which I again concur. Given its critique of technical-instrumental dispositions, he observes, the book's tenor is opposed to a "shallow form of pragmatism" and particularly to a "liberal-progressivist fix-it mentality" which considers everything as "doable." More generally, ontology is at odds with a liberal or Enlightenment rationalism wedded to the aim "of creating society in rational discourse, of putting pure thought, pure minds in advance of embodied practice" and thus of reducing history to the "outcome of conscious coordination." The chief defect of such an outlook, Misgeld writes, is that "the world disappears as a horizon of communication and practice," more precisely: that it appears as "the telos of human understanding, not as its ground." This consideration also undergirds the book's distantiation from Habermas's communicative rationalism or rationalist model of communication, especially from his treatment of communication as a "mechanism of action coordination" and of language as a "usable means" or as "property or competence" of speakers - a treatment reinscribing critical theory in traditional metaphysics with its "separateness of consciousness and world." In terms of political structures, ontology refuses to identify politics with the modem "state" seen as the locus of the "systematic and bureaucratic regulation of social activities." In the words of the paper, directed against Luhmann's systems theory: "The modem state is not a

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polis; community cannot be generated by it." It is at this point that the political significance of Heidegger, Adorno, and Derrida comes into view. Political life - Misgeld paraphrases the book's argument - depends on "a 'poetic' generation of a public space through common living experiences and shared agonies"; in Heideggerian language, human "historical dwelling" is a "poetical act: community is (poetically) created, not (technically) made." Since poetic generation also involves the risk or prospect of nonunderstanding, Misgeld correctly adds, discontinuities (in Derrida's sense) "grant freedom, the space to establish and reclaim the difference between self and other." On the basis of these observations, Misgeld is able to locate Critical Encounters quite aptly on the intellectual map of our time. It is apparent, he concludes, that "deeply influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty" the book remains "committed to the assumptions of postHusserlian phenomenology and its critique of the Cartesian legacy in philosophy." Despite the discomfort involved in any labeling, this is a description which I find quite adequate and congenial. While straying at times far afield, I have always considered myself as standing chiefly in the tradition of phenomenology as inaugurated by Husserl and as carried forward by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer and others. Phenomenology to me means basically an attentiveness to the phenomena of experience, an effort to "save the appearances" in the face of technical constructs and abstract explanations, and ultimately an openness to whatever appears or discloses itself in phenomena. Contrary to Husserl's aspirations, of course, such disclosure never yields a full cognitive transparency, but always involves a twilight of revealment and concealment, of presence and absence of meaning. To this extent, phenomenology is not only the examination of intentional forms of thought and action, but also the acknowledgement of non- or counter-intentions, of non- or counter-actions, and thus of the interplay of being and non-being. Noting these shifts of accent in the phenomenological movement, Misgeld remarks that my "incorporation of deconstructionist themes, such as the decentering of the subject, the significance of othemess and difference, and the contingency of social meaning, is ultimately formed by these assumptions." In view of these perceptive comments, the paper's concluding paragraphs are unexpected and somewhat baffling. Seemingly forgetting the strictures against merely "technical dispositions" or "problem-solving measures," Misgeld suggests that to understand politics "we need something handy and practical," some "reflective technique" useful for solving concrete political issues. Once this is granted, he assumes, ontology as propounded in the book is jeopardized or at least restricted in its role. What do we gain, he asks, "by placing our trust in ontology, the thinking of being, and the

30 deconstructive multiplication of differences?" Putting to one side the "poetic generation" of public space, the paper sees a need for theorizing "carried out in a rational (possibly 'rationalist') mode" or at least for a theory "which is pragmatic and principled, profound and practical, moralpractical and technical (in some sense)." Such a theory, we are told, would give "prominence to norms and principles of public conduct" as they operate in real-life, social-political contexts (that is, to normative and empirical considerations). What troubles me in these comments is not so much their intent as their formulation: their endorsement of a pragmatism which seems incompatible with and immune from ontological reflection (and issues of poetic generation). It may be well to recall here the book's emphasis on "practical ontology," that is, on ontology seen as praxis or a practical happening - although a praxis bereft of moorings in subjective interests and goal orientations (and thus also at odds with traditional normativism and empiricism). What particularly alarms me is the possible subservience of political thought to pragmatism, in the sense of an acknowledgement of its "dependence on those practically motivated interpretations which are put forward by social groups" - which, to me, conjures up the danger of ideological entrapment. One way to honor Misgeld's legitimate concerns is to distinguish between "ontic" and "ontological" levels of analysis, more specifically: between politics seen as concrete policy-making and politics viewed as the generation and maintenance of "polity" or a public space. In Critical Encounters, my own theorizing was primarily concerned with the second meaning of politics rather than the first - for a reason. The relation between the two levels of politics, between polity and policy, in my view, is by no means of a deductive sort; theorists or intellectuals, in any case, have no privileged position in policy-making over other citizens - although they surely can make contributions to a "restructuring of institutions" or the shape of "particular policies, such as affirmative action." Exploring the ontological matrix of politics, I need to add, is not simply synonymous with anchoring politics in "philosophy" (in a traditionalfoundational sense). The notion of such an anchoring is one of Misgeld's central qualms. As he notes, my book probes the "landscape between politics and philosophy" - but in a way privileging the one over the other. He takes it to be the point of the book that "politics needs philosophy, while philosophy does not need politics"; the term "between" thus implies a oneway movement, namely, one which "places politics into the context of philosophical reflection," while neglecting to develop an understanding of philosophy "by way of a theory of politics." This issue resurfaces pointedly in the final paragraph which puts forth the idea of a "politics of philosophy" or of an interrogation of philosophy "in terms of politics." I confess that I

31 am struck by this idea - but not as something alien to Critical Encounters. What muddles the issue here, I fear, is Misgeld's substitution of philosophy for ontology without further discrimination. Yet, his paper amply attests to the oddity of ontology in comparison with philosophical systems. The opening lines link ontological reflection with Heidegger's notion of Holzwege - which certainly are ill-suited for any secure type of anchoring. On the level of political ontology, the paper refers to Heidegger's rethinking of the polis not in terms of state or city-state but in terms of "polos, vortex, a realm of the questionable and undomesticated." If these views are indicative of ontology, then my sense of "philosophy" is surely not immtlne from politics or the dilemmas agitating the polis. Accordingly, I fully concur with Misgeld's suggestion that "we should look at politics as lying at the heart of philosophy" (provided "politics" is in turn ontologicaUy rethought). For a long time, my quarrel has been with a self-contained rationalism aloof from everyday predicaments as well as the political agonies of our age. For this reason, I have tended to foreground in my writings the role of "experience" (understood in a Heideggerian or Gadamerian sense); on the plane of theoretical inquiry, Critical Encounters sought to offer not a privileged vantage but to record paths, perhaps Holzwege, of experience. In this respect, I strongly second Misgeld's observation about philosophical reflection that we do not expect it to "solve or even address the constantly changing preoccupations of daily politics," but that we do expect it to "offer perspectives on the age in which we live" and finally to "match up with the everyday sense of society and politics" available to philosophers and non-philosophers alike.