Starting in the winter and continuing into the spring of 1988, a large number of articles appeared in France prompted by the publication there the previous year of Victor Farias's Heidegger et le nazisme.  The French articles (and indeed books) were rapidly followed by others in German, Italian, English, and other languages.  Numerous international conferences were and continue to be convened on the same matter, now widely known as l'affaire Heidegger.  The great interest being shown both inside and outside the univeristy in one of the most influential philosophers of this century who became, for a time, an enthusiastic Nazi raises anew the age-old question of the relation between philosophy and politics.  This general topic, which has been the subject of reflection and debate at least since the days of Plato, is once again timely and calls for fresh consideration.
    It was never the intention of Social Research to devote a special issue exclusively to an examination of Heidegger or any other single philosopher.  What we sought, rather, was a broader historical and theoretical approach in order to examine the complexity of the relations and even tensions that obtain between philosophical activity and political commitment.  We solicited responses concerning philosophers and schools of philosophy that addressed such questions as: How have philosophical convictions, and the intensity with which they are held, determined political activity?  Conversely, what effect have political opinions exercised on philosophical thought?  How have individual philosophers or schools of philosophy construed and analyzed their own political positions, and what is their responsibility for the public articulation of their views?  What in fact constitutes a philosophical politics?  Is such a politics necessarily utopian?  To what extent is philosophical reason capable of penetrating the realm of belief and the contingency of human affairs?  What effects have historical changes in the conception of reason itself had on politics?
    Two of the papers in the present issue do deal directly with Heidegger, the first of which, by Hans Sluga, is a consideration of that philosopher "in relation to the philosophical field in which he operated," a field composed of a diversity of schools of philosophy all of which were influenced by Nazism.  Methodologically, Sluga considers the attempts of all members of these schools to establish their work as the appropriate philosophy of the new system - that is, to state the connection between the philosophical and political realms - as neither "plainly philosophical" nor "simply political" but metadiscursive.  However the link was made (Heidegger, for instance, made it in terms of "knowledge" and "destiny"), it was, according to Sluga, never shown in any case to be necessary, which, while absolving individual philosophies from the charge of "complicity" with the Nazis, leaves open the question of a possible "affinity" between the discipline of philosophy itself and totalitarian power.  It is that very question, in regard to Heidegger, that Dominique Janicaud takes up.  In tacit agreement with Sluga that there is no direct link between Heidegger's politics and philosophy, Janicaud considers the possibility of a "negative link," namely, that the absence of a political or ethical philosophy in Heidegger is not itself "external" to his thought.  While locating "nothing politically determinate" in what she calls Heidegger's "a-politics," Janicaud nevertheless holds that it contains a danger in "the will to found a politics anew on the ontological difference alone."  It is not that Nazism can in any sense be derived from expression of an "exacerbated Platonism" in the Rectorial Address and a belief in the possibility of an "ontological" or "originary politics," whereas Janicaud holds, after Aristotle, that politics, when it is not utopian, is "mainly an ontical affair."
    Turning to the case of Sartre, perhaps the most politically active of twentieth-century philosophers, William McBride finds ambiguity in the very meaning of the word "activism."  Sartre was indeed an activist in the sense that can be measured by "the quantity of physical activity" exerted on specific occasions; but he was also and "first and foremost a writer," who in a variety of genres politically influenced the public, however skeptical Sartre himself may have been about the power of literature to do that.  McBride argues that in a changing world the fact that Sartre's thought changed does not entail an alteration in his basic "political projects," nor any kind of revisionism or opportunism.  Rather, by raising the question of the lines of demarcation between a writer's "theory" and his "opinion," McBride argues that conventional barriers between philosophy and political writing, at least in the case of Sartre, become eroded.  In a comparative analysis of the political essay "The Communists and Peace" and The Critique of Dialectical Reason, McBride concludes that, while the former may be dated, it is not in any absolute sense separable from the latter.  In this reading of the case of Sartre, and particularly of the mature Sartre, a breakdown of the traditional distinction between philosophy as the search for eternal truth and the search for a plurality of "human" truths embedded in temporal flux - a distinction shared to some extent by Sartre himself - is seen to occur.
    The political responsibility of professional philosophers is the subject of Larry May's essay.  By looking at many examples from the history of philosophy in conjunction with acknowledged responsibilities of other professional groups - such as those composed of journalists, physicists, physicians, psychologists, and lawyers - May argues that the public expectation that "philosophers are trying to stimulate their societies in ways which are, on balance, positive" is not irrelevant to their acknowledged obligation to pursue wisdom.  He argues, in fact, for the heightened political responsibility of philosophers to be vigilant in minimizing "the likelihood of harm produced by their writings," citing the example of Nietzsche, Rousseau, and Hume.  Such professional vigilance has parameters of which ignorance is no excuse, since once "a philosopher decided to publish his or her work that philosopher is already launched into the public arena where the political and moral consequences of one's acts must be taken seriously."  As all professions are "public entities," so also the profession of philosophy is "a politicized domain," and the higher the reputation of any given philosopher the greater is his responsibility "to prevent the abuse of philosophy."
    A political theory that is not utopian, according to Thomas Nagel, is one that is both "desirable in itself" and "one to which we can reasonably conform."  Thus he perceives a delicate balance between the ideal and persuasive functions of political theories and analyzes their justification in terms of it.  While  there is a notion of truth relevant to political theories, it is different from that of science, for what human beings share that permits "a political argument to be addressed to them at all" is not only rationality but also certain moral values, such as "mutual respect or "equal regard."  At the same time no political theory can ignore "individual motives."  While mutuality and individuality overlap in part, political institutions offer both more protection and greater threats to the individual than principles of individual morality, and political theory is viewed as distinctive in presenting an ethical and practical demand.  The theories of a classless society and of a liberal system of individual rights illustrate the problem of double justification - impersonal and individual - required of political theories.  Whereas the ideal of moral equality in the former seems hopelessly utopian in terms of requiring a transformation of human nature, the persuasive function of the latter, with its "limited morality" in support of "limited government," appears less than adequate in terms of realizing any sort of (nonutopian) feasibility of devising "a more egalitarian set of institutions...still liberal in spirit..."
    George Kateb presents the case for liberal, rights-based individualism, with its institutions of representative democracy and capitalism, against its communitarian critics.  His defense is aimed at showing that Foucault's theory of "docility," which purports to reveal that modernity's "liberation of the individual [is] only a new servitude," is in fact more appropriately applied to communitarianism.  Kateb's arguments consider both people's needs, according to the communitarians - togetherness, discipline, mutuality, and group identity - and the communitarian critics' own needs, which he speaks of in terms of religious and aesthetic "mentalities." He finds both sets of needs are "retrogressive," entailing a distrust of freedom and a threat to dignity, that they are "inhospitable to diversity and disagreement," and that they require leadership and a disposition to be led.  Citing Emerson and others, Kateb understands individualism not as self-expression or egotism (as Foucault did) but as the awareness of the "cultivated inward self" of others as equals.  In this powerful defense of liberalism the liberationist movements of the 1960s, the opposite of docility, are seen to have frown from "the soil of rights-based individualism," whereas the sources of docility are located in anti-individualist practices such as fascism, socialism, and power-statism.
    The concluding essay, by Seven Smith, confronts the basic problem of politics and rationality in terms of three historical changes in the conception of rationality itself.  The first "crisis" comes when the classical conception, the proper adjustment of the soul, is utterly rejected by Hobbes, a rejection that Smith finds antipolitical from an Aristotelian perspective.  The second "crisis" comes when rationality is conceived, by Hegel, as profoundly temporal.  The central section of this essay is concerned with Kojeve's Marxian reading of Hegel and the criticism of that reading by Leo Strauss.  Their debate turns on the notions of recognition, equality, dignity, and the end of history.  To Kojeve the achievement of a rational society means not only the end of history, but also the end of alienation and the subject-object dichotomy, the end of man, and, in the absolute knowledge of the philosopher, the end of philosophy.  To Strauss, since the exercise of political power is necessarily "at odds with the philosophical life," such a rational society, or utopia, is not in accord with political reality, hence not feasible nor even desirable, since if it were the goal of history, then history is a tragedy without the possibility of human happiness.  Smith revised Hegelianism by making his own distinction between reason as "operative in history' as opposed to "history as a rational process," thereby replacing the notion of historical truth with that of rational beliefs subject to change.  The postmodern critique of reason itself, the suspicion that all forms of rationality are forms of domination (as in Foucault), represents the third "crisis" of rationality facing us today.
    It is clear that this collection of essays, while frequently joining common issues and referring to some of the same materials and figures, represents different perspectives on the common theme of the relations of philosophy and politics, which was our goal.  When a journal plans a special issue it typically asks more writers to contribute papers than it can possibly print in a single issue, knowing that not all potential contributors will be free to write at the same time.  In this case the response was so overwhelmingly positive that the next issue of Social Research will continue the discussion of philosophy and politics, including more material on Heidegger, essays on Hannah Arendt and Richard Rorty, and a hitherto unpublished essay by Arendt.

    Philosophy and Politics

    Introduction                                                            Jerome Kohn                                                            789

    Metadiscourse: German
    Philosophy
    and National Socialism                                            Hans Sluga                                                               795

    Heidegger's Politics:
    Determinable or Not?                                            Dominique Janicaud                                                  819

    The Case of Sartre                                                William L. McBride                                                    849

    Philosophers and Political
    Responsibility                                                        Larry May                                                                  877

    What Makes a Political
    Theory Utopian?                                                    Thomas Nagel                                                           903

    Individualism,
    Communitarianism,
    and Docility                                                            George Kateb                                                           921

    Hegelianism and the Three
    Crises of Rationality                                                Steven B. Smith                                                        943

    Table of Contents and Index of
    Contributors to Volume 56                                                                                                                       975
 

Jerome Kohn teaches in the Graduate Liberal Studies program at the New School for Social Research.  He is currently editing the unpublished and uncollected political, philosophic, and literary papers of Hannah Arendt.

Hans Sluga, professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote Gottlob Frege (1980).

Dominique Janicaud is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Research in the History of Ideas at the University of Nice.

William L. McBride is professor philosophy at Purdue University.  His Sartre's Political Theory will be published soon.

Larry May professor of philosophy at Purdue University, is the author of The Morality of Groups (1987).

Thomas Nagel is professor of philosophy and law at New York University.  His books include The View from Nowhere (1986).

George Kateb is professor of politics at Princeton University and the author, most recently, of Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil (1984).

Steven B. Smith is associate professor of political science at Yale University.  His most recent book is Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (1989).